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This is the first update of the WWW.LIFTINGTHEYOKE.COM website. As you will note, I don't go into any great detail. If you want more information you need to delve into the various websites where there is in-depth material on the subject matter.
Ron Krupp - July, 2009
VERMONT NEWS
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* The Further Demise of the Vermont Dairy Farmer
The state's dairy industry is one the brink of collapse. Prices to dairy farmers have fallen to record lows even as production costs continue to rise. In the past five years, Vermont has lost over 250 dairy farms, leaving the state with 1,046 farms. Thirty two farms have gone under so far in 2009. The dairy industry represents 70 percent of Vermont's agricultural economy.
Here the situation in a nutshell: Middlebury farmers received $11.28 per hundredweight in June of 2009 compared to $18.91 per hundredweight in June of 2008. This adds up to a loss of $7 a hundredweight. The state average of a gallon of milk to consumers fell from $4.28 in January of 2009 to $3.45 in June of 2009. During the same period, the price being paid to for milk delivered to Middlebury fell from $1.16 a gallon to 97 cents a gallon. It costs on average $1.50 a gallon to produce a gallon of milk.
David Montagne, a Franklin County dairy farmer, is considering selling 200 acres of land in Swanton to a big-box store to make up for falling milk prices. He told the Vermont Milk Commission that he is loosing $100 a cow every month.
Senator Bernie Sanders appealed to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to provide higher milk prices to farmers under the Federal Milk Marketing Order. The loss of dairy farms would have a huge economic impact on the state. Dairy farms are one of the main reasons for the tourist industry in Vermont.
The milk prices paid to farmers have gone down in part because there is a glut of milk in the system. At the same time farmer production costs have risen because of the high price of feed, the shortage of canola feed grain and the high cost of gasoline.
Add to this the depressed economy and monopoly conditions in the dairy marketplace. According to Senator Sanders, while the price paid to farmers continues to decline - the processors and distributors are making lots of money. In other words, the drop in prices paid to farmers has not coincided with in drop in prices to consumers and the high profit margins of dairy processors, distributors and supermarkets.
Sanders points out the near-monopoly conditions of Dean Foods Inc. of Texas which controls 70 percent of the New England's milk products and 40 percent of the national market.
Dean sells processed milk to Wal-Mart Supercenters, Sam's Club, Giant and Stop & Shop. They also own Horizon Dairies, the largest organic dairy in the country. Sanders asked to meet with Dean Foods to discuss how much they pay Vermont's dairy farmers but they declined stating the federal government sets milk prices. Sanders said the government sets minimum prices and that Dean Foods makes massive profits as the expense of farmers.
Sanders asked the Justice Department to investigate whether milk processors, such as Dean foods, are enriching themselves at the expense of farmers. Dean Foods profits climbed from $30 million in the first quarter of 2008 to $76.2 million for the first quarter of 2009.
Sanders said, "We're supposed to be living in a country that embraces competition in the marketplace and free enterprise but that's clearly not happening when one company controls 70 percent of the market."
Solutions and Initiatives:
. The most immediate assistance would be to increase the Milk Income Loss Contract (MILC) safety net payments to help ward off a full disaster. When prices drop below c$14, the MILC subsidy kicks in. With farmers spending between $18 and $19 for a hundred pounds of milk and receiving $12 for a hundred pounds of milk, MILC subsidies of $2 and $3 dollars would help even though are not sufficient.
. A minimum six-month interest free extension or debt forgiveness to dairy farmers on USDA loans would provide some relief.
. Another initiative would be to start an emergency program that pay farmers for hamburger meat from cows brought to slaughter. The meat could be distributed to domestic and international nutrition programs. Another initiative would be to make more powdered milk from surplus milk and store this commodity.
. Finally, there is a nationwide program to lower the supply of milk by culling cows from dairy herds. This would cut the surplus of milk and farmers would receive a higher price. This is a longer term solution. There is talk of going more to a demand-supply system similar to the one in Canada where only enough milk is produced to meet the consumer demand.
Roger Allbee, the Vermont Secretary of Agriculture and chairperson of the Vermont Milk Commission (VMC) said, "The dairy farms must be insulated from the unpredictable price fluctuations and market manipulations that have plagued our farmers." Allbee recently met with Tom Vilsack, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture. Vilsack has created an advisory group that would recommend changes to the federal milk pricing system.
Allbee said dairy farmers on the Northeast realized a price collapse was coming but couldn't get an allocation on the $787 billion federal stimulus program.
Bob Wellington, an economist with Agri-Mark Inc. regional milk cooperative, said that the global recession played a large role in the collapse of milk prices. Dairy farmers in the U.S. used to sell 10 percent of their products internationally and that now has been cut in half. He also said that Americans have cut back on eating out. McDonald's has reduced the number of slices of cheese from two to one in a double cheeseburger. Wellington said that volatile prices mostly benefit large-scale grocery stores. They raise prices when milk prices are on the upswing and decrease prices, slowly, when milk prices fall.
The VMC had proposed to set up a fee to be paid by milk producers to the state's dairy farmers. The VMC plans to meet with milk processors such as Ben & Jerry's, Booth Brothers, Cabot, Dean Foods, Cabot and Hood. The goal is to redistribute some of the profits from the bottlers and retailers to dairy farmers. This plan has not worked in the past due to interstate commerce rules.
. This information was taken from articles in the Burlington Free Press. I have written extensively on the Vermont Dairy Farmer: An Endangered Species. If you want more information on the subject, please email me at: woodchuck37@hotmail.com.
* The Vermont Milk Company (VMC) shut its doors on July 18 due to poor sales and a high debt load. It was founded three years. The dairy was formed by farmers and investors who were seeking stable milk prices and added value to its products. VMC made yogurt, cheese curds and ice cream. From what I heard, one of their main contracts to supply cheese curds to a Vermont company was canceled. About 40 dairy farms have been lost this year in Vermont.
