Everyday Thinking

Local foods may be better for your health

The local food movement typically has been about improving the health of the planet. Buying locally means less fuel burned to transport food, which means less pollution.

But now researchers are trying to find out if eating locally farmed food is also better for your health.

A team of researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has received a grant to study the public health impact of moving toward a local, sustainable food system. An increasingly vocal local food movement calls for consumers to try to buy and eat foods produced within 100 miles of their homes.

So far, there’s not real evidence that eating locally farmed food is better for you. But there are many reasons to think it might be. By definition, locally farmed food is not going to come from large commercial food companies, so people who eat locally aren’t going to consume as much processed food, which typically contains lots of refined carbohydrates, sugar, fat and preservatives.

By focusing your diet on products grown and raised within 100 miles of your home, you will likely end up eating more fruits and vegetables as well. Shopping for fruits and vegetables at farmers’ markets is also pleasurable and may lead to more variety in your diet. Eating local often means you can meet the people who produce your food, and you can also ask questions about pesticide use and farming methods.

The University of North Carolina study will last two years, and researchers say it will improve understanding of the health, environmental and economic issues associated with the local food trend. The study will look at the environmental benefits of transitioning to sustainable farming practices, determine whether there are nutritional and health benefits for consumers, and conduct an economic analysis of opportunities and barriers to local food systems.

“Among the most pressing public health problems in the U.S. today are obesity, environmental degradation and health disparities,” said Alice Ammerman, director of the U.N.C. Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention. “Contributing in a big way to each of these problems is our current food system, with its heavy dependence on fossil fuels such as fertilizers, pesticides and gasoline for large-scale production and long distance transportation of often high-calorie, nutrient-poor food, from farm to processing facility to table.”

Read the full article here.

Guest blogger: From page to soil...

After reading "In Defense of Food: An Eaters Manifesto" by Michael Pollan, I have become very scared about food and my eating habits.  Now considering how most in America eat - we do really, really well.  Primarily we are vegetarians - with occasional fish (can't give up the sushi) but no other meat of any kind.  We mostly eat organic things.  We mostly cook things from scratch (not out of a box).  We rarely eat out and almost never eat fast food... perhaps a bit when traveling - but what are you going to do?

But the book points out so many better ways and reasons for eating better and growing food is certainly a huge component... building a relationship with food and how it is produced - the full life cycle - rather than it appears magically at the grocery store.  Lots of the agra-business is really evil.  So our family is going to try to change our connection with what we eat even more!

This is my first step into heavy vegetable production.

I am trying tons of different things - plus all the typical things.  I am so curious about how my Japanese vegetables will do. I have planted: tall bunching onions, snow peas, Japanese radish (red long & daikon), long bean, cucumber (the type for sushi), burdok, aka shiso, Kyoto red carrots, pak choi, mibuna, soy-bean (eda mame type), Japanese spinach, Japanese eggplants & peppers and momotaro tomatoes... I think that is it for the Japanese stuff.  I really liked living in Japan and all the different things to eat and cook with that are just never available here.

In case you're interested, Michael Pollan has also written other great books on food, like "The Omnivores Dilemma."

I'll be posting more about this adventure as the season progresses.

Laura Intscher is a guest blogger for WSKG. She's the principle architect of Secret Base Design and a leading architect in straw bale construction.

EarthTalk: Cleaner, greener lawnmowers

Dear EarthTalk: What’s available now in lawnmowers that are easier on the environment? My yard is too big for one of those “reel” mowers, and I’m no longer a spring chicken, so I have to buy something that runs on more than human power. What’s out there?     -- Joel Klein, Albany, NY

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), traditional gas-powered lawnmowers are a public nuisance to say the least. Using one of them for an hour generates as many volatile organic compounds—dangerous airborne pollutants known to exacerbate human respiratory and cardiovascular problems—as driving a typical car for 350 miles. The EPA estimates that, with some 54 million Americans mowing their lawns on a weekly basis, gas lawnmower emissions account for as much as five percent of the nation’s total air pollution. Beyond that, homeowners spill some 17 million gallons of gasoline every year just refueling their lawnmowers.

