Friends of Rural New York

Lagoon covers help fight global warming. TAXPAYERS MILKED AGAIN- FORCED INTO PAYING FOR A PROJECT THAT WOULD NOT EVEN BE NECESSARY IF CAFO CRIMINALS WERE ACTUALLY GOOD FARMERS.

http://www.theithacajournal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080102/NEWS01/801020302/1002
Lagoon covers help fight global warming
Technology captures, uses emissions from liquid manure
By Bill Huttunen
Special to The Journal

KING FERRY — In an innovative move designed to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions and provide revenue for cash-strapped dairy farmers who store

liquid manure for long periods of time, Environmental Credit
Corporation
has completed installation of one of two manure lagoon covers at
Fessenden Dairy, a 550-cow Dairy of Distinction farm owned by Tim
Fessenden, of King Ferry in southern Cayuga County.

The lagoon covers will capture methane and other air emissions with
high
global warming potential produced from the manure and convert them into

less harmful carbon dioxide (CO2) through a flaring process.

This capture-and-conversion process will greatly reduce the farms’
greenhouse gas emissions to a figure roughly equal to the emissions
produced in one year by nearly 700 cars.

The reduction in emissions will be registered as carbon credits and
monetized on the Chicago Climate exchange, giving each ton of
greenhouse
gas reduction a monetary value that can be sold as an additional source

of income for farmers. Methane is 21 times more potent than CO2 in
trapping heat in the atmosphere.

Fessenden’s farm, handling more than 16,000 gallons of manure per day,
is the first one in New York to be chosen for the program based on its
progressive manure management practices and opportunities for carbon
credits. The company hopes to install more than 200 covers for other
dairy and hog farms throughout the United States over the next several
years.

Environmental Credit Corporation will pay the entire cost for
installation and project operation expenses through a $1 million United

States Department of Agriculture grant to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions, and once the system on a farm is in place, the corporation
will create and monetize the carbon credits to generate revenue.

In return, farmers such as Fessenden will be paid for their
participation in the program and simply observe and record the system
performance and do occasional maintenance. After a period of time, if
results are satisfactory, the system can be purchased outright.

“The lagoon covers will not only reduce harmful emissions, but they
will
also help in pest and odor control and improve air quality during
storage, which will please our neighbors,” Fessenden said.

Another plus will be a reduction of lagoon volume. “Last year,
rainfall
increased the lagoon volume by 30 percent. That created a problem
returning it back into the land, and it also carried over into the
croplands,” Fessenden said. “The covers will definitely help by
keeping
the rainfall out of the lagoon.”

EEC president Scott Subler believes the Lagoon Cover program is a
win-win situation for eligible farmers helping a stressed environment.

“The carbon credits are a great incentive for farmers who are
striving
to be environmentally conscious in their day-to-day work. “They’ll
receive a guaranteed payment for their work, with incentive bonuses
based on system performance.”

Environmental Credit Corporation plans to monitor farmer participation
in the program and provide onsite monitoring, documentation and carbon
credit registration up until 2020.

Fessenden anticipates having the second cover installed within the next

six months, weather permitting. “It’s very exciting to have our farm
selected to be the program’s pilot project for New York,” he said.

Article published Feb 28, 2008
Experts blame lake’s odor on farming, pols
By Krisy Gashler
Ithaca Journal Staff
ITHACA — Scientists at a public forum on phosphorus in Cayuga Lake said residents concerned about stinking algae should blame farmers and elected officials, not Lake Source Cooling.
Robert Howarth, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Cornell, said biofuels like ethanol are one of the greatest threats to water quality because they encourage farmers to grow more corn, which requires more fertilizer and herbicides, and causes more erosion, carrying phosphorus to the lake.

A proposed biofuel plant at the Seneca Army Depot could decrease water quality in Cayuga and Seneca lakes, he said.

All of the scientists, from Cornell, the Community Science Institute, the Ithaca Area Wastewater Treatment Plant and the Finger Lakes Institute, agreed that tributaries to Cayuga Lake contribute the most silt and phosphorus to Cayuga Lake.

The lake is on the EPA’s impaired water bodies list because of excessive phosphorus and silt.

Cornell’s Lake Source Cooling contributes approximately 10 percent of the phosphorus load to the lake, according to Cornell’s 2006 Lake Source Cooling monitoring report.

John Halfman, director of the Finger Lakes Institute, has been studying an increase in deep water phosphorus in Cayuga Lake. Similar trends have occurred in other Finger Lakes, he said.

He called the impact from Lake Source Cooling “miniscule.”

Rich DePaolo, an area resident, said the “lake has been studied to death.”

“We can talk about 20 micrograms per liter, but the bottom line is in the middle of the summer on the Southern shelf of Cayuga Lake you’ve got sailboats that can’t get out of the weeds, you’ve got things that smell,” he said. “When are we gonna stop studying the problem and start doing something about the problem?”

Halfman and Howarth said those interested in protecting the lake should encourage municipalities not to scrape the sides of ditches but rather let plants grow there, to capture sediment and phosphorus before it gets to streams and eventually the lake.

DePaolo and several other members of the public said they want the state Department of Environmental Conservation to enact stricter regulations on all sources of phosphorus contribution.