There is a move by local citizens to resurrect VMC. Stay tuned.
Go to Vermont Milk Company on the web for more information.
* The Fat Hen Natural Food store in Vergennes shut its doors a few months ago. From what I heard, even though business was good, the owners could not afford the rent.
* An Inventory and Assessment of Recent Local Food Initiatives
Prepared for - The Vermont Sustainable Agriculture Council 2008
by Virginia Nickerson 802-223-6979
vnic@umich.edu Go online for the complete report
* Water Buffalo - Yogurt
Bufala di Vermont is moving back to its homeland in Quebec from Woodstock, Vermont. Frank Abballe is taking his 500 shaggy water buffalo bovines to a farm 20 minutes north of the Vermont border. Abballe said the cost of feed was too high in Vermont. He plans to build a slaughterhouse on the current site and turn it into a conventional feedlot for baby sheep. We'll see.
* Wine Country Notes
Vermont looks to become a new place for growing grapes into wine. The Vermont Agency of Agriculture wants Vermont to become known as a wine-producing region. Wine currently produces $5 million in revenues. There are 17 licensed wineries and more than 6 more will be licensed in the next year. Vermont wineries won 16 medals in the Eastern States Exposition in June of 2009. Wine is beginning to show up in area restaurants.
We already know about artisan cheese, bread and beer. Climate may be a limiting factor. Grapes that tend to like a cooler climate may have a hard time in Vermont. Northeastern Vine Company in Poultney, Vermont sells root stock. Most of the stock originated in Minnesota where crosses of French and American grapes were made.
Perhaps one day, folks will follow the cheese, beer, bread and wine trails through the Green Mountains.
* Whole Foods announced plans to build a store in South Burlington on an undeveloped piece of land. Whole Foods, whose main offices are located in Austin, Texas - has the largest number of organic food stores in the U.S. Coming to an area already over-loaded with natural food stores seems predatory to some. You already have City Market, Healthy Living and Natural Provisions. Healthy Living, the largest natural food store in Vermont at 30,000 square feet, is only a mile from the proposed 45,000 square food site of Whole Foods. Whole Foods currently has 273 stores. For the story on Whole Foods and the communities response, go to Seven Days, July 22-29 - Big Fish.
NATIONAL NEWS
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Two-thirds of Americans are overweight. One-third are obese.
Columnist, Ellen Goodman - Article -
Beginning of the End of Big Food - The Boston Globe
Goodman describes "Overweight America" as a business plan.
She writes about David Kessler's best seller - The End of Overeating - An investigation into an industry that wants us to eat more.
Kessler writes about how the food industry has learned to produce "hyperpalatable combinations of sugar, fat and salt" that not only appeals to us but has the capacity for addiction. Kessler uses words like "cravibility" and "conditioned overeating." The industry makes us in food addicts by spiking our food. As one food industry executive admitted to Kessler, "Everything that has made us successful as a company is the problem."
Kessler likens the obesity epidemic with the tobacco epidemic.
We as a society need to change our attitudes towards Big Food just like we've done with cigarettes.
DOCUMENTARY
FOOD,INC.
This is a new popular documentary that does for food what SICKO did for health care. The producer is Robert Kenner. Co-produced by Eric Schlosser - Fast Food Nation - Food Inc. covers the basics when it comes to the politics of food and farming. Its purpose is to first, to shock and awe watchers with the dangers of our industrial food supply. Food Inc. documents the costs to the land, workers and customers of a food industry that makes it cheaper to buy fast food than fresh food.
Second, it focuses on the advantages of buying local. The 93-minute documentary has segments such as Unintended Consequences, The Dollar Menu and In the Grass. Michael Pollen, the author of the Omnivore's Dilemma, helps to narrate the film. Food Inc. covers many of the same areas as Lifting the Yoke.
The Community Food Security website recently provided information on: Money for Farm to School Programs
Child Nutrition Bills
The Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009
USDA Releases Food Desert Study
Community Gardens of 2009
FY 2010 Ag Appropriations
Cornucopia Institute News 7/2009
* Release: Washington Post Investigation of USDA's Organic Mismanagement.
* Dean Foods in creating "natural" dairy products using conventional milk. Dean Foods controls over 70 percent of the milk processing in the country and they also control the processing of organic milk through companies like Horizon. The new "natural milk" will come under the Horizon label. This is a new product category.
* USDA Report: Corporate Imports from China
6-16-2009 American organic farmers are being sold out.
Organic Consumers Association (OCA) News
* A new study revealed major health problems linked to genetically engineered foods and pesticides. Journal of Biological Science.
GMOs are now found in 80 percent of (non-organic) sold in the U.S., as well as the majority of animal feed in the EU. Check this out on the web.
* There have been violations of national organic standards in the organic dairy industry (including Horizon and Aurora). They continue to unfairly undercut ethical brands by using cheaper, inhumane confinement feedlots where cows have limited or no access to required pasture.
* Many consumers believe that natural is "greener" than organic. Natural is basically unregulated - organic must meet government standards. See July 9, 2009 news from OCA on Natural Foods, Factory Farms and Organic Integrity.
* Whose Killing Organic Foods? Horizon, Sik, Whole Foods Market
July 1,2009.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Monday, June 29, 2009
PART I. Specific 2008 Farm Bill Projects
PART I. Section 1: THE GLOBALIZATION OF FOOD AND FARMING
1. SPECIFIC 2008 FARM BILL PROJECTS
. permanent disaster assistance to farmers
. an increase in farmland preservation through the purchasing of development rights
. a provision for more fruits and vegetables to school children
. help for farmers to convert to organics from conventional farming, boosting organic farming initiatives for small and medium sized producers and helping organic growers get higher insurance payments should their harvest fail. A total of $78 million in funding for organic research: A 600 percent increase.
