Legislation that would create jobs and save money

From the Letter by Eric Engle, Charleston Gazette, February 20, 2021

The West Virginia Legislature’s 2021 session is off to a ferocious start. Bills are being introduced and considered rapidly, with very little time given for public input and very limited public access to committee proceedings or other activities at the Capitol building.

Those of us trying to keep track of legislation have to do all we can to keep the public informed and keep constituents in contact with their delegates and senators. To that end, there are very important pieces of legislation for West Virginia’s economic, energy, public health and environmental future that I’d like to bring to your attention, and I encourage you to contact your representatives about them quickly.

Senate Bill 30, titled “Permitting third-party ownership of renewable and alternative energy generating facilities,” and the similar House Bill 2249, titled “Permitting customers and developers to enter into solar power purchase agreements,” have been introduced to the Senate Economic Development Committee and the House Energy and Manufacturing Committee, respectively.

These bills would legalize power-purchasing agreements (PPAs) in West Virginia and have bipartisan backing, with SB 30 introduced by Sen. Charles Trump, R-Morgan, and HB 2249 introduced by Delegate Barbara Fleischauer, D-Monongalia.

The coalition West Virginians for Energy Freedom, longtime advocates for PPAs in West Virginia, defines PPAs as “a widely available method to finance distributed energy generation projects such as rooftop solar panels or landfill bio-gas.” West Virginians for Energy Freedom explains: “These third-party agreements are legal in at least 28 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico. States such as Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Georgia offer PPAs, but they are not available in West Virginia.”

PPAs can bring renewable energy to West Virginia, while creating jobs, saving West Virginia’s energy consumers money and improving public health and environmental protection as we inevitably move away from fossil fuels. They also help foster the kind of energy independence that both major parties and people along the entire political ideological spectrum can get behind.

Another crucial piece of legislation, introduced by Delegate Evan Hansen, D-Monongalia, HB 2287, titled “Providing for solar energy production on formerly mined land,” would “encourage solar energy development on lands formerly used for mining and certain third-party co-generation projects, to provide electricity for commercial, industrial and manufacturing businesses or institutions of higher education or nonprofit organizations that are located in or will locate in West Virginia,” according to the summary

Many businesses and corporations are pledging to reduce, and eventually eliminate, their greenhouse gas emissions in the coming years and decades. If we want those entities to locate in West Virginia and bring their jobs with them, we have to be able to accommodate their energy and other infrastructural needs and goals.

HB 2287 gives us a leg up on attracting and retaining these investments, while also providing cheaper energy for our existing commercial, industrial and nonprofit entities. There’s no reason why partisan politics or political ideology should get in the way of all the potential in this bill.

The House Energy and Manufacturing Committee is chaired by Delegate Bill Anderson, R-Wood. The Senate Economic Development Committee is chaired by Sen. Chandler Swope, R-Mercer. Please contact these chairmen and let them know you want to see House Bills 2249 and 2287 and Senate Bill 30 on the committee agendas and see them passed. The legislative session ends April 10.

West Virginia deserves a more diversified economy, with more and better jobs, cheaper energy and better protection of our health and natural resources. These bills can help us get there.

>> Eric Engle is chairman of Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Action, most active in the Parkersburg — Marietta area in the Ohio River valley.

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See also: What West Virginia’s Changing Climate Means for Its Farmers | USDA Climate Hubs — By Evan Kutta, West Virginia University, Institute of Water Security and Science and Jason A. Hubbart, West Virginia University, Davis College of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Design

Small scale production of egg plants in Bangladesh

By Blaine Friedlander, Cornell Chronicle, October 12, 2020

The world’s small-scale farmers now can see a path to solving global hunger over the next decade, with solutions – such as adopting climate-resilient crops through improving extension services – all culled rapidly via artificial intelligence from more than 500,000 scientific research articles.

The results are synthesized in 10 new research papers – authored by 77 scientists, researchers and librarians in 23 countries – as part of Ceres2030: Sustainable Solutions to End Hunger. The project is headquartered at Cornell, with partners from the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD).

