Even as extreme drought wreaks havoc on crops and communities across the Midwest, government officials are now confident that they can link recent bouts of extreme weather to man-made climate change. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration underscored that point in early July when it released research conducted by 378 scientists from 48 countries that “provides a detailed update on global climate indicators, notable weather events and other data collected by environmental monitoring stations and instruments on land, sea, ice and sky.”

Deputy NOAA Administrator Kathryn D. Sullivan Ph.D. summed it up this way:

Every weather event that happens now takes place in the context of a changing global environment.

Just a day after NOAA released its findings, in coordination with the American Meteorological Society, Reuters’ Chuck Abbott reported on the Department of Agriculture’s dire forecast for this year’s corn crop:

The worst Midwest drought in a quarter century is doing more damage to U.S. crops than previously expected, with the government on Wednesday slashing its estimate for what was supposed to be a record harvest.

Climate change affects agriculture more directly and profoundly than most other economic sectors. The Washington Post’s Brad Plumer has pointed out that while it’s hard to pinpoint climate change by itself as the cause of any particular drought, it’s certainly a big factor in how severe it gets. Meanwhile the danger from climate change-fueled droughts will only increase as America dithers about and polluting special interests continually block solutions.

The Dangerously Counterproductive Industrial Agriculture Lobby

It’s a sad irony to recall that three short years ago, the industrial agriculture lobby and its patrons in Congress helped scuttle the nation’s first attempt at serious climate legislation — the cap-and-trade proposal titled the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009.

The American Farm Bureau Federation, the largest agriculture lobby, vehemently opposed the bill. It went so far to as to embark on a public relations campaign called “Don’t Cap My Future.” Federation President Bob Stallman said then:

At the very time we need to increase our food production, climate change legislation threatens to slash our ability to do so. The world will continue to depend on food from the United States. To throttle back our ability to produce food — at a time when the United Nations projects billions of more mouths to feed — is a moral failure.

The corn lobby fell right in line with the Farm Bureau in opposing meaningful climate legislation. Mark Lambert, a spokesman for the National Corn Growers Association, wrote:

They ought to call it the economic change bill. Greenhouse gases may get cut but so will jobs and economic growth. Moving too far, too fast on something this sweeping seems to be asking to kill any resurgence in the U.S. economy in the wake of the banking debacle. Isn’t this the same as walking around with a sign that says “kick me” on your backside?

The argument that the bill would cost farmers big money was debunked in an Environmental Working Group report titled “Crying Wolf.”  EWG Senior Vice-President Craig Cox made clear that the claims were absurdly exaggerated:

The costs of legislation to protect farmers against crippling drought, volatile weather and increased pest and disease outbreaks are so small that they would be lost in the background noise caused by annual swings in farm income from yield variation, crop prices and the cost of seed and chemicals.

At the Center for American Progress, Tom Kenworthy also took issue with the Farm Bureau’s campaign, offering a common sense appraisal of farmers’ options:

Rather than engaging in a cheap hat trick, farmers and those purporting to advocate on their behalf should look at three key issues regarding energy and climate legislation: the cost of doing nothing, the modest cost of doing something, and the very real economic benefits the Senate and House legislation can bring to farmers and rural America.

Three years later, it is blindingly clear that what’s crippling America’s ability to grow crops is not climate change legislation but the consequences of climate change itself – in the form of massive floods and severe drought. The self-proclaimed “Voice of American Agriculture” still doesn’t get it. Progressive Farmer editor Chris Clayton, the only agriculture trade reporter paying serious attention to climate change, wrote this account of a presentation by James Taylor, a senior fellow of environmental policy for the Heartland Institute, at an Farm Bureau convention earlier this year:

Essentially, every important crop that American agriculture produces has set records over the past few years. And again, this is not some sort of aberration. This is a long-term production trend going back decades … Even if we were to accept the assertion that global warming was a problem, it is not an inhibiting problem.

Further, Taylor argued, increased precipitation is occurring in what would normally be summer and fall drought seasons, not the spring or fall.

“So what we’re seeing in agriculture is global warming is happening – in a modest manner,” he said. “It’s happening in a manner that is conducive to crop production.”

I defy anyone to claim that what’s occurring across the Corn Belt today is “conducive to crop production.”

Crop or Climate Insurance?