. develop next-generation cellulosic ethanol by providing research and development funds, provide tax credits and loan guarantees, shifts funding from corn-based ethanol to other renewable sources of energy, and provides money to encourage farmers to grow biomass crops in areas around biomass facilities
. local procurement of unprocessed farm products to the schools, such as eggs, vegetables, poultry, beef and dairy products
. grants to support the development of enterprises which distribute and market healthy, locally produced food to under-served urban, rural, and tribal communities
. loans to finance local food enterprises in rural areas
. funding community food projects in low-income communities
. funding senior market programs providing vouchers to low-income seniors for fruits and vegetables farmers' markets, roadside stands and community supported agriculture (CSA) initiatives
. support for the promotion for farmers' markets
. support for programs to reduce the rising rates of obesity
. support for studying urban and rural areas with limited food markets called "food deserts"
. increases in access to food stamp programs; the term "Food Stamps" would be changed to "Food and Nutrition"
. other initiatives include support for Food Stamp Nutrition Education and for the Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP)
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Part 1. Section 2: HOW DOES THE 2008 FARM BILL IMPACT VERMONT?
PART I. THE GLOBALIZATION OF FOOD AND FARMING
2. HOW DOES THE 2008 FARM BILL IMPACT VERMONT?
The Farm Bill OF 2008 will boost aid to dairy, organic and specialty crop farmers, help pay for the clean up of Lake Champlain, provide more funds for farmland preservation and support renewable energy projects.
The bill will help 60,000 low-income Vermonters who need to turn to the Vermont Foodbank and their network partners of food pantries and food shelves. This translates into greater food security at a time when rising food prices and fuel prices, stagnant wages and a faltering economy are hitting these families the hardest.
In March 2008, more than 53,000 Vermonters enrolled in food stamps -- a 15-year high. Overall, more than $15 million in new food stamp investments will be made Vermont over the next 5 years. The farm bill also provides $2 million in new and increased support for food banks, food shelves and pantries -- after a five year decline in food donations. More than 770,000 additional meals will be provided to low-income Vermonters through the increase. The bill also encourages the purchase of locally-grown produce from small farmers to food shelves and increases the access to farmers' markets for low-income Vermonters.
Specific monies will be spent on:
. providing $22 million to help farmers pay for the cost of becoming certified organic under the National Organic Program;
. offering $446 million in block grants to maple syrup producers, Christmas tree growers and other specialty crop farmers to help pay for production, marketing and development costs;
. boosting Lake Champlain clean-up efforts by increasing funds to help farmers prevent phosphorous pollution from running off their land into the lake and its tributaries;
. helping to fight sprawl by increasing the Farmland Protection Program by more than $700 million. The program provides federal matching funds to states and local governments to buy development rights to help current farmers stay on the land and provide opportunities for new farmers to purchase farms;
. providing matching funds for the Community Forest and Open Space Conservation Program, which helps towns purchase forested space. Technical assistance in forest management will be available. The Community Wood Energy Program would provide matching funds for communities to shift heating and power for municipal buildings from fossil fuels to woodchip and biomass systems.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Part 1. Section 3: FARM ENERGY ALTERNATIVES IN THE GREEN MOUNTAINS
BIODIESEL, BIOMASS, WIND, AND SOLAR
On-farm energy is a hot topic these days in Vermont due to the high cost of fuel, the growing concern about climate change, and the desire for new markets to enhance farm profitability. On-farm energy production provides an opportunity for Vermont farmers to wean themselves off of fossil fuel imports. We'll always need to import some of our food just as we'll need to import energy and fuel, but our dependency on them must be cut. And besides, you can't outsource manure, wood, wind, water or the sun. But you can grow corn, canola, sunflowers, flax, hemp, mustard and soybeans on Vermont farms for energy use.
Vern Grubinger and Heather Darby of the University of Vermont Extension Service have calculated that the average Vermont farm spends between $10,000 and $16,000 per year on energy. Many farmers are experimenting with renewable energy sources to help lessen these fuel costs. Farming like other industries may be forced by necessity to go local rather than global. Those strawberries, which travel across the country in huge refrigerated trucks, may not be as plentiful one day due to high energy costs.
Practical field studies on the energy potential of corn, willow, woodchips, soybeans, switchgrass, canola, and sunflowers as well as wind, solar and hydro are happening on many farms in Vermont, the greater Northeast, and throughout the country.
The Vermont Biofuels Association is working with a number of farmers throughout the state. Cedar Creek Farm in East Thetford, Vermont is now heating its greenhouse with used vegetable oil. Ekolatt Farm has 3 acres of sunflowers and five acres of soybeans to use as feedstock for biodiesel.
One farmer in Massachusetts is growing a special variety of corn for heating his greenhouses. Another is experimenting with sunflower oil production. Each state and each region have advantages for growing certain crops. We are just on the cutting edge of energy production "down on the farm."
GLOBAL WARMING AND MAPLE SYRUP
You can't get more local in Vermont than maple syrup but global warming and the high cost of fuel may change all that. When you think about the Green Mountain state, you have images of a sugarhouse in Spring boiling sap from wood-fired boilers and steam rising from the chimney along with the sweet, subtle aroma of sugarsap in the air. This may all end sooner than we think as the planet continues to warm up.
Most people, whether they're farmers or not, know that global warming is affecting the planet. No one understands this better than the Vermont maple sugar producer. Each spring, Burr Morse of East Montpelier taps 3,000 maple trees in his sugarbush. Morse said that for the past five years, he has been forced to tap his maple trees in the middle of February to avoid missing the best sap flow. Many sugarmakers are tapping earlier and for less time because of warmer and shorter winters. It used to be that sugaring began in early March.
(Maple sap runs best when there are freezing nights and warm days. New technologies in the past few years have made it possible to lessen the decline in maple production. Using tubing instead of buckets and setting higher vacuum levels puts more pressure in the tubing, producing more sap and allowing the sugarmaker to tap longer.)