The papers were published concurrently on Oct. 12 in four journals – Nature Plants, Nature Sustainability, Nature Machine Intelligence and Nature Food – and assembled in a comprehensive package online: Sustainable Solutions to End Hunger.

Ceres2030 employed machine learning, librarian savvy and research synthesis methods to quickly scan a trove of thousands of scientific journals for ideas and websites from more than 60 agencies that can help eradicate world hunger.

Principal Investigator Jaron Porciello of Cornell University

“Moreover,” Porciello said, “we are synthesizing this scientific information to make it useful for an audience – like policymakers – that needs science to make decisions.”

The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal No. 2, known as SDG2, calls for ridding the world of hunger by 2030. Currently, more than 690 million people – about 8.9% of the world’s population – are food-insecure, according to the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, that global statistic could easily rise by 10 million people a year from now, and by nearly 60 million people in five years.

If recent trends continue, the number of people around the world affected by hunger would surpass 840 million by 2030, according to the FAO.

Ideas from the array of papers published in the respective Nature publications can be implemented instantly. Around the world, for example, small-scale farmers are rooted in their agricultural ways, often holding on to traditional farming methods that may impair their own food security and livelihoods.

In an evidence-synthesis study about small-scale producers in low-and middle-income countries in Nature Plants, Cornell researchers found that a key to adopting drought-tolerant crops was people – extension experts teaching farmers ways to move forward.

Researchers and librarians reviewed more than 200 journal articles that revealed how extension and education helped small-scale farmers adopt climate resilient crops to achieve steady production, even in the face of climate change, said Maricelis Acevedo, senior research associate in the Department of Global Development.

“How do we make sure that technologies that we develop based on science can have a positive impact on a farmer’s livelihood?” Acevedo said. “We can do all the science, but if we don’t communicate effectively with farmers, they won’t get the right information.”

Acevedo worked on the study with Cornell colleagues Hale Tufan, senior extension associate in global development; Kate Ghezzi-Kopel, evidence synthesis librarian at Mann Library; and Porciello.

Reviewing scientific literature can reveal knowledge gaps. In the evidence-synthesis paper about feed interventions and the livelihoods of small-scale livestock keepers in Africa, Asia and Latin America, in Nature Plants, nearly 23,000 papers were identified by human expertise and artificial intelligence. Only 73 of them were included in the final analysis, and just six reported evidence of adopting new livestock feed methods.

The authors, including Debbie Cherney, professor of animal science, and Erin Eldermire, head of Cornell’s Flower-Sprecher Veterinary Library, at Cornell’s College of Veterinary Medicine, found that while many papers examined the technical aspects of a livestock feed supply, they rarely accounted for nutrition.

Cornell researchers’ work on accelerating evidence-informed decision-making for the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals using machine learning in Nature Machine Intelligence, describes how Porciello group developed Persephone, the machine-learning model they used for the gargantuan task of reviewing research. Joining Porciello on the paper were graduate student Maidul Islam ‘21; Stefan Einarson, director of information technology in the Department of Global Development; and Haym Hirsh, professor of computer science.

In a review of the contributions of farmers’ organizations to smallholder agriculture, in Nature Food, Ghezzi-Kopel and other authors said formal farmer groups not only provided needed structure to market produce, but encouraged natural resource management, improved food security and helped the environment.

Magdalena Skipper, editor-in-chief of Nature, will present the entire package of Ceres2030 papers to Gerd Müller, Germany’s Federal Minister of Economic Cooperation and Development, at the online event, “A World Without Hunger is Possible – What Must Be Done,” Oct. 13 at 4 a.m. EDT. The program will include remarks by billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates, chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The prospects for the reaching the United Nations’ anti-hunger goal is promising, Porciello said. “We’re trying something new that hasn’t been done before,” she said. “We know the tools weren’t there, the methods weren’t there and the teams weren’t in place. Now, we’ve created some staircases to make science and world reality connect a little bit more. This approach could be replicated to build a scientific evidence base for many of the world’s most complex policy problems”

Acevedo, Porciello and Tufan are faculty fellows at the Cornell Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future.

