Pleasant Living Magazine

How do green groups feel about the new 2012 Farm Bill draft recently released by the Senate?  --Roger Wheeler, Miami, FL

Like so much of the legislation coming out of Washington, D.C., green groups are mixed on the new Farm Bill now making its way toward a floor vote. No doubt there are some conservation bright spots in the bill, but the question is: Are there enough and do they go far enough?

The non-profit Environmental Working Group (EWG) doesn’t think so. “Unfortunately, the bill ... will do more harm than good,” says Craig Cox, an agriculture and natural resources expert at EWG. “It needlessly sacrifices conservation and feeding assistance programs to finance unlimited insurance subsidies and a new entitlement program for highly profitable farm businesses.” Cox is critical of the new bill for essentially replacing one subsidy to large successful farms (those which need it least) with another: “Rather than simply ending the widely discredited direct payment program, the Senate Agriculture Committee has created an expensive new entitlement program that guarantees most of the income of farm businesses already enjoying record profits.” He calls replacing direct payments with a revenue guarantee program “a cynical game of bait-and-switch that should be rejected by Congress.”

On the conservation side, Cox is dismayed that the draft bill fails to address “the impact of fence-row to fence-row agricultural production, which is putting unprecedented pressure on our land, water and wildlife.” EWG would like to see the bill include language forcing farmers to protect critical wetlands and grasslands, not to mention soil health in general, in exchange for getting the insurance subsidies. “In combination, a new entitlement program, unlimited secret insurance subsidies, cuts to conservation programs and high commodity prices will create powerful incentives to plow up fragile wetlands and grasslands and erase many of the environmental gains made by agriculture in recent years,” says Cox.

On the plus side, Cox applauds provisions in the bill that create and expand programs supporting healthy diets and organic farmers, as well as those that seek to expand links between local farmers and consumers. “We also support efforts to reform conservation programs to get more conservation bang for the buck,” he concludes, adding that EWG hopes to work with legislators on strengthening the bill’s conservation and nutrition provisions, and to place sensible limits on subsidies for highly-profitable farms.

Another respected non-profit, American Farmland Trust (AFT), is more bullish overall on the Senate’s draft of the bill. The group likes the fact that funding for conservation programs is maintained at all, given the sour economic climate and resistance to put funds into non-emergency programs. AFT also praises the bill for its commitment to support farm and ranch land protection through a new permanent Agricultural Land Easement option which will help protect working lands and keep them in agricultural use.

“Our nation has a critical need to protect farm and ranch land,” says AFT president Jon Scholl, adding that the U.S. lost farm and ranch acreage equal to the size of Indiana over the last 30 years. “Permanent conservation easements protect agricultural land from development, safeguard local agricultural economies and help farmers and ranchers transition their land to the next generation.”

A vote on the final version of the bill could come as early as this summer.

Credit: Stockbyte.

Some green groups, such as the Environmental Working Group, applaud parts of the 2012 Farm Bill that support healthy diets, organic farmers and links between local growers and consumers.  But they are critical of provisions they say only continue subsidies for highly profitable farms while ignoring needed protections for wetlands, grasslands and soil health.

CONTACTS: EWG, www.ewg.org, AFT, www.farmland.org.

EarthTalk® is written and edited by Roddy Scheer and Doug Moss and is a registered trademark of E - The Environmental Magazine (www.emagazine.com). Send questions to: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . Subscribe: www.emagazine.com/subscribe. Free Trial Issue: www.emagazine.com/trial.

I understand there is an effort underway to allow all-terrain vehicles, snowmobiles, motorbikes, motorboats and other motorized vehicles into wilderness areas, which would overturn a long-standing ban.  What's behind this? --Harry Schilling, Tempe, AZ

A new bill making its way through Congress, the Recreational Fishing and Hunting Heritage and Opportunities Act (H.R. 2834), aims to make federally managed public lands across millions of acres of Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management property more accessible to hunters and anglers. And a key element of the bill calls for allowing motorized vehicles and equipment—as long as they are used for hunting or fishing—into these areas. Leading green groups are outraged because this would undermine 1964’s Wilderness Act which expressly bans motor vehicles on these last wild vestiges of untrammeled American land.

According to the non-profit Wilderness Society, the motorized vehicles provision “would result in the destruction of the very wilderness values that millions of American hunters and anglers cherish.”

