fertilizer

December 15, 2023

“We can’t sit back” – Amid climbing cancer rates, Iowa health officials eye farm chemicals

Faced with a startlingly high cancer rate in the key US farm state of Iowa, public health leaders are taking the politically precarious step of acknowledging that preventing disease necessitates cutting exposure to potentially cancer-causing chemicals, including those used in agriculture.

In a departure from other state cancer prevention programs, which rarely address environmental risk factors for cancer other than radon, a known cause of lung cancer, Iowa is working to better understand and make the case for limiting exposure to pesticides, commercial fertilizer, and animal manure used and generated by Iowa agriculture, among other environmental contaminants.

“These broader array of environmental risk factors are absolutely there for cancer. But they’re not paid attention to in state cancer control plans,” said Molly Jacobs, an epidemiologist at the University of Massachusetts, who is working with Iowa health authorities. “It’s quite unique that Iowa has addressed this as a priority in their plan. I applaud Iowa for taking on this task of thinking much broader and bigger, and changing this paradigm.”

The work to address environmental factors to reduce cancer cases began earlier this year and is being undertaken by the Iowa Cancer Consortium. It’s a 21-year-old, 650-member coalition of public health professionals, researchers, and health providers focused on controlling cancer. The consortium is led by Dr. Mary Charlton, an epidemiologist at the University of Iowa College of Public Health who also is research director of the Iowa Cancer Registry, which collects cancer data on Iowa citizens.

The consortium has launched an Environmental Task Force and a five-year plan for cutting public exposure to “environmental carcinogens.”

Farmers, agricultural executives, and state lawmakers have spent decades resisting any changes in farm practices that reduce the use of chemicals and nutrients, saying the inputs are needed to ensure ample food production.

But public health advocates say evidence tying the farm pollutants to disease is too strong to deny.

“We can’t sit back and say, ‘Wow. Somebody may not like this.’” said Kamyar Enshayan, director of the Center for Energy and Environmental Education at the University of Northern Iowa. “Knowing what we do know, it’s just prudent that we support practices and systems that require significantly less fertilizer and pesticides.”

September 13, 2023

Could farm fertilizers be driving Corn Belt cancers?

By Keith Schneider

BERNE, Minn. – It was a hot afternoon in mid-July and 60-year-old Brian Bennerotte was making a pilgrimage of sorts, navigating a shotgun-straight, gravel road south of Minneapolis on a journey through a landscape stitched with crop and livestock farms as far as the eye can see.

Bennerotte is one of only three surviving members of a family who farmed for three generations along a mile-long stretch of County Road B. As a long-haul truck driver, Bennerotte rarely gets back here. But with a visitor at his side, he finds his way.

From the passenger seat of a rented vehicle he scans both sides of the road, then points to a dust-scoured barn leaning into the wind. The building is all that remains of his family’s farmstead, which once encompassed 200 acres and a home large enough for Bennerotte’s parents to raise five boys and a girl.

Down the road a bit further, he recognizes neighboring properties: There is the Glarner farm, and the Spreiter farm and the Serie farm. All are connected by circumstances of geography, topography, agriculture, and social commerce.

All are also joined by disease and death.

Among the four families who lived for decades along County Road B, 12 people developed cancer and seven died. Bennerotte was one of three people who developed lymphoma. The disease nearly killed him in 1983 when he was 20 years old. His father and three brothers would not survive their own bouts with cancer.

For some, County Road B has a different name: They call it Cancer Road.

“Every family along here was affected. Every one,” said Bennerotte.

August 31, 2023

As hydrogen projects accelerate, fears mount about environmental impacts

On a recent hot August evening, residents of the tiny rural community of Universal, Indiana packed into a public meeting to barrage operators of a proposed fertilizer plant with an array of concerns about what risks the project may pose for their health and the surrounding environment.

One after the other, worried residents quizzed officials with Wabash Valley Resources about their plans to construct what would not just be a fertilizer plant, but also one of the nation’s largest carbon sequestration projects, near their town of less than 400 people.

Wasbash proposes to produce hydrogen and anhydrous ammonia for fertilizer through a process that will capture and store the resulting carbon dioxide created by the plant underground. When the plant is fully operational, Wabash Valley Resources expects to inject and store 1.65 million tons of carbon dioxide into the ground.