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The 17 United Nations sustainable development goals (SDGs) to transform our world:

GOAL 1: No Poverty, GOAL 2: Zero Hunger, GOAL 3: Good Health and Well-being, GOAL 4: Quality Education, GOAL 5: Gender Equality, GOAL 6: Clean Water and Sanitation, GOAL 7: Affordable and Clean Energy, GOAL 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth, GOAL 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure, GOAL 10: Reduced Inequality, GOAL 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities, GOAL 12: Responsible Consumption and Production, GOAL 13: Climate Action, GOAL 14: Life Below Water, GOAL 15: Life on Land GOAL 16: Peace & Justice Strong Institutions, GOAL 17: Partnerships to achieve Goals

Soil Disturbance Challenge for Doddridge County Watershed Association

The Earth’s Soil Serves as a Carbon Storehouse

Analysis by S. Tom Bond, Retired Chemistry Professor and Resident Farmer, Lewis County, WV

An exciting new way to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide by a natural process is being discussed in many places. See here, and see here, and see here, and see here, for example.

To understand it, some background is needed. As the reader will know, most of our energy in this age is derived from burning carbon containing compounds (fossil fuels) in the form of natural gas, oil and coal. They are burned with oxygen in air and carbon dioxide is formed. Less energy is derived from the hydrogen in these compounds atom for atom, and most of the compounds formed from the sulfur, phosphorus. and other elements present in fuels are pollutants.

The process of burning (combustion) oxidizes carbon and the other elements, but some of the carbon dioxide and water from the air are converted to plant life by photosynthesis. Decomposition of dead plants and animals exposed to the air also contributes carbon dioxide. The evidence indicates this has been going on for 2.8 billion years. Sometimes in geological periods past there has been greater or lesser amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than now. The return to plant life of oxidized carbon through photosynthesis is slow.

Much of plant life grows roots into the soil. When the plant dies its roots are converted to a soil carbon form known as humus to gardeners. This is done by fungus, (actually up to 1.5 million species are present in the soil worldwide according to a recent article in Science, the journal of the AAAS) and other microorganisms. As everyone knows, humus helps hold nutrients in the soil, and water. This helps new plants to grow. Scientists now understand soil based life is an association between plants and special microorganisms acting between soil and plant roots. This helps the plants to get nutrients from the soil and from the soil carbon compounds (which are very numerous and complex) in humus.

The excitement is that in many parts of the world soil carbon is depleted, but with proper management it can be rebuilt. It is a huge reservoir – one source gives 2.7 x 10¹⁸ long tons of carbon in soil compared to 0.78 long tons in the atmosphere and 0.75 long tons in biomass, i.e., living matter.

According to Rattan Lal, director of Ohio State University’s Carbon Management and Sequestration Center, the world’s cultivated soils have lost between 50 and 70 percent of their original carbon stock, much of which has oxidized upon exposure to air. (Notice this is cultivated soils, not all soils.) Some of it goes back 15,000 years to when forests were first cleared for crops.

Regenerating these soils involves agricultural practices such as using year-around cover crops, and what is commonly called rotational pasture and other measures. Top priority would be in restoring degraded and eroded lands, avoiding both deforestation, and farming of peat land. Restoration of mangrove areas along coasts, salt marshes and sea grasses would also play a part.

The good thing about this method of reducing carbon dioxide, in contrast to mechanical sequestration, is that it increases the capacity to produce food for the coming increase in world population by increasing soil productivity, and making soils more resilient to both floods and drought. It is not high tech, but involves techniques already with an advanced state of understanding. It is not capital intensive, but education intensive.

One of the most severe problems is with grassland. Much of the world’s agricultural land produces grass and is not suitable for crops, except for certain small favored spots. It is too dry, too hilly, or too wet for crops which produce parts that can be eaten by humans. Grasslands developed under herds of grazing animals, so they are adapted to each other.