Vermont went from producing an average of 1 million gallons a year in the early part of the century to 500,000 gallons a year from 1970 to 1999. Many years ago, almost every farm had a small maple operation. For the past 4 years, the state has produced between 400,000 and 500,000 gallons. Vermont remains the #1 maple producer in the U.S.
The increase in temperature due to global warming is the main factor in determining production levels. Output per tap is going down, along with dieback in the maple forests with longer regeneration periods. Warmer levels could one day signal the end of sugarmaking. According to the Climate Change Research Center at the University of New Hampshire, from 1970 to 2000, the average winter temperature in the Northeast increased by 4.4 degrees. The economic loss of $164 million in maple sales from the state's 4,600 maple producers would be a blow to the agricultural economy.
Where Maple Sap Meets Soybeans: Vermont sugarmakers are experimenting with new fuels for their evaporators. Glenn and Ruth Goodrich of Cabot collect maple sap from 20,000 trees and use fuel derived from petroleum oil and soybeans to boil their sap into maple syrup. Most sugarmakers use wood to heat the sap to remove water and produce the sweet, sticky syrup. About a third of Vermont sugarmakers are using oil-evaporators to save time and labor. The Goodriches' evaporator is fueled by 20 percent biofuel and 80 percent petroleum. The plant-based fuel costs about a dollar more than a gallon than oil. Funding from the Calkins Fuel Company and a small grant from the Vermont Biodiesel Project, which receives funding from U.S. Department of Energy, covered the difference in price.
On the Web
Goodrich Maple Farms: www.goodrichmaplefarm.com
The University of Vermont Proctor Maple Research Center
BIODIESEL
In the U.S., most biodiesel comes from soybeans, which are processed into high protein feed, leaving behind their oil, which is turned into commercial fuel in multi-million gallon biodiesel plants. This process is just becoming a reality on a large scale in Vermont and the Northeast.
* See information below on BioCartel in Swanton, Vermont.
There are many small-scale alternatives being tried on Vermont farms. What's needed are community-scale biodiesel systems that minimize infrastructure costs and transportation requirements that use raw products and that can be grown by local farmers and provide a fair return. Some of these initiatives, like processing oil-seed production and on-farm production from local waste oil and others, are described below.
(Oil seed crops include canola, flax, mustard, soybeans, and sunflowers. These can be grown in the Northeast, although yields are variable. One challenge is to obtain affordable equipment like combines, seed cleaners, presses, and processors.)
* Go to the University of Vermont Center for Sustainable Agriculture at www.uvm.edu/sustainableagriculture for updates on biodiesel research in Vermont.
The Fiske Farm and the Energy Crisis of 2008
Wayne and Nancy Fiske hope that the 15 acres of canola seeds they planted in the spring of 2008 will provide biodiesel fuel on their farm where they milk 125 Holsteins. Biodiesel costs have more than doubled in the last year. After pressing the seeds for oil, the leftovers could be used as high protein feed for their cows and the stubble in the field as animal bedding. Fiske obtained a UVM Extension research grant of $2,900 for a Chinese-made oil seed press.
Canola, or rapeseed, is a variety of the brassica family, which also includes broccoli, cabbage, and the mustards. Canola is 40 percent oil that has become a common source of food-grade salad oil. Earlier trials on another Vermont farm produced one and a half tons per acre or 80-120 gallons of canola oil.
For canola to come into wide use, Vermont would need to build the infrastructure to press and refine the oil and a system to connect farmers with processors. Many farmers who might be interested in growing the crop would not want the added work of processing the seeds. Also, once the seeds are pressed into oil, further processing is necessary to remove glycerin before it can be used for vehicle use. A Vermont biodiesel company in Winooski, Green Technologies, can perform this task.
Cate Farm: Some farmers are already using biodiesel as a fuel for greenhouse heat, tractors and on-farm vehicles. Richard Wiswell is a vegetable farmer who runs Cate Farm in Plainfield. He has one of many operations using biodiesel extensively, running his diesel tractors and cars, and heating the greenhouse on biodiesel fuel.
He collects vegetable oils (grease) in large plastic containers from local restaurants and makes biofuels in his farm shop. The oil comes from deep fryers. (The best type of oils are non-hydrogenated oils, such as canola. The worst oil is animal tallow or oil that is not changed regularly.) Wiswell estimates his biodiesel costs him about $0.50 per gallon, not including the cost of labor. That's not bad when you consider the current price of gas averaged around $4.00 in the summer of 2008.
Biodiesel is a cleaner and renewable source of energy and there are other benefits. If you've ever run a diesel tractor out in the fields, you know how polluting and noxious the diesel smell is to the farmer and to the environment. Wiswell told me that as a farmer out on a tractor for hours, it's great to know you aren't harming the air or breathing in those smelly fumes.
* Biodiesel is the end product of a reaction between waste vegetable oil (grease), methanol, and lye. Biodiesel is made through "transesterification," a chemical process in which glycerin is separated from fat or vegetable oil, creating two products: alkyl esters, the generic chemical name for biodiesel, and glycerin, a byproduct usually sold to be used in soaps and other products. Biodiesel can be made from soybean, sunflower or canola oil and vegetable oils, which Richard Wiswell does at Cate Farm.
This low-emission fuel can be used to power diesel engines and oil-fired furnaces. Biodiesel blends can be run with any diesel engine without modification, with less biodiesel used during the winter months to prevent the fuel from congealing. Compared with petroleum-based diesel, B20 has 20 percent biodiesel and 80 percent conventional diesel and has 12 to 20 percent fewer emissions. The fuel however, creates 1 to 2 percent more nitrogen oxide, a pollutant. B5 is a 5 percent biodiesel fuel with 95 percent conventional diesel.