Company officials say the operation will be safe, producing affordable and much-needed fertilizer for farmers in an environmentally friendly manner. “While empowering agriculture Wabash Valley Resources will play a vital role in the transition to a greener world, ensuring energy security and supporting a robust economy,” the company states on its website.

August 25, 2023

Advising farmers on fertilizer, universities add to water pollution woes

By Keith Schneider

WINONA, Minn. – Corn drapes every curve and rise here in Winona County, Minnesota – seemingly endless fields of grain that contribute to the food, fuel and finances of a robust US agricultural economy.

But the bucolic landscape belies a dark and dangerous truth: Much of the groundwater in the porous limestone beneath this area of southeast Minnesota is contaminated with some of the nation’s highest levels of nitrates – harmful pollutants released into the environment by the use of nitrogen chemicals and livestock manure as fertilizer on farmland.

Close to 200 wells in the county have been contaminated with nitrates at levels higher than what is considered safe, according to state officials and in parts of Winona County, half of all households have nitrate-contaminated drinking water. It’s frightening data for area residents because nitrates are linked to a range of health problems, including heart and lung problems and certain cancers. Nitrates are known to be particularly dangerous for babies.

Crop and livestock production accounts for roughly 70% of the state’s nitrate pollution, according to the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, a fact that recently led a coalition of 11 state and national environmental groups to petition federal regulators to investigate.

The groups are calling on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to protect residents of Winona and seven other southeast Minnesota counties from “imminent and substantial endangerment” caused by nitrate contamination. The agency’s regional office has begun to interview state officials.

The issue is not unique to Minnesota. State and federal data show that since 1990, nitrogen spread on fields in ten major US corn-growing states has increased 26%, with more nitrogen than ever pouring off the land and into US waters.

July 24, 2023

Reporting project examines the scandal of US farm pollution

By Keith Schneider

There’s no way to describe farm-related nutrient pollution other than what it is – a national scandal.

A tiny minority of Americans, half of one percent, is grossly fouling the waters for tens of millions of others. Corn Belt crop farmers, and livestock and poultry producers – the heart of the rich and powerful $618 billion American farm sector – have virtually unlimited opportunities within state and federal law to pollute at will.

Crop producers, unregulated under the Clean Water Act, seek maximum production with no restriction on how much fertilizer they apply. Livestock and poultry producers, barely covered by the clean water law, treat farm fields as waste disposal zones for an ocean of untreated liquid manure and a mountain range of solid manure and poultry litter ripe with E.coli and other hazardous microorganisms. Polluting farm production practices, mostly overlooked by state environment departments, are defended by trade associations with lobbying offices in state capitals and allies from both parties in state legislatures and in Congress.

Since January I’ve been reporting the causes, consequences, and solutions to the farm sector’s assault on American waters with financial support from the Alicia Patterson Foundation, which also helped me secure a second grant from The Fund For Investigative Journalism. See the latest story here.

The project focuses on nitrate pollution in the Corn Belt and builds on expertise I gained reporting in 2022 for Circle of Blue on phosphorus pollution in Michigan and the Great Lakes states. Early reports from this year’s project have already been published in The New York Times, The Guardian, The New Lede, Circle of Blue, Minnpost, Investigate Midwest, Detroit Now, Michigan Radio, and my ModeShift blog.

To some extent, the tide of toxic nitrogen and phosphorus discharges from crop land and livestock operations is a well-recognized story not only in media, but also in government. Addressing it has resulted in an unsteady platform of responses over the last three decades held up by two of three legs.

The first is the considerable investment by states and the federal government in science. Billions of dollars have been spent on research and nutrient monitoring. America knows with great clarity the sources of nutrient contamination and the environmental, health, and economic damage it causes.

June 1, 2023

New York fails to protect farmland from PFAS in sewage sludge, report finds

By Shannon Kelleher

Highlighting a practice that compromises farmland nationwide, a new report finds that sewage sludge spread as fertilizer on New York state fields contains toxic chemicals that sicken farmers, contaminate crops, and threaten consumer health. The report, published today by the Sierra Club Atlantic Chapter, suggests that the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) has failed to take measures to prevent these dangerous per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) from entering the environment through the practice and urges the state to put a stop to it.

“What we are talking about here is the active permitting…of PFAS-contaminated sewer sludge being spread over farmland to create food that we then consume,” said New York state assemblymember Anna Kelles today in a briefing about the report. “It’s literally creating a mechanism to get PFAS to bioaccumulate in human tissue.”

