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27 Dishwasher Maintenance Tips to Maximize Performance

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27 Dishwasher Maintenance Tips to Maximize Performance

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Elizabeth Warren Challenges Chris Christie for the Science Behind His Ebola Quarantine

Mother Jones

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is demanding Gov. Chris Christie (R-N.J.) reveal the science behind his controversial decision to place all health care workers returning back from Liberia, Guinea, or Sierra Leone to be placed under a mandatory quarantine. Spoiler alert: the science does not exist.

“He should bring out his scientists who are advising him on that, because we know that we want to be led by science,” Warren said Tuesday during an appearance on CBS’s This Morning.

“That’s what’s going to keep people safe,” she added. “Science, not politics.”

Warren, who was promoting her book A Fighting Chance, was responding to a question about Christie’s earlier comments in which he defended the mandatory quarantine against claims the policy is draconian.

“I don’t think it’s draconian,” Christie said on the Today show. “The members of the American public believe it is common sense, and we are not moving an inch. Our policy hasn’t changed and our policy will not change.”

Warren’s criticism joins a widening chorus of politicians–both on the right and left–and health officials who have slammed Christie and Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-N.Y.) for placing involuntary quarantines in their respective states over the weekend after first Ebola outbreak in New York City last Thursday surfaced.

Both governors have been accused of playing politics at the expense of basic human rights–Christie hoping to recall the image of an unapologetic, bipartisan leader in times of crisis (a la Sandy); Cuomo hoping to exert any level of control.

On Monday, in light of the newly implemented quarantines, the Centers for Disease and Control and Prevention unveiled a new set of federal guidelines for local governments to adopt.

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon also released a statement praising medical officials as “exceptional people.” Alluding to Christie and Cuomo’s policies, Ban also admonished against “restrictions that are not based on science.”

(h/t Mediate)

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Elizabeth Warren Challenges Chris Christie for the Science Behind His Ebola Quarantine

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Paul Ryan Wants to Block-Grant Food Stamps and Medicaid. That’s a Terrible Idea.

Mother Jones

House budget committee chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) has lately rebranded himself as an advocate for the poor, albeit with his own makers-versus-takers, Ayn Randian twist. He recently issued a lengthy study of federal anti-poverty programs and over the past year and a half he has embarked on a “listening tour” to hear from low-income Americans. On Tuesday, Ryan issued the House GOP’s 2015 budget proposal, which would make major changes to two of the federal government’s primary anti-poverty programs, food stamps and Medicaid. Using as his model the supposedly successful welfare reform effort of the 1990s, Ryan envisions turning these programs into block grants that are handed over to the states to administer. But his plan to “help families in need lead lives of dignity” is likely to make matters worse for America’s neediest. Here’s why.

In 1996, Congress reengineered the federal program that provided cash assistance to the poorest families. Along with imposing stiff work requirements, Congress turned the old entitlement program, whose budget rose and fell automatically with need, into a block grant with a fixed budget. The grant was then distributed to the states, with few strings attached, under the premise that they were “laboratories of innovation” that would revolutionize the way the government helped the poor.

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Paul Ryan Wants to Block-Grant Food Stamps and Medicaid. That’s a Terrible Idea.

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If Crimea Really is Important, Tell Us What Obama Ought to Do About It

Mother Jones

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Fareed Zakaria has a piece in the Washington Post about Ukraine. Here’s the headline:

Why (this time) Obama must lead

So I clicked. Plenty of sensible stuff. The EU dithered. Ukraine blew up. Putin responded stupidly. “Let’s not persist in believing that Moscow’s moves have been strategically brilliant,” Zakaria says. His invasion of Crimea has turned the rest of Ukraine irretrievably pro-Western; triggered lots of anti-Russian sentiment on his borders; soured relations with Poland and Hungary; and sparked Western sanctions that are going to hurt.

And Zakaria says this is important stuff. “The crisis in Ukraine is the most significant geopolitical problem since the Cold War….And it involves a great global principle: whether national boundaries can be changed by brute force. If it becomes acceptable to do so, what will happen in Asia, where there are dozens of contested boundaries — and several great powers that want to remake them?”

