Losing Iowa's land -- by Jim Kessler

Jim Kessler grew up in a Quaker family on a dairy farm near Oskaloosa, Iowa. He became interested in environmental issues during graduate school at the University of Northern Iowa while working on his MA in Biology. Kessler has been involved in tallgrass prairie and native plant restoration for 35 years, the last 15 on his and his wife’s 30 acres near Grinnell, Iowa. He says, "I view myself as a simple Quaker man who intensely loves Jesus and tries to live a servant life in that awareness daily."

Before: 
tall grass prairie (photos by J Kessler)

  

After:  

a steep hillside pasture that was plowed last fall; clay shows where topsoil eroded

The agrofuel threat to biodiversity isn't just happening in the underdeveloped world. (1) It's a huge threat to biodiversity and topsoil in the US Midwest and I suspect parts of Canada. (2)  Worldwide, marginal lands (grasslands) are rapidly being plowed. (3)  

erosion: Iowa State U

runoff and dead zone: Buckner

In my part of Iowa I've observed many permanent pastures being ripped up to raise corn and soybeans. Much of this land is highly erodible. (4) Though our topsoil in some places is 100 feet deep, the richest land in the world, Iowa loses an average of 5.2 tons per acre per year. (5)

erosion: Iowa Environmental Council

This is a huge threat to biodiversity. Corn and soybean fields provide lots of food for wild turkeys, raccoons, and deer, but almost no food for most other native wildlife species. 

Biologists who study the amount of habitat needed by species predict that for every 1% of habitat that is converted to raising crops, we will eventually lose 1% of our wildlife species to extinction. Also, grasslands sequester carbon. Well managed grazed grasslands reduce soil erosion and contribute very little to the dead zones in our oceans. I'm beginning to understand that agrofuels are a losing proposition for us and the planet. My sense of urgency led me to give talks and workshops about re-establishing Native Plants in order to

• respond locally to the 6^th great extinction crisis
• reverse the decline in native migratory songbirds
• stop destruction of wildlife habitat and biodiversity
• maintain pollinator populations to increase food security. 

And I am trying to set up a nonprofit to reestablish native plants in my region, Empowering Nature and People: all workshop fees and consulting charges will be donated to organizations like Right Sharing of World Resources that help the poor. 
 

Corn and soybean profits will eventually crash because of oversupply. I hope then farmers will turn cropland back into native grasslands through the Conservation Reserve Program unless the radical right succeed in their campaign to defund it. 

Notes 

1. Agrofuel land grabs in Africa: UK Guardian 31 May 2011

Growing jatropha for agrofuel, Ivory Coast: 
courtesy UK Guardian and Kambou Sia/AFP/Getty Images

2. Washing Away the Fields of Iowa, NYT 4 May 2011; statistics and Iowa erosion map, Iowa Environmental Council; Corn And Soybeans Are Conquering U.S. Grasslands, NPR 19 Feb 2013; King Corn Mowed Down 2 Million Acres of Grassland in 5 Years Flat, Mother Jones 20 Feb 2013.

3. The LULUCF program threatens to promote further land grabs, agrofuel and GMO plantations worldwide, in return for carbon credits. This will give pollution permits to fossil-fuel industries, load poor countries with debt, and do nothing to save biodiversity or halt climate chaos: a lose-lose-lose proposition. 
4. Monica Buckner, Montana State U, The Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone.
5. photo and statistic: Iowa State University.

Further reading

Wikipedia on Tallgrass prairie

Tallgrass Prairie Center, University of Northern Iowa 

Sean Garrity's short-grass buffalo prairie in MT 

Frank and Deborah Popper's proposal for a shortgrass Buffalo Commons in 10 High Plains states

G8 leaders: all gas and no brakes

crash: strange dangers
.com
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Avaaz Titanic ad for Bali talks, Dec 2007
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At the G8 summit in Japan, Harper, Fukuda, and Bush are trying to block any reference to UNFCCC climate targets for the year 2020 -- just as they did at Bali in Dec 2007, where global protest turned the tide. Negotiators from the South rose, one after another, to demand that the spoilers step aside. NGOs launched petitions -- including an Avaaz letter signed by 320,000 members in the final 72 hours. In tomorrow`s Financial Times, Avaaz will run another petition with a satirical advertisement. It will be delivered to the hotel room of every G8 delegate, so that no leader can ignore the political cost of shirking responsibility.