So what’s a green-minded property owner to do about keeping the grass down? Go electric, of course!

Electric mowers, which either plug into a wall outlet via a long cord or run on batteries charged up from the grid, create no exhaust emissions and run much cleaner than their gas-powered counterparts. They also need less maintenance, with no spark plugs or belts to worry about, and are easier to use, as they tend to be smaller and come with push-button starters. The icing on the cake might be the fact that electric mowers are cheaper to run, using about as much electricity as an ordinary toaster. Most electric mower owners spend about $5 a year on electricity to keep their grass trimmed just right. The non-profit Electric Power Research Institute reports that replacing half of the 1.3 million or so gas mowers in the U.S. with electric models would save the equivalent amount of emissions of taking two million cars off the road.

But going electric has some minor trade-offs. Electric mowers tend to cost up to $150 more than their gas-powered counterparts, and the plug-in varieties can only go 100 feet from the closest outlet without an extension cord. And the cordless models last only 30-60 minutes on a charge, depending on battery size and type, though that’s plenty sufficient for the average lawn (just remember to re-charge it in time for the next mow).

And, of course, just because electric mowers don’t consume fossil fuels or spew emissions directly doesn’t mean they are totally green-friendly. Most people derive their household electricity from coal-fired power plants, the dirtiest of all energy sources. Of course, running an electric mower on electricity generated from clean and renewable sources (solar, wind or hydro power) would be the greenest of all possibilities, and those days may be upon us soon.

For those ready to take the electric mower plunge, the Greener Choices website, a project of Consumer Reports, gives high marks to Black & Decker’s corded ($230) and cordless ($400) models for their efficiency, reliability and ease-of-use. Corded models from Worx and Homelite (both around $200) also fared well, along with cordless offerings from Craftsman, Homelite, Remington and Neuton ($300-450).

GOT AN ENVIRONMENTAL QUESTION? Send it to: EarthTalk, c/o E/The Environmental Magazine, P.O. Box 5098, Westport, CT 06881; submit it online, or by e-mail. Read past columns at the EarthTalk archives.

Corn plastic to the rescue?

Thirty minutes north of Omaha, outside Blair, Nebraska, the aroma of steaming corn—damp and sweet—falls upon my car like a heavy curtain. The farmland rolls on, and the source of the smell remains a mystery until an enormous, steam-belching, gleaming-white architecture of tanks and pipes rises suddenly from the cornfields between Route 75 and the flood plain of the Missouri River. Behold NatureWorks: the largest lactic-acid plant in the world. Into one end of the complex goes corn; out the other come white pellets, an industrial resin poised to become—if you can believe all the hype—the future of plastic in a post-petroleum world.

The resin, known as polylactic acid (PLA), will be formed into containers and packaging for food and consumer goods. The trendy plastic has several things going for it. It’s made from a renewable resource, which means it has a big leg up—both politically and environmentally—on conventional plastic packaging, which uses an estimated 200,000 barrels of oil a day in the United States. Also, PLA is in principle compostable, meaning that it will break down under certain conditions into harmless natural compounds. That could take pressure off the nation’s mounting landfills, since plastics already take up 25 percent of dumps by volume. And corn-based plastics are starting to look cheap, now that oil prices are so high.

For a few years, natural foods purveyors such as Newman’s Own Organics and Wild Oats have been quietly using some PLA products, but the material got its biggest boost when Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, announced this past October that it would sell some produce in PLA containers. The move is part of the company’s effort to counter criticisms that it has been environmentally irresponsible. “Moving toward zero waste is one of our three big corporate goals for the environment,” says Matt Kistler, vice president of private brands and product development for the retailer. Wal-Mart plans to use 114 million PLA containers a year, which company executives estimate will save 800,000 barrels of oil annually.

