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This Town Was Almost Blown Off the Map

by KetaHeadraf Posted on April 2, 2013

green4us

Now it’s back, and super green. dmbernasconi/Flickr If I were to tell you this is a story about a tornado in Kansas, it would probably bring to mind a certain doe-eyed girl and her little dog. Well, sometimes tornadoes transport girls and their adorable pets to magical lands. Other times they level entire towns. That is what happened the night of May 4, 2007, when an EF-5 tornado (for non-Kansans, that’s a really freaking big — the biggest, in fact) nearly two miles wide hit the town of Greensburg, a farming community in south-central Kansas. Almost all of the 1,383 residents lost their homes, nine died, and the town was left looking like this: To keep reading, click here.

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This Town Was Almost Blown Off the Map

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This Town Was Almost Blown Off the Map

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Major grocers on frankenfish: ‘Hell no, we won’t sell that!’

by JoanSanderz Posted on March 21, 2013

Major grocers on frankenfish: ‘Hell no, we won’t sell that!’

By John Upton

Shutterstock

/ Luiz RochaBlended Atlantic salmon / Chinook salmon / ocean pout, anybody?

What do you call a farmed Atlantic salmon with a Chinook salmon growth-hormone gene and a DNA splice from a cold-loving eel-like fish?

Tough to market.

Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, Aldi, and other grocery chains that together run more than 2,000 stores across the U.S. announced this week that they would not sell AquaBounty Technologies’ AquAdvantage® Salmon, aka frankenfish, even if the Food and Drug Administration issues expected approvals.

From a press release put out by Friends of the Earth, which has been waging a campaign that helped convince the retailers to keep the freak fish off their shelves:

Stores that have committed to not offer the salmon or other genetically engineered seafood include the national retailers Trader Joe’s (367 stores), Aldi (1,230 stores), Whole Foods (325 stores in US); regional chains such as Marsh Supermarkets (93 stores in Indiana and Ohio), PCC Natural Markets (9 stores in Washington State); and co-ops in Minnesota, New York, California and Kansas.

“We applaud these retailers for listening to the vast majority of their customers who want sustainable, natural seafood for their families. Now it’s time for other food retailers, including Walmart, Costco and Safeway, to follow suit and let their customers know they will not be selling unlabeled, poorly studied genetically engineered seafood,” said Eric Hoffman, food & technology policy campaigner with Friends of the Earth.

The AquAdvantage® fish is a genetically engineered Atlantic salmon. Added to its genetic makeup is DNA taken from Chinook salmon that triggers fasters growth, particularly during the first two years of life. Because Atlantic salmon naturally grow only during the warmer months, scientists also inserted some DNA from the ocean pout, an eel-resembling creature that revels in the cold. The genetic switch from the ocean pout causes the salmon to churn out growth hormones year-round, further accelerating the speed at which it grows. (The ® means that you are not allowed to sell your own genetically engineered freak fish under the name “AquAdvantage.”)

Many Americans are apparently uncomfortable with this type of genetic manipulation, for some reason.

A San Jose Mercury News reporter stood outside a Trader Joe’s outlet on Tuesday and asked shoppers what they thought about the company’s decision. They seemed to like it.

“It definitely makes me want to shop here,” said Linda Terra of San Jose as her husband, Rod, loaded up their groceries.

The couple tries to eat seafood, especially salmon, at least twice a week.

“I wish everybody would label everything,” Rod Terra said. “What could it hurt?”

Well, Rod, maybe it would hurt the frankenfish’s feelings?

John Upton is a science aficionado and green news junkie who

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Major grocers on frankenfish: ‘Hell no, we won’t sell that!’

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Farmland prices soar — along with farm debt

by pfmufle Posted on March 20, 2013

Farmland prices soar — along with farm debt

By Susie Cagle

While small-scale producers of fruits and vegetables are scraping by, it’s a whole ‘nother story for corn and soy farmers. (It’s always a whole ‘nother story for corn and soy farmers, really.) Well-oiled subsidies, overseas demand, ethanol like whoa, plus a drop in production thanks to the drought are all pushing crop prices up — and, in turn, prices for the land those crops are grown on.

Shutterstock

The New York Times reports on the gleeful farmers, speculating investors, and impending economic doom.

