Spade & Spoon: Localizing the Way Westerners Eat
ATTRA: Calculating Reductions in Energy Use on the Farm
By Kisha Lewellyn Schlegel, 8-07-07
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According to the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, farmers and ranchers spend about 6 percent of their expenses on energy. The amount depends on the crops grown and the region, but most energy is used to run motors that propel irrigation and provide lighting. These estimates from the organization’s 2005 report do not include the energy used to produce feed or fertilizer, which is often petroleum based. According to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), nitrogen fertilizer alone accounts for 29 percent of agriculture’s energy use.
Farmers and ranchers can now use the internet to estimate farm energy use for things such as irrigation and nitrogen at the USDA and Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) website where the USDA and NRCS encourage farmers to reduce energy use by changing farming practices. For instance, the site recommends that farmers should use manure instead of petroleum-based fertilizers in order to reduce a costs by $55 an acre. The USDA also provides a list of farm energy options, with links to resources.
In tandem, the ATTRA (National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service) Farm Energy Search Tool, allows researchers to find services and information pertinent to their region. Managed in conjunction with the National Center for Appropriate Technology (NCAT), the database provides state-by-state information that includes resources for making farms (and homes) more energy efficient. The database includes technical information and links to stores that sell innovative energy options as well as links to state databases of initiatives and incentives for using energy efficient technology. At this site, one can also search by topic such as solar, wind or anaerobic digesters.
ATTRA’s website is also a vital resource for other technical information about sustainable agriculture. With publications ranging from Organic Cotton Production to “Sustainability Checksheets” for beef and dairy, farmers can learn how to implement methods that are more sustainable.
For those who have technical questions about sustainable agriculture that no website can answer, call ATTRA’s experts at 1.800.346.9140. If you prefer Spanish, dial 1.800.411.3222. At either number, callers are directed to a specialist and will be sent a copy of “Sustainable Agriculture: An Introduction.”
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Comments
The inspection was about signage for sanitary practices. Eg., no food in fields, no clothes in flats or lugs, flats or lugs sanitized, as well as picking buckets, lots of hand washing training, facilities up to snuff, no smoking, chewing, or spitting. Also a paper trail for training education of workers. And no evidence of poop from domestic animals or wild animals. We also have to do soil samples due to the seasonal flooding some fields experience. The interest, of course, is E.coli 1:57. Our irrigation and potable water has to be periodically tested.
So to sell to my wholesaler, I need a GAP certification, to assuage the marketplace that we do not pass E.coli from our butts to the fruits and vegetables, and that we are not allowing animals, domestic and wild, free range on our fields, and their soiling our farmland with their excrement, and the irrigation water is clean.
Please explain how manure is not a very possible source of contamination of fresh picked fruits and vegetables. Which will kill your kid first, manure or commercial fertilizer? The highest nitrate levels in ground water found in Oregon were under alfalfa fields over 20 years old that had never had nitrogen fertilizer applied to them. It was all "natural" from the nitrogen fixing nodes of alfalfa plants. Two corn crops and it was gone. People poop from sewage sludge goes on grass seed fields, or other crops not for human consumption. Food safety trumps "sustainable."
I believe the apples used by Odwalla for juice that lead to an E.coli outbreak that killed one child and sickened 14 others may have been contaminated by animal fecal matter.