What the political leaders of the rich nations should be doing:
See the world's leading climate science and policy experts including James E. Hansen, Gwyn Prins, David Steven, Alex Evans, Shuzo Nishioka, and Ted Nordhaus on video

Friends of the Earth ask the G8 to block the World Bank's controversial Climate Investment Funds (ex-Clean Technology Fund)' currently supported by the United States, the UK and Japan and their corporate friends, who hope to reap $billion profits on technology transfers to the 3rd world, especially China. According to FOE, the WB scheme will

• undermine the UNFCCC post-Kyoto talks,
• increase debt,
• pay polluters [both in the 3rd world and the 1st world, especially coal companies - Ed.]
• threaten Indigenous Peoples' land rights through the Bank's forestry offset funds

Greenpeace calls on the G8 to:

• increase public investment in research and development on ecological and climate change-resilient farming
• stop funding for GE crops and prohibit patents on seeds
• phase out the most toxic chemicals and eliminate environmentally destructive agricultural subsidies;
• protect domestic food production and drop mandatory targets to increase the ratio of biofuels used in transport.

[see our previous post on G8 and the food summit - Ed.]
also
George Monbiot's analysis of the Bali talks; NY Times analysis of Hokkaido results.
Yelena Zagorodnaya`s report on Fukuda's climate promises at Davos in Jan 2008.
Olive Heffernan`s Hokkaido blog for Nature magazine.

G8, agribusiness blackmail the world's hungry

photo: tyranno.saur.us

Judge not that ye be not judged... what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone?
Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, Matt 7:1,9

Sam Urquhart, a London UK journalist, reports that agribusiness lobbies control the highest levels of the UN food aid program, and that the G8 (the richest countries) are blackmailing the FAO and UN -- insisting that the UN and poor nations support the WTO Doha program, unrestricted globalization, environmental deregulation in agriculture, and unrestricted entry for GMO and agribusiness interests -- while holding back funds desperately needed for emergency food shipments.

Secretary General of the OECD Angel Gurria states, "The way to address rising food prices is not through protectionism but to open up agricultural markets and to free up the productive capacity of farmers, who have proven repeatedly that they will respond to market incentives." FAO news 29 May 08

FAO Secretary General Jacques Diouf [stated officially 28 May 08] that "high food prices represent an excellent opportunity for increased investments in agriculture by both the public and private sectors to stimulate production and productivity" adding that "Governments, supported by their international partners, must now undertake the necessary public investment and provide a favourable environment for private investments."

Diouf deliberately ignored alternatives proposed by NGOs. (1)

Urquhart concludes:

The agenda for the [Rome FAO] summit is clear – more of the same, with the World Bank back at the helm. The systematic destruction continues. Critics of the World Bank have long questioned its motives in dispensing aid to poorer nations and have attacked the conditionalities that it has attached to its loans as a means of opening up undeveloped economies to corporate predation. Yet the IMF and World Bank have stumbled in recent years, partly due to their failed policies, but also due to a credit glut brought on by spiraling oil prices. Smaller nations have not needed the services of the global institutions and their power has begun to wane. But with the credit crunch and rising food prices, some nations are headed back to the trough.

John Holmes of UN Humanitarian affairs told Reuters on 30 Apr 08

People have described it as a silent rolling tsunami and I think that's quite a good analogy... you have hundreds of millions of people who are eating less, and eating less well. This will have a dramatic effect ... because if you are malnourished as a young child you will never recover from it mentally or physically." On top of that, if parents have to spend more on food, they will be forced to cut back on their children's healthcare and education, further harming the next generation's ability to prosper later in life.

Urquhart insists there is not a food shortage. It is “the global food market” that has made starvation inevitable, by destroying local food security, increasing trade imbalances, and raising prices when the rich – and their biofuelled vehicles – increase consumption. The market serves the wants of those who can pay, not human needs.

Forty years ago, developing nations as a whole had a food export surplus of $7 billion, by 1980 that had shrunk to $1 billion and, according to Food First, 'the southern food deficit has ballooned to US $11 billion/year'.