Here is a video of an expert, Allan Savory of Rhodesia (now Nyasaland) in Africa explaining the method in a TED talk. It will be recognized by any Appalachian farmer as “rotational grazing.” It is also called holistic management. The animals are kept close together, stay on one spot long enough to eat the top one-third or one-half the plant, the part that has the highest sugar content, then moved on. (The customary practice now is to keep animals in the same field continuously, in the worst case, as long as any of the plant growth remains there.)

The claims of holistic management have their detractors, too. But if you are “into” research on extreme hydrocarbon energy exploitation (shale drilling, mountaintop removal, deep water drilling, etc.) you have learned to look at who is financing what. Don’t skip the last line. Established environmental groups can be slow to change, too! They can’t argue that grazing doesn’t reduce grass fires, though, a benefit important near habitation.

Ohio State University maintains the Carbon Management and Sequestration Center, which lists four measures for reestablishment of soil carbon: afforestation, wetlands management, no-tillage of soils and close management of grazing. (1) Reforestation is the name that has been used for decades when the objective was to get the resulting timber. It is now recognized as a good way to build soil, too, because trees have the same kind of relations with microorganisms and humus as grass. Our Appalachian soils developed under forest cover. It is also recognized that the carbon in timber (since it is protected by roofs, etc., last decades to centuries after the tree is cut, before returning to carbon dioxide.

(2) Wetlands often preserve carbon for a long time, since the remains of plants are cut off from oxygen at the water level. Peat is a residue built up from wetland plants that is almost entirely organic. At one time it was cut and dried for fuel, a practice which has largely been discontinued. However peatlands can be drained and farmed, resulting in oxidation of the peat to carbon dioxide. The emphasis is now on preventing this from being done. (3) “No tillage” means not plowing to plant crops which have been traditionally handled this way. Plowing and tillage are primarily weed control activities. Today the best method for corn, soybeans and such like is to plant a cover crop, frequently a legume, which gets good growth before winter and keeps the ground covered and crowds out baby weeds. This prevents oxidation of the carbon in the soil, adds to it, and helps fertilize the main crop. It also helps control some insect pests and encourages wildlife.

So holistic management of soil can remove some carbon dioxide from the air and do it for decades to come. This can provide quite a few other benefits to society, such as food, timber, erosion and flood control, improved wildlife habitat, and scenic values. It is not  high tech nor does it does it require rare or expensive materials. It employs and educates many people, including the poorest, all over the world. Well now, it looks pretty good, doesn’t it?

This article was prompted by a recent extended review from Yale University.

What Dr. Howell bargained for looked like this.

Marcellus on the farm

Article by S. Tom Bond, Retired Chemistry Professor and Resident Farmer, Lewis County, WV

It’s no secret that I don’t want Marcellus development on my farm.  Here is why:

In 1962, four of us, my sister, her husband,  my wife and I, bought an old farm in a remote place about 3 miles from Jane Lew.  For over 50 years, all my spare time, and every cent we made from the farm went back into improvements.  Today, my wife and I own it.  It is fenced with modern high-tensile fence, there are cattle guards in critical places where roads and fences intersect, and it is very clean.  We have the essential equipment and quality livestock,  and space for 55 to 60 head of brood cows.  After 50 years of planning and scrimping and work on our part, we hope to pass this land along to a new generation.

I have developed methods suitable to medium size hilly farms which I discuss at this website and have written a book about my life farming and changes in the community which appears here.   And I did these things while teaching Chemistry and helping raise four children.

The oil and gas was “severed” from the surface in 1934, 80 years ago, by the second predecessor-in-title, Dr. Howell.   He was a physician in Buckhannon and his heirs live in Colorado.  I called three decades ago, and the granddaughter who spoke for the heirs couldn’t even distinguish which of her grandfather’s farms I was talking about.  So much for any responsibility to the community.

In Howell’s time, there were hand built rigs, pipelines dug by hand (and not so intrusive), equipment hauled only in good weather and by oxen without roads.