OK, fine. So what should Obama do? Here it is:

Obama must rally the world, push the Europeans and negotiate with the Russians.

Go ahead and click the link if you don’t believe me. This is, literally, the sum total of Zakaria’s advice. So what’s the point? Obviously Obama is already doing this. Is he doing it badly? Is he pressing for the wrong sanctions? Is he working too much behind the scenes and not enough publicly? Should he be threatening a military response? Should he ask Zach Galifianakis to tape an episode of “Between Two Ferns” with Vladimir Putin? Or what?

Maybe I’m more frustrated than usual with this because I tend to like Zakaria. Sure, he’s sometimes a little bit too weather-vaney for my taste, but he’s smart and practical and tends to understand the big picture pretty well. So why not tell us what he thinks the US response should be? We could use some judicious advice to make up for the tsunami of idiocy emanating from the crackpot wing of the foreign policy community right now.

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If Crimea Really is Important, Tell Us What Obama Ought to Do About It

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Ugh: Cheney and Palin Call For Military Involvement in Ukraine

Mother Jones

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Washington bureau chief David Corn joined Chris Matthews and Huffington Post‘s Howard Fineman on Hardball to discuss the push by far-right conservatives like Dick Cheney, Sarah Palin, and Ted Cruz for US military involvement in Ukraine.

David Corn is Mother Jones’ Washington bureau chief. For more of his stories, click here. He’s also on Twitter.

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Ugh: Cheney and Palin Call For Military Involvement in Ukraine

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San Jose’s Green Vision: Six Years In

Sorters work to remove recyclable materials from trash at one of the city’s processing facilities. Photo: City of San Jose

When the city of San Jose, Calif., launched its Green Vision in 2007, new mayor Chuck Reed hoped to create an environmental overhaul as part of his lasting legacy. Today, Reed still is mayor of San Jose, and the Green Vision has become one of his most noteworthy accomplishments.

“He wanted stretch goals that would also be relevant,” says Jo Zientek, deputy director of the environmental services department for the city of San Jose. “He wanted the goals to be both economic and sustainable, and the council worked with business leaders to make sure the plan was achievable.”

The 15-year plan was established to “transform San Jose into the world center of clean technology innovation, promote cutting-edge sustainable practices, and demonstrate that the goals of economic growth, environmental stewardship and fiscal responsibility are inextricably linked,” according to the city’s website. The plan adopted by the city council established 10 aggressive goals in the areas of jobs, energy, water, waste, trees and transportation.

Less than halfway into the long-term plan, San Jose is well on target to hit its sustainability goals for 2022, and also has become a model for other cities.

Next page: Setting an Example

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San Jose’s Green Vision: Six Years In

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China Is So Smoggy You Can’t Even See Beijing From Space

Can you find Beijing in this photo? Or anything, really? Photo: NASA Earth Observatory / Jeff Schmaltz / LANCE MODIS Rapid Response

China’s smog problems have been all over the news, with the air pollution to blame for bringing massive cities to a snarlforcing the shutdown of factories and transportation, and wreaking havoc on people’s health. But a new photo captured by NASA’s Terra satellite really puts China’s smog problems into perspective: the smog over Beijing is so thick that it obscures the view of the city from space.

On December 7th, says NASA’s Earth Observatory, the day this photo was captured, “ground-based sensors at U.S. embassies in Beijing and Shanghai reported PM2.5 measurements as high as 480 and 355 micrograms per cubic meter of air respectively. The World Health Organization considers PM2.5 levels to be safe when they are below 25.”

PM2.5 refers to particles of air pollution that have a diameter below 2.5 micrometers.

“Fine, airborne particulate matter (PM) smaller than 2.5 microns (about one thirtieth the width of a human hair) is considered dangerous because it is small enough to enter the passages of the human lungs. Most PM2.5 aerosol particles come from the burning of fossil fuels and of biomass (wood fires and agricultural burning).”

For reference, here’s what the region is supposed to look like from space, a snap captured by Terra in January of last year. Beijing is the city in the top left, nestled among the mountains. The port city in the bottom right is Tianjin.