Maybe one reason the farm lobby is so comfortable ignoring climate change is that farmers, unlike other businesses, have a government-funded insurance program that bails them out when they lose crops to drought or floods. The heavily subsidized program — taxpayers pick up two-thirds of the premiums for policy holders — paid out $1 billion a month in 2011 to help Texas farmers hit by a drought that NOAA says was due to man-made climate change. Taxpayers, not crop insurance companies, got the bill for most of those losses.

This year’s record-breaking drought is compelling evidence that farmers need a basic safety net that helps them survive a bad year. It also puts in stark relief why our food and farm system desperately needs a long-term policy focused on fighting climate change – a federal initiative that pays special attention to helping farmers become more resilient to increasingly volatile weather and a warming atmosphere.

Crop insurance was a workable safety net until 2000, when Congress voted to make major changes in how the program works. The Agricultural Risk Protection Act that year doubled the share of premiums paid by taxpayers and jump-started a new variant of crop insurance that guarantees a farmer will get most of his or her expected income no matter what happens on the farm.

The same lobby that worked so hard to spike climate change legislation now benefits from a budget-busting program that insures that some farmers will make more money in insurance payoffs than they would have if there were no drought at all. Bloated insurance subsidies also mean that some farmers can turn a profit by plowing up and cultivating poor and environmentally sensitive land on an industrial scale – pumping more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

Despite all this, crop insurance in its current form has no conservation or climate requirements.

The Farm Bill as a Climate Solution

The farm bill could do a lot to armor farmers against the dangerous consequences of climate change. Instead, as I wrote at the beginning of this year, the cuts to conservation programs in the Senate farm bill would result in releasing greenhouse gases equivalent to the annual emissions of 2 million passenger vehicles. The currently stalled House version would do the same.

It’s hard to believe that cutting conservation this way makes sense to any one.

Since the 2012 farm bill’s authors intend to shift federal farm support into subsidized crop insurance, the commonsense approach would be to require farmers to implement basic conservation measures in exchange for these generous, taxpayer-funded subsidies. A farm bill with simple conservation compliance requirements would help reduce greenhouse gas emissions, rather than driving them up.

The farm bill could also do much more to help farmers transition to climate-friendly practices such as organic production that produces more resilient crops. Mother Jones’ Tom Philpott recently explored the research that shows how organic varieties cope better with drought conditions.

But don’t hold your breath. Rep. Collin Peterson (D-Minn.), ranking member of the House Agriculture Committee and one of industrial agriculture’s biggest boosters (and a leading recipient of its campaign spending), did his best three years ago to make trouble for the climate bill. When questioned about his stand by The Wall Street Journal, Peterson sounded like a cheerleader for global warming:

After the administration released a report last week by government scientists warning of increased heat, pests, water shortages, disease and other impacts of climate change on crop and livestock production, Mr. Peterson laughed and said farmers in his district would welcome warmer temperatures after a recent cold spell.

“They’re going to be able to grow more corn,” he said.

Peterson is one of the architects of the worst farm bill in recent memory, a bill so deeply flawed that it has been abandoned for now by the House. In yet another short sighted blow to addressing climate change, Congress is considering a disaster aid package for drought-stricken producers to be funded by cutting green house gas sequestering conservation programs.

The farm lobby is fine with the high cost of climate change as long as it’s the taxpayers — as usual — who bear the brunt of the costs – in the form of taxpayer-subsidized crop insurance. Grist’s Tom Laskaway clearly outlined the hazardous feedback loop that this one-sided approach produces.

Taxpayers who want a more secure and resilient food supply, along with farmers weary of devastating weather events year-after-year, need to stand up against the industrial agriculture lobby and start fighting for workable solutions to climate change.

As a possible 2012 Farm Bill looms, the ag committee leaders and their industrial agriculture lobby remoras are sorting through the smoking ruins of the 2011 “Secret Farm Bill” process. They hope to come up with a unified position from which to begin deliberations on a new bill. Sadly, one thing they’ve all agreed to cut is 7 million acres from the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP). The CRP is administered through the U.S. Department of Agriculture and pays farmers to keep highly erodible land out of production.

While many recognize that putting land into conservation programs leads to cleaner water, healthier soil, and robust wildlife habitat, few realize that CRP land also plays a major role in fighting climate change. According to the USDA [PDF], one acre of protected land sequesters 1.66 metric tons of carbon every year, carbon that would otherwise end up in the atmosphere. The 7 million acres about to be cut from the CRP have been putting 11.6 million metric tons of carbon into the soil every year.

