Eat Invasive Species

Honeysuckle

Invasive species are non-native species, especially plants, insects, and animals whose presence negatively affects and can even destroy a native habitat. Invasive species can be deliberately or mistakenly introduced into an area by humans, or they can come to it of their own accord.

An example of deliberate introduction is that of ornamental plants such as honeysuckle (common in Indiana, originally from Asia), or livestock such as donkeys and cattle, which were brought to North America during colonial days. Lionfish, which started out as a pet for Floridians now kills up to 74% of native species in the Caribbean.

There are even invasive species that land managers have introduced as a means of combating other, pre-existing invasive species. The tamarisk, or salt cedar, tree is one. It sucks up immense amounts of water in the already-dry Southwest USA, and it is now of the most noxious invasives in the US.

Lionfish

Mistakenly introduced species can hitch a ride over on ships, for example. You can see a great map of zebra mussel spread here. Asian carp are another barge-hopping species that was declared invasive in 2007.

A current trend in the environmentally-conscious food world is eating invasive species. From the popularity of dandelion greens on fancy salads, to sushi restaurants that highlight invasive fish and seafood, to hunting down feral pigs in Texas, it's making quite a splash! 

Zebra mussels

Lionfish is apparently great-tasting. And who doesn't like ham and bacon? Plus, the feral pigs are free-range and grass-fed!

“Humans are the most ubiquitous predators on earth,” said Philip Kramer, director of the Caribbean program for the Nature Conservancy. “Instead of eating something like shark fin soup, why not eat a species that is causing harm, and with your meal make a positive contribution?” (NYT)

While not a cure-all, eating invasive species can be one means of combating and removing habitat-destroying plants and animals. What do you think?

Controversy Over GMOs

Have you heard of "GMOs," genetically modified organisms? A famous example is the "tomato fish" - a tomato whose DNA has been cross-bred with coldwater fish so as to make it more cold-resistant. Plants can be bred to be more disease-resistant, to use less water, or simply to taste better to humans. GMO crops are controversial; strict legislation governs their use and the extent of the "modification" of plants that can take place.

GMO crops are controversial for a number of reasons. Some groups express concerns that humans do not know enough to fully comprehend the potentially negative consequences of interfering in natural processes & naturally-produced organisms. Others cite a number of recent studies that have confirmed that GMOs may actually cause problems for those that eat them; one study linked GM soy to sterility.

Proponents of GMO crops cite their pivotal role in the mid- to late-20th century "Green Revolution," which theoretically saved over a billion people from starvation. Crops bred for high yields, hardiness and resistance to insects, as well as a variety of pesticides, herbicides, etc. produced more food than was thought possible before.

Since the Green Revolution, a number of case studies and country-wide experiences have questioned & criticized the Revolution's long-term value. For example, consider the environmental degradation caused by monocropping and high pesticide use. As far as human health is concerned, those who benefited from increased food yields also saw increased rates of cancer due to pesticides.

What do you think? Do the benefits of GMO crops outweigh the negative effects?

Wild Broccoli? It Doesn't Exist!

We humans, being the clever creatures we are, like to change our environment in order to influence what it produces. Farming is a classic example of this: we encourage the land to grow what we want it to grow, so that we can eat what we want to eat.

Another great example of this is not just working with what the Earth gives us, but actually inventing new foods, or changing the "natural," original product. This can be both good and bad -  breeding animals for food, for example, causes a great deal of controversy. Consider mass-produced chickens that are bred with huge upper bodies (for the meat), but have legs that can't support their weight.

Less controversial is breeding plants. By selecting some traits that we like about a given plant, and then selectively breeding it with plants with similar traits, it's possible to create a whole new plant. Take a minute and think - have you ever seen truly wild broccoli? How about cauliflower? Brussels sprouts? I bet you haven't, and my odds are great! Those vegetables don't actually exist in the wild! They were all bred from kale, a form of cabbage. By selecting different traits about the kale plant, we have been able to create entire new vegetables. See this short article on Indianapolis Public Media's "A Moment of Science" program for a more detailed explanation.

