Friends of Rural New York

As usual, CAFO neighbors bear the burden for CAFO “cost-saving” pollution.

Mecklenburg residents, dairy farmers discuss use of fertilizer sludge
By Cara Hoffman
Special to The Ithaca Journal

Chemically treated human and municipal waste from the Syracuse metro
area containing unregulated heavy metals and PCBs is being spread on
fields in Schuyler County by Bergen Farms in a cost-saving move that
has
local residents alarmed and looking for information.

But the product — sold under the name Earth Blends or N-Viro Soil and

manufactured by Waste Stream Environmental, Inc., in Syracuse — may
be
as much of a mystery to the Bergens as it was to the crowd of concerned

citizens who packed the Mecklenburg Fire House on Wednesday night for
an
informational meeting that the Community Dispute Resolution Center
facilitated.

Sitting in folding chairs in the chilly fire hall, wearing coats and
caps, the group of more than 80 had concerns that ranged from odor,
quality of life issues and impact on real estate values, to potential
well, ground water and watershed contamination and long-term health
effects on human and animals including cancer.

According to marketing materials on the N-Viro Web site, Earth Blends,
which has a tagline of “mixtures of earthly good,” is used as a
“bio-organic and mineral fertilizer with agricultural liming and
nutrient values.”

Jim Bergen said his 2,200 head family-owned dairy operation is able to
buy the product for $7 a ton, and though it is only half as effective
as
lime for regulating the pH levels of crops, it beats the $35 a ton the
farm would pay for lime.

N-Viro goes through a number of treatment processes to neutralize E.
coli and other pathogens before it becomes the dry product that is
spread on crops. But pathogens are a small part of the equation as
Murray McBride, director of Cornell’s Waste Management Institute,
explained to residents.

Treating the sludge does not eliminate heavy metals, such as arsenic,
cadmium, lead, copper and mercury, or man-made chemicals such as PCBs,
fire retardants and dioxin, which build up in the soil over time and
bio-accumulate in crops and in the bodies of animals that eat those
crops.

McBride explained there are no EPA regulations regarding the use of
these industrial and chemical pollutants in land application. The EPA
did, however, make a statement in a 2000 report from its inspector
general’s office stating it “Cannot assure the public that current
land
application processes of sewage sludge are protective of human health
and the environment.”

The Bergens have been spreading N-Viro’s sludge product on their fields

in Odessa for 10 years. In October 2007 they purchased land in the Town

of Hector on the southwest corner of Perry City Road and the
intersections of routes 227 and 228. A month later they had spread 600
tons of the treated sludge on their fields.

Mark Ochs, CAFO planner for Bergen Farms, said that a great deal of
scrutiny goes into planning how the product is spread and that there is

a buffer of land that is not fertilized with the product between Bergen

Farm’s fields and other properties to prevent possible contamination
from runoff. “There is a lot of oversight for these plans,” Ochs
said.
“They are heavily science based.”

“The last thing we want to do is go around polluting someone’s water
source,” said Skip Bergen. But Bergen said he did not have all the
answers about what the product contains.

“The problem is the EPA says it’s OK to use this,” said Bergen’s
brother
Jim. “It shouldn’t be up to us if it has PCBs in it.” He said he
knew
the product contained some heavy metals but Wednesday’s meeting was the

first time he had ever heard the waste contained PCBs.

“We are not anti-farming,” said Mecklenburg resident Harley
Campbell.
“We are against poor farming practices and poor regulations.”
Campbell
said the farmers were led to believe what they were doing was all right

and it wasn’t. “We need to ask the Bergens as neighbors not to use
(N-Viro),” he said.

Skip Bergen nodded thoughtfully at the question. “If people were
really
upset about it, I think that’s something my brothers and I could sit
down and talk about.”

After the meeting Jim Bergen said discussing the use of the fertilizer
was a likely scenario. “There’s definitely concerns,” he said.

*Originally published January 25, 2008*

The NY Times story on EQIP grants funding lagoon construction left out
one important fact.  There is no oversight on how the EQIP grant money
is spent.  None.  They are simply issued a check to spend as
they see fit.  Nobody checks up on them to see if they are using it
for conservation purposes.  The farmer can buy a sports car, a new
tractor or a new SUV with it if he wants, and many of them do.

January 13, 2008
THE FEED
In the Farm Bill, a Creature From the Black Lagoon?

By ANDREW MARTIN
IT may not surprise you to learn that much of the pork and chicken and beef and milk that you buy at the grocery store comes from huge, industrial-size operations that bear little resemblance to the quaint family farms that adorn many food packages.

But you may be surprised to learn that your tax dollars have helped pave the way for the growth of these livestock megafarms by paying farmers to deal with the mountains of excrement that their farms generate. All of this is carried out under the rubric of “conservation.” Congress is about to renew the program — and possibly even expand it — as part of a new farm bill wending its way through the Capitol.

It’s called the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, also known as EQIP — a name that suggests an initiative to encourage farmers to improve environmental standards.

And, in fact, when the program was created as part of the 1996 farm bill, that’s exactly what it was. At the time, the government agreed to pay a share — up to 75 percent — of a conservation project, and the payments were limited to $10,000 a year. Farmers used the money for small-scale projects that had environmental benefits, like planting cover crops to prevent erosion and soak up excess nitrogen or installing fencing to better manage grazing cattle.

But in the 2002 farm bill, the program was changed at the livestock industry’s behest, and funding for the program was raised from $200 million a year to, eventually, $1.3 billion. Yearly payment limits were scratched, replaced by a provision that farmers could get no more than $450,000 during the bill’s life.