The Environmental Protection Agency says that this amount of carbon is equivalent to the annual emissions of 2 million passenger vehicles. All that stored carbon will be sent back into the atmosphere if those 7 million acres are plowed under to plant more industrial-scale corn for ethanol and livestock feed.

A recent poll [PDF] conducted by Iowa State University Extension and Outreach found that 68 percent of Iowa farmers surveyed say climate change is occurring; many of those same farmers likely experienced the devastating weather events of the past few years. So you’d think that there would be a clarion call from agriculture to have the federal government do whatever it takes to protect farmers against the ravages of climate change. Instead, taxpayers have to pick up the rapidly increasing insurance tab after climate-related disaster strikes.

And had industrial agriculture lobbyists not helped scuttle climate change legislation, farmers would be collecting payments today via carbon credits for their conservation practices.

The main impetus for cutting conservation acres is the mad rush to plant every available inch of ground — whether it’s highly erodible land or a golf course — to capture the high prices for corn propped up by Washington’s misguided corn ethanol mandate.

Speaking of corn ethanol, the industry and its lobbyists should be gravely concerned about the carbon emissions released by plowing under CRP land. Political support for corn ethanol — which has been slipping — depends in part on whether it is better for the environment than gasoline. Most believe that corn ethanol currently is no better, emissions-wise, than gasoline.

America’s water, soil, and wildlife habitat have never been under greater assault from the ravages of modern industrial agriculture. And since industrial crop production is exempt from most federal regulations, farm bill conservation programs like the CRP are often our only line of defense against erosion and water contamination by toxic agrichemicals. Conservation is the rare investment in agriculture that pays every taxpayer a positive return.

Meanwhile lavish government payments to highly profitable mega-farms continue. Astonishingly in this tea-flavored budget environment, farm state lawmakers and agribiz lobbyists are working toward newer programs that could increase taxpayers’ burden. Farm income has been white-hot for a decade and shows no sign of diminishing. But if you quiz industrial ag lobbyists about why agribusiness subsidies should be spared the budget axe while conservation gets whacked, they’ll tell you farm bills are written for the bad times, not the good times.

Well, it’s pretty obvious these are the bad times for conservation.

The conservation community needs to fight back hard against these proposed cuts. Environmental Working Group President Ken Cook said it best:

No conservationist worthy of the name should accept legislation that cuts another $6-plus billion from the farm bill’s programs to protect land, water and wildlife. Nor should conservationists accept subsidy programs that give incentives to farmers who drain wetlands, plow up prairies or recklessly increase already severe runoff pollution from farm fields.

And if the climate change community can engage the debate on the 2012 Farm Bill with the same intensity it used to postpone the Keystone pipeline, we may just have a conservation battle we can win this time around.

Midwest farmland is more scarred and eroded then previous reports suggested.Photo: Environmental Working Group

That’s the alarming finding of a new Environmental Working Group report that highlights innovative research by scientists at Iowa State University (ISU). The report is titled “Losing Ground,” and it shows in stark terms what industrial-scale crop production is doing to our soil and water in the Corn Belt.

In researching “Losing Ground,” the Environmental Working Group (EWG) filmed Iowa farmland from the air to show graphically how recent rainstorms washed away tons of soil. Working with Atlas Films, EWG produced a short video that provides stark images illustrating how federal farm subsidies and ethanol mandates, piled on top of skyrocketing crop prices, are supporting an intensive monoculture that kneecaps any hope for a more resilient and diverse food and farm system. EWG’s flights found numerous Corn Belt fields scarred by ephemeral gullies that funnel soil and toxic farm chemicals into streams and rivers before they’re plowed over again — causing damage that is not accounted for in official or even ISU’s estimates of soil erosion and runoff.

The report should be a wake-up call for policymakers and stakeholders who have been under the mistaken assumption that when it comes to soil loss, everything is more or less fine. In April 2010, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) issued a report concluding that soil erosion across Iowa, and the Corn Belt as a whole, is on average comfortably lower than the so-called “sustainable rate.” But the more precise look provided by the ISU data shows that these statewide or regional estimates mask the serious damage that larger storms cause.