Other Vermont Biodiesel Projects: A collaborative effort is taking place between the Vermont Sustainable Jobs Funds, the Vermont Biofuels Association (VBA), and the Vermont Department of Public Service. The goal is to increase in-state biodiesel production capacity to 450,000 gallons in the next few years. VBA anticipates that the state could produce 5 percent of its current diesel needs by 2020 using crops grown in Vermont.
Seed Power
John Williamson is a farmer from Shaftsbury who is planting seeds for biodiesel production. With the help of grants and the support of the staff at the University of Vermont Extension Service and the Center for Sustainable Agriculture, Williamson is pioneering a small-scale system for brewing biodiesel from sunflower seeds grown on his farm. Williamson of State Line Farm started making his first batch of fuel in February 2008 from sunflower oil from sunflower seeds grown on his farm in 2007. He's also experimenting with biodiesel from canola seeds where he uses a special commercial seed press from Sweden.
As he put it, "It squeezes the bejeezus right out of the seeds." With 7,000 pounds of canola he grew on about five acres, he's producing his own oil for biodiesel. He says, "It gives you quite a sense of security to be growing your own fuels. You don't care when you go down to the gas station or how much a gallon costs. And your money stays right here. It's not going to Saudi Arabia ... "
On a Grand Scale: Biocartel Vermont Inc.
Biocardel Vermont was formed by Biocardel Inc. and Guilmax Inc., two Montreal firms. The Canadian companies are building several operations in Canada and the Eastern U.S. to produce biodiesel fuel.
Biocartel is producing biodiesel from Canadian soybean oil. A Canadian firm is putting a $1.6 million investment into the Swanton, Vermont plant -- a 3,600 square foot facility. This is the first phase of the project. Swanton is located in northwestern Vermont, close to the Canadian border. There is a rail line connected to the plant. The goal is to produce 8 million gallons of 100 percent biodiesel annually. This will be one of largest plants in New England.
For more information, go to: www.vtbiodieselproject.org
On the Road Again: Willie Nelson and three business partners recently formed Willie Nelson's Biodiesel, which is marketing biodiesel to truck stops. The product called Bio-Willie is made from vegetable oils, mainly from soybeans, and can be burned without modification to diesel engines. Nelson says, "There is really no need going around starting wars over oil. We have the fuels right here at home where the farmers can grow it." The fuel's average price in 2005 was $1.79 per gallon. Most biodiesel stations are in the Midwest with a few in other parts of the country. Biodiesel has to be stored in heated tanks to prevent gelling problems. Check out: www.biodiesel.org
* The word diesel comes from Rudolf Christian Karl Diesel, a German inventor and engineer who demonstrated at the Paris Exposition of 1900 how his patented compression ignition engine could run on peanut oil. Diesel was born in Paris in 1858 and died in 1913.
BIOMASS:
Biomass is organic material that has stored sunlight in the form of chemical energy. It includes: wood, wood waste, willow, straw, switch grass, manure, sugar cane, and many byproducts from a variety of agricultural processes. When burned, the chemical energy is released as heat. If you have a woodstove or fireplace, the wood you burn is a biomass fuel.
Cow Power: Manure Digesters on Dairy Farms
You may have heard of late about "cow power." That's the idea behind dairy farmers producing electricity from manure. The manure is held in a sealed concrete container at 101 degrees Fahrenheit, the temperature of a cow's stomach. Bacteria digest the volatile compounds of the manure, creating biogas, which is part methane. Energy is produced by an anaerobic process in which bacteria breaks down the cow manure in a digester, which releases carbon dioxide and methane gas. The methane gas fuels a generator, and energy is sent onto the power grid.
This type of manure treatment system produces energy as well as bio-solids that can be applied to the land as fertilizer. In addition, the digesters kill common pathogens, and eliminate odors and weed seeds. Air quality is improved through the reduction of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. Less liquid manure will remain after "digestion" takes place, which will reduce run-off from farm fields into the nearby streams and lakes. Another benefit is that the solids that remain from the digestion can be used for bedding for the animals, reducing the need for sawdust, which is not cheap.
The Foster Brothers Farm in Middlebury has one of the oldest anaerobic digester systems in the country. They have been converting their manure waste to electricity and providing power to their farmstead for a number of years. A more recent example is Central Vermont Public Service's Cow Power Program. It is the nation's first direct farm-to-consumer renewable energy project that processes cow manure to generate electricity. The 1000 cows and 500 young stock at Blue Spruce Farm in Bridport, Vermont are generating electricity and lots of it. The cows make nearly 9,000 gallons of milk and about 35,000 gallons of manure a year.
Blue Spruce is producing enough electricity to power roughly 300 to 400 average households per year. According to Earl Audette, who owns the farm with his brothers, "The cows are producing two streams of income, a milk check and a power check." Audette says, "This is one more way to diversify the farm, improve the bottom line, and manage our manure responsibly."
The bottom line, given recent wholesale power prices, is more than $120,000 a year from electricity sales. When the Audettes add in other energy savings from the project, they expect their $1.2 million dollar investment in project equipment to pay for itself in about seven years.
The large size of the Audette farm makes it a good candidate for electricity generation. There are only a handful of farms of sufficient size in the Green Mountains now but digesters and other necessary equipment are being developed for smaller operations.
The Audette Farm received the first Vermont public service grant to build a farm-based methane generating system. In 2005, four more farms were awarded development grants totaling $666,000. The clean renewable energy generated from these farms will be enough to power 1,395 average homes with electricity each year. Three of the farms have more than 1,000 dairy cows and the fourth has 210 cows. And in 2006, Pleasant Valley Farm in Richford with 1500 cows began producing enough energy for an additional 600 homes.
