Mulch has served well as a forum for EWG's work on biofuels, conservation, farm subsidies and the impact modern agriculture has on the environment. However, we're proud to announce the launch of our new online property, AgMag.

AgMag is Environmental Working Group's online chronicle of agriculture and the environment. We bring you bullet-proof analysis and in-depth investigations into the science and politics of food, water, farming, the environment and the money and politics that make it go. AgMag delivers a clear-eyed and new look at our increasingly complex and global 21st century food system.

The inaugural post for AgMag is on how agriculture has much more to lose with actual climate change than with climate change legislation, detailed in an EWG report entitled Crying Wolf.

This will be the final Mulch post as we move all of our agriculture work to one property. Please update your bookmarks and favorites to AgMag and check the new site for instructions on how to receive updates and posts via email.

Posted by Don Carr at 8:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
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OAKLAND September 30 - California agriculture, which grows roughly 40 percent of America's food, faces grave threats spurred by climate change, including volatile weather, crippling drought and assaults by growing hordes of pests. It also directly generates about 6 percent of California's greenhouse gas emissions.

In spite of agriculture's vulnerability and contribution to global warming the sector was practically left out of the state's climate change implementation strategy mandated by the Global Warming Solutions Act (AB32), according to a new report released today, California's Climate Change Policy Leaves Agriculture in the Dust, from the Environmental Working Group (EWG).

"California agriculture has a lot to lose with climate change," said EWG senior analyst Kari Hamerschlag, author of the report. "It's unfathomable that a state with a $33 billion a year agriculture industry and a history of leadership on climate change is demonstrating such an acute lack of institutional capacity and leadership on the issue."

The report finds that AB 32's implementation strategy failed to establish meaningful emission reduction targets and present an effective action plan for agriculture, missing an urgent opportunity to motivate skeptical farmers to take steps that will both curb their own emissions and help them to better cope with a changing climate.

Hamerschlag's report finds that careful studies have shown that several underused farm management practices, such as cover cropping, conservation tillage and organic fertilization, have the potential to deliver significant carbon sequestration benefits while helping farmers conserve water, maintain yields and resist weeds and pests in the face of climate change.

The report makes ten specific recommendations for addressing the inertia that has prevented California from taking effective action on agriculture and climate change and calls on policy makers to develop programs of targeted research, outreach, technical assistance and financial incentives for farmers.

"As a first step towards swifter action," Hamerschlag said, key state agencies "should establish an inter-agency working group on agriculture and climate change. Federal agencies, NGOs and farm groups all have critical roles to play and should also be actively involved."

Go here for the full report:

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Posted by Don Carr at 1:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)
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Senator Ben Nelson (D-NE) this week proposed an amendment to an Interior Appropriations bill to cut off funding to the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) waiver process unless the agency subverts its own scientific review process and immediately allows 50% more corn ethanol to be blended into the national gasoline supply.

In a word, blackmail.

Fortunately, the amendment did not make it to the final list of amendments agreed upon today by Senate leaders (E and E Subscription Required).

A major hurdle for the politically well-connected ethanol lobby has been proving its fuel is environmentally sound. The debate has raged about Indirect Land Use Change (ILUC), technical jargon for factoring in the climate-damaging gases that will be released when forests or grasslands are plowed under and planted with crops to make up for the corn used to make ethanol. When EPA scientists factor in indirect land use change, as they are required to do by law, it turns out corn ethanol likely increases rather than decreases greenhouse-gas emissions.

House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson effectively neutered ILUC in the concessions he extracted from the House climate bill. The ethanol industry's consternation over ILUC is hard to comprehend, however, since Congress already made sure corn ethanol was protected from any scientific assessment of its impact on the environment when it passed the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act.

The real reason for blackmailing EPA is that corn ethanol producers have no market for their 15 billion gallons of grandfathered corn ethanol. Despite lavish federal subsidies and tax breaks, the ethanol industry has struggled to remain financially viable. During the debate over a federal stimulus bill, the ethanol industry lobbied for bailout funds, but withdrew their request in the face of intense media scorn. Senator Nelson's move intends to force EPA into granting a request to increase the amount of ethanol blended into gasoline by 50%, thus dramatically expanding the market for the floundering industry.