By tracking erosion after every storm over a period of years, the researchers showed that some Iowa farms are losing precious topsoil up to 12 times faster than the government estimates. When storms hit vulnerable or poorly protected soil, fields sometimes lose more soil in a single day than is considered sustainable for the whole year, or even decades.

And we can’t just blame the weather. Farmers are planting fencerow to fencerow in response to high crop prices that are likely here to stay. Misguided mandates for increased corn ethanol production add fuel to the fire, and flawed government farm and insurance subsidies clear the way for all-out production — with little regard for what happens to the soil, water, and wildlife habitat.

“Losing Ground” is bad news for many reasons — the foremost being that we are sacrificing the nation’s future ability to grow food in the name of protecting today’s profits for Big Ag. Worse, federal erosion measurements are misinterpreted by industrial agriculture and its lobbyists to provide political cover to continue doing subsidized business as usual while our soil and water pay the price.

The American Farm Bureau Federation, one of the largest and most powerful groups that lobby on behalf of agribusiness, pounced on the USDA’s estimates the moment they were released in 2010:

Today’s farmers and ranchers grow more food with fewer resources. Conservation tillage is up and soil erosion is declining. As farmers and ranchers, we know this based on our experience. Now, a new report confirms this has occurred nationwide.

The 2010 National Resources Inventory (NRI) recently released by the Agriculture Department’s Natural Resources Conservation Service shows that farmers and ranchers are careful and caring stewards of our nation’s natural resources. The massive report, coupled with the latest USDA productivity figures, confirms the shrinking environmental footprint of our efforts to produce food and fiber in the United States. This is good news that should not go unreported

Bob Stallman
President, American Farm Bureau, June 2010

The National Corn Growers Association was quick to join the chorus, happy to use the data to bolster a million-dollar PR campaign.

The latest data basically gives farmer documentation for what we already knew … growers are doing more with less; less land, less water, less crop inputs from pesticides to fertilizer, and all the while getting gonzo increases in productivity of crops like corn.

This was the very reason corn growers created the Corn Farmers Coalition (CFC) last year; to bridge the large gap between what consumers don’t know or think they know and the reality of modern, innovative farming. In the case of CFC the idea was to start small by educating decision leaders in Washington, DC because of the enormous impact Congress and other federal agencies can have on farmers either legislatively or through regulation.

Now NRCS gives us a well-deserved “A” on our environmental report card. This is a story worth telling, especially given the misleading information being spewed by some agenda driven groups. So, look for opportunities to speak up for your farm; Do it locally, tell your story online through social media, tell your elected officials. We all have a vested interest in getting this right.

The Farm Bureau and the corn growers would like members of Congress and their constituents to believe that everything is fine with the soil and water in the Midwest, with good reason: Awareness that agribusiness practices are wreaking environmental havoc would erode taxpayer willingness to continue subsidizing these practices and would invite calls for regulation of an industry that largely escapes government oversight.

For instance, non-point-source pollution — nitrates and phosphates from fertilizers slathered on farm fields to squeeze out every possible bushel — is subject to no regulation at all under the Clean Water Act. Excessive pesticide spraying over water sources is enforced by nothing more than a label on the pesticide container, and water utilities must bear most of the work and expense of removing toxic farm chemicals and other pollutants from tap water.

Still, there is good news in “Losing Ground.” The report reminds us that common sense and traditional conservation practices work. As much as 97 percent of soil loss is preventable by simple measures like planting strips of grass or trees on the edges of crop fields and along streams and the contours of hills. These practices also help limit the damage from chemicals that run off fields and into water sources. Our aerial survey revealed that some, but not nearly enough, farmers are using these and other practices to protect our soil and water. These conservation-mined farmers are living proof that profitable farming doesn’t have to come at the expense of our natural resources.

Unfortunately, however, most of the federal conservation programs that help farmers implement these practices are slated to lose funding — what looks like a $356 million cut from last year — in the current frenzy of budget cutting. And this isn’t their first visit to the chopping block. State programs aren’t faring any better.

Moreover, these programs have never been robust enough to compete with the pressure that subsidies and incentives put on America’s soil and water. Between 1997 and 2009, the government paid Corn Belt farmers $51.2 billion in subsidies to spur production, but just $7 billion to implement conservation practices. The $18.9 billion spent to subsidize the corn ethanol industry rubs salt in the wound.