A smog-free look at the region, taken January 3, 2013. Photo: NASA Earth Observatory / Jeff Schmaltz / LANCE MODIS Response Team

More from Smithsonian.com:

Most of China’s Infamous Black Carbon Smog Comes From Cars And Cook Fires
Air Pollution Closed Schools in China

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China Is So Smoggy You Can’t Even See Beijing From Space

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Blistering exposé prompts Johns Hopkins to suspend black-lung screenings

Blistering exposé prompts Johns Hopkins to suspend black-lung screenings

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The coal industry has a decades-old friendship with Johns Hopkins University, but now that cozy relationship is being torn apart by the scrutiny of investigative journalists.

When employees filed for black-lung-related benefits, coal companies paid the Baltimore-based university handsome sums to screen the claimants for the disease. After reviewing chest X-rays, the university’s scientists almost always concluded that the scans did not show black lung — a conclusion which often overwhelmed any other medical opinion in the case.

(Black lung disease, or coal workers’ pneumoconiosis, kills an estimated 1,500 former coal miners every year. It is a painful and preventable ailment contracted by inhaling coal dust.)

The racket was exposed by the ABC, working in partnership with the Center for Public Integrity:

For 40 years, these doctors have been perhaps the most sought-after and prolific readers of chest films on behalf of coal companies seeking to defeat miners’ claims. Their fees flow directly to the university, which supports their work, an investigation by the Center for Public Integrity and ABC News has found. According to the university, none of the money goes directly to the doctors.

Their reports — seemingly ubiquitous and almost unwaveringly negative for black lung — have appeared in the cases of thousands of miners, and the doctors’ credentials, combined with the prestigious Johns Hopkins imprimatur, carry great weight. Their opinions often negate or outweigh whatever positive interpretations a miner can produce.

For the credibility that comes with these readings, which the doctors perform as part of their official duties at Johns Hopkins, coal companies are willing to pay a premium. For an X-ray reading, the university charges up to 10 times the rate miners typically pay their physicians. …

In the more than 1,500 cases decided since 2000 in which [senior university scientist Paul] Wheeler read at least one X-ray, he never once found the severe form of the disease, complicated coal workers’ pneumoconiosis. Other doctors looking at the same X-rays found this advanced stage of the disease in 390 of these cases.

After the results of the investigation were broadcast late last week, the university announced on its website that it was suspending the screening program:

Following the news report we are initiating a review of the pneumoconiosis B-reader service. Until the review is completed, we are suspending the program.

United Mine Workers called on the federal government to take action following the revelations.

“Whatever penalties or punitive actions that can be taken with respect to Dr. Wheeler should be,” union spokesman Phil Smith said. “But whatever they are, they will pale in comparison to the pain and suffering he has caused thousands of afflicted miners. There is no penalty which will make up for that.”


Source
Johns Hopkins medical unit rarely finds black lung, helping coal industry defeat miners’ claims, Center for Public Integrity
Statement from Johns Hopkins Medicine Regarding ABC News Report About Our B-Reads for Pneumoconiosis (Black Lung), Johns Hopkins University
Johns Hopkins suspends black lung program after Center-ABC investigation, Center for Public Integrity

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Blistering exposé prompts Johns Hopkins to suspend black-lung screenings

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How Many Senate Republicans Will Vote for LGBT Discrimination?

Mother Jones

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By Tuesday morning, Congress will either make progress on a long overdue piece of anti-discrimination legislation or, as public opinion continues to swing away from the homophobia of yesteryear, a cadre of Republican senators will have stamped their distaste for LGBT rights into the history books.

The Senate is set to vote Monday evening on the Employment Nondiscrimination Act (ENDA), which would offer employment protection for LGBT workers. All 55 Senate Democrats support the bill and four Republican senators have indicated that they’ll be voting for it. No one quite knows if ENDA has the necessary 60 votes to overcome a filibuster, but it seems likely that at least one more Republican will side with the Democrats (one of the unknown holdouts, Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), endorsed same-sex marriage earlier this year after revealing that his son is gay). But the majority of Republicans still oppose the bill, with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) terming it “reverse discrimination.”

