Home News & Events Alternative Agriculture News -- April '97

Headlines:
Avery's Policy Recommendations "Fall Short," Say Professors
EPA's New Law Will Promote "Safer, Effective Pest Control"
Wallace Had "Second Thoughts" About His Revolution
Wallace Institute Elects Officers, New Members
Borlaug Criticizes Environmental "Extremism"
As Development Threatens Farmland, Some Towns Fight Back
National Soil Tilth Lab Studies "Sustaining Surface"
Research Improvements Needed to Ensure Sustainable Ag
Positions
Upcoming Events

©1997, Henry A. Wallace Institute for Alternative Agriculture, 9200 Edmonston Road, #117, Greenbelt, MD 20770. Phone: (301) 441-8777. E-mail: hawiaa@access.digex.net.

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In addition to this monthly newsletter, the Henry A. Wallace Institute for Alternative Agriculture publishes the American Journal of Alternative Agriculture, a quarterly, peer-reviewed journal of research on alternative agriculture. It is a scientific forum for disseminating technical, economic, and social research findings about the character and requirements of alternative agriculture systems.

The current issue (Volume 11, No. 4) includes articles on a first study of managing vertebrates in cover crops, the links between pesticide use and pesticide residues, and production-side progress and demand-side constraints in sustainable agriculture in the Corn Belt. It also features abstracts from the conference on "Environmental Enhancement Through Agriculture," sponsored by the Wallace Institute, Tufts University, and American Farmland Trust in November, 1995, are also in the new issue of the Wallace Institute's quarterly peer-reviewed journal of research on alternative agriculture.

Subscriptions to AJAA are $44 for libraries; $24 for individuals; and $12 for students.

Avery's Policy Recommendations "Fall Short," Say Professors

The policy recommendations made by Dennis Avery in an article in Choices magazine "fall short of resolving serious global poverty and environmental problems," according to two professors who responded to Avery's article. Both the Avery article and the response by Fred Fitzhusen and Craig Davis of Ohio State University appeared in the First Quarter, 1997, issue of the peer-reviewed magazine of the American Agricultural Economics Association.

Asserting that "the biggest danger to the world's natural environment today is low-yield agriculture," Avery advocated the adoption of "advanced farming methods" and concluded that "the only food strategies likely to protect the world's remaining wildlife are further advances in sustainable crop and livestock yields, and radically liberalized trade in farm products." He also criticized the Wallace Institute's publication, Intensive Agriculture and Environmental Quality: Examining the Newest Agricultural Myth, as making "tiny and poorly-founded criticisms."

In their response to Avery's article, Fitzhusen and Davis wrote that "Avery's future scenario is particularly dependent on major increases in per capita income among the world's poor; significant increases in environmentally benign, yield-increasing technologies for food and fiber production on prime agricultural lands; and a global free trade regime. ... Avery exposes his lack of understanding of biodiversity and its causes, confusing the conservation of wildlife and wild lands with the more general and critical concerns of conserving overall biodiversity. ... The construction of social policy on the basis of selective use of what we understand about the causes of biological diversity is poor science and makes for poor policy."

Their main criticisms "are that he understates the potential downstream environmental impacts of agricultural intensification, overlooks the extreme difficulty of fostering and targeting economic development to reduce extensive poverty in much of the developing world, and grossly oversimplifies the complexity of the underlying causation of species distribution and abundance."

EPA's New Law Will Promote "Safer, Effective Pest Control"

The Environmental Protection Agency's plan for implementing the 1996 Food Quality Protection Act is based on five guiding principles that include "promotion of safer, effective pest control methods," and "a protective, health-based approach to food safety."

The Food Quality Protection Act requires major changes in how the EPA regulates pesticides, includes new food safety protections, and requires the EPA to address new considerations in establishing tolerances for pesticide residues in food. Those considerations include assessing total pesticide exposure from all non-occupational sources, and assessing the effects of exposure to multiple pesticides with a common mechanism of toxicity.

The major provisions of the new implementation plan include establishing a single health-based standard for all pesticide residues in food, whether raw or processed; requiring the EPA to reassess roughly 9,000 existing permissible pesticide tolerance levels in food to ensure they meet the new standards; requiring the EPA to develop consumer information on the risks and benefits of pesticides used in or on foods, as well as recommendations to consumers for reducing dietary exposure to pesticides while maintaining a healthy diet; and ensuring that all pesticides will be periodically re-evaluated to make sure they meet current testing and safety standards.

The implementation plan is available from the Office of Pesticide Programs Public Docket at (703) 305-5805, and on the Internet at http://www.epa.gov/pesticides/lawsregs.htm.

Wallace Had "Second Thoughts" About His Revolution

Henry A. Wallace promoted "an American revolution" of institutional and technological change which "transformed the ways of farming, the farm population, and the agricultural system" -- and also caused him to have second thoughts during the last years of his life, according to Dr. Richard S. Kirkendall, who presented the 1997 Henry A. Wallace Annual Lecture last month.

Dr. Kirkendall, the Scott and Dorothy Bullitt Professor of American History at the University of Washington in Seattle, has devoted a considerable part of his research and writing to the life and philosophy of Wallace and the Wallace family. His speech, entitled "Second Thoughts on the Agricultural Revolution: Henry A. Wallace In His Last Years," quoted Wallace as saying, "I fear we may be headed even in the Corn Belt for Big Agriculture as well as Big Labor and Big Business and Big Government."