Marcellus Shale drilling is a different beast than what I had to deal with from the four Benson (5000 foot) wells drilled on the 500 acres in my tenure.  Benson wells took a few hundred square feet, and required a lightly rocky road.  The wells were drilled in a couple of months, and reclamation allowed some grass production to return to the surface, however there was some dust, and a little storm drainage.  Other effects include the requirment for constant access by well tenders, oil removal, occasional replacement of transmission lines, open spaces for lines through forest land.  One interesting fact is that all the wells in the community have the same lock and the keys are passed around freely, so you can not maintain control of access to your farm.  Little negotiation with them is possible for things like remediation of the roads, but they are good about coming to relocate pipelines when you need to drive fence posts into the ground, or you are laying drainage ditches.  And they do a good job of keeping the well sites “clean.”

Benson wells are tame in comparison to Marcellus Shale development.  The pond that was used on the Benson wells could not have been used to  park a truck larger than a pickup.  Ponds today can hold two or more dozen of the big tankers they use and are  several times deeper.  The well pad size is in acres, not hundreds of square feet.  The pad and the road is heavily rocked and will never produce decent pasture again.  The pipeline rights-of-way are wide enough to accommodate very large equipment.  Trees won’t be allowed to produce timber until the lines are abandoned.  If it is economically feasible to remove the pipelines, the ground will be disturbed again then and it will be decades before the forest can recover after that, if ever.

On this land now diverted to drilling, there will be endless dust on the pasture and meadow  - hundreds of truckloads of water and chemicals in and out, many pickup loads of workers.  Bright light at night, and high decibel sounds constantly  negatively affecting the cattle.  Storm water carrying silt and chemicals from the well pad and the roads will end up diverted into productive areas of the farm, and worst this adverse process can go on for years if wells are drilled one at a time.

Many people have the idea that cattle are tough.  While they can survive some harsh conditions which they are adapted for in natural settings like cold, hunger, and some predation, the unnatural industrial drilling on farmlands with non-natural (chemical) insult does hurt production.  The farm business is already operating on a very thin margin.

What if somebody in my chain of title made an agreement with somebody who is the predecessor in the gas companies chain of title for something much different than what I am getting from him?  Is there any precedent?  There certainly is.  It was done for strip mining.  The first strip mining paid nothing to the surface owner.  The coal was sold with the necessary rights to remove.  No one had contemplated this new technology, so the law was changed so that the surface owner received what is now known as “surface rights.”

Decades ago I learned that the Corps of Engineers maintained a stable of appraisers to value land that they take for various projects.  These individuals are certified and used over and over again.  They are trained to appraise at just the least amount the landowner might accept, rather than fight in court.  I took time to study the matter at a couple of sites, and found that almost anyone who went to court received more, but had to endure great stress to do so.   Some oil and gas companies also offer “damages,” sometimes like the Corps of Engineers offer, sometimes an arbitrary figure, but not nuanced nor acknowledging the factors above.

Sometimes dead cattle are paid for, but not ones that “aren’t doing well,” abortions, dusted hay, dead pets, sickness (NEVER admit guilt), or losses from all the other  subsidiary complaints you hear about.  Damage to game and fish (note: about one-eighth of my farm income is from hunting rights) does not come into the picture, despite complaints from  hunters and fishermen, nor does destruction of scenic value, or the retirement industry, or the edge effect on forest creatures due to so much more subdivision.

There will be a significant reduction in property value.  Who wants to buy a farm with a well pad on it that enables the driller to fool around for decades on one well after another?  With reclamation that is not renovation, repeated for each well, many times over?    With the uncertainty of  loss of water, damage from fumes, from toxic ponds and compressor stations?  Am I alone in this claim?

Read “Fracking Boom Gives Banks Mortgage Headaches.“  The disgusting part of the article is that it is worried about banks, but there is not a word about property owners.  I suppose landowners are  like grass that has to accept being eaten off by cows.  (And stepped on and the other thing cows do on grass.)  In the places where oil and gas has been extracted before, there is no mineral rights for the surface owners!  Such rights are long gone.  See also the American Banker video here.

Property values will crash if buyers can’t get financing because of the extraction, as is now the case in some places.  And in some places the farming operation can’t be insured because of the “industrial operation” being conducted on it.  Externalized cost is very near theft, and not paying for damages is a form of denying the effect of the extraction.  Shale drilling is like an invading army in power, but unlike a wise invading army, it doesn’t strive to preserve eventual productive value.