It’s been a relatively good year for LGBT rights in the US. In June, the Supreme Court overturned the Clinton-era Defense of Marriage Act, granting federal recognition to married same-sex couples. California, Maryland, Delaware, Minnesota, New Jersey, and Rhode Island all began marrying same-sex couples in 2013, with Hawaii possibly joining that list by year’s end. But the fight for LGBT rights is still an ongoing battle in this country. Employers can fire their employees for their sexual orientation or identification in most states. National law bars employers from dismissing workers based on race, sex, or nationality, but transgender people aren’t protected in 33 states, while 29 states lack laws to prevent gay, lesbian, and bisexual people from being unjustly fired. These protections aren’t just symbolic; LGBT people still suffer high rates of employment discrimination, with 15 to 43 percent of gay, lesbian, and bisexual workers reporting that their sexual orientation had negative ramifications for their careers.

Barack Obama penned an op-ed for The Huffington Post over the weekend urging congress to pass the bill. “It’s offensive,” the president wrote of the current lack of legal protections. “It’s wrong. And it needs to stop, because in the United States of America, who you are and who you love should never be a fireable offense.”

ENDA last came up for a vote in 2007, when it passed the House by a wide margin, only to die in the Senate. Democrats again tried to pass the bill when they controlled both chambers in 2009 and 2010, but held up ENDA over disputes contesting the inclusion of protection for transgender people.

If a bipartisan Senate coalition passes ENDA this week, odds are slim that the bill, which still has to get past the House, will become a law. Meanwhile, House Republicans are considering legislation that would allow anyone to discriminate against married same-sex couples.

Update: On Monday morning, John Boehner’s office reaffirmed the House Speaker’s past opposition to ENDA, ruling out any possibility that the bill will become law as long as he continues to lead House Republicans. “The Speaker believes this legislation will increase frivolous litigation and cost American jobs, especially small business jobs,” his spokesman said.

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How Many Senate Republicans Will Vote for LGBT Discrimination?

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One Weird Trick to Fix Farms Forever