Across the American heartland, farmland prices are soaring. In places like Waco, Neb., and Chickasaw County, Iowa, where the boom-and-bust cycle of farming reaches deep into the psyche, some families are selling the land that they have worked for generations, to cash in while they can. …

Sensing opportunity, investment firms are buying, too. David Taylor, of Oskaloosa, Kan., said he was saddened to sell his family’s farm but that the prices were too good to resist. …

“I bawled like a baby,” Mr. Taylor, 59, said. His crop-producing fields sold for $10,100 an acre.

In Iowa, despite the drought last year, farmland prices have nearly doubled since 2009, to an average $8,296 an acre, far surpassing the last boom’s peak in 1979. In Nebraska, the price of irrigated land has also doubled since 2009.

That’s given farmers who’ve chosen to stay a whole lot of value to borrow against, and borrow they are. Farmers’ debt load has risen almost a third since 2007.

Regulators say it is difficult to determine exactly how much farm debt exists, because much of it involves debt owed to various vendors and suppliers.

“In so many ways, we’re blind to some of that information,” said Jason Henderson, a vice president at the Omaha branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.

What banksters aren’t blind to is the potential for profit. More investors, including foreign banks, are moving in to snap up high-priced land and rent it back to farmers. The whole dynamic smacks of a bubble — one that deserves to pop, but that will make a big mess for the folks invested in it.

“There are some opportunities out there, but man, it’s tough,” said Shonda Warner, a former Goldman Sachs trader who returned to her Midwest farm roots in 2006, when she started Chess Ag Full Harvest Partners, a private equity firm that specializes in farmland. Like many other investors, Ms. Warner’s fund buys land and then rents it to farmers. As land prices have risen sharply, so have rents.

“I worry about people who are buying farmland and expecting to get big rents, $500 or even $600 in the Midwest,” Ms. Warner said. “What happens when corn prices fall next year and they can’t pay? What are you going to do? Take their television set?”

Uh, yeah, Warner, that’s exactly what the debt collectors will do. And then, ironically, those now TV-less ex-farmers will only be able to afford cheap processed foods and meat from animals fed corn and soy. Oh, I almost forgot: Happy National Agriculture Day!

Susie Cagle writes and draws news for Grist. She also writes and draws tweets for

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Extreme weather and GMO crops devastate monarch butterfly migration

by kx93z6g Posted on March 14, 2013

Extreme weather and GMO crops devastate monarch butterfly migration

By Susie Cagle

It’s not so much the butterfly effect as the butterfly affected: We knew monarchs had it bad as of late, but there was some hope for their winter migration — until scientists conducted a census.

JaguarFeather

In just two years, the annual migration of North American monarch butterflies has declined by 59 percent, and scientists are blaming extreme weather and “changed farming practices,” according to the New York Times. In other words, monster storms and monster Monsanto.

The area of forest occupied by the butterflies, once as high at 50 acres, dwindled to 2.94 acres in the annual census conducted in December, Mexico’s National Commission of Natural Protected Areas disclosed at a news conference in Zitácuaro, Mexico. …

The latest decline was hastened by drought and record-breaking heat in North America when the monarchs arrived last spring to reproduce. Warmer than usual conditions led the insects to arrive early and to nest farther north than is typical, Chip Taylor, director of the conservation group Monarch Watch at the University of Kansas, said in an interview. The early arrival disrupted the monarchs’ breeding cycle, he said, and the hot weather dried insect eggs and lowered the nectar content of the milkweed on which they feed.

That in turn weakened the butterflies and lowered the number of eggs laid.

But an equally alarming source of the decline, both Mr. Taylor and Mr. Vidal said, is the explosive increase in American farmland planted in soybean and corn genetically modified to tolerate herbicides.

The milkweed monarchs used to feed on in the corn belt is, well, a weed, and farmers have handily knocked it out while also expanding farmland by millions of acres each year. As milkweed-free farm land expands, food for monarchs disappears. Mexico claims to have cut back on deforestation in the monarchs’ migratory home, but we haven’t done our part on this side of the border. There’s no stopping drought and Roundup-Ready crops at this point.