To make plastic packaging and containers from a renewable resource that can be returned to the earth as fertilizer sounds like an unmitigated good. Selling fruits and veggies in boxes that don’t leach chemicals into landfills sounds equally wonderful. But PLA has considerable drawbacks that haven’t been publicized, while some claims for its environmental virtues are downright misleading. It turns out there’s no free lunch after all, regardless of what its container is made of, as I learned when I tried to get to the bottom of this marvelous news out of corn country.

Read the full article here.

EarthTalk: What about wind?

Dear EarthTalk: How is wind power faring in the U.S. now? Is more of it coming on line and
becoming a larger percent of the grid? And what about some of the highly publicized efforts to build wind farms, such as in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Has that been approved?
                                                                          -- Paul Howe, San Francisco, CA

Clean and green wind energy is the new darling of alternative energy developers, and the U.S. industry has been surging the past three years, especially as developers take advantage of government incentives—in the form of the so-called Production Tax Credit (PTC)—for erecting turbines and connecting them to the grid.

The non-profit American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) reports that, in 2007 alone, total U.S. wind power capacity grew by a new record of 45 percent, injecting some $9 billion into the economy. These new installations provide enough electricity to power 1.5 million typical American homes while strengthening the nation’s energy supply with clean, homegrown electricity.

According to AWEA, utility-grade wind power installations are now in operation across 34 U.S. states, generating more than 16,000 megawatts (MW) of electricity cumulatively—enough to power upwards of 4.5 million homes and to generate 45,000 new domestic jobs. But even with this growth, wind energy still accounts for just one percent of U.S. electricity supply. Continued growth apace with of recent years, though, should make it a major player in the American energy scene within a decade. President Bush himself recently suggested that wind has the potential to supply up to 20 percent of the nation’s electricity.

Of course, the volatility of oil prices has helped wind energy gain its foothold. Once a wind farm is built, the fuel cost is essentially zero (as long as the wind blows), whereas fluctuating fossil fuel prices have made traditional power sources more costly and risky. Upping our reliance on wind power has also allowed us to lower our overall carbon footprint. If coal or natural gas were to be substituted to generate the electricity we now get from wind, it would put 28 million additional tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year. Wind power also saves water by not requiring the billions of gallons of water used to cool coal-fired power plants, an increasingly contentious issue in arid areas with limited access to fresh water.

As for the contentious Cape Wind project proposed for Nantucket Sound in Massachusetts, the federal agency in charge, the U.S. Minerals Management Service, is sifting through tens of thousands of public comments and expects to make a final decision on the project by next winter. But even if they give it the green light, extensive permitting demands and legal challenges will likely hold up construction for years. 

AWEA thinks that 2008 can be as much of a growth year as 2007 if Congress extends the PTC program. The Senate has already approved extending the PTC for at least one more year, but the House has yet to bring it up for a vote. Meanwhile, wind energy proponents are pacing the halls of Congress trying to persuade their Representatives that what’s good for the wind industry is good for America.

CONTACTS: American Wind Energy Association; Cape Wind; U.S. Minerals Management Service

GOT AN ENVIRONMENTAL QUESTION? Send it to: EarthTalk, c/o E/The Environmental Magazine, P.O. Box 5098, Westport, CT 06881; or submit it online.  Click here to read past columns of EarthTalk. 

Hartwick College hosts talk on local food campaign

On Wednesday, April 23, 2008, Challey Comer, Farm to Market manager for the "Pure Catskills" buy-local program, will give a talk titled "Buy Local Efforts for Farm, Food, and Forest: The Pure Catskills Branding Campaign." The event will be held at 7 p.m. in the Strawbale House at Hartwick College's Pine Lake Environmental Campus as part of the Conversations at the Lake series.

Pure Catskills is a branding and buy local campaign sponsored by the Watershed Agricultural Council in collaboration with farmers and purveyors of fresh food across Delaware, Greene, Otsego, Schoharie, Sullivan, and Ulster counties in New York State. Comer will cover the basics of the Pure Catskills program, discuss the argument for buying local, and talk about some possible next steps for people interested in doing more.