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Does David Brandt hold the secret for turning industrial agriculture from global-warming problem to carbon solution? Photos by Tristan Spinski CHATTING WITH DAVID BRANDT outside his barn on a sunny June morning, I wonder if he doesn’t look too much like a farmer—what a casting director might call “too on the nose.” He’s a beefy man in bib overalls, a plaid shirt, and well-worn boots, with short, gray-streaked hair peeking out from a trucker hat over a round, unlined face ruddy from the sun. Brandt farms 1,200 acres in the central Ohio village of Carroll, pop. 524. This is the domain of industrial-scale agriculture—a vast expanse of corn and soybean fields broken up only by the sprawl creeping in from Columbus. Brandt, 66, raised his kids on this farm after taking it over from his grandfather. Yet he sounds not so much like a subject of King Corn as, say, one of the organics geeks I work with on my own farm in North Carolina. In his g-droppin’ Midwestern monotone, he’s telling me about his cover crops—fall plantings that blanket the ground in winter and are allowed to rot in place come spring, a practice as eyebrow-raising in corn country as holding a naked yoga class in the pasture. The plot I can see looks just about identical to the carpet of corn that stretches from eastern Ohio to western Nebraska. But last winter it would have looked very different: While the neighbors’ fields lay fallow, Brandt’s teemed with a mix of as many as 14 different plant species. Also see: How Cover Crops Make Healthier Soil “Our cover crops work together like a community—you have several people helping instead of one, and if one slows down, the others kind of pick it up,” he says. “We’re trying to mimic Mother Nature.” Cover crops have helped Brandt slash his use of synthetic fertilizers and herbicides. Half of his corn and soy crop is flourishing without any of either; the other half has gotten much lower applications of those pricey additives than what crop consultants around here recommend. But Brandt’s not trying to go organic—he prefers the flexibility of being able to use conventional inputs in a pinch. He refuses, however, to compromise on one thing: tilling. Brandt never, ever tills his soil. Ripping the soil up with steel blades creates a nice, clean, weed-free bed for seeds, but it also disturbs soil microbiota and leaves dirt vulnerable to erosion. The promise of no-till, cover-crop farming is that it not only can reduce agrichemical use, but also help keep the heartland churning out food—even as extreme weather events like drought and floods become ever more common. THOSE ARE BIG PROMISES, but standing in the shade of Brandt’s barn this June morning, I hear a commotion in the nearby warehouse where he stores his cover-crop seeds. Turns out that I’m not the only one visiting Brandt’s farm. The Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS)—a branch of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) that grew from Dust Bowl-era efforts to preserve soil—is holding a training for its agents on how to talk to farmers about cover crops and their relationship to soil. Inside the warehouse, where 50-pound bags of cover-crop seeds line one wall, three dozen NRCS managers and agents, from as far away as Maine and Hawaii, are gathered along tables facing a projection screen. Brandt takes his place in front of the crowd. Presenting slides of fields flush with a combination of cover crops including hairy vetch, rye, and radishes, he becomes animated. We listen raptly and nod approvingly. It feels like a revival meeting. “We want diversity,” Brandt thunders. “We want colonization!”—that is, to plant the cover in such a way that little to no ground remains exposed. While the cash crop brings in money and feeds people, he tells the agents, the off-season cover crops feed the soil and the hidden universe of microbes within it, doing much of the work done by chemicals on conventional farms. And the more diverse the mix of cover crops, the better the whole system works. Brandt points to the heavy, mechanically operated door at the back of the warehouse, and then motions to us in the crowd. “If we decide to lift that big door out there, we could do it,” he says. “If I try, it’s going to smash me.” For the agency, whose mission is building soil health, Brandt has emerged as a kind of rock star. He’s a “step ahead of the game,” says Mark Scarpitti, the NRCS state agronomist for Ohio, who helped organize the training. “He’s a combination researcher, cheerleader, and promoter. He’s a good old boy, and producers relate to him.” Later, I find that the agency’s website has recently dubbed Brandt the “Obi-Wan Kenobi of soil.” Soon, we all file outside and walk past the Brandt family’s four-acre garden. Chickens are pecking about freely, bawk-bawk-bawking and getting underfoot. In an open barn nearby, a few cows munch lackadaisically. I see pigs rooting around in another open barn 30 or so yards away and start to wonder if I haven’t stumbled into a time warp, to the place where they shot the farm scenes in The Wizard of Oz. As if to confirm it, a cow emits a plaintive moo. Brandt’s livestock are something of a hobby, “freezer meat” for his family and neighbors, but as we peer around the barns we see the edges of his real operation: a pastiche of fields stretching to the horizon. Before we can get our hands in the dirt, Brandt wants to show us his farm equipment: the rolling contraption he drags behind his tractor to kill cover crops ahead of the spring and the shiny, fire-engine-red device he uses to drill corn and soy seeds through the dead cover crops directly into the soil. As some NRCS gearheads pepper him with questions about the tools, he beams with pride. Finally, we all file onto an old bus for a drive around