Farmers love these conservation programs but are being turned away in droves for lack of funds. Commodity groups and Big Ag lobbyists are already circling the wagons to fight any cuts in traditional subsidies. They would be wise to not let the public’s benefit from agriculture program spending — improved water and soil quality from conservation programs — evaporate or any rationale for public support for commodity subsidies and propping up crop insurance will disappear along with it.

What’s needed is full and aggressive enforcement of provisions in the 1985 farm bill that require farmers who accept subsidies to use soil conservation measures on the most vulnerable cropland. But the reality, according to official reports and anecdotal evidence, is that “conservation compliance” enforcement has waned, putting at risk the real soil conservation gains that were made between 1985 and 1995.

The best part about pushing for full enforcement of conservation compliance in an era of extreme political gridlock — it’s already on the books. And if conservation compliance is properly enforced, violators should have their federal subsides revoked — a savings that goes back to the taxpayer. Conservation compliance is one way to level a playing field that currently puts conservation-minded landowners at a disadvantage.

Farmers need a safety net, but so do our soil and water.

Laurie David delivers inconvenient truths on the food system at TEDx Manhattan.Photo: Jason Houston, via Flicker

Since Time’s Bryan Walsh offered a comprehensive write-up of the day’s highlights here and here, I’m focusing my coverage on conversations I had with attendees and speakers as they came off the stage. Much of the offstage discussion centered on the looming farm bill, the critical legislation that guides and funds federal food policy.

TEDx, an offshoot of the “ideas worth spreading” TED conferences, describes itself as “a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group.”

Laurie David

After winning an Oscar for co-producing An Inconvenient Truth, Laurie David enlisted more than 50 child-care experts, writers, celebrities, activists, musicians and chefs – including Michael Pollan and Alice Waters – to contribute to her new book on the importance of The Family Dinner.

After leading off the discussion with an account of how she rediscovered the simple but critical act of having a family meal, she went into detail about its environmental benefits.

“Since the kitchen is the greenest room in the house, all these environmental issues … cross the dinner plate, including climate change. The dinner is as much about the conversation as it is about the food.”

Off-stage,fter watching Environmental Working Group President Ken Cook’s presentation on the farm bill, David told me:

“I think the government should be using taxpayer dollars to provide a real safety net for farmers and to help them be better environmental stewards.  We should be shifting our farm bill dollars to reward farmers for preserving water resources, reducing chemical use and curbing the pollution that causes climate change.”

Miriam Latzer

Miriam Latzer, owner and operator Loose Caboose Farm in Clermont, N.Y., came to TEDx armed with specific ideas and policy recommendations for the 2012 farm bill and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

“Having more control over our supply chain is critical. When there was a farm on every road it wasn’t that hard to get supplies. So conceptually in the Hudson Valley you have a bunch of small farmers in an area, but we’re often trucking supplies from hundred or thousands of miles – local manufacturing or even a well-run warehouse would make a huge difference. When you’re small, you’re not getting the bulk discount.”

“Education for the next wave of farmers is critical. Land grant universities have very a conventional focus, with funding coming from the federal government and agribusiness – if we could have more funds for organic field research and studies that would look at, say, different varieties of tomatoes that can withstand blight, there’s no telling what smaller and organic-focused farms could accomplish. But these land grant universities are focused on churning out large-scale, conventional-growing-minded farmers.”

“And a single-payer insurance plan would help every small business in America, regardless,” Miriam said with a weary laugh.

Dave Ring

“I came to TEDx basically to connect with other people and a national audience that is working toward making change in our food system and to find partners to work on the issue at a national level, ” said Dave Ring, organic farmer and owner of Farm Stand in Muncie, Ind. Farm Stand is an organic grocery store and eatery that buys from from local organic farms.

“I picked up some good pointers from the presentations and view this TEDx event as an important first step.  Made a lot of connections and events like this need to happen more around the country.  It’s good to get out and experience new perspectives.  I am resolved to work on the national issue of the farm bill at the local level.”

On that note, I asked Dave if he would ever consider attending an event like the annual industrial grain expo – Commodity Classic.

“I would be open to it. I like to talk to people form all different walks, and I like to spread information and share ideas, but I’d want some of the agenda to be relevant to me.”

Josh Viertel

During his presentation, Josh Viertel, president and founder of Slow Food USA, gave a glimpse of how his powerhouse grassroots group plans to be a major player in the upcoming farm bill debate by showing a YouTube clip of him asking President Obama why it’s cheaper to feed kids Fruit Loops than actual fruit.   