Claims by the ethanol industry that EPA's assessments are unfair are misguided, not only because most ethanol is grandfathered in under EPA rules, but also because ethanol is mandated for use. The real fear is that increasing the amount of ethanol blended into gasoline by 50% will have catastrophic environmental impacts. The rush to plant more corn for ethanol has already choked rivers and streams with toxic fertilizers and pesticides, leading to the growth of the Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone. Wildlife habitat is plowed under at an alarming rate and air quality is degraded all to produce a fuel that's production in all likelihood contributes to climate change.

It is hard to fathom that at a time of environmental crisis our senators are willing to defund the EPA's effectiveness because the agency won't look the other way and mandate the use of more environmentally damaging fuel. This spurred us to produce the above image, a riff on the iconic National Lampoon cover pasted below.

Copyright National Lampoon Inc.

Posted by Don Carr at 2:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)
Filed under congress, corn, ethanol

DES MOINES September 24 - A representative from the Washington, D.C. based Environmental Working Group (EWG) has been asked to present remarks to the Mississippi River Gulf of Mexico Watershed Nutrient Task Force Public Meeting held today in Des Moines, IA. In his remarks, EWG Midwest Vice-President Craig Cox provided a clear-eyed and no-nonsense assessment of the state of pollution flowing into the Mississippi River Basin and how it contributes to the Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone.

EWG recently opened a Midwest office in Ames, IA to effectively address the growing threat modern agriculture poses to the environment. Cox manages EWG's agriculture programs from the Ames, IA office.

"The fundamental problem we face is not lack of technology or solutions. The problem is poor policy and institutional inertia," Cox said in his remarks.

However, in a move welcomed by EWG and reported by the Associated Press this morning, US Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack intends to inject $320 million in dedicated pollution clean up funds to the 12 states encompassed in the Mississippi River Basin.

"We commend Secretary Vilsack for bringing more federal support to bear on a region in desperate need of assistance," Cox said. "Coupling an increase in funds with better enforcement of conservation compliance and better policies to mitigate toxic run-off will go a long way to solving the Dead Zone problem," Cox added.

The Mississippi River Gulf of Mexico Watershed Nutrient Task Force, consisting of five federal agencies and 10 state agencies, was brought together in 1997 to develop and implement an action plan to reduce the Gulf Dead Zone. Agriculture has been identified as the single largest contributor of pollution flowing into the Mississippi River Basin.

Go here for the full text of Craig Cox's comments: http://www.ewg.org/2009/hypoxia-task-force/dead-zone-action-needed



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Posted by Don Carr at 1:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
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By Michelle Perez, Senior Analyst

There is a Hearing in Congress today on how the federal government can accelerate clean up of the Chesapeake Bay. You can watch the Hearing online at 2 pm, EST.

In preparation for the event, the staff of the House Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment released a memo that quantifies what EWG said in our report, Facing Facts in the Chesapeake Bay:

The federal government's reach over pollution to the Bay is very limited.

The memo shows that the federal government DOES NOT have jurisdiction over:

60% of the nitrogen pollution load to the Bay, 65% of the phosphorus pollution load, and 96% of the sediment load.

Furthermore, the federal reach over the agricultural sources of pollution is just a fraction of the pollution sources:

43% of the total nitrogen load to the Bay comes from agriculture but only 6% is regulated by the federal government.

45% of the total phosphorus load to the Bay comes from agriculture but only 8% is regulated by the federal government.

The facts are undeniable. The federal government cannot solve the problem itself.

A healthier Bay will only be achieved if the state governments step up to the plate.

States have to get aggressive yet creative and fair to develop sensible solutions to the 60% - 96% of the pollution that the federal government can't touch.