the fields. An ag nerd among professional soil geeks, I feel like I’m back in elementary school on the coolest field trip ever. An almost giddy mood pervades the bus as Brandt steers us to the side of a rural road that divides two cornfields: one of his and one of his neighbor’s. We start in Brandt’s field, where we encounter waist-high, deep-green corn plants basking in the afternoon heat. A mat of old leaves and stems covers the soil—remnants of the winter cover crops that have kept the field devoid of weeds. At Brandt’s urging, we scour the ground for what he calls “haystacks”—little clusters of dead, strawlike plant residue bunched up by earthworms. Sure enough, the stacks are everywhere. Brandt scoops one up, along with a fistful of black dirt. “Look there—and there,” he says, pointing into the dirt at pinkie-size wriggling earthworms. “And there go some babies,” he adds, indicating a few so tiny they could curl up on your fingernail. Then he directs our gaze onto the ground where he just scooped the sample. He points out a pencil-size hole going deep into the soil—a kind of worm thruway that invites water to stream down. I don’t think I’m the only one gaping in awe, thinking of the thousands of miniature haystacks around me, each with its cadre of worms and its hole into the earth. I look around to find several NRCS people holding their own little clump of dirt, oohing and ahhing at the sight. Then we cross the street to the neighbor’s field. Here, the corn plants look similar to Brandt’s, if a little more scraggly, but the soil couldn’t be more different. The ground, unmarked by haystacks and mostly bare of plant residue altogether, seems seized up into a moist, muddy crust, but the dirt just below the surface is almost dry. Brandt points to a pattern of ruts in the ground, cut by water that failed to absorb and gushed away. Brandt’s land managed to trap the previous night’s rain for whatever the summer brings. His neighbor’s lost not just the precious water, but untold chemical inputs that it carried away. ASIDE FROM HIS FONDNESS FOR WORMS, there are three things that set Brandt’s practices apart from those of his neighbors—and of most American farmers. The first is his dedication to off-season cover crops, which are used on just 1 percent of US farmland each year. The second involves his hostility to tilling—he sold his tillage equipment in 1971. That has become somewhat more common with the rise of corn and soy varieties genetically engineered for herbicide resistance, which has allowed farmers to use chemicals instead of the plow to control weeds. But most, the NRCS’s Scarpitti says, use “rotational tillage”—they till in some years but not others, thus losing any long-term soil-building benefit. Finally, and most simply, Brandt adds wheat to the ubiquitous corn-soy rotation favored by his peers throughout the Corn Belt. Bringing in a third crop disrupts weed and pest patterns, and a 2012 Iowa State University studyfound that by doing so, farmers can dramatically cut down on herbicide and other agrichemical use. The downsides of the kind of agriculture that holds sway in the heartland—devoting large swaths of land to monocultures of just two crops, regularly tilling the soil, and leaving the ground fallow over winter—are by now well known: ever-increasing loads of pesticides and titanic annual additions of synthetic and mined fertilizers, much of which ends up fouling drinking water and feeding algae-smothered aquatic “dead zones” from Lake Erie to the Gulf of Mexico. But perhaps the most ominous long-term trend in the Corn Belt is what’s known as peak soil: The Midwest still boasts one of the greatest stores of topsoil on Earth. Left mostly unfarmed for millennia, it was enriched by interactions between carbon-sucking prairie grasses and mobs of grass-chomping ruminants. But since settlers first started working the land in the 1800s, we’ve been squandering that treasure. Iowa, for example, has lost fully one-half—and counting—of its topsoil, on average, since the prairie came under the plow. According to University of Washington soil scientist David Montgomery, author of Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations, it takes between 700 and 1,500 years to generate an inch of topsoil under natural conditions. Cornell agricultural scientist David Pimentel reckons that “90 percent of US cropland now is losing soil faster than its sustainable replacement rate.” Soil, asAmericans learned in the Dust Bowl, is not a renewable resource, at least on the scale of human lifetimes. Then there’s climate change itself. Under natural conditions—think forests or grasslands—soil acts as a sponge for carbon dioxide, sucking it in through plant respiration and storing a little more each year than is lost to oxidation in the process of rotting. But under current farming practices, US farmland only acts as what the USDA has deemed a “modest carbon sink”—sequestering 4 million metric tons of carbon annually, a tiny fraction of total US greenhouse gas emissions. The good news, says eminent soil scientist Rattan Lal of Ohio State University, is that if all US farms adopted Brandt-style agriculture, they could suck down as much as 25 times more carbon than they currently are—equivalent to taking nearly 10 percent of the US car fleet off the road. (Lal, a member of the Nobel-winning International Panel on Climate Change, is so impressed with Brandt’s methods that he brought a group of 20 Australian farmers on a pilgrimage to Carroll two years ago, he tells me.) In the middle of his cornfield, holding a handful of loamy, black soil, Brandt explains that he habitually tests his dirt for organic matter. When he began renting this particular field two seasons before, its organic content stood at 0.25 percent—a pathetic reading in an area where, even