Offstage, Veirtel talked about the upcoming legislative battle.

“This fight is important simply because most subsidies support the food that is bad for us and not the food that is good for us.”

When asked which US Department of Agriculture program is the most beneficial, he said, “It’s small now in terms of funding, but the farm-to-school program is fantastic.”

And the worst USDA program? “USDA’s habit of buying up industrial food that we heavily subsidize and then feeding it back to kids in schools,” Viertel replied.

David Murphy

David Murphy, founder and director of Food Democracy Now in Clear Lake, Iowa – a grassroots community dedicated to building a sustainable food system that protects the natural environment, sustains farmers and nourishes families – had this take:

“It was inspiring that this TEDx event spent an entire day talking about food and agriculture, since many of the problems facing us as a nation and globally will only be solved by reforming food and agricultural production.”

“From improving poorly allocated farm subsidies to school lunches, the answers to major problems such as climate change, hunger, obesity and proper resource management can be found in our fields and urban gardens, from Iowa to Manhattan to India and beyond.”

Round and round they go, when such conspicuous energy waste will stop, nobody knows. Photo: Amplified-Photography

Like the ethanol industry, NASCAR is struggling, USA Today reports, and chasing “green” dollars looks like a crowd pleaser:

NASCAR has put an emphasis on recycling (all tires, oils, fluids and batteries used in competition are recycled, and sponsors have helped expand programs in campgrounds) and achieved LEED certification for new office buildings in Charlotte and Daytona Beach.

But the switch to ethanol might be the most important step in achieving an ancillary benefit — attracting new sponsors in the green economy to cash-strapped teams hurting for funding since the onset of the recession.

The only thing green in this deal is the money changing hands.

NASCAR CEO and Chairman Brian France was vague about NASCAR’s environmental motivations for embracing ethanol. The move would reduce the carbon footprint of a race, he said.

How, exactly? “We’re not exactly certain, but there is a benefit,” he told USA Today.

Here at the Environmental Working Group, we are certain that using corn ethanol as an alternative to gasoline is hardly a sustainable solution to our energy needs. We know that between 2005 and 2009, U.S. taxpayers spent $17 billion to subsidize corn ethanol blends in gasoline, an outlay that produced a paltry reduction in overall oil consumption equal to a 1.1 mile-per-gallon increase in fleetwide fuel economy.

We’re sure that corn ethanol production pollutes fresh-water sources in the Midwest. We know that there are serious concerns about ethanol plants and their impact on the environment. We know corn production for ethanol expands the dead zone in the Gulf. We also know it has led to obliteration of wildlife habitat.

NASCAR might want to ask its fans whether they’d rather watch races or be able to fish in clean water or hunt in abundant habitat.

It gets worse. According to this news release, all the ethanol supplied by NASCAR sponsor Sunoco will be produced by a plant in Fulton, N.Y., and blended with gasoline at another facility in Marcus Hooks, Pa. Which means that the fuel powering NASCAR’s racers will have to be shipped by truck to far-flung racetracks all over the country.

The result will be multiple ethanol tank trucks traveling to multiple tracks almost every week of the year. Will these huge semis be burning soy biodiesel? Doubtful.

The “green” benefit of burning thousands of gallons of diesel to haul a fuel with dubious environmental benefits to a location where hundreds of cars and trucks drive furiously around in circles, combined with the energy it takes to grow and haul the corn around in the first place is … less than zero.

If America is truly going to wean itself off its addiction to oil and fight the specter of climate change, then conservation and efficiency must be part of the solution. Promoting excessive consumption of greenhouse gas-belching fuels is a blatantly hypocritical admission that corn ethanol is about getting people to burn more corn ethanol, and not about protecting the environment.

Photo courtesy of Overduebook via Flickr

Hold on: Make that “corn sugar.” With consumers souring on HFCS, the Corn Refiners Association has embarked on a re-branding effort, as Tom Laskawy mocked, to prop up the lagging sales of the calorie-laden sweetener that’s found in nearly all cheap processed foods.