“The practical effect could be to open all designated wilderness areas to all-terrain vehicles, snowmobiles, motorbikes, motorboats, chainsaws and other motorized vehicles and equipment…” warns Wilderness Society president William Meadows in a letter to Congress. He adds that buildings, towers and temporary roads could even be built in currently pristine stretches of wilderness if the proposed bill becomes law.

But what’s most troubling to Meadows and others is language in the bill saying that “any requirements imposed by [the Wilderness Act] shall be implemented only insofar as they facilitate or enhance the original primary purpose or purposes for which the federal public lands or land unit was established and do not materially interfere with or hinder such purpose or purposes.” Meadows fears this could be construed to allow road building, timber cutting, mining, oil and gas drilling and other development in our remaining wilderness areas.

Another beef environmentalists have with the bill is that it would exempt decisions made or actions taken with regard to hunting and fishing on federal lands from federal environmental review and public disclosure regulations established under 1969’s National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). The Wilderness Society reports that this part of H.R. 2834 would keep the public and concerned parties out of decisions to compromise the integrity of wilderness but also other types of protected lands.

First introduced in the house last September by Michigan Republican Dan Benishek (with 45 bi-partisan co-sponsors), H.R. 2834 made it through the House Natural Resources Committee within three months and is poised for a full House vote later this spring. If it passes there, the Senate will take up a companion version, S. 2066, sponsored by Alaska Republican Lisa Murkowski and West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin. Depending on how it plays out, the bill could be on the President’s desk by the summer.

“Recreational fishing and hunting are important and vital recreational activities on our federal public lands,” concludes the Wilderness Society, “but the anti-Wilderness provisions of H.R. 2834 should not be allowed to become law.”

The oil industry is planning what some call a dangerous strategy of drilling for oil on the Outer Continental Shelf in the Arctic Ocean. What’s going on?  --Vera Bailey, New Hope, PA 

In November 2011 the Obama administration began lifting the moratorium on off-shore drilling that had been imposed in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced a five year plan including 15 leases for oil development on Alaska’s Outer Continental Shelf and in the Gulf of Mexico. For now the East and West coasts of the continental U.S. have been spared from drilling, but environmentalists are particularly worried about opening up the fragile Alaskan Arctic to off-shore rigs.

“This five-year program will make available for development more than three-quarters of undiscovered oil and gas resources estimated on the [Outer Continental Shelf], including frontier areas such as the Arctic, where we must proceed cautiously, safely and based on the best science available,” Salazar told reporters.

Republicans were incensed that more acreage was not being made available for off-shore drilling, but environmentalists couldn’t believe what they were hearing for different reasons: In June 2011 the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) had released a 292-page report commissioned by Interior Secretary Salazar “to identify the gaps in scientific or technical knowledge about how drilling in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas north of Alaska would affect the region,” reports Jerry Bellinson in Popular Mechanics. The report, Bellinson says, “details several areas where those gaps exist, including oil-spill cleanup technologies, basic mapping of currents and the effects of underwater noise on sea mammals.” Despite the USGS’s warnings, the Obama administration decided to proceed anyway.

“Drilling infrastructure permanently alters ocean floor habitats,” reports Defenders of Wildlife. “Drill rig footprints, undersea pipelines, dredging ship channels, and dumped drill cuttings—the rock material dug out of the oil or gas well—are often contaminated with drilling fluid used to lubricate and regulate the pressure in drilling operations.” The group adds that contaminated sediments are carried long distances by currents and can kill important small bottom-dwelling creatures at the bottom of the marine food chain.

Defenders also argues that spills, leaks and occasional BP-like catastrophes are unavoidable with off-shore oil drilling, if history is any guide. “Even with safety protocols in place, leaks and spills are inevitable—each year U.S. drilling operations send an average of 880,000 gallons of oil into the ocean.”

Credit: Tom Mackensie, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service

Despite U.S. Geological Survey warnings that drilling in waters north of Alaska could have deleterious effects on ocean habitats and wildlife, the Obama administration proceeded with a lifting of the moratorium on off-shore drilling.

Pictured: An oiled brown pelican awaits cleaning in the wake of the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster.

