North Bay Report: Climate Change and Agriculture and Apple Moths

Climate Change and Agriculture

Using chicken manure to create electricity, and the benefits of getting to know your local farmer. These were among the myriad topics covered at a conference this week on "Preserving Agriculture in the Face of Climate Change."

Farming organically is a good thing, says Paul Kaiser of Sebastopol's Singing Frogs Farm (speaking in a windy corner outside the conference). But it's not necessarily the same thing as farming sustainably.

Sonoma County's small farms are impressively productive, Kaiser adds. That's the good news. The downside is that most of that produce gets shipped out of county, eroding the benefits of growing it locally.

CSA subscriptions have seen enormous growth in the past decade, benefiting small farmers here and across the country. Yet they are still often seen as an expensive, luxury purchase, which Kaiser contends is exactly backwards.

The manure-fueled methane plant is more officially known as a "bio-gas" generating facility. Amy Bolten of the Sonoma County Water Agency says the basic process is being implemented at various sites across the county. But this one adds a new wrinkle.

Interested in this story? Read the full report from KRCB here.

Statewide Apple Month Environmental Review

The fight against invasive insects that threaten crops is a big concern in California. Now a proposed statewide environmental planning document for that effort is threatening to trigger another fight over how it should be conducted.

Groups that oppose pesticide spraying, such as Pesticide Watch and Nan Wishner's Stop the Spray East Bay, tend to view the California Department of Food and Agriculture with a good measure of skepticism, seeing it as unresponsive and stuck in the past.

In her day job, as a technical writer, Wishner herself drafts environmental impact reports. That experience has given her a keen understanding of the inner workings of that process, as spelled out in the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). And she's concerned that CDFA, as the "lead agency" that drives the process, will manipulate the eventual outcome of the planned programmatic EIR through the way they define their goals at the beginning.

The state's 2010 EIR specifically for light brown apple moth eradication can be seen and downloaded here.

Listen to the full report here.

Eradicating Mice on the Farralones

If protecting one endangered species means other, less threatened species are harmed in the process, where is the ethical and environmental balance point? That's the issue the US Fish and Wildlife Service is wrestling with as they attempt to eradicate a plague of non-native house mice on the Farallon Islands.

Both before and after a May 12 public meeting hosted by the US Fish and Wildlife Service to explain the issue, most media coverage has focused on the possibility of "carpet bombing" the islands with poison, as one report characterized it. While that is one of the options that will be examined, agency spokesman Doug Condell says they are just beginning to study the responses they could deploy.

Protecting the endangered birds that nest on the Farallones is all very well, says Maggie Sergio of Wildcare, but at what cost to other species?

Sergio adds that her concerns about the possible use of the rodenticide are more than hypothetical, as the damaging consequences of that approach have already been demonstrated elsewhere.

Listen to the whole story at KRCB by clicking here.

Editor's note: This story was reported and produced by KRCB, and written for Rohnert Park Patch with the permission of KRCB News Director Bruce Robinson.