Have you heard of "GMOs," genetically modified organisms? (The link leads you to an article on GM plants.) A famous example is the tomato fish - a tomato whose DNA has been cross-bred with coldwater fish so as to make it more cold-resistant. Read the next blog post to learn more about the controversy!

Cover Crops to Combat Weeds

Weeds are the bane (well, one of them) of every farmer and gardener. Products such as Round-Up are used to control weeds chemically, but as weeds evolve and develop resistance to these chemicals, it becomes increasingly difficult to control them.

Cover crops can be a non-chemical, natural way to help control weeds. In this article, author Mike Plumber describes how using a cereal rye cover crop can combat marestail (aka horseweed). He writes that cereal rye provides "excellent control" over the weed.

Do you have any success stories of how cover crops prevent or diminish weeds?

For more information on what cover crops are and how they are used in agriculture, watch this quick video primer:

Preserve the Land, or Build On It?

The Central Indiana Land Trust received a grant of 40 acres from the Eller family. The land is located in fast-growing Fishers, IN, just north of Indianapolis. According to an article in the Indy Star, Van Eller turned down offers to sell to residential developers. (Between 2000 and 2007, Fishers' growth was more than double that of Indianapolis. Undeveloped farmland is very valuable to developers in high-growth areas.) Eller didn't want to see the land that had been in his family since the 1830s fall into the hands of suburb developers. Instead, he gave the land to the Central Indiana Land Trust. The 40 acres will become a nature preserve.

"Such land donations have become more popular since the downturn in the economy as property values have dropped and landowners seek to take advantage of federal tax breaks.

In Indiana over the past five years, there has been an increase of 64 percent in the acreage set aside for preservation, according to the first census of land trusts conducted on a national level by the Land Trust Alliance, which released its findings last month." (Indy Star). 

In an area like Fishers, which has experienced explosive growth and development (click here for a satellite view of the suburbs), preserving land is an important part of planning for a sustainable future. Fishers typifies many aspects of urban sprawl, defined thus by Wikipedia:

Urban sprawl, also known as suburban sprawl, is a multifaceted concept, which includes the spreading outwards of a city and its suburbs to its outskirts to low-density and auto-dependent development on rural land, high segregation of uses (e.g. stores and residential), and various design features that encourage car dependency.[1] ... The term urban sprawl generally has negative connotations due to the health, environmental and cultural issues associated with the phrase.

While building suburbs and roads as fast as possible may be immediately profitable, preserving areas of undeveloped land are important to the overall health of our communities and of our environment.

What do you think?

40 Years of the Clean Water Act

A couple days ago, the New York Times published an op-ed piece entitled "Keep the Clean Water Act Strong". The Act will celebrate its 40th anniversary next year. The article notes the successes of the Clean Water Act, but focuses on continuing challenges to its success, including ambiguously-worded laws, the prevailing belief that polluting business practices are better than clean business practices, and others. Moreover, in July 2011, Congress "strip[ped] the E.P.A. of some of its authority to enforce the Clean Water Act."

Oftentimes, environmental health and economic health are seen as being incompatible - one must be compromised in order to let the other flourish. However, a number of examples (here's one, from PRI's The World) prove that this is not always the case - protecting the environment can go hand in hand with protecting the economy, especially when it comes to farming.

Using conservation agriculture techniques has been proven to improve the health of the land (for example, planting a cover crop keeps nitrogen in the soil and drastically reduces erosion), and therefore the quality and yield of the crop.

Interested in learning more about the impact of erosion on farmland? Watch this short video for a primer:

Are you interested in learning more? Check out IASWCD's website!

Conservation Agriculture

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations defines "Conservation Agriculture" as

“a concept for resource-saving agricultural crop production that strives to achieve acceptable profits together with high and sustained production levels while concurrently conserving the environment.”

Wikipedia is a widely-used source for background information on an untold number of topics, from personal histories of public figures, to detailed descriptions of Anime characters, to the history of bread. 

For those who would like to learn more about conservation agriculture, check out Wikipedia's article on the subject. 