EWG's report, Facing Facts in the Chesapeake Bay begins the discussion of what a fair and sensible regulatory framework should look like. Our report also details how the voluntary policy approach to agricultural sources has failed to get the job done. And, we shine the spotlight on the gaping holes in the few and limited agricultural regulations addressing the problem.

See the pie chart below from the House Subcommittee memo (pdf) detailing the sources of pollution to the Bay:

Posted by Don Carr at 11:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
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The folks over at Foreign Policy are taking a hard look at the US's current biofuels policy. First it was this piece characterizing corn ethanol's patrons in Congress as the "Corn Dogs." Now Micheal Grunwawld, as part of a broader overview called Seven Myths About Alternative Energy, singles out biofuels in two of the myths.

Myth #2 - "Renewable Fuels Are the Cure for Our Addiction to Oil."

Researchers used to agree that farm-grown fuels would cut emissions because they all made a shockingly basic error. They gave fuel crops credit for soaking up carbon while growing, but it never occurred to them that fuel crops might displace vegetation that soaked up even more carbon. It was as if they assumed that biofuels would only be grown in parking lots.

Myth #3 - "If Today's Biofuels Aren't the Answer, Tomorrow's Biofuels Will Be."

The latest U.S. rules, while continuing lavish support for corn ethanol, include enormous new mandates to jump-start "second-generation" biofuels such as cellulosic ethanol derived from switchgrass. In theory, they would be less destructive than corn ethanol, which relies on tractors, petroleum-based fertilizers, and distilleries that emit way too much carbon. Even first-generation ethanol derived from sugar cane -- which already provides half of Brazil's transportation fuel -- is considerably greener than corn ethanol. But recent studies suggest that any biofuels requiring good agricultural land would still be worse than gasoline for global warming. Less of a disaster than corn ethanol is still a disaster.

But for today, farmland happens to be very good at producing the food we need to feed us and storing the carbon we need to save us, and not so good at generating fuel.

Posted by Don Carr at 11:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
Filed under biofuels, corn, ethanol

By Michelle Perez, EWG Senior Analyst

Press coverage last week of the latest federal proposals to clean up the Chesapeake Bay was good. But, an important piece of the puzzle was missing from the discussion.

Yes, it's fantastic that President Obama has asked five federal agencies to propose ways they can do their jobs better to restore water quality in the six-state, 64,000 square-mile Bay watershed. And yes, Senator Ben Cardin's (D-Maryland) draft legislation is crucial to give EPA unprecedented power to compel the states to clean up the Bay and punitive authority if they fail to act.

Anyone have power to manage agricultural runoff?

However, these reports and legislation and the resulting press coverage ignores the 800-pound gorilla in the room:

Unintended albeit harmful runoff from agricultural farm fields.

The federal government's reach over farm pollution - which is the single largest source of the nutrient and sediment pollution harming the Bay - is limited to regulating only the largest animal production farms. This leaves the majority of animal farms and the majority of animal waste unregulated by the federal government.

What's worse, there's a huge loophole in the federal animal farm regulation: the feds have no authority over the manure that gets transferred off the regulated farm and onto an unregulated farm where the manure is applied to land as a fertilizer substitute.

The current system isn't working
EWG released a report last week - Facing Facts in the Chesapeake Bay - that points out the real gorilla in our midst:

The inability of the six Bay states (Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Delaware, West Virginia, and New York) to cope with the agricultural pollution that the federal government has no jurisdiction over.

Furthermore, EWG's analysis explains why and gives examples of how the voluntary approach that pays farmers to install best management practices that are good for the farm and good for the environment has failed to clean up the unintended pollution.

Here's one way to reduce the farm pollution
Finally, EWG points out that the only way these state governments can show EPA they are truly able to achieve their portion of the upcoming Bay clean-up goals is if they develop a fair and sensible regulatory framework to reduce agricultural pollution.

Read more about what a fair and sensible regulatory framework could look like and find out what agricultural pollution regulations do exist are in Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Delaware, West Virginia, and New York.

Posted by Don Carr at 4:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)
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