Kelles is working with Senator Rachel May to pass a bill that would require wastewater treatment plants to test effluent for PFAS contamination.

PFAS chemicals are associated with serious health conditions including cancers, thyroid disease, liver damage, and harm to pregnant women and babies. These so-called “forever chemicals” take hundreds of years to break down in the environment and are harmful even in tiny concentrations.
“We’re taking an enormous risk when we spread sludge on farmland,” said Adam Nordell, an organic farmer in Maine. Nordell was forced to learn about the risk firsthand the winter before last, when he and his wife discovered PFAS in their well water at levels 400 times higher than Maine’s interim drinking water standard.

“Our farm had been managed organically for seven years under our management and previously under organic practices for 25 years,” said Nordell in the briefing. “But a prior generation in the early 1990s spread the land with sludge from two wastewater districts for a total of four years.”

A test last spring revealed PFAS levels in Nordell’s blood serum at a staggering 3,500 parts per billion. People with blood serum levels totaling as little as two parts per billion from seven combined PFAS are at risk for adverse effects, according to a 2022 report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

The problem of PFAS in sewage sludge used to fertilize agricultural fields extends far beyond the Northeast, said Laura Orlando, a senior science advisor with Just Zero, a nonprofit focused on equitable waste solutions.

May 31, 2023

Citing safety concerns, groups seek moratorium on new CO2 pipelines

By Dana Drugmand

Environmental and public health advocates are calling on President Joe Biden to issue a moratorium on new carbon dioxide pipelines, citing “serious safety concerns” and significant gaps in current federal safety regulations.

The effort comes as the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) holds a public meeting in Iowa to gather stakeholder input as it prepares to update its safety regulations governing CO2 transport by pipeline.

“A moratorium on dangerous and underregulated carbon dioxide pipelines is essential to protect communities and the environment,” Maggie Coulter, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute, said in a statement.

In a letter to President Biden released on Tuesday, more than 150 organizations urged the president to issue an executive order halting federal permits for CO2 pipelines while insisting that states hold off on granting state permits for these pipelines until PHMSA completes its updated regulations.

Last year PHMSA announced it would be initiating a new rulemaking on CO2 pipeline safety in response to a pipeline rupture in Satartia, Mississippi in February 2020 that released a large plume of highly pressurized CO2, sending nearly 50 people to the hospital and causing around 300 people to be evacuated. The letter to President Biden references the disaster, warning “our communities face the risk of much larger and more devastating ruptures” in the absence of updated federal regulations.

The president’s negotiated deal with congressional Republicans to raise the debt ceiling could also weaken federal environmental reviews and reduce public input on energy-related infrastructure and other development projects including CO2 pipelines, environmental advocacy groups say.

May 24, 2023

In Iowa, a tale of politics, power, and contaminated water

By Keith Schneider

IOWA CITY, IOWA – Here in the heart of US farm country, the wretched quality of Iowa waterways is a well-known lament. Farm fields laden with synthetic fertilizers and manure produce bounties of over 2 billion bushels of corn each year, but those same fields also produce a torrent of run-off that contaminates virtually every mile of the state’s streams and rivers and every acre of lakes and ponds.

For Iowa’s farm sector and its powerful political allies, the dire public and environmental consequences are perhaps unfortunate, but acceptable, outcomes of modern, large-scale agriculture – and, importantly, a topic best kept out of the spotlight.

Advocates for solutions to farm-related water contamination recently found out just how difficult it can be to try to shine a light on the problems. Over the last few months, a campaign of political bullying, academic intimidation, and information repression has roiled the state, offering a rare and vivid illustration of the power the agricultural industry can wield to silence challengers and to evade responsibility for it mammoth waste stream.

“It’s not working for Iowans,” said David Cwiertney, director of the Center for Health Effects of Environmental Contamination at the University of Iowa. “We’re not changing behavior in agriculture. We don’t spend enough time thinking about the damage we’re causing to people here in Iowa, to water quality impacts.”

The Iowa saga began in March when two senior Republican state lawmakers decided a state water quality researcher, who was tracking and mapping water quality problems and writing a blog about agriculture’s culpability, was getting a little too much attention.