Many of the factors that contribute to the nation’s broken food and farm system, like perverse subsidies for commodity grain growers, were exposed in a September 5 Denver Post article. In “Spoiled system: Eating healthier comes with a price for families,” reporter Karen Auge explored the factors that make fresh fruits and vegetables costlier than highly subsidized and less healthy foods based on corn and soy:

The reasons fresh fruits and vegetables are so pricey compared with processed food in a carton are a complicated stew of government subsidies, politics and the whims of Mother Nature.

But their combined might, say critics pushing for a change in the way money is doled out, moves us away from fruits and vegetables and toward meat, dairy products and the sugar- and sodium-loaded processed foods for which crops like corn and wheat serve as the raw ingredients.

“We’ve made the unhealthy choice the rational choice,” said Merrick Weaver, who, as executive director of Partnership for Healthy Communities, works to improve nutrition among lower-income families in Commerce City [Colo.].

Weaver was echoing Michael Pollan, whose book The Omnivore’s Dilemma has become a manifesto for those trying to shift discussion about the country’s obesity epidemic to include the food-production infrastructure.

In short, “You can buy more calories for your dollar if you buy bad foods,” Weaver said.

There is no denying that America faces a health crisis with its simultaneous obesity and hunger epidemics. And right now is an especially good time to confront the issue. The law that guides federal food and agriculture policy — the Farm Bill — comes up for debate again in 2012, and deliberations have already begun. The corn refiners’ push to re-brand corn syrup is a clear response to the growing awareness among consumers not only of the environmental perils of modern industrial agriculture, but the heavy toll of our current food and farm system on the health of families and kids.

If the death grip that agribusiness and its powerful lobby have had on the food and farm status quo is to be loosened, subsidy-friendly members of Congress must hear from people who want a system that serves them and their families.

One important thing for consumers to note is that in 2009, $15.4 billion in subsidies were lavished on the growers of corn, cotton, rice, wheat, and soybeans. In that same year, fruits, vegetables, and organics received only $825 million in support from the federal government. And that money doesn’t go directly into fruit and vegetable growers’ pockets, but mostly goes toward procurement for schools, research and market promotion programs.

We can agree with the subsidy lobby that eliminating the billions in grain subsidies tomorrow wouldn’t make much of a dent in the widespread availability of cheap chips and soda. What our maze of farm and risk management subsidies do is facilitate a highly risky agricultural business model that makes our industrial food system overly dependent on one or two grain crops.

In the end, these subsidies are not about producing food at all. They are about taking the financial risk out of a system that encourages fencerow-to-fencerow production of raw material for highly processed food — with deleterious effects on the environment and human health.

A slick re-branding campaign for high-fructose corn syrup can’t obscure the reality that the commodity growers trot out contradictory messages as they fight to keep the subsidy spigot open: When crop subsidies are criticized for lavishing the bulk of their largesse on the largest and wealthiest farm operations, taxpayers are told by the agri-lobby that those payments are critical to preserving the cheapest and most abundant food supply in the world. But when they’re challenged with the reality that subsidized corn, soybeans, and wheat dump a glut of cheap, unhealthy calories on the market, agribusiness objects that “it’s desperately a myth in need of correction.”

So which is it? Do subsidies make unhealthy food cheaper, or don’t they?

The Sundance Film Festival has long been a celebrated venue for environmental documentaries, due in part to Sundance founder Robert Redford‘s green sensibilities. An Inconvenient Truth, The Cove, and Who Killed the Electric Car? all attracted critical buzz at Sundance before they made their way into theaters around the country. The festival’s 2010 lineup continues this trend with a handful of well-crafted, compelling films that address crucial environmental themes not yet in the public consciousness.

Gasland

Avant garde filmmaker Josh Fox grew up in Pennsylvania on a pastoral stretch of the Delaware River, which happens to sit on the natural gas-rich Marcellus shale formation. When he got a $100,000 offer to lease his property for natural-gas exploration, Fox felt compelled to chronicle the impact that the natural gas-extraction process known as hydraulic fracturing has had on the American landscape. 

Gasland begins by deftly explaining the complicated practice of hydrofracking, which involves injecting toxic chemicals into the ground — often not far from drinking-water sources — to force natural gas to the surface. This allows the film’s central theme to emerge: that average Americans are under siege from toxic water and air contamination while cavalier energy executives brush aside their concerns.

With his untraditional filmmaking background, Fox elevates the often-dry conventions of environmental documentaries into a persuasive, mood-driven piece. But this is no art film. Fox travels across 25 states, including the drill-punctured lands of Colorado and Texas, to document the debilitating health effects endured by people who have had the misfortune of living near natural-gas wells.

