A Teachable Moment

The racially-charged national controversy between Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Cambridge Police Sergeant Jim Crowley was characterized as a teachable moment by President Obama. The president heightened this situation by stepping in the proverbial press conference “cow pie”. In an attempt to diffuse the anger and find a little common ground, a beer summit was hailed as a good venue to start a conversation. After all, don’t men typically bond better after slogging down a few local brew-skies, followed up with back slaps and high fives? I can certainly appreciate feeling better about my time on the hill talking about grass-based agriculture, by partaking in a Foggy Bottom Lager (bottled here in Utica) or a Chocolate Stout from the Capital Grill after the day was done. I actually thought this throwing down of hops and barley was a cool new way of bringing combatants together, and it supported agriculture in a way.

However, showing our leaders drinking alcohol may not be sending the best message to our youth or to the country for that matter. I would have suggested adding some diversity in beverage choices. Could you see Mr. Obama sporting a milk moustache or Vice President Biden with a frothy mug of ole fashion Root Beer? I wonder if leaders could come to consensus if they quenched their minds with a hardy pitcher of Switchel and a healthy dollop of hand churned ice-cream. I know I would! Taking time to rethink how a stitch in time meeting has consequences, good and bad, will help for future endeavors. This is also true when looking at the importance or repulsiveness of grass in a looming TMDL (Total Maximum Daily Load) watershed. There are teachable moments, but don’t shoot this messenger.

Dick Wanner’s story in Lancaster Farming, naming grass as the largest crop in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed started with how many gallons of water, fuel, fertilizer and chemicals, my suburban cousins use to maintain their green status symbol and ended with a plea to do nothing but allow the mini-forage to return to a more natural state. Ya know more like a native pasture. The trouble is with some 6 million postage-stamp grass farmers there tends to be management issues leading to significant environmental degradation in watercourses feeding the bay that feed those same people. Talk about a teachable moment.

The result of this ongoing saga is a call for a more sustainable stormwater management initiative or perhaps a metropolitan Graze the Bay program that seeks to educate and give “technical assistance” to the urban dweller on keeping the sod thriving with fewer inputs. The American lawn icon mentality has always puzzled me. Feed it, weed it, cut it and repeat. Feed it more, water it more, cut it more and spend more. Sounds like being in a squirrel cage to me. But don’t stop because the big box input stores and landscape companies need this green stuff to grow like crazy to keep business flowing---right into the watershed. It’s time to rethink the more is better scenario. As they say, “save the crabs then eat’em.”

While I’m on the subject of more, what’s the deal with weed killer around road signs and the apparent disregard for application rates. Traveling down Route 28 south out of Cooperstown, N.Y., I became acutely aware of the almost shameful way a fan tip sprayer was used to apply Roundup around road markers. The trail of chemical discontent went from the sign all the way to the culvert, carrying the message to the bay that we too need a beer summit or our heads examined. Here’s my problem: We spend public money and labor on chemicals to kill the sod that holds the soil that will erode down the stream because the sod is killed. Tell me this makes any sense for water quality. What about the half-lives of these herbicides? Will we see them in our water a decade from now? How is this strategy helping mitigate the concern over the TMDL? Will these questions lead to a teachable moment?

I’m not going to lie, I have issues with yearly ditch cleaning of stable sod bound material filtering the water before it hits the many culverts. The reason I have disdain for this practice is I am running around trying to keep farms covered with sod to stop the erosion process and in a “gradall minute” I lose the fight when the banks are disturbed and the soil wound is opened once again. No covering, no check dams, nothing but a clear shot of soil headed for the bay once again. “We do this digging as a matter of public safety,” said the highway superintendent. Isn’t enjoying good water quality important to the public too? From a watershed perspective this also needs a few moments of teaching.

I bring out these points at the risk of being slapped around a bit. There is considerable scrutiny on agriculture in the tenuous TMDL models that will drive environmental policy for years to come. I think there are other components to this issue that warrant a look-see and not place all the blame on farmers trying to produce food in a cheap food society. My friend says, “look deeper for the root causes and address them, and stop patching the symptoms.” This approach will take a lot of time, money and cool heads to make a systematic and human behavioral change to save the watershed in the modern day pressure cooker of land grabs, increasing population and concrete jungles. This teachable time in our history depends on all of us doing our part to help the whole watershed and its benefits. That is something I can drink too. Published in Lancaster Farming 9/12/09