Sen. Dan Zumbach, the chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee, and Sen. Tom Shipley, chair of the Senate Ethics Committee, reportedly told a lobbyist for the University of Iowa that they wanted to silence the researcher’s widely read, university-sponsored blog because of its aggressive reporting on farm-related water contamination. [cg1] The author of the blog was Chris Jones, a 62-year-old chemist and research engineer at the University of Iowa Institute of Hydraulic Research (IIHR).

Jones warned in his blog that strategies to reduce harmful run-off of farm fertilizers and other nutrients were not effective. As head of the Iowa Water Quality Information System since 2015, Jones backed his warnings with data; data he said made it clear that the state’s increasingly intensive industrial farm practices were pouring more nutrients into Iowa’s streams and rivers and water pollution was getting worse.

Within days of the push from the lawmakers, university administrators shut down Jones’ blog and he resigned. Weeks later the state legislature voted to defund the monitoring network Jones led.

May 12, 2023

Flaws in carbon credit programs for farms draw concerns

As fears about climate change grow, a new “gold rush” of carbon credit programs are incentivizing US farmers to slash greenhouse gas emissions generated by the practices they use growing crops and raising livestock. But experts say the programs face difficulty in ensuring that the credits provided truly match emission cuts.

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that agriculture accounted for 11.2% of US greenhouse gas emissions in 2020. Greenhouse gases trap heat from the sun in the atmosphere, triggering harmful climate changes and increasing temperatures worldwide. Carbon dioxide is released when farmers till their fields, for instance, and nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas with almost 300 times more warming potential than carbon dioxide, is released when farmers spread fertilizer or manure on their fields.

In one increasingly popular mitigation strategy, private carbon programs pay farmers for implementing practices known to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, generating credits that can then be sold to large corporations wanting to use the credits to offset their own emissions. One tradable carbon credit equals one ton of carbon dioxide, or the equivalent amount of a different greenhouse gas reduced, sequestered or avoided.

Many programs pay farmers for planting cover crops — a practice shown to limit the amount of carbon dioxide that soils release into the air. But few offer any incentives for farmers to reduce nitrous oxide emissions, though nitrous oxide is a highly potent greenhouse gas. A 2021 report estimated nitrous oxide made up for 2.4% of total global greenhouse gas emissions, while the EPA estimates nitrous oxide makes up over half of all greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture.

As the popularity of carbon credit programs grows, concerns and questions about the validity of the programs to truly reduce greenhouse gas emissions from farms are also emerging. Carbon credit schemes have been criticized for a lack of rigorous accounting of the amount of carbon dioxide lost from soils. Additionally, the difficulty of measuring nitrous oxide emissions could mean some businesses are paying for carbon credits that don’t really reduce emissions as much as promised.

That’s the “worst-case scenario,” said Eric Slessarev, a biogeochemist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. “We better hope we’re right, on average, because if we’re not right, then we’re in trouble,” he said.

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February 8, 2023

“A national scandal” – new US climate funding could make water pollution worse

By Keith Schneider

The $369 billion Inflation Reduction Act was applauded by a chorus of US organizations and activists enthusiastic about the generous funding earmarked for projects designed to mitigate harmful climate change and improve environmental health.

But some researchers and activists are raising concerns that several provisions of the new law will actually worsen a growing environmental disaster in the nation’s heartland by increasing the tide of farm-related pollution washing into waterways and groundwater.

The sweeping new statute, which includes more than $140 billion in incentives designed to promote renewable fuels and cleaner electricity generation, aims to slash greenhouse gas emissions 40% below 2005 levels by the end of the decade. But in its efforts to promote climate-friendly agriculture, it also promotes corn-fed ethanol refineries and manure-based energy production that could unintentionally supercharge fertilizer and fecal contamination.

The Great Lakes and Midwest regions face nothing short of a water quality emergency, say those on the frontlines. Farming-related contaminants have already fouled thousands of drinking water wells from Minnesota to Missouri, and virtually every waterway in Iowa is degraded with little regulation to rein in the pollutants.

“It’s already a national emergency and a national scandal,” said Emma Schmit, senior organizer in the Midwest for Food and Water Watch, an environmental advocacy group. “When we test our waterways, the main pollutants are E.coli and nitrates and phosphorus from agriculture. These are pathogens and contaminants that can cause serious issues for people. We’re about to give large corporate farms carte blanche to make it worse.”