Climate Change Impacts on Global Food Security

Review by S. Tom Bond, Ph.D., Retired Chemistry Professor & Resident Farmer, Lewis County, WV, August 20, 2013

FrackCheckWV has referred its readers to the recent issue of Science which has over 50 pages of articles on the changes in natural systems in changing climates.  Being both a farmer and someone who enjoys a good meal encourages me to think about what future possibilities would be.  Food security, the ability of individuals to secure enough of the right kinds of food to sustain them, is also a very important political consideration.  This article is a condensation of “Climate Change Impacts on Global Food Security, appearing on page 508 of the August 2, 2013 issue of Science.

Food security has four factors.  The first is production of sufficient quantities of the right kinds of food.  Each human needs not only energy, but protein and other nutrients.  The second is access.  There must be transportation and distribution to reach the individual, and in some cases this doesn’t exist.  In urban settings it has to be paid for, so the individual must have sufficient  steady income. Third, there must be adequate utilization – facilities to prepare the food, including cooking and clean water for sanitation that are needed so physiological needs can be met.  The fourth is stability of supply, so that an individual can have adequate food at all times. 

Production, access, facilities to prepare and year-round supply.  All are needed by every individual if they are to survive.

It is estimated that  the undernourished in terms of calories has been reduced from 980 million to 850 million in the two decades from 1992 to 2010-12, but judging from under-weight, stunted-growth and health surveys, 2 billion people still suffer from micro-nutrients today.  Moreever, this seems to have been getting worse since 2007 due to pressures from food prices, extreme climate events and forced changes in diet.

Such pressures ae expected to build in the future.  Demand for food is expected to increase by 50% by 2030, as the global population increases.  Climate change could dramatically influence the progress toward reduction of hunger.

Present studies usually think in terms of production only, ignoring the other factors  mentioned above.  Even with sufficient calories, physical and mental factors can be influenced by nutrients, ability to prepare, and daily availability.  Remember the phrase “give us this day our daily bread?” It is very serious business for someone on the edge of starvation.  Data about food availability taken from aggregate reckoning is not adequate to completely understanding of the situation.   Surprisingly, the first analysis even from this limited perspective was not published until 1994.

This study was by Rozenzweig, Parry and others. It showed there is great variation in yields, highest yields the developed North of Europe and America, decreasing across Africa and South America.  Further work has shown that crops are more negatively affected by stress in the tropics, and so coincides with countries that presently have high burden of hunger.  It seems likely that food effects of climate change will be more severe in areas which already have a problem.

Food access is better understood.  For individuals it is largely a mater of income and rights.  Findings in this area show clear linkages between economic development and resilience to climate change.   In other words, if you have to buy food, you are better able to get it when you have more income.  On the other hand, if one’s assets are drawn down, if one must change jobs,  if migrating, etc., one is more vulnerable. 

If global warming changes location of production of biomass, which includes not only food, but also fiber and timber, trade in these commodities will change and consequently prices.  The resources of production , such as land and water access, will increase in value.  Such structural problems will lead to more appropriation of the assets of the poor, such as “land grabs” by external and foreign interests.  (Such is going on now at the fringes of tropical forests, in Africa, Madagascar  and Southeast Asia by Middle East oil potentates, and European, American and Chinese investors.  – Author’s note).

Utilization will be effected by less water in some areas, droughts and floods.  Higher temperatures will increase water-born disease, particularly diarrheal disease, and uptake of microneutrients may decrease.  Pesticides may come into even greater use due to increased abundance of pests.

Global urbanization results in changes in lifestyle, including higher caloric intake, poorer quality diet and relatively low physical activity, leading to obesity and chronic disease, even among the poor.  How this will link with effects of climate change is not known.

However it is clear that small shocks in supply or demand will have great effect on prices, and thus on food supply of the poor. Aggressive bioenergy projects, when applied by the political economy, can have great effect on food supplies.   Ethanol for fuel in the U. S. caused food riots in other countries, because the global price went up.