The official Declaration of the June 08 FAO food summit (as reported by Canada's IISD) does not contradict Urquhart in any significant way:

• ...donors and international financial institutions should provide balance of payments support and/or budget support to food-importing, low-income countries. The relevant international institutions are called upon to simplify the eligibility procedures for existing financial mechanisms to support agriculture and environment. [See NZ blog "Carbon Credits to fund GMOs" in Celsias 9 Jan 08]

• [aid is to include] locally-adapted seeds, fertilizers, animal feeds and other inputs, as well as technical assistance, to increase production; [from Cargill, now linked with Monsanto, and ADM, Dupont, Dow, Novartis, and others (3)]

• development partners are called upon to undertake initiatives to moderate unusual fluctuations in food prices;

• WTO members reaffirm their commitment to the rapid and successful conclusion of the Doha Development Agenda...implementing an aid for trade package should provide a valuable complement to the Doha Development Agenda

• the prioritization [of]... financial mechanisms and investment

• increased investment in science and technology for food and agriculture and the establishment of supportive policies and governance structures in accordance with the Monterrey Consensus [dictated by WTO, WB and IMF] (4)
  

• continued efforts toward liberalizing international trade in agriculture by reducing trade barriers and market-distorting policies

A sustainable global agriculture must move in the opposite direction, explains Katarina Wahlberg in Global Policy Forum May 2008:

Governments must immediately increase food aid, ban biofuel production and develop policies to supersede factory farms and other unsustainable farming practices.

The [April 2008] IAASTD report (2) ...presented a compelling vision of truly sustainable agriculture. It argues for an alternative to the “New Green Revolution”, [an industrial-agriculture model that increases production at the cost of severe environmental damage.] It focuses less on increasing yields, and more on reducing hunger, through “environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable development.” The report talks about addressing the needs of small-scale farmers, by increasing their access to land and natural resources. It cautions against Genetically Modified (GM) crops, as too little is known about their long-term effects. Further, the report warns that patenting of GM crops undermines local farming practices and concentrates ownership of resources. Finally, the authors propose financial incentives to reduce deforestation and conserve natural habitats so as to mitigate climate change. A “fundamental shift” in agricultural policy is needed.

(1) Food First urges 4 steps to global food sovereignty: take agriculture out of WTO to protect small farmers, put a moratorium on biofuels, rebuild national farm economies with import controls against G8 dumping, prefer agroecology to GMO technofixes.

California writer William M H Kotke's article 10 June 08 on the global ecovillage network describes a similar alternative. He is the author of Garden Earth and Final Empire.

(2) The IAASTD (International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development) based on three years of international research by 400 scientists and other experts, was sponsored by the World Bank, FAO, GEF, UNDP, UNEP, UNESCO, WHO and representatives of governments, civil society, private sector and scientific institutions from around the world. It used a consultative 'bottom-up' process to assess the different needs of different regions and communities.

(3) See Corpwatch reports and QIAP (Quaker International Affairs Program), The Future Control of Food: free download.

(4) see ELDIS summary of the Monterrey consensus. July 2008 summary of Promises and Perils of Agricultural Trade Liberalization in Latin America by Tufts University GDAE and the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA).

See also
Urquhart's article "Speculate to annihilate" 4 June 08
Wikipedia on the food crisis and the Washington consensus
Guardian 4 July 08 and Grist 9 July 08 leak a World Bank study contradicting Bush USDA: 75% of food price hike is due to biofuel
Previous posts on food in this blog

Fuel vs Food

graphic: enviro.org.au (footnotes below)
Ethanol production increases not reduces green house gas emissions, according to scientists. US corn ethanol, touted as cutting fuel GHG by 20%, will almost double them in 30 years and the effect will last for 167 years (1). Worldwide, crop biofuels will release 17 to 420 times more CO2 than the fossil fuel they replace (2). The only alternative, next generation biofuel from perennial grasses, depends on still unproven technology.