in fields farmed conventionally, the level typically hovers between 1 and 2 percent. In just two years of intensive cover cropping, this field has risen to 1.25 percent. Within 10 years of his management style, he adds, his fields typically reach as high as 4 percent, and with more time can exceed 5 percent. Building up organic matter is critical to keeping the heartland humming as the climate heats up. The severe drought that parched the Corn Belt last year—as well as the floods that have roared through in recent years—are a harbinger of what the 2013 National Climate Assessment calls a “rising incidence of weather extremes” that will have “increasingly negative impacts” on crop yields in the coming decades. As Ohio State soil scientist Rafiq Islam explains, Brandt’s legume cover crops, which trap nitrogen from the air and store it in nodules at their roots, allow him to grow nitrogen right on his farm, rather than importing it in the form of synthetic fertilizer. And the “complex biological systems” created by cover crops marginalize crop-chomping bugs and disease-causing organisms like molds—meaning fewer insecticides and fungicides. Nor is Brandt any less productive than his chemical-intensive peers, Islam says. Quite the opposite. Brandt’s farm regularly achieves crop yields that exceed the county average, and during last year’s brutal drought, his yields were near the normal season average while other farmers saw yields drop 50 percent—or lost their crop entirely. THE MORNING AFTER OUR FIELD TRIP,we reconvene in Brandt’s barn to take in a series of simple soil demonstrations. I don’t say “we” lightly—by now, I’ve been more or less accepted into the NRCS crew’s soil geek club. At a table at the front of the room, an NRCS man dressed in country casual—faded jeans, striped polo shirt, baseball cap—drops five clumps of soil into water-filled beakers: three from farms managed like Brandt’s, with cover crops and without tillage, the others from conventional operations. The Brandt-style samples hold together, barely discoloring the water. The fourth one holds together too, but for a different reason: Unlike the no-till/cover-crop samples, which the water had penetrated, this one was so compacted from tillage that no water could get in at all. The fifth one disintegrates before our eyes, turning the water into a cloudy mess that the NRCS presenter compares to “last night’s beer.” Other demos are equally graphic—including one that shows how water runs through Brandt’s gold-standard dirt as if through a sieve, picking up little color. In the conventional soil, it pools on top in a cloudy mess, demonstrating that the soil’s density, or compaction, can cause runoff. The presenter recalls a recent Des Moines Register article about how a wet spring caused a torrent of nitrogen runoff into the city’s drinking-water sources, prompting health concerns and expensive filtration efforts. As I watch, I imagine the earnest agents fanning out across the Midwest to bring the good news about cover cropping and continuous no-till. And I wonder: Why aren’t these ways spreading like prairie fire, turning farmers into producers of not just crops but also rich, carbon-trapping soil resilient to floods and drought? I put the question to Brandt. His own neighbors aren’t exactly rushing out to sell their tillers or invest in seeds, he admits—they see him not as a beacon but rather as an “odd individual in the area,” he says, his level voice betraying a hint of irritation. Sure, his yields are impressive, but federal crop payouts and subsidized crop insurance buffer their losses, giving them little short-term incentive to change. (For his part, Brandt refuses to carry crop insurance, saying it compels farmers “not to make good management decisions.”) Plus the old way is easier: Using diverse cover crops to control weeds and maintain fertility requires much more management, and more person-hours, than relying on chemicals. And the truth is, most farmers don’t see themselves as climate villains: Iowa State sociologists found that while 66 percent of farmers polled believed climate change was occurring, just 41 percent believed that humans had a hand in causing it. Longer-term, though, Brandt does see hope. Over the next 20 years, he envisions a “large movement of producers” adopting cover crops and no-till in response to rising energy costs, which could make fertilizer and pesticides (synthesized from petroleum and natural gas), as well as tractor fuel, prohibitively expensive. The NRCS’s Scarpitti concurs. He acknowledges that in Brandt’s corner of Ohio, the old saw that the “prophet isn’t recognized in his own hometown” largely holds, though a “handful” of farmers are catching on. Nationwide, he adds, “word’s getting out” as farmers like Brandt slowly show their neighbors that biodiversity, not chemicals, is their best strategy. Sure enough, during the NRCS meeting, another local farmer stops by to pick up some cover-crop seeds. Keith Dennis, who farms around 1,500 acres of corn and soy in Brandt’s county, and who started using cover crops in 2011, says there are quite a few folks in the county watching what Brandt’s doing, “some of ‘em picking up on it.” Dennis has known about Brandt’s work with cover crops since he started in the 1970s. I have to ask: If he saw Brandt’s techniques working then, what took him so long to follow suit? “I had blinders on,” he answers, adding that he saw no reason to plant anything but corn and soybeans. “Now I’m able to see that my soil had been suffering severe compaction,” he says. “Because it wasn’t alive.”

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One Weird Trick to Fix Farms Forever

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One Weird Trick to Fix Farms Forever

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