Monarchs are one of the only insects capable of such a long-distance migration. Here, this cool German gif will tell you all about it:

If the monarch migration drops another half acre next year, scientists say, the butterflies may not be able to recover and the migration will end. If you live along the monarch’s flight path (and almost all of us do), planting milkweed in your garden couldn’t hurt. But also maybe book a flight to Mexico if you really want to see these guys doing their butterfly thing before it’s all gone.

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Bike bans declared unconstitutional in Colorado, introduced in Missouri

by um2rnxc Posted on February 5, 2013

Bike bans declared unconstitutional in Colorado, introduced in Missouri

By Susie Cagle

Bike happy, cyclists, and bike free! The Colorado Supreme Court this week overturned a ban on bikes in the town of Black Hawk, where since June 2010 cycling citizens have been forced to walk their bikes through downtown’s narrow roads or face $68 tickets. From The Denver Post:

Black Hawk’s ban forced cyclists to walk their bikes through the city’s casino-lined streets on the southern end of the famed Peak to Peak Highway, a high-country scenic by-way popular with road cyclists. …

Black Hawk had argued that its home-rule status allowed it to script its own traffic laws. The city said the 2009 state law that required vehicles to give cyclists a 3-foot berth was unmanageable for gambler-toting tour buses and casino delivery trucks navigating Black Hawk’s narrow streets. So the city’s leaders chose to ban bikes. …

The Supreme Court ruled the issue was not just local but impacted state residents. The court noted that municipalities can ban bikes — Denver prohibits pedalers on the 16th Street Mall, as does Boulder on a stretch of Pearl Street — but it must provide alternate routes within 450 feet, as required by state law.

The city’s statement on Monday said it would “look for alternatives” to address safety concerns but would not develop an alternate bike path. “The city has no plans to construct any special accommodations to address this issue.”

I wonder if Missouri State Rep. Rick Brattin (R) reads the Colorado news? Maybe he should! The state legislator is planning to introduce a bill to ban bicycling on at least some state roads. From the Missouri Bicycle and Pedestrian Federation:

Rep. Brattin appeared on local TV news earlier in January, complaining about bicyclists on the newly completed Highway 150, which runs through portions of Kansas City, Grandview, and Lee’s Summit, near the northern edge of Brattin’s district.

Highway 150 is in the Longview Lake area, one of the most popular areas for bicycling in the Kansas City metro area. Numerous individuals and groups large and small hold daily, weekly, monthly, and annual rides in this area. It is a real center of bicycle activity in the metro area. …

Rep. Brattin is now working on creating a bill to ban bicyclists from certain roads in Missouri, based on his belief that bicyclists should not be allowed on roads like Highway 150. … Brattin had a bill drafted to require bicycles to be inspected, registered, and display a special bicycle license plate. There would be special requirements for bicyclists under the age of 16.

However, Rep. Brattin was not happy with this draft and has discarded it — it is not strong enough for his tastes. He indicated that he wants to introduce a bill that will actually ban bicyclists from roads like Highway 150.

Maybe grumpy Brattin just resents all those happy cyclists.

Susie Cagle writes and draws news for Grist. She also writes and draws tweets for

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Will 2013 be the year of ag-gag bills?

by ansonsten Posted on January 30, 2013

Will 2013 be the year of ag-gag bills?

By Susie Cagle

The U.N. has declared 2013 to be the Year of Quinoa. But it’s also shaping up to be the Year of Ag Gag, those bills that make it illegal to covertly investigate factory farms for animal and ecological abuse. From Bruce Friedrich of Farm Sanctuary:

In 2011, the meat industry backed laws in four states to make taking photos or videos on farms and slaughterhouses illegal. In 2012, the industry pushed similar laws in 10 states. This year, we expect even more.

Shutterstock

In 2011 and 2012, Iowa, Utah, and Missouri all enacted some version of an anti-whistleblower ag-gag law, while similar proposals were struck down in Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, Nebraska, New York, and Tennessee.

This year, more such laws are proposed in Nebraska, New Hampshire, and Wyoming.

Ag-gag laws are hardly the first attempt to keep the prying eyes of the public — activists, journalists, eaters all — away from the truths about animals raised en masse for food. Kansas, Montana, and North Dakota passed less restrictive versions of these laws back in the early ’90s, when the Animal Liberation Front was running around in balaclavas, being surprisingly organized and effective at freeing moneys and minks and smashing up butcher shops. In 1992, Congress passed the Animal Enterprise Protection Act, boosting penalties for these crimes.

The Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, passed in 2006, went even further — like, way way further — making it illegal to “intentionally damage” a company’s physical property or its potential profits, even by nonviolent civil disobedience. Under the AETA, activists have been arrested and held for running websites and peacefully protesting animal testing.

But the corporate- and Koch-backed American Legislative Exchange Council wanted to crack down even further. In 2003 it proposed model legislation that would make it illegal to “enter an animal or research facility to take pictures by photograph, video camera, or other means with the intent to commit criminal activities or defame the facility or its owner.” Today’s ag-gag bills are a direct descendant of that far-reaching legislation. From Alternet:

Ag-Gag laws passed 20 years ago were focused more on deterring people from destroying property, or from either stealing animals or setting them free. Today’s ALEC-inspired bills take direct aim at anyone who tries to expose horrific acts of animal cruelty, dangerous animal-handling practices that might lead to food safety issues, or blatant disregard for environmental laws designed to protect waterways from animal waste runoff. In the past, most of those exposes have resulted from undercover investigations of exactly the type Big Ag wants to make illegal.

The three state bills proposed so far this year would require people with knowledge of animal abuse to promptly report it to officials. But if you just upload those photos and video and don’t report them to the government within a day or two, you’ll be breaking the law. Friedrich again:

It’s certainly possible that animal-friendly legislators are supporting [these kinds of bills] out of concern for animals, but of course undercover investigations, whether of a drug ring or organized crime syndicate or factory farm, require that the investigator document the full extent of the illegal activity. If the FBI or CIA stopped an investigation at the first sign of criminal activity, wrong-doers would be inadequately punished, if they were punished at all, because the full extent of the criminal behavior would not be known. Similarly, if an investigator witnesses illegal abuse of animals and immediately turns in that evidence without thorough documentation, the plant may receive a slap on the wrist (at best), the investigator leaves the plant, and business-as-usual continues.

The more of these laws that pass, the more free speech is chilled, and the less likely we are to see the uncovering of abuses. (Activists, you are fucking badass, but I know you also don’t want to go to jail.)

So is 2013 the Year of Ag Gag? Or is that actually every year now?

Susie Cagle writes and draws news for Grist. She also writes and draws tweets for

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Winter storm ‘Draco’ will solve, cause many problems

by biglermyrta910 Posted on December 19, 2012

Winter storm ‘Draco’ will solve, cause many problems

By Philip Bump

I guess “draco” is the word for “dragon” in Latin. I didn’t know that, despite Mrs. Marino spending two years teaching me the language in high school. (We got to choose our own Latin names; I chose “Aesculapius,” because I was a dork.) (“Was.”)

Draco is also the name for the giant winter storm dropping snow over the Midwest. See if you can spot it on this map. If you know where the Midwest is, it should be easy.

NOAA

This is good news, for a reason that you might not expect: It’s precipitation in a region desiccated by drought. As we mentioned last week, cities across the region have been setting new records for days without snow. A lot of those records are about to end.

From Weather Underground:

Blizzard warnings are posted over portions of Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, Illinois, and Wisconsin, and snowfall amounts of up to a foot are expected in some of the affected regions. While the heavy snow will create dangerous travel conditions, the .5″ – 1.5″ of melted water equivalent from the the storm will provide welcome moisture for drought-parched areas of the Midwest. Though much of the moisture will stay locked up as snow for the rest of the year, runoff from the storm may help keep Lake Michigan and Huron from setting an all-time record low for the month of December, and may also keep the Mississippi River at St. Louis above the -5′ stage though the end of December.

That Mississippi River point is big; it has been at risk of having to halt shipping traffic due to low water levels. The storm also means that some areas may see a white Christmas, if the snow sticks around. (This latter point is less important than the Mississippi River.)

Draco’s wintry breath isn’t being felt everywhere. Washington, D.C., has been 7.5 degrees above normal on average so far this month. In Texas?

Lubbock, in west Texas, had a storm of its own.

So Draco is the exception for this warm, dry month. But none of that is the point of this article. The point of this article is: If you were going to name a potentially massive, powerful storm something, why on Earth would you choose Draco over Drago?

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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