Finally, “This complex system of risks can assume a variety of of patterns that could potentially collide in catastrophic combinations.”  This author’s conclusion is that food supply can be handled as large scale management concern, or simply left to see who can make the most money from it, the latter being the most likely outcome at this point.

Farm Field Testing

“WV Host Farms” Concerns Include Fracking Impacts

Commentary from Diane Pitcock, West Virginia Host Farms, May 10, 2013

In rural communities in WV, we have many small farms that rely on Farmers Markets to sell their produce for supplemental income. And we also have “Mountain State Naturals” – which is a “WV Beef Farmers’ Cooperative” that markets their beef as raised without using growth hormones.

On their website: “Our cattle are raised in open fields with continual access to pasture. They are never fed growth hormones of any kind and have never been given antibiotics. Our young West Virginia beef are raised to about 1100 pounds and receive corn supplements as they reach finished weight. Because our West Virginia beef are primarily fed grass, they are higher in Omega-3 fatty acids, which are shown to reduce or prevent cardiac disease.”

But what now raises a concern is the fact that these pasture fed cattle are being raised for the entry into the food market in areas of WV where there is significant Marcellus shale gas drilling in these counties and on properties having oil and gas wells on or very near them.

What kind of risk will this have if the cattle are grazing in meadows and drinking from streams right next to drilling sites? They may be at risk of contamination from the hundreds of thousands of gallons of toxic chemicals that are being injected down into gas wells to frack in meadows where these cattle live? Spills and leakage are of great concern. Migration from cracks and faults can occur. Is anyone studying this? They should be!

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Organic Farmers Struggle to Protect Their Land from Fracking Impacts

From an Article in EcoWatch, April 1, 2013

In Pennsylvania, organic farmers fear the entire process of shale gas drilling—from the building of the well pads through the hydraulic fracturing process to the disposal of fracking wastewater—threatening their ability to produce products that conformed to organic standards.

An 88-acre organic pork and poultry farm is less than 4,000 feet from a drilling site operated by Shell. The battle with the shale gas industry is featured in the latest installment of Gas Rush Stories, a documentary film project on shale gas drilling.

“I just don’t understand how [the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection] granted them [Shell] permits to drill in this area,” Maggie Henry said in the film. According to Gas Rush Stories, old abandoned and unplugged oil and gas wells can provide a pathway for methane and other pollutants to seep to the surface and into aquifers. Pennsylvania currently does not have any laws preventing companies from drilling a shale gas well within a certain distance of an unplugged well.

If the shale gas industry were to spill chemicals or fracking wastewater on his land, Stephen Cleghorn said he would immediately call Pennsylvania Certified Organic, a U.S. Department of Agriculture-accredited organic certifying agency, and have their officials take soil samples at his farm. “If my soil has been contaminated,” he explained, “I want you to decertify it because I’m not going to grow anything on it and call it organic anymore.”

Jill Kriesky, associate director of the Southwest Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project, said the issue of shale gas drilling on farmland raises many questions, all the way down the supply chain. “Should grocery stores come up with some sort of policy of testing the food that comes in?” Kriesky asks.

Southwest Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project is a nonprofit environmental health organization created to assist and support residents in the region who believe their health has been, or could be, impacted by natural gas drilling activities.

Without more research into the impact on food production and without greater transparency by the industry and the government, it would be difficult to track the issues related to food consumption. Referring to Cleghorn and Henry, Kriesky said it is clear that there are responsible farmers who do not want to sell any product that is potentially contaminated. “But we really are not completely clear on what to look for” in terms of contamination when the food makes its way to farmers’ markets, grocery stores and restaurants, she explained.

David Brown, a toxicologist at Southwest Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project, has never studied anything as inescapable as shale gas drilling in his 50 years as a toxicologist. “He’s worked on Superfund sites for all sorts of really horrible environmental disasters. But they were contained,” Kriesky said. “There’s no fence line here. You can’t put a fence around what’s happening” in the communities affected by the shale gas rush, she said.

Visit EcoWatch’s FRACKING page for more related news.