The four Vermont farms that received the 2005 "Cow Power" grants are in St. Albans, Sheldon, Fairlee and West Paulet. Cathy Montagne, whose family's St. Albans farm is part of the program, is excited about getting started with "Cow Power" as it will help the Montagne Farm both economically and environmentally. Their 1,200 cows are expected to produce 1.7 million kilowatt-hours of energy per year.
Central Vermont Public Service (CVPS) is the largest electric/power company in Vermont. CVPS charges a little more to those customers willing to pay a premium for the renewable energy that comes from the Audette Farm. The utility's goal is to have 12 farms providing "Cow Power" electricity to 10,000 customers by the end of 2010 . The power company allows customers to take 25, 50 or 100 percent of their electricity from the "Cow Power" program.
Thirty-five hundred CVPS customers are now paying a premium for electricity from alternative sources like "Cow Power." There are more "Cow Power" CVPS customers in Addison County where Blue Spruce Farm is located than in any other part of the state. When people see that electricity is being generated by the farmer down the road, they are more willing to support the farm community. About 600 utility companies around the country give customers the choice of paying a premium on their rates to support development of renewable energy sources such as wind turbines and hydroelectric dams.
* A good share of the funding for these biomass projects comes from the federal government.
"Cow Power" is also lighting the way for students at Green Mountain College in Poultney, some 35 miles from Blue Spruce Farm. The college will pay an extra $48,000 on its $250,000 electricity bill to support this alternative energy source. The Audette farm installed a second generator for the project.
Three Vermont dairy farms -- Nordic Farms in Charlotte, Foster Brothers in Middlebury and Jasper Hill in Greensboro -- have signed up with a new company, AgRefresh, to participate in another manure- to-electricity project. The firm, whose trademark is "Pure Farm Energy," is selling shares to companies interested in compensating for their own carbon footprint. By paying to help sustain manure-to-power projects on dairy farms, which account for about a third of methane emissions in the U.S., corporations can, in effect, offset the discharges from their own heating, cooling, and transportation systems.
Other farms around the country are adopting the digester model to make energy. Some are loading their digesters with other waste products. One farmer in the state of Washington is using tomato waste from a salsa factory to make energy.
In countries that have signed the Kyoto Accord to combat global warming, eco-changes are taking place at a rapid pace. There are 23,000 bio-digesters in Germany alone compared with 150 in the United States. Farmers and investors in some parts of Europe are building models that will hopefully be adopted in the U.S.
Another Local Biomass Sustainable Solution
Burlington Electric's McNeil Wood Burning Plant is located in the Intervale. The woodchips (scrap wood) come in on boxcars from forests in northern Vermont. The McNeil plant supports the logger, the railroad, the workers and the operation of the wood burning plant. The money and the energy are kept at home. The plant provides enough energy to meet the electrical needs of Burlington
-- a city of 40,000 people.
* 85 percent of electric power generation comes from fossil fuels.
Source:
The information on Biomass came from:
Cheryl Bruce, NOFA Notes, Summer 2005.
www.nofavt.org (802)-434-4122
Side Notes:
Why hasn't hemp been mentioned in the discussion? It's three times more energy efficient than corn-made ethanol and much less destructive to the soil and the environment. We need to get over the illusion that hemp is the same as that illegal substance called marijuana. During World War II, Kentucky and Wisconsin were the two leading states in hemp production.
WIND, SOLAR AND MORE:
WIND: Farms at high elevations often experience significant levels of wind. Jack Lazor of Butterworks Farm in Westfield, Vermont and Ken Smith of Merck Farm and Forest in Rupert both decided to use their windy locations to their advantage by tapping into wind power.
The idea is to have wind speeds in the 15-20 mph range, those are the speeds that generate the most power. The blades start turning at about 6-7 mph, and shut off at speeds over 45 mph. The typical wind tower is 75 feet tall, with blades measuring 21-25 feet. Jack Lazor is able to use net metering with his surplus power, because he has a connection to the grid. He can send surplus power to the grid and pull electricity off the grid later when energy generation is lower.
Ken Smith does not have a grid connection on his farm. Instead, he relies on a battery bank to get him through periods with less wind. His system cost $60,000, and Jack's cost $100,000. Ken also has a photovoltaic solar system, which balances the stormy, windy days with sunny days.
SOLAR: Laini Fondiller is a cheese producer in Westfield who uses solar power. Twenty years ago when Laini purchased her farm, she had no electricity. It would have cost $15,000 to bring power to the farm. Today, she has 20 photovoltaic panels. The energy is stored in batteries and the system can run for two-three days without sun before relying on a generator. The solar system provides power to the house, milking machine, pasteurizer, cooling room, cheese ripening cave and chicken coop. Laini uses 150 kilowatts (kw) on her farm; the average household uses about 600 kilowatts.
ENERGY RESOURCES:
More Energy Resources "Down On The Farm"
For more information, check out www.climateandfarming.org or get in touch with Vern Grubinger at the Extension Service of the University of Vermont in Brattleboro. He is knowledgeable on the topics of global warming and alternative energy sources on the farm throughout Vermont and the northeast. Grubinger has written an article entitled "Climate Change and Agriculture: Challenges and Opportunities for Outreach," in which he lists a number of important websites.
Vern Grubinger is the Small Fruits and Vegetable Specialist
at the University of Vermont Extension Service.
You can contact him at (802)-257-7967
157 Old Guilford Rd. Suite 4 Brattleboro, VT 05301
The Vermont Sustainable Jobs Funds (VSJF) provides on-farm energy grants to Vermont farmers. For more information go to their website: www.vsjf.org
VSJF
61 Elm Street
Montpelier, VT 05602
(802) 828-0398
Scott Sawyer of VSJF prepared a booklet, "On-Farm Energy Production: A Vermont Primer" in 2005.