As for wildlife, off-shore drilling can have devastating effects even with no spills or leaks. “Seismic surveys conducted during oil and gas exploration cause temporary or permanent hearing loss, induce behavioral changes, and even physically injure marine mammals such as whales, seals and dolphins,” reports Defenders. “Construction noise from new facilities and pipelines is also likely to interfere with foraging and communication behaviors of birds and mammals. Because they are at the top of the food chain, many marine mammals will be exposed to the dangers of bioaccumulation of organic pollutants and metals.” And off-shore drilling only adds insult to injury as far as Defenders is concerned: “In the face of the climate crisis, the U.S. needs to look for ways to decrease petroleum consumption, not…increase it.”

CONTACTS: Defenders of Wildlife, www.defenders.org; Popular Mechanics, www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/coal-oil-gas/oil-drilling-in-the-arctic-ocean-is-it-safe.

EarthTalk® is written and edited by Roddy Scheer and Doug Moss and is a registered trademark of E - The Environmental Magazine (www.emagazine.com). Send questions to: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . Subscribe: www.emagazine.com/subscribe. Free Trial Issue: www.emagazine.com/trial.

What is the "Fair Trade Your Supermarket" campaign?  --Brian Howley, Washington D.C.

Credit: International Fairtrade Certification Mark

Fair trade is a system of exchange which ensure that farmers, artisans and other producers throughout the developing world are paid fair prices for their work and have direct involvement in the marketplace.

A project of the non-profit Green America, the “Fair Trade Your Supermarket” campaign aims to empower consumers to advocate for more “Fair Trade” products on store shelves at their local supermarkets. Fair trade is a system of exchange that honors producers, communities and the environment by ensuring that farmers and artisans throughout the developing world are paid fair prices for their work and have direct involvement in the marketplace. The goal of the wider Fair Trade movement, according to Green America, is to build real and lasting relationships between producers in developing countries and businesses and consumers around the world.

And that’s where your neighborhood grocer comes in. “While the Fair Trade movement is gaining steam nationwide, most of our supermarkets still carry few–if any–Fair Trade products on their shelves,” reports Green America. “Together, we can put Fair Trade products within reach for millions of Americans.”

And just how does Green America expect us to do this? “First, take stock of Fair Trade products in your supermarket—look for coffee, tea, chocolate, rice, sugar, honey, wine, fresh fruit, and olive oil.” Scan the relevant aisles for third-party certifier Fair Trade USA’s distinctive black-and-white “Fair Trade Certified” label, which is only attached to imported goods where the producers receive fair prices for their products and where strict socio-economic and environmental criteria are met during production. Alternatively, look for the logos of other third-party certifiers such as “Fair for Life” or “Fair Trade Federation” on product labels if you think fair trade versions may be available in a given product line.

“Then, you can encourage the store to stock more Fair Trade products by talking to the store manager as a loyal customer,” adds Green America. They suggest using comment cards, which can be key to getting a store with no Fair Trade items to start carrying them. “Every time you go grocery shopping, drop a comment card in the box asking your manager to stock Fair Trade items.” Of course, talking to a store manager in person may be even more effective, especially if you are armed with a pile of your receipts from the store from the previous month or two to show how much spending power you alone would be able to allocate toward Fair Trade versions of the items you are buying there.

Another creative way to spread the Fair Trade gospel would be by volunteering to hand out free samples of Fair Trade products that the store already sells in order to raise awareness and build consumer demand. “Stores sell more of a product when a sampling table is set out, and if you, your friends and family are working the table, the labor is free for the store too.”

But why stop with your local market? If there is a chain supermarket outlet in your area, take it to the top by writing an e-mail, letter or postcard to corporate headquarters informing them of your desire to buy Fair Trade items in all of their stores. Check out the Fair Trade Your Supermarket website (link below) for more tips on how to make your next shopping trip fairer to the planet and its people.

CONTACTS: Fair Trade Your Supermarket, www.fairtradeyoursupermarket.org; Green America, www.greenamerica.org; Fair Trade USA, www.fairtradeusa.com.

EarthTalk® is written and edited by Roddy Scheer and Doug Moss and is a registered trademark of E - The Environmental Magazine (www.emagazine.com). Send questions to: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . Subscribe: www.emagazine.com/subscribe. Free Trial Issue: www.emagazine.com/trial.

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