This Soil’s Been Soiled!
May 5, 2021
The Good News
- Belgian farmer accidentally moves French border (BBC). Everyone had a laugh about it.
- FDA preparing to authorize Pfizer Covid vaccine for 12- to 15-year-olds as early as next week (NBC)
“Urban conservationists may feel entitled to be unconcerned about food production because they are not farmers. But they can’t be let off so easily, for they are all farming by proxy.” — Wendell Berry
“A paradigm shift, where, in addition to physical inputs for farming, a focused emphasis placed on knowledge inputs can be a promising way forward. This knowledge-based approach will bring immense returns, particularly in rain fed and dry land farming areas.” — Pratibha Patil
This Soil’s Been Soiled!
(Julian Stratenschulte via Getty Images)
Many Americans like to know where their food comes from and that’s it’s safe to eat. Others go even further and want to know their food is being produced in an organic, environmentally sensitive, and sustainable way. Big food companies like to make promises that they are delivering products from green, sustainable farms. Turning those promises into reality can be complicated.
As of 2019, some 40% of American farmland is simply rented to tenant farmers, who answer to non-owner managers who are part of a corporate structure, likely made up of wealthy people who may just be treating farmland as a real estate investment.
Gunsmoke Farms is a vast property covering 53 square miles northwest of Pierre, SD. The Cheerios maker, General Mills, announced in 2018 it would convert Gunsmoke Farms to organic production, eventually turning it into an educational hub to teach other farmers “how to implement organic and regenerative agriculture practices.”
General Mills doesn’t own or directly control Gunsmoke Farms. The food giant signed a “strategic sourcing agreement” with an investment firm that acquired the land to supply the company with organic crops; an offshoot of the firm currently owns the farm. The investors have hired a series of managers to run the operation, but now some of its neighbors say Gunsmoke Farms is doing more environmental harm than good.
Dwayne Beck is a soil scientist who manages South Dakota State University’s research station 40 miles east of Gunsmoke Farms. Beck worried about the project from the beginning, because he knows something about organic farming in the area that off-site, non-farm managers probably don’t. According to Beck: “…normally organic [farming] entails lots of tillage, and those soils are very fragile.”
Tilling the soil involves breaking it up to uproot weeds and get the land ready for planting. But tillage is not only breaking soil loose from the plant roots that help hold it together, it’s also breaking down parts of the soil that are most rich in carbon and nutrients. Beck says this is especially true of soils where Gunsmoke Farms is located — it’s full of clay. “Once you disturb it, nothing holds that soil together. It just turns into powder,” vulnerable to rain or wind that can carry it away. This used to happen regularly in western South Dakota, with dust storms so thick cars crashed because drivers couldn’t see vehicles in front of them.
Dust storms have abated somewhat because for years many area farmers abandoned regular tillage. Initially, Gunsmoke’s managers grew primarily alfalfa, which doesn’t require annual planting. But in 2020, they planted their first crops of wheat and peas, which involved tilling the enormous fields.
Months later Beck’s fears came true. Small drifts of wind-blown soil collected in a roadside ditch, and a country road disappeared into a brown cloud of blowing dust. “The soil that blew out of there, it will never be the same as it was before it blew,” he said. It won’t have the stability and structure of healthy soil, held in place by the roots of plants.
The farm’s managers failed to implement the soil conservation plan drawn up by the organic farming expert who collaborated with General Mills in launching the Gunsmoke project. Now, he says, the project is “in a deep hole” and he doesn’t know how it can be fixed. “It’s hard to farm organically if you do it really well, and have your intensive management. But 30,000 acres, poorly managed, is a really good sign for failure.” (Modern Farmer, NPR)
Off The Tracks
(Hector Vivas via Getty Images)
- At least 24 people, including children, were killed and almost 80 injured when a Mexico City subway train overpass collapsed into a busy roadway Monday night. Video from the scene showed mangled train cars hanging from the crumbled overpass and rescue personnel searching and transporting the injured on stretchers.
- Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum said “A support beam gave way,” just as the train passed over it. By Tuesday afternoon, only five of the dead had been identified. Sheinbaum told reporters that federal justice experts in Mexico will be helping the city with an investigation to “discover exactly what happened and what the causes.”
- The subway system has been the source of growing concern after several accidents and a 2017 earthquake. A Norwegian company will be in charge of the external investigation. (NBC; NYT, $)
The Little Nation That Could
- The island of Cuba is dealing with a pandemic while suffering its worst economic crisis since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The US trade embargo restricts the medical equipment the island can import; even so, of the 27 coronavirus vaccines in final stage testing around the world, two are Cuban.