Comer is the Farm to Market manager at the Watershed Agricultural Council. She worked as an engineering specialist in the Agricultural Program for nearly three years before taking on her current position in the spring of 2007. During her time in the Catskills, Comer has held part-time jobs at an heirloom vegetable nursery, on a farmstead cheese operation, and as an independent producer-grower.

This talk, which is free and open to the public, is sponsored by the Pine Lake Environmental Campus of Hartwick College. Conversations at the Lake, begun in 2006, is a series of informal talks on subjects relating to sustainability and the environment. For more information on upcoming events at Pine Lake, contact Program Coordinator Dan Morse at 607-431-4520 or morsed@hartwick.edu.

WSKG celebrates Earth Day with special programming

During the week of April 21 and through the end of the month, WSKG invites you to tune in and learn about the current status of our environment, scientific innovations and how to become more environmentally conscious.

On Tuesday, April 22 at 1 pm, WSKG radio’s Crystal Sarakas hosts Thinking Green, a special Earth Day call-in program featuring a discussion of how we can make changes in our lives that are Earth-friendly, whether it’s a large project like building a new home or something as ordinary as changing a shower curtain. Thinking Green airs at 1 pm with a rebroadcast at 7 pm on WSKG radio. The program will also be available for on-demand listening at WSKG.ORG.

WSKG Television hosts a line-up of science and environmental programming for Earth Day and beyond, as well as special programming for kids.

On the PBS KIDS preschool block, Miss Lori and Hooper teach children how to recycle their trash at home, and new stories from Dot’s Story Factory show how kids at home can celebrate the planet. Earth Day-themed episodes from CURIOUS GEORGE, CLIFFORD THE BIG RED DOG and IT’S A BIG BIG WORLD will air alongside themed music videos from the award-winning kids’ rock band Milkshake.

PBS KIDS GO!, for elementary school kids, celebrates Earth Day with themed programming from ARTHUR, MAYA & MIGUEL and CYBERCHASE. Throughout the late afternoon programming block, PBS KIDS GO! presents creative ideas for kids to take care of the environment by recycling, cleaning up their neighborhoods and more.

Other programming on environmental issues include:

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC’S STRANGE DAYS ON PLANET EARTH
Wednesday, April 23, 2008, 9:00-11:00 p.m. ET

Edward Norton hosts this two-part special. “Most Dangerous Catch”: Over-fishing is affecting life far beyond the shoreline, including Earth’s own life support systems. “Dirty Secrets”: Striped bass are succumbing to flesh-eating bacteria in the Chesapeake Bay. Majestic seabirds are starving in Hawai’i. Coral reefs are weakening under a growing assault of invisible contaminants. How are these mysteries related? In HD where available. http://www.pbs.org/strangedays

NOVA

“Car of the Future”
Tuesday, April 22, 2008, 8:00-9:00 p.m. ET

Tom and Ray Magliozzi of NPR’s “Car Talk” take viewers on a roller-coaster ride into the world of cars as NOVA takes a look at the latest and greatest in the automotive industry. In HD where available.

FRONTLINE “Hot Politics” (Repeat)
Tuesday, April 22, 2008, 9:00-10:00 p.m. ET

FRONTLINE and the Center for Investigative Reporting go behind the scenes to explore how bi-partisan political and economic forces prevented the U.S. government from confronting what may be one of the most serious problems facing humanity today — global warming.

INDEPENDENT LENS “The Creek Runs Red” (Repeat)
Tuesday, April 22, 2008, 10:00-11:00 p.m. ET

This program explores the human response to an environmental disaster and the complex connection between people and place in the mining town that the EPA calls the most toxic place in America — Picher, Oklahoma. In HD where available.

Rural town prepares for delivery of 1,400 energy saving lightbulbs

Over 100 volunteers are preparing to deliver one energy-saving compact-fluorescent lightbulb to all 1,400 households in the Town of Caroline on Saturday April 19.  A project of Energy Independent Caroline, "Lighten Up Caroline!" could collectively save residents $70,000 in energy bills and reduce carbon emissions by over 800,000 pounds.