Another change: large-scale livestock facilities that once were not eligible for EQIP money were encouraged to participate under the 2002 bill.

As a result, many farmers are using their EQIP money for animal waste management practices, which include helping to pay for lagoons to store manure. The lagoons are lined ponds that are used to keep the waste until it can be pumped out for some other use, usually as fertilizer on nearby fields. In some instances, manure lagoons have leaked or overflowed into the groundwater or neighboring streams.

Defending real food in An Eater’s Manifesto
Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. These seven simple words of dietary advice are at the heart of journalist Michael Pollan’s new book, In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto. Having covered the ecological repercussions of our food choices in his bestselling The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Pollan turns now to consequences for our personal health. He questions why decades of nutritional advice have left U.S. eaters fatter and less healthy than ever. His conclusion? In place of real food, Americans today are eating “edible food-like substances” that come largely from factories instead of farms. But we can, in Pollan’s words, “reclaim our health and happiness as eaters.” Read an excerpt from the book.
http://www.michaelpollan.com/indefense.php
Also, read Pollan’s recent article in the New York Times Magazine about what’s wrong with our food system.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/16/magazine/16wwln-lede-t.html
FROM: Union of Concerned Scientists

Thanks to Evangeline and Paul and all the other hard-working sustainable farmers who bring us delicious,healthy, locally grown foods.

Article published Jan 1, 2008
Winter isn’t fallow for vegetable farms
Root storage, greenhouses keep crops growing
By Rebecca Lerner
Special to The Ithaca Journal

Every other Wednesday in the winter, Trumansburg farmers Evangeline Sarat and Paul Martin set out to meet the people who eat their food.
“Everything we grow is for them,” said Sarat, co-owner of Sweet Land Farm. “We really believe in the idea of a community supporting a farm.”

Sweet Land Farm is a CSA (community-supported agriculture), a kind of agricultural business model that connects organic growers directly with consumers.

By cutting out the middlemen — distributors, truckers and grocers — CSAs bring in more money for farmers, who often struggle to earn a living wage. Most small farms had negative profit margins in 2004, the last year data was available, according to a report this year by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. And because members buy shares before the growing season begins, farmers have income available when they need it most, to purchase seeds and soil mixes, advertise and work on building projects.

In general, a CSA operates like this: Customers purchase shares in a farm’s harvest in advance, then come to designated pick-up points on a weekly or bi-weekly basis to pick up a pre-determined variety of produce that shifts as the season progresses.

On a recent mid-week afternoon, Sarat and Martin spread boxes of fresh kale, potatoes and other produce on the tables at Main Street’s Hazelnut Kitchen, a Village of Trumansburg eatery where they distribute their food. The CSA’s 64 wintertime members trickled in over a four-hour stretch, taking time to swap recipes and trade updates about their lives.

“A couple generations back, everyone had a garden or bought from the local grocer. It’s really different these days. Most food in the supermarket, you have no idea where it came from — you’re never going to visit that farm in California,” Sarat said.

Buying locally grown food is a way of life for many in Tompkins County, as the popularity of the GreenStar Cooperative and the Ithaca Farmers’ Market can attest. CSAs, too, have become increasingly prolific. A search on the Web site LocalHarvest.org showed 17 area CSA farms.

Most CSAs, however, operate in the summer. Sweet Land Farm in Trumansburg and Blue Heron Farm in Lodi are the only two in the area offering winter shares.

Sweet Land Farm is solely a CSA, both in the winter and the summer. Sweet Land began its operations after Sarat and Martin bought the property on the winter solstice of 2006.

Blue Heron Farm, run by Robin Ostfeld and Lou Johns, sells produce at the Ithaca Farmers Market, GreenStar Cooperative Market and to four restaurants. In 1997, Blue Heron also became a wintertime CSA, though it does not have a summer CSA program. This year, Blue Heron has upward of 120 members — each of whom pays $150 — and a long waiting list.

“We find it gratifying on many levels,” Ostfeld said. “Educating people about what it takes to grow and store food really helps to bridge the gap between passively consuming and actively choosing how to spend food dollars.”

Many of Blue Heron’s CSA customers are motivated by concern over global warming, Ostfeld said: “They want to do their part to eliminate long-distance trucking of produce from California to the Northeast in the winter.”

Local-food advocate Tycho Dan, a produce manager at GreenStar Cooperative Market, called CSAs “pioneers” in sustainability.

“Even at GreenStar, which is the most local grocery store, we get 25 percent of our apples from New Zealand in a given year,” Dan said. “It is absurd, in the opinion of a person who studies these things, how much energy and pollution comes from what we do. It’s really mind-boggling.”

But the challenge of the CSA model is that the consumer has to adjust to eating only produce that is in season, Sarat said.

Sweet Land’s June 7 distribution offered chard, parsley, cucumbers, basil, peas and broccoli. The Aug. 17 one had cantaloupes, onions, sweet peppers, summer squash, edamame and cucumbers. A recent wintertime distribution had potatoes, kale, carrots, beets, parsnips, cabbage, leeks, rutabagas and salad mix.

Wintertime distributions generally contain less variety than summertime distributions because they include root vegetables that the farms have stored in humid cellars, in addition to freshly harvested produce. Kale grows outside unprotected in the winter because it can survive freezing temperatures, but other items, such as lettuce varieties, are grown inside a greenhouse in tunnels covered by poly-blend fabric.