Other Important Alternative Energy Websites:
--------------------------------------------
www.attra.org - publications on alternative energy
Energy Resources
Books:
"The Farm Energy Handbook" contains basic information for farmers on subjects ranging from energy efficiency to solar and wind power, types of ethanol, and geothermal heating and cooling.. The 65-page booklet was produced by the Vermont Environmental Consortium and Vermont Dairy Task Force, with support from Ben & Jerry's Homemade, Inc. David Hecht, a principal author of the handbook, said it's meant to be less of a how-to-manual than an introductory guide that can give farmers ideas about the potential for renewable energy applications.
Other Books:
Alovert, M. Biodiesel Homebrew Guide
Tickel, J. From the Fryer to the Fuel Tank
A Quote from Al Gore: "We're borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Persian Gulf to burn it in ways that destroy the planet. Every bit of this has to change."
Part 1. Section 4. THE NATURE AND POWER OF CORPORATIONS: GOMERY AND HARTMANN
In order to grasp the nature and power of the Corporate Agricultural Industrial Machine (CAIM), one needs to look at the history of corporations in the U.S. Ralph Gomory has re-thought how corporations work in our global environment.
Gomory used to be a senior vice-president for IBM and is now the president of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. He asks the question, if free trade is a win-win proposition, why is America losing so many jobs? Gomory wrote Global Trade and Conflicting National Interests in collaboration with William Baumol, a respected economist. Gomory has recently been joined by a group of corporate executives called the Horizon Project, who are concerned about the destructive impact of globalization on American prosperity.
Gomory believes that there is a divergence between the interests of U.S. multinational corporations and the interests of U.S. citizens. He says that American multinationals are the principal actors in the transfer of wealth from the middle class to the wealthy class in the 21st century and have been able to function without resistance from the government. The loss of trade is not confined to workers who lose jobs and wages. In time, the accumulated loss of a country's productive base can injure the its overall economic well-being.
The standard of living in the U.S. is going down and billions of dollars of debt are owed to countries like China and Japan. Gomory offers two solutions. First, the U.S. government must cap the nation's trade deficit until there is balanced trade. Second, the government must impose a national policy on the behavior of multinational corporations, directly influencing their investment decisions. This can be done through a new corporate tax code which would penalize those corporations that keep moving high-wage jobs and value-added production offshore and reward those that are investing in redeveloping our country's economy.
Gomory proposes to alter the profit incentive of U.S. multinational corporations thus providing for greater national interest in the U.S. He wants to recreate an understanding of the corporation's obligation to society -- a social perspective that flourished for a time in the last century but is now nearly gone. The old idea was that the corporation is a trust, not only for shareholders but for the benefit of the country: the employees, and the people that use the product.
Source: The information on Ralph Gomory came from an article by William Greider, "The Establishment Rethinks Globalization," The Nation, April 30, 2007.
In Thom Hartmann's book, Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights, he describes how corporate values and power have come to dominate life in our nation and the world. Hartmann believes that too much corporate power is incompatible with democracy, the market economy, and the well-being of society.
Witness what the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the liberal trade agreements with China have done to working men and women in the United States. There is no way for U.S. workers to compete with low-wage workers in China. Millions of people in this country have lost work, while the multinational corporations such as Wal-Mart and their stockholders have been the winners.
Hartmann explains how there is a legal provision in the U.S. whereby a group of people can get together and form a corporation. This entity has the same rights and powers given to individual people. Corporations, by law are considered "persons," and benefit from tax breaks, trade advantages, media privacy, and regulation protection. Corporations are also entitled to many of the same protections guaranteed to citizens by the Constitution's Bill of Rights. As with individuals, corporations are given the right of free speech, including the right to influence legislation, to be protected from searches, and Fifth-Amendment protection against double jeopardy and self-incrimination, even when a crime has clearly been committed.
The boards of most corporations primarily value profit, leading them to make decisions individuals of conscience wouldn't make. Look at the for-profit managed health care corporations that value profit over wellness.
According to Hartmann, traditional English, Dutch, French and Spanish law didn't say companies were people. The U.S. Constitution wasn't written with that idea in mind and during America's first century, courts all the way up to the Supreme Court said that corporations did not have the same rights as humans. Corporate personhood was never voted on by the public, enacted into law or proclaimed by the court.
Hartmann explains in his book Unequal Protection how in 1886 in a case before the Supreme Court, there was a mistaken interpretation from a reporter's notes on a railroad tax case. The comments were in error and should never have been accepted. Because of this, corporations were legally considered "persons," equal to citizens and entitled to many of the same protections guaranteed by the Bill of Rights -- a clear contradiction of the intent of the founders of the United States.
Hartmann writes how America's founders and early presidents warned that the safety of the new republic depended on keeping corporations on a tight leash -- not abolishing them, but keeping them in check.
From 1780 to 1910, corporations served the public good at the pleasure of the granting authority. Legislators routinely revoked corporate charters, or allowed the charter to expire and corporations to be dissolved -- at any time when the public's representatives determined that a corporation had failed the test of "serving the public good." History is full of experiments of privately funded roads and postal services that failed to meet the criterion of "serving the public good."
Hartmann says that corporations have done much good in the world, but does not advocate doing away with them. Instead, they need to be reined in and set in their rightful place. There are other ways to exchange goods and earn wealth besides corporation as they now exist.
The problems associated with corporate power need to be fixed by democratic action and citizen involvement. In California and Pennsylvania, citizens have stood up and, through local and state governments, begun to pass laws that deny corporations the status of personhood. Reclaimdemocracy.org is a group working toward a constitutional amendment to mandate that the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments apply only to "natural" persons, not corporate ones. They state that the gradual extension of human rights to corporations is one of the most important factors in the corporate takeover of our resources, our political system, and our cultural life.
For more information on corporate personhood, go to Thom Hartmann at: http://thomhartmann.com
Side Notes:
It's about time that the folks who support the "Small is Beautiful" saying add on another one: "Small Makes Sense." Take, for example, a methane generating plant that produces electricity from garbage. Many people today would rather invest in this smaller type of plant than put money into a refinery. There's nothing wrong with making money but we need to be socially responsible in how we invest capital.