Impacts on ecosystems and human security are severe, lack hard statistics, and lag years behind futures markets hype. "Green deserts" were created by megaprojects in Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay -- where rich landowners and investors clearcut rainforest, drove out native people and small farmers, often with violence, and imposed GMO / chemical monocultures. There is now evidence from Argentina and Brazil that their bonanza profits lasted only a few years, soil fertility fell, while chemical use doubled (3); people have been poisoned by reckless pesticide spraying (4); nitrate fertilizers pollute wells and rivers (5). Fertilizers and farm mechanization, both based on fossil fuel, increase emissions. Alarmingly, many of these projects were financed by "carbon offsets" and the misnamed "Clean Development Mechanism" of Kyoto (6).

Madhu Khanna, a University of Illinois professor of agricultural and consumer economics, was one of the experts in a Feb 2008 roundtable on Sustainable Biofuels, Gender Equity and Human Security. In a UI News interview she says:

The food vs. fuel debate is real and can only be expected to intensify in the near future...Given the questionable environmental benefits of corn-based ethanol, the large diversion of corn from food/feed that it requires and the limited potential to rely on it to achieve meaningful independence from foreign oil there is a need to rethink our current policy.

Since Congress subsidies in 2005, corn prices doubled despite a huge expanse in acreage. Soy and wheat prices also rose. 90% percent of ethanol distilleries popping up across the United States are corn-based. Diverting half of US corn from food to fuel only meets 10% of of our current gas-guzzling, she points out:

The recent Energy Bill sets ambitious mandates for renewable fuel production of 36 billion gallons annually by 2022. Of this, 15 billion gallons is expected to be corn-based ethanol; this would represent less than ten percent of our annual gasoline consumption in the US and require using 50 percent of our current corn production for fuel production... World prices of food and feed are likely to rise even further with potentially adverse impacts on net food importing developing countries as well as on the poor in urban populations.

It is already happening: in early 2008 there were food riots in a number of countries.(7)

Next-generation alternatives to corn ethanol include dedicated energy crops, such as Miscanthus x giganteus and Switchgrass, crop residues like corn stover and wheat straw and municipal wastes. These feedstocks can be used to produce ligno-cellulosic biofuels. Miscanthus and switchgrass are high yielding perennial grasses with low input requirements that can be grown under a wide range of growing conditions in the midwest and southern regions of the US. They have the potential to more than double the gallons of ethanol that can be obtained per acre and are expected to have a significantly lower greenhouse gas intensity than corn ethanol. These grasses also reduce soil erosion and nitrogen run-off. However, the commercial viability of converting these next generation feedstocks into biofuels is highly dependent on technological breakthroughs that are still in the pipeline.

Footnotes
(1) T. Searchinger, et al "Use of U.S. Croplands" in AAAS Science Feb 2008
(2) Joseph Fargione, et al. "Land Clearing" in AAAS Science Feb 2008; W Laurance, "US corn subsidies promote Amazon deforestation¨ in Science Dec 2007, reported by Enviro.org.au.
(3) "Soyabean in Argentina" in Wikipedia Monsanto; on Brazil, Institute of Science in Society UK, Climate Ark.
(4) pesticide poisoning in LaSoyaMata; "fumigation" in Independent Science Panel, Indymedia and GRR.
(5) green deserts: see Guardian 2004. For those caused by eucalyptus monoculture for paper see WRM, Chris Lang's blog, police violence against dispossessed natives, protests led by MST, Via Campesina, FoE in 2007-08, video of Brazil women's leader Arlete Pinheiro.
(6) carbon financing: Red Pepper Sep 2006, Guardian Feb 2007, Environment New Net on dubious certifications (for CDM).
(7) "Food Crisis," BiofuelWatch Feb 2008.

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See Wikipedia on biofuel, second and third generation; updates in Science; our previous postings peak everything and biofuel debate. Brazil cropdusting videos one, two.
Videos of small farmer-campesino-peasant activists around the world: All Raised Voices.
En español: Grupo de Reflexión Rural con audios, Via Campesina, La Soja Mata. Videos contra las papeleras.