Gasland‘s subjects aren’t crunchy types ensconced in eco-conscious enclaves like Boulder. Most are rural families and ranchers who could easily have cast a McCain vote in the last election. Yet they seethe at an unsympathetic natural-gas industry that clings to the eroding notion that its product is safe and environmentally friendly, and that fights tooth and nail to protect its Bush-era exemption from the Safe Drinking Water Act.

And then there’s the flammable tap water. In one home after another, Fox and his subjects put lighters to faucets to show how sloppy drilling has let gas leak directly into drinking water. The pyrotechnic parlor trick is good cinema; combined with images of endless parades of heavy trucks to and from drill sites, it makes the visually quantifiable point that the natural-gas industry has engaged in a rabid, decade-long expansion without much thought to the consequences.

Fox is hopeful that a distribution deal is imminent for Gasland. Robert Koehler’s swooning review in Variety — which says Gasland is so “potent” that it could be the rare film that forces social change — could help make studio distribution a reality. At Monday night’s screening at Sundance, Fox was greeted by a roaring crowd and choked-up audience members during the Q&A session. If that’s any indication, the future of Gasland is as bright as flaming tap water. 

See the flammable tap water:

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Climate Refugees

Director Michael Nash’s alarming documentary, which details the impact that a billion humans displaced by climate change will have on global security, should goose even the most fervent climate deniers into reconsidering their positions. Nash uses lush cinematography and first-person accounts to chronicle hellish experiences of displacement caused by increasingly severe weather-related events like the ones expected to be triggered by global warming. 

Climate Refugees begins with the tiny sliver of Polynesian islands that make up the country of Tuvalu. Tuvalu is expected to be the first sovereign nation to become a casualty of rising sea levels. This raises a central question of the film: What happens to the political identity of people when their country no longer exists? In a world of tightly controlled national borders, climate refugees have many more barriers to relocation than political refugees.

And what will happen when larger groups, in the hundreds of thousands or even millions, are displaced and have no country in which to relocate? Will they pour over borders and destabilize already shaky governments in Asia and the South Pacific? 

When the film pivots from the recent Bangladesh cyclone to the U.S. disasters of Hurricanes Katrina and Ike, it makes the point that America is also in deep danger from displaced refugees. Crime rates have spiked in towns and cities where Katrina survivors relocated. Viewed in the context of tens of millions of refugees potentially rushing our border from the South, our current immigration problems seem trivial.

The film alternates between heart-wrenching accounts of survivors of climate disasters all over the globe and interviews with leading environmental experts such as Lester Brown. Political leaders like Sen. John Kerry and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich also provide insight and commentary, with Gingrich saying he became concerned about climate change in part because the U.S. military has warned that the phenomenon threatens to become a serious destabilizing force around the world.

Climate Refugees doesn’t address the causes of climate change, opting not to get bogged down in that distracting debate. But Nash makes a frightening point near the end of the film. If climate change is human-made, we have a chance to head off the global threat of climate refugees. If it’s naturally occurring, we’re screwed.

Watch the trailer:

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Born Sweet

Oscar winner Cynthia Wade’s short film Born Sweet follows Vinh Voeurn, a 15-year-old Cambodian boy suffering from arsenic poisoning. Arsenic occurs naturally in Cambodia’s volcanic soil and has been poisoning Vinh’s village water supply for years, recently causing the death of a young neighbor girl. The arsenic is permanently in Vinh’s system, leaving him anemic and with ugly dark spots on his body. Yet in this moving but hopeful short, Vinh comes to terms with his illness and potential mortality, all while nursing the normal teenage hope of meeting a girl.

In Vinh’s village, the main source of entertainment is singing along with Cambodian karaoke music videos, and Vinh dreams of escaping his desperate future with a career as a karaoke performer. When aid workers connect Vinh with karaoke video producers in order to make an arsenic PSA, his life changes in a way he and his family could never have imagined.

Watch the trailer.

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And two more worth a mention: Mark Lewis introduced a 3-D update of his 1988 comedy/documentary about the misguided introduction of amphibians into Australia, called Cane Toads: The Conquest. And Wasteland, a film by Lucy Walker, shows how Brazilian artists use found objects, in this case from vast garbage landfills, to make inspired creations.