Roughly 50 people attended the forum Wednesday at the Tompkins County Public Library.

It was co-sponsored by Cornell Cooperative Extension and the Community Science Institute.

This is a hoot! We can’t imagine why people are getting a mite annoyed with pollution caused by livestock factories in Cayuga County.  CAFO criminals don’t respond to polite requests and everyone knows the government is ignoring neighbor’s complaints about water pollution from runoff.

Cayuga Lake Watershed Network

“Sharon Anderson stated that the project with the Community Dispute Resolution Center to begin a consensus building process to resolve issues related to pollution in Salmon Creek and Cayuga Lake is underway. This process is partially funded by the New York State Agriculture Mediation Program. She made a proposal to the group that to further this process that the WQMA provide some funds to show local support. Bruce Natale stated that the issues with agriculture in that area is getting contentious and it is getting to the point where there is a need for dispute resolution. Jim Young stated that it might be a good model to use elsewhere in the County and Steve Lynch stated that a good model could help the County with these issues.”

from Meeting Minutes of the Cayuga County Water Quality Management Agency 2/7/08

March 1, 2008
NYT Op-Ed Contributor
My Forbidden Fruits (and Vegetables)

By JACK HEDIN
Rushford, Minn.

IF you’ve stood in line at a farmers’ market recently, you know that the local food movement is thriving, to the point that small farmers are having a tough time keeping up with the demand.

But consumers who would like to be able to buy local fruits and vegetables not just at farmers’ markets, but also in the produce aisle of their supermarket, will be dismayed to learn that the federal government works deliberately and forcefully to prevent the local food movement from expanding. And the barriers that the United States Department of Agriculture has put in place will be extended when the farm bill that House and Senate negotiators are working on now goes into effect.

As a small organic vegetable producer in southern Minnesota, I know this because my efforts to expand production to meet regional demand have been severely hampered by the Agriculture Department’s commodity farm program. As I’ve looked into the politics behind those restrictions, I’ve come to understand that this is precisely the outcome that the program’s backers in California and Florida have in mind: they want to snuff out the local competition before it even gets started.

Last year, knowing that my own 100 acres wouldn’t be enough to meet demand, I rented 25 acres on two nearby corn farms. I plowed under the alfalfa hay that was established there, and planted watermelons, tomatoes and vegetables for natural-food stores and a community-supported agriculture program.

All went well until early July. That’s when the two landowners discovered that there was a problem with the local office of the Farm Service Administration, the Agriculture Department branch that runs the commodity farm program, and it was going to be expensive to fix.

The commodity farm program effectively forbids farmers who usually grow corn or the other four federally subsidized commodity crops (soybeans, rice, wheat and cotton) from trying fruit and vegetables. Because my watermelons and tomatoes had been planted on “corn base” acres, the Farm Service said, my landlords were out of compliance with the commodity program.

I’ve discovered that typically, a farmer who grows the forbidden fruits and vegetables on corn acreage not only has to give up his subsidy for the year on that acreage, he is also penalized the market value of the illicit crop, and runs the risk that those acres will be permanently ineligible for any subsidies in the future. (The penalties apply only to fruits and vegetables — if the farmer decides to grow another commodity crop, or even nothing at all, there’s no problem.)

In my case, that meant I paid my landlords $8,771 — for one season alone! And this was in a year when the high price of grain meant that only one of the government’s three crop-support programs was in effect; the total bill might be much worse in the future.

In addition, the bureaucratic entanglements that these two farmers faced at the Farm Service office were substantial. The federal farm program is making it next to impossible for farmers to rent land to me to grow fresh organic vegetables.

Why? Because national fruit and vegetable growers based in California, Florida and Texas fear competition from regional producers like myself. Through their control of Congressional delegations from those states, they have been able to virtually monopolize the country’s fresh produce markets.

That’s unfortunate, because small producers will have to expand on a significant scale across the nation if local foods are to continue to enter the mainstream as the public demands. My problems are just the tip of the iceberg.

Last year, Midwestern lawmakers proposed an amendment to the farm bill that would provide some farmers, though only those who supply processors, with some relief from the penalties that I’ve faced — for example, a soybean farmer who wanted to grow tomatoes would give up his usual subsidy on those acres but suffer none of the other penalties. However, the Congressional delegations from the big produce states made the death of what is known as Farm Flex their highest farm bill priority, and so it appears to be going nowhere, except perhaps as a tiny pilot program.

Who pays the price for this senselessness? Certainly I do, as a Midwestern vegetable farmer. But anyone trying to do what I do on, say, wheat acreage in the Dakotas, or rice acreage in Arkansas would face the same penalties. Local and regional fruit and vegetable production will languish anywhere that the commodity program has influence.

Ultimately of course, it is the consumer who will pay the greatest price for this — whether it is in the form of higher prices I will have to charge to absorb the government’s fines, or in the form of less access to the kind of fresh, local produce that the country is crying out for.

Farmers need the choice of what to plant on their farms, and consumers need more farms like mine producing high-quality fresh fruits and vegetables to meet increasing demand from local markets — without the federal government actively discouraging them.

Jack Hedin is a farmer.