WCC on genetics and new biotechnologies

This is a summary of a World Council of Churches global consultation on genetics and new biotechnologies, in Johannesburg, South Africa, 3-6 December 2007. See the full report and delegate presentations.
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Problems
- Biotechnology, like apartheid before it, thrives on inequality and the indignity of persons and communities.
- A US pharma company is suing the South African government over HIV drugs.
- Neoliberal globalization and North's subsidies create poverty trap in developing countries.
- WB-IMF policies slashed public transport, water, education and health services, thus worsening problems of
epidemics, starvation, desertification and environmental refugees.
- HIV-AIDS retrovirals are available but priced beyond the South's means. Poor parents die, children orphaned: a two-generation crisis.
- Diseases of the poor are ignored. Pharma serves only the market, i.e. the rich.
- Clinical drug trials are conducted with poor third world people. They face risks that would be unacceptable in the North, and are often denied full treatment.
- Nano engineers propose growing new human parts, available only to the rich -- same problem as with pharmaceuticals.
- Stem cell research: moral concerns about work with embryos, but new methods may be able to use adult stem cells.
- Cloning: its dangers and failures have been concealed.
- The precautionary principle is violated.
- IPR [Intellectual Property Rights] and patenting of medicinal plants for commercial use is biopiracy: theft of the commons.
- Small farmers, landless and aboriginal communities are endangered.
- 4000-10 000 medicinal plant species are endangered.
- Pesticides create super weeds and superbugs.
- Genetic codes are being commodified
- SLAPP case against Biowatch by Monsanto: though Biowatch won the case, it had to pay court costs of the South African government and the company intervenor. It is considering whether to appeal.
- GMO corn threatens 12 000 years of natural breeding, community life and native values in Mexico.
- GMOs and environmental stress are killing pollinators (e.g. bee die-off ), a major threat to food security.
- GMO soy has disastrous impact-- social and environmental -- in Latin America.
- Green revolution in India led to a gender gap: 25% fewer women than men in Punjab and Haryana.
- Failure of Bt cotton crops in India caused 150 000 farmer suicides.
- High-input agriculture [fertilizers, machines] is probably unsustainable. Chemical pollution, fossil fuels.
- Biofuel reduces food supplies. Speculation is raised world food prices 50%. Starvation (e.g. in Haiti).
- Pacific Islands have lost food growing areas due to global warming and ocean rise, are already forced to import food.
- Terminator seeds: Canada and the US are trying to undermine the current ban.
- Deliberate weakening of governance: weakened environmental standards, lower enforcement budgets, industry reps seem to dictate to advisory committees, regulators and administrators. Lack of citizen and NGO participation. Lack of whistleblower legislation.
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Principles
- Precautionary principle
- Bioethics: respect of all life
- Genuine informed consent in clinical trials
- Equality of access to medical care and pharmaceuticals
- Ethical standards for investment
- Ethical standards for use of biological information
- UN Convention on Bioethics and Human Rights 2005
- A theology of human dignity, justice, ecological wisdom, and solidarity
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What should churches do?
- Develop bottom-up and top-down strategies. Involve other faiths.
- Cooperate regionally and nationally: CCC, NCCUS, SACC, CCC, AACC, PCC, European CC, Pacific and Mideast.
- Hold another world consultation in Boston 2009.
- Use the Internet
- Set up a database.
- Support policy research. Independent biotech research. Provide this information to churches in the South.
- Churches in the North could confront corporations about their actions in the South.
- Provide money and solidarity to Southern churches. Let them organize themselves. Don't do it for them
- Citizen campaigns. Share information between churches. Joint submissions to legislators and bureaucrats.
- Timing campaigns: just before elections, organize constituents, meet politicians in their home ridings.
- Speak government's language: what the issue means in terms of power, money, votes.
- Support GMO free zones.
- Support GMO labeling.

Delegates agreed that "science needs to serve the common good". They recognized the need for "dialogue with scientists", moving "beyond a reactive mode", and "restoration of the churches' prophetic voices and public witness in the growing debate regarding the ethical use of genetics and biotechnologies".