"Energy conservation is the key to energy independence," said Don Barber, Caroline Town Supervisor and first chair of Tompkins County Council of Governments. "This event has the potential to create public awareness in our community about how we can conserve. Cutting carbon emissions by over 800,000 pounds is a huge impact for our rural town," he added.

The distribution is the largest door-to-door distribution of energy saving lightbulbs in Tompkins County history. Volunteers will deliver the lightbulbs entirely by foot, bicycle, and carpool.

Energy Independent Caroline is a town advisory committee working to declare energy independence in their community in Tompkins County.

"Lighten Up Caroline!" is sponsored in part by Cornell University's Community Partnership Board and Cornell Cooperative Extension of Tompkins County.  SewGreen of Ithaca is providing over 1,000 hand made reusable bags made entirely from reused materials.

Ouroussoff lecture on environmentally-friendly building

Nicolai Ouroussoff, the chief architecture critic for The New York Times, will discuss green architecture on Thursday, April 17, at SUNY Cortland.

Ouroussoff, who has written a number of articles pertaining to the green architectural movement for The New York Times magazine, will begin at 4:30 p.m. in Sperry Center, Room 105.

The lecture, which continues the College’s year-long “Earthly Matters” lecture series organized by the Cultural and Intellectual Climate Committee, is free and open to the public.

Ouroussoff wrote an article titled “Why Are They Greener Than We Are,” which was published on May 20, 2007, in The New York Times magazine. The piece explains why Europe has been building “green” for decades while the designers in the U.S. are still taking baby steps.

Much of the construction on the European continent was completed under ever tightening European Union environmental guidelines for buildings, he asserted.

By comparison, in the U.S., “despite the media attention showered on ‘green’ issues, the federal government has yet to establish universal efficiency standards for buildings,” Ouroussoff wrote.

His article shows examples of Europe’s early “green” construction undertaken during the 1970s, a self-conscious and basic approach featuring solar panels and recycled materials that was dubbed “Birkenstock architecture.” More recent projects include the headquarters for Germany’s environment agency in Dessau. Described by Ouroussoff as the embodiment of “a new, ecologically sensitive Europe,” the structure is cooled and heated by a system of underground pipes and ceiling vents that automatically release excess heat and circulate breezes from outside.

“Americans did not always lag so far behind,” Ouroussoff wrote. “Much of our most celebrated architecture has had a green strain. Frank Lloyd Wright, Rudolf Schindler and Richard Neutra all sought to create a more fluid relationship between indoor and outdoor spaces.”

Named the architecture critic of The New York Times in 2004, Ouroussoff was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2006. From 1996 to 2004, he was the architecture critic of The Los Angeles Times and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2003 and 2004.

"Earthly Matters” is the third yearlong series of lectures and cultural events organized around a single theme at SUNY Cortland. Sponsored by the College’s Cultural and Intellectual Climate Committee and NeoVox, the series is funded by the Offices of the President and the Provost.

For more information, contact Richard Kendrick, professor and chair of the Sociology and Anthropology Department and director of the College’s Institute for Civic Engagement, at (607) 753-2481.

Maple weekends could shift two months earlier by 2080

This year, Maple Weekend is March 29-30 since weather patterns are providing good sap flow in the maple trees of northern New York. But by 2080, sugarhouses in northern New York may be humming as early as Jan. 29-30, according to climate change models that predict warmer winters and more thaws.

To evaluate the effects of climate change on the industry, which adds about $1.7 million to northern New York's economy each year, Brian F. Chabot, director of Cornell's Maple Program, and Cornell's Uihlein Maple Research Station Director Michael Farrell are launching a new study with six maple producers.

"Long-term sap collection records on the trees at the Uihlein Forest show that both the start and end of the sap season has moved about a week earlier in the past 30 years with an overall loss of three to four days of production," Farrell said.

Chabot, also a Cornell professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, added, "Climate projection models suggest that the sap season with the freeze-thaw conditions needed to make the sap run will continue to advance. Winter as we now know it may be replaced by spring beginning in early January."

Read the full article here.

(Photograph by Jack Schmidling.)