Monday, June 22, 2009
Part 1. Section 5. THE HISTORY OF PLUNDER: AT HOME AND ABROAD
The American Revolution, the Constitution and Shays Rebellion: Historically, there has always been tension between agrarian and mercantile interests in the U.S. Over time, the business, banking, and corporate machines prevailed over the agrarians. For example, the Tyson Corporation which controls poultry and pork production in the US has replaced independent farmers in producing and marketing poultry and pork. Many farmers are little more than tenants under Tyson contracts.
In order to understand our history, it's useful to review the time of the American Revolution and the conflict between the cash-based mercantile economy and the barter-based, inland, agrarian economy. Some historians see this as a clash between the values of Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton.
Shays Rebellion: Due to mismanagement, the mercantile (business) class had rung up huge post-revolutionary war debt owned the British. They were holding an excess of imported goods they couldn't sell. What occurred is that they called in the debt owed them by the smaller rural merchants, who were then forced to require cash payments from farmers rather than taking bartered goods or services. Many small farmers in western Massachusetts were forced to sell their land, often at less than one-third of fair market value. Loss of their property reduced many farmers to poverty. It also meant they might lose their right to vote since suffrage was often tied to property ownership.
Calling themselves "Regulators," men from all over western and central Massachusetts began to agitate for change to a more democratic system. Initial disturbances were mostly peaceful and centered primarily on freeing jailed farmers from debtors' prisons. Daniel Shays met other farmers at Conkey's Tavern in Pelham, Massachusetts, where he vented his anger calling on the farmers to rebel. Eventually, the farmers revolted as they were losing their farms and way of life. Shays, a veteran of the American Revolutionary War, led the charge in what was the last great stand of the agrarian class in the country.
In response, the mercantile class crushed the rebellion with their own armies. Shays and his followers were defeated on February 3, 1787. He and many of the leaders of the rebellion escaped across the border to Vermont where they were sheltered by prominent Vermonters such as Ethan Allen. Samuel Adams, once a great advocate of the American Revolution, called for death for the farmers.
The rebellion was closely watched by the nation's leaders. George Washington came out of retirement, seeing a need for a stronger central government. The lack of a central government response to the uprising energized calls to re-evaluate the Articles of Confederation, giving strong support for the Constitutional Congress, begun in May 1787. Shays Rebellion is considered to be a turning point in American history, as it sparked the drive for a constitution. This document places the army, commerce, the money supply, and the judicial system in the hands of the federal government. This marked the beginning of the end for the barter-based, agrarian economy.
Source: wikipedia.org.
Trade as Plunder
The tension between farmers and mercantile interests began long before Shays Rebellion in 1787. At the time leading up to the American Revolution, England plundered her colonies. The king's corporation did not permit the profitable enterprise of farming or other enterprises of farming in the colonies.
In 1700, the English Parliament decreed that no wool, yarn, cloth or manufactured goods should come from America. In America farmers were free to sell their products, unlike Europe's peasants who were exploited. Soon the same phenomena of exploitation happened in the American south with the slave trade and cotton production.
During this period, great wealth passed into the hands of British merchants and manufacturers. America's domestic industries, such as shoemaking and rope making were suspended. The colonial market was flooded with British goods. Prices fell. Without domestic trade, laborers went idle, and without earnings, their property declined in value.
Source:
The information on Trade as Plunder came from the writing of Charles Walters. Unforgiven - The American System Sold for Debt and War. Acres U.S.A.
The Rights of Conquest: In 1600, the exploitation of people and natural resources began with England's conquest of the world. Queen Elizabeth gave a royal charter to the East India Company that was given a monopoly over all British trade, including trade in the American colonies. The company was based in part on the philosophy of John Locke, "the rights of conquest." The East India Company founded Haileybury College for the purpose of running the empire. It trained soldiers, businessmen, and missionaries. The East India Company rose to dominate world trade by the mid-18th century.
Robert Malthus, philosopher and minister of Christian doctrine was an influential teacher who theorized that the planet would soon be overpopulated, that some life is superfluous and that farming could not feed everyone if the population continued to increase. In 1805, Malthus became Britain's first professor in political history at Haileyburg College.
Malthus was followed by Charles Darwin in the mid 19th century who argued for the "survival of the fittest." This philosophy helped to set the Dutch, French, Spanish, Portuguese and English on a course of conquest for every inch of land on earth. In the U.S., we called it our "Manifest Destiny" as we conquered the West.
Side Notes:
Conquest Revisited: The 2008 economic crisis in the U.S. reminds me in some ways of how the British empire subjected the colonials to economic exploitation. In this case the corporate world has taken the place of Great Britain and are exploiting its citizens as well as other peoples around the world. Most corporations pay no or very few taxes and have all kinds of tax write-offs. At the same time, the middle class continues to carry the tax burden, over-consume material goods, save little and build up credit card debt.
We have become a nation of consumers rather than producers while millions of factory workers are being laid off and corporations such as Wal-Mart are exploiting cheap foreign labor to produce their products. Add to this our continued dependence on foreign oil from the Middle East and the billions of dollars in loans from China that support our mounting annual deficits.
One author, Andrew J. Bacevich, speaks to these issues in a real way. He has written a number of books including The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War and his recent book, The Limits of Power; The End of American Exceptionalism, with an epitaph taken from the bible; "Put thine house in order." Bacevich says we must confront our consumerism, give up our messianic dream of controlling the world and cease our efforts to coerce history in a particular direction.
Bacevich takes some of his message from the theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr, when he says that not only must we understand the limits of what a government -- and its military -- can accomplish, but we must resist the temptation to guide history towards some perceived purpose or end.
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