See also the WWC Theological Anthropology report and other documents, Gregor Wolbring's Ableism, QIAP's Guide to International Negotiations and Rules on Intellectual Property, Biodiversity and Food Security, QIAP's Tracey McCowan & Carol Dixon on TRIPS, and individual church discussions of GMO. CFORE on Land, food and faith. Extrait du vidéo-DVD Le monde sans Monsanto s-t en français, Greenpeace France, vidéo-DVD Pas de pays sans paysans / The fight for true farming (ONF 114 m, 2006)

Eco-Economics vs perverse subsidies

The neoclassical view
Market fundamentalism (aka neoclassical economics, neoliberalism, Washington Consensus, structural adjustment plans, globalization ideology) assumes that unlimited growth is possible on a finite earth. The ecosystem is treated only as biofragments: a source of "raw materials". Pollution, waste and social impacts are "externalities" which the model ignores. To this environmental injury, the US government is now adding the insult of perverse subsidies, warns Lester Brown.

The EE view
Eco-economics urges that markets must serve human needs, which in turn must respect the biosphere. For several decades, human use has exceeded natural renewal (NPP), putting at risk all species. "Green accounting" must include "natural capital" and "ecosystem services", as well as environmental degradation.
See Commonwealth of Life, the Earth Shareholder Report, and ESDA, a bottom-up visioning campaign for US citizens.

Data compiled by Lester Brown's Earth Policy Institute show that grain-growing land peaked in 1981. World population is still rising. As a result, cropland per person has shrunk 50% in the last fifty years from 0.23 to 0.11 hectares, "half the size of a housing lot in suburban America". Countries like Rwanda, China, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, the Sudan and Ethiopia are already experiencing a land crisis. India and Nigeria will soon follow. At the same time, the much-touted "green revolution" (heavily dependent on fossil fuel and fertilizer) is showing sharply diminishing returns. World grain stocks have dropped to record lows. Several producing countries have banned exports.

Last year Professors Runge & Senauer of the University of Minnesota updated their 2003 report on food security. Instead of a reduction in the world's hungry, their projections of biofuel impact on world prices now show the number climbing to 1.2 billion. Their figures were immediately attacked by agribusiness lobbyists. But the World Bank, which none accuse of being anti-market, reckons that for every 1% rise in food prices, caloric intake falls by 0.5%. Last year there were food riots in Mexico, Italy, Indonesia and China. Brown predicts more environmental refugees from failing states -- a category to which Kenya must now be added. The cropland crisis is exacerbated by US biofuel subsidies. Ethanol distillers will take 28 percent of this year's US grain harvest.

Brown concludes that "The United States, in a misguided effort to reduce its oil insecurity by converting grain into fuel for cars, is generating global food insecurity on a scale never seen before."
His book Plan B 3.0 proposes an alternative -- "tell the environmental truth by incorporating into prices the indirect costs of burning fossil fuels", a steeply rising world carbon tax to be "offset at every step by a reduction in income taxes". The book may be downloaded free.
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Other eco-economics resources: the Encyclopedia of Earth and click on EE in Delicious tags, in the righthand column. In a useful Sep 2007 article Walden Bello locates major economic thinkers' positions between neoclassical and EE.

The great biofuel debate

Just out, CIBC economist Jeff Rubin’s careful study of corn ethanol finds that “benefits look marginal” compared to its huge US subsidies. National Geographic offers an interactive comparison of various biofuel sources.
“Exploding the biofuel myth,” an article in Monde Diplomatique July 2007 by Food First’s Eric Holtz-Gimenez, has been widely reprinted -– it predicts biofuel development will result in “displaced peasants, higher fuel prices and a crutch for the petrol economy” -- and furiously attacked by rightwingers. The UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food has just called for a 5-year moratorium, saying the biofuel gold rush threatens the right to live of the world's poor. The total impact of biofuels may be worse than coal and oil, according to the 4 Jan 08 Guardian. For reliable background information, see Wikipedia (on biofuels, biomass, and second generation fuels), the debate by UK scientists in the Independent, Biofuelwatch news and powerpoints, Grist interviews, Committee of Concerned Scientists’ analysis of current US legislative proposals
also FCNL's analysis of US congress and admin proposals on energy.

Water guzzlers - gallons of water used to produce fuel to drive a family sedan one mile:

Gasoline: 1
Plug-in hybrid-electric: 10
Hydrogen: 25
Ethanol: 40-130 (Varies by region and crop. Corn is the most water-intensive)

Source cited Center for International Energy and Environmental Policy, University of Texas at Austin