It lists key principles of Ag Conservation, including "practicing minimum mechanical soil disturbance" (i.e. no-till farming) and "practice of crop rotation with more than two crop species" (i.e. cover cropping).

This photo of a beautiful cover crop is from PlantCoverCrops.com

Conservation agriculture is a worldwide movement, and has been for quite some time. Here in Indiana we have a strong Conservation Partnership that works to encourage landowners to engage in conservation practices. If you want to get involved, feel free to contact me via commenting on this blog post, or contact your local Soil and Water Conservation District! (PDF)

EPA's "Apps for the Environment"

The EPA held a contest this summer to challenge "app" developers to come up with a tool that uses EPA data. The apps can be used on smartphones. The top five apps are:

• Winner, Best Overall App: Light Bulb Finder by Adam Borut and Andrea Nylund of Eco Hatchery
• Runner Up, Best Overall App: Hootroot by Matthew Kling of Brighter Planet
• Winner, Best Student App: EarthFriend by Will Fry and Ali Hasan of Fry Development Company and Differential Apps
• Runner Up, Best Student App: Environmental Justice Participatory Mapping by Robert Sabie, Jr. of Western Washington University 
• Popular Choice Award: CG Search by Rajasekaran Bala of Cognizant Technology Solutions

I think my favorite for everyday use is HootRoot, which helps users map out the greenest way to get where they're going, but the Environmental Justice Participatory Mapping app can be an important tool in recognizing environmental discrimination. According to the website, it "give[s] citizens access to basic information on unregulated water sources and abandoned urnanium mine features. The map also provides citizens with the basic tools to visulize the spatial elements of potential environmental hazards"

Check them out! A full list of contest submissions can be found here. What's your favorite?

Agriculture - Based Scholarships

A variety of scholarships are available to students of Agriculture. A great list is featured on Brownfield Ag News' website. Some are available to a limited audience - Boone County residents or Ball State students, for example - and some are available to a wider audience, like one offered by the Indiana Beef Association.

See all the scholarship listings here.

For a large listing of ag-related scholarship programs, check out this link on Scholarships.com.

Attention young writers!

An essay contest co-sponsored by Indiana's Family of Farmers and Indiana Humanities is available to students in grades 4-12. The Contest is entitled, "Our Food, Our Farmers: Feeding the World." For details, go to this website. Sponsored by Indiana's Family of Farmers and Indiana Humanities, the essay contest encourages students to recognize and share all the ways Indiana agriculture plays a positive role in their own lives -as well as in the lives of those around them. The essay competition includes three grade levels: 4-6; 7-9 and 10-12. Entries must be received by Feb. 1, 2012. Details about how to enter the contest, guidelines for different grade levels, and prizes can be found here.

Conference: Special Opportunities

Welcome back after a long holiday weekend! The season has just begun and the IASWCD office is busy preparing for the 2012 Annual Conference of SWCDs. The theme is The Power of Conservation: Local Action with Global Impacts! This will be the 69th time this educational and informative conference has been offered to the conservationists of Indiana, and we are looking forward to it! It will take place January 9-12 in downtown Indianapolis. For more information and to register, check out our website here. 

There are still exhibitor booths available for any organization or company that would like to seize this excellent opportunity to reach out to the over 400 conservationists that will be in attendance at the conference. For more information, please contact Liz Rice, our project assistant.

This year, IASWCD was pleased to be able to offer up to 10 full conference scholarships to local Soil and Water Conservation District supervisors. (Supervisors serve as board members to their local SWCD. In Indiana, there are 92 SWCDs - one for each county. Learn more about supervisors, their role in promoting conservation, and how you can be one here!) The application deadline for this year has past (we awarded 7 full scholarships), but be ready to apply again in 2013!

IASWCD is also offering two grants of $750 apiece to the two SWCDs that recruit the most supervisors, staff, or associate supervisors to go to Conference this year. Those recruited must meet these criteria: 1) they have never been to Conference before, or 2) they must not have been to Conference since 2008. Recruiters may recruit individuals from outside of their own District. More information and the application can be found here. It is due January 4.