- “To have our sovereignty we need our own vaccines,” said the director of the Finlay Institute, which developed the most advanced of the country’s five vaccine candidates. “In nine months we have gone from an idea to a vaccine in phase three clinical trials.” Their progress is particularly impressive since different Cuban research teams working on the vaccines share just one spectrometer — a machine essential for quality control and powerful enough to analyze a vaccine’s chemical structure.
- The UN has called on the US to lift sanctions on the island during the pandemic, but the embargo has actually toughened since the outgoing Trump administration put Cuba on the US list of state sponsors of terrorism. “The US is trying to starve Cuba into submission,” said one of the doctors on the coronavirus taskforce. “It’s not only that it’s difficult to buy things directly from the US. It’s also that all these sanctions that the Trump administration put in place have dried up many sources of revenue.”
- Nevertheless, Cuban scientists are confident that widespread vaccination will be attained this year. “When you have everything, you don’t have to think so much.” said another scientist. “But when you have difficulties, you have to think up new ways to innovate.” (Guardian)
Additional World News
- Jordi Cuixart, Imprisoned Catalan Separatist, Poses a Dilemma for Spain (NYT, $)
- Far-Right French Leader Marine Le Pen Acquitted Over ISIS Tweets (NYT, $)
- EU delivers vaccine jabs to Balkans after China and Russia (AP)
- India cases set new global record; millions vote in 1 state (AP)
- Scientists make alarming discovery: The Amazon has ‘flipped’ to become major producer of greenhouse gasses (The Hill)
- Mexico marks end of last Indigenous revolt with apology (AP)
- G-7 foreign ministers hold talks on ‘rising threats,’ Russia, China (CNBC)
- Deaths at sea highlight failings in Europe migration policy (AP)
- U.S.-Mexico Efforts Targeting Drug Cartels Have Unraveled, Top DEA Official Says (NPR)
Diamonds Are Forever, But Mining Isn’t
- He may have gone to Jared — or Zales or Kay Jewelers for that matter — but the largest producer of jewelry in the world is still Pandora. And on Tuesday, the Copenhagen-based company announced it was making a major change: No more mined diamonds will be used in its products. Instead, it will be using diamonds created in labs.
- The company was quick to insist that both mined and artificial diamonds have the same “optical, chemical, thermal and physical characteristics.” Pandora said that before they’re sold, lab-grown stones are graded on the same “4Cs” as mined diamonds: cut, color, clarity, and carat. And something really important: these artificial gems are the ethical, traceable alternative to mined diamonds.
- The diamond industry was said to be paranoid over the 2006 Leo DiCaprio movie Blood Diamond, a fictional account of the rebel militias that were fueling a bloody civil war and chaos in 1990s Sierra Leone through the sale of the precious gems, also called conflict diamonds.
- The movie made the term “Blood Diamonds” a household phrase, raising awareness and prompting efforts to clean up the mined diamond industry. But the diamond trade is an $81 billion industry, with 65% of mined diamonds coming from Africa, where the business has historically been riddled with corruption and violence.
- In 2020 Human Rights Watch reviewed the diamond sourcing practices of 13 of the largest jewelry and watchmakers. The report found that many companies do not know where their diamonds come from, and don’t do enough to ensure that human violations didn’t occur in the mining process. The previous year the US government had recognized issues with conflict diamonds and minerals and banned the importing of diamonds from Marange, Zimbabwe because they were “produced, in whole or in part, using forced labor.”
- Pandora wanted to get ahead of the curve in addressing the continuing issues of forced labor, torture, and other humanitarian abuses. Their new collection, called Pandora Brilliance, features lab-created diamonds made on average with more than 60% renewable energy; it rolls out soon in the UK. And the company expects that by the time the collection launches globally next year, its next diamonds will be made with 100% renewable energy. (CNN, Miadonna)
Additional Reads
- Gummy Bears and Candy Bars Are Casualties of the Pandemic (Wired)
- Why Nearsightedness Is on the Rise in Children (NYT, $)
- Feds Arrest an Alleged $336M Bitcoin-Laundering Kingpin (Wired)
- Life and Death on the Lighthouse of the Mediterranean (NYT, $)
- Melting ice reveals first world war relics in Italian Alps (Guardian)
- Yahoo Answers showed us how strange the Internet can be (WaPo, $)
- Epic vs. Apple opening arguments suggest a bitter battle over iOS’ future (ArsTechnica)
- They Told Their Therapists Everything. Hackers Leaked It All (Wired)