Although supportive of the family farmers who had adopted the new ways of farming, "Henry worried that the demographic component of the revolution would seriously damage the national character," Dr. Kirkendall said. Wallace believed that "farm habits" had been "the strength of the U.S.," which led him to ask, "How long can a civilization exist with less than eight percent of the next generation acquainted with the virtues inculcated by farm living?"

It was this idea about "the importance of 'farm habits' for the national character that persuaded Henry to press once again for a substantial farm population. As he saw things now, this national need for people on farms meant that small farmers should be held on the land."

The solutions that attracted Wallace's attention were part-time farming and industrial decentralization, according to Dr. Kirkendall. Wallace even met with President Lyndon Johnson about the need for a "program of decentralization of industry so that most of the smaller and more inefficient farmers may be in commuting distance of a job in town."

"Henry A. Wallace's idea of an alternative agriculture emphasized the expansion of part-time farming, not technological change," said Dr. Kirkendall. "His alternative could serve his enthusiasm for the psychological benefits of living on farms without threatening the modern farming in which he also believed. The nation, he maintained, needed both the new ways of using the land and a large population living and working on it. The modernization of farming had sharply reduced the percentage of Americans who experienced farm life, but Henry proposed a way of turning the movement of the farm population around that would not overturn the modern farming system and its practices."

• The new President is Dr. Frederick Kirschenmann, farmer and manager, Kirschenmann Family Farms, Windsor, N.D.
• Vice President is Dr. Cornelia Butler Flora, Professor of Sociology and Director, North Central Regional Center for Rural Development, Iowa State University
• Secretary is Dr. Frederick Magdoff, Professor, Department of Plant and Soil Science, University of Vermont
• Treasurer is Jose Montenegro, Director, Rural Development Center, Salinas, CA.

• Desmond A. Jolly, Agricultural and Consumer Economist, Department of Agricultural Economics, University of California, Davis
• Deborah A. Neher, Assistant Professor, Department of Biology, University of Toledo
• Robert I. Papendick, Professor Emeritus, Department of Crop and Soil Sciences, Washington State University
• Frederick V. Payton, Assistant Professor, Institute of Community and Area Development, University of Georgia.

• Dedicating specific funding to build an improved public agricultural research accountability system led by USDA with full stakeholder participation.
• Targeting increased research funding for environmental and other public goods.
• Establishing a national commission on extension to assess innovative reforms across the country that can help safeguard the sustainability of agriculture.

• University of Minnesota, Department of Soil, Water, and Climate seeks applicants for a postdoctoral associate position in soil and water quality; send letter of interest, curriculum vitae, and names of three references to Dr. Deborah Allan, Department of Soil, Water, and Climate, 439 Borlaug Hall, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN 55108; e-mail dallan@soils.umn.edu.
• Nick's Organic Farm seeks part-time farm workers for organic vegetable and grain farm; contact Nick Maravell, 8565 Horseshoe Lane, Potomac, MD 20854; (301) 983-2167.

• April-December, the Rodale Institute Experimental Farm in Kutztown, PA, offers workshops, plant and book sales, special events, and training sessions on sustainable gardening, farming, composting, and herb growing; for a complete schedule of events, contact the Institute at (610) 683-1400.
• April 30-May 2, 27th Annual BioCycle National Conference on Composting and Recycling will be held in Philadelphia, PA; contact BioCycle at 1-800-661-4905.
• May 4-7, Natural Foods Supershow will be held in New Orleans, LA; contact Craig Gould, DSC Group, 194 Main Ave., Norwalk, CT 06851; (203) 847-7000.
• May 4-8, "Beneficial Co-Utilization of Agricultural, Municipal and Industrial By-Products," sponsored by the Agricultural Research Service/USDA, will be held in Beltsville, MD; contact Nancy McGaha, Bldg. 003, Room 232, 10300 Baltimore Ave., Beltsville, MD 20705-2350; (301) 504-6591; or Patricia Millner, Soil Microbial Systems Laboratory, (301) 504-8163, e- mail pmillner@asrr.arsusda.gov.
• May 5-7, "Native Plants as Minor Crops" will be held in Richland, WA; contact Dora Rumsey, P.O. Box 646230, Pullman, WA 99164-6230; (509) 372-7256; e-mail rumsey@tricity.wsu.edu
• May 7-9, "Communities Working for Wetlands" will be held in Alexandria, VA; contact Terrene Institute, 4 Herbert St., Alexandria, VA 22305; 1-800-726-4853; e-mail terrene@gnn.com
• May 9-11, "Small-Scale Agricultural Production and Marketing for the Southwest: Farming and Gardening Under Dry Conditions" will be held at NewFarms, HC69 Box 62, Rociada, N.M. 87742; (505) 425-5457.
• May 18-20, "Exceeding Expectations," the 1997 Wildlands Conference, will be held in Atlanta, GA; contact Wildlife Habitat Council, 1010 Wayne Ave., #920, Silver Spring, MD 20910; (301) 588-8994; e-mail whc@cais.com
• May 22-25, "International Conference on Sustainable Urban Food Systems" will be held in Toronto, Canada; contact Jennifer Welsh, Centre for Studies in Food Security, Ryerson Polytechnic University, Toronto, Ontario, M5B 2K3 Canada; (416) 979-5000 ext. 6931; e-mail jwelsh@acs.ryerson.ca
• May 25-28, "8th Global Warming International Conference & Expo" will be held in New York, N.Y.; contact Prof. Sinyan Shen, c/o Global Warming International Center, 22W381 75th St., Naperville, IL 60565-9245; (630) 910-1551; e-mail syshen@megsinet.net

Home News & Events Alternative Agriculture News -- April '97