Taylor’s grandmother, Lola Hampton, was a sharecropper who, in the 1940s, had the opportunity to buy the 32 acres she had farmed. In addition to maintaining orchards of peaches, apples, and pears, Hampton raised chickens, goats, and dairy cows—and had a mule, of course. After Hampton could no longer work the farm, the land lay fallow until Taylor and her husband Ron Gilmore took over in 2010 and developed Lola’s Organic Farm.

Today, the operation is much more than an ordinary farm; it’s become a mecca for small organic farmers, hosting workshops and farm tours throughout the year. In her work as a farmer, educator, and advocate, Taylor promotes best organic practices, following the principles of sustainability laid out by the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movement (IFOAM) and encouraging healthy microbial soil through cover crops, crop rotation, and compost.

“I believe if a farmer chooses to grow good food, they should build healthy soil—that’s the key,” said Taylor. “Building a healthy [farm] environment is a good influence on neighbors. It enhances neighboring land through clean air, biodiversity, and good food.” In addition, she said, healthy soil improves “the whole community, benefiting bees and other pollinators as well as the farmers and farmworkers. It’s not a vacuum.”

In addition to managing the farm with Gilmore, Taylor works during the week as an associate professor at Florida Agricultural & Mechanical University (FAMU) in Tallahassee. There, she  coordinates Florida’s Statewide Small Farm Program, which focuses on providing education, training, and technical assistance for small farms. Rather than teaching formal classes on the FAMU campus, however, Taylor travels around Florida visiting sharing knowledge and encouraging organic methods. She returns home, three and a half hours from Tallahassee, to help her husband run the farm on weekends.

High tunnels at Lola’s Organic Farm. (Photo credit: Candace Pollock Moore / SSARE)

“Most [farm outreach] programs focus on large-scale agribusiness, leaving 80 percent of farmers [globally] underserved,” she said. In the U.S. and Florida, 90 percent of farms are small scale (although many don’t produce crops commercially). “Traditionally, many small-scale farmers—minorities, Indigenous communities, and women—are resource-poor, and outreach and extension programs often don’t reach [them],” Taylor said. These are precisely the folks Taylor focuses on through her efforts.

Her program visits farmers who invite them, she explained. “They discuss their needs, and we work together to map out a plan to enable sustainable, regenerative farming through education and available resources.”

Taylor also conducts group “capacity-building sessions.” These advertised group sessions offer information on sustainable agriculture and allow the community to see where their food comes from. During these farm-facilitated tours, the public can view the environmental benefits of healthy farming practices. “Farmers are continually learning, and we need to look at the big picture,” she said of these sessions.

Good Work Recognized

Her approach to helping farmers build their soil and improve their environments has earned Taylor a host of accolades, including the 2019 Organic Pioneer for Farming award from the Rodale Institute and a seat on the Institute’s board. Last month, Florida’s Commissioner of Agriculture named her Florida’s Woman of the Year in Agriculture “for her many contributions and outstanding leadership within our state’s agriculture community.”

Taylor also served on the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB), and in 2014, then Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack appointed her to serve on the Advisory Committee on Beginning Farmers and Ranchers (ACBFR).

“Jennifer impressed me because of her dedication to mentoring others who want to be organic,” said Diana Martin, director of communications for the Rodale Institute. “She spends her time off the farm advocating for small organic farmers, and she lobbies for those who can’t leave their cows in Wisconsin to come to Washington.”

A farm tour group at Lola’s Organic Farm. (Photo credit: Candace Pollock Moore / SSARE)

Martin said Taylor exemplifies the type of people Rodale tends to select for the Organic Pioneer Award, which was established to honor those who have faced the wrath of industrial agriculture.

“Early on, organic farmers faced adversity if they decided to avoid chemicals,” Martin said. “Many researchers had funding cut, so there was not enough research for solutions, and some [advocates] were even kicked out of their churches.”

Following in Her Grandmother’s Footsteps

“My family have always been farmers,” Taylor said. “Even as a child, I liked connecting to the soil, watching a plant grow. I have great memories of the farm, where we spent holidays, weekends, and a few weeks in the summer.” Gilmore had farmers in his family, too, giving them both close ties to the soil.

“Lola’s cows roamed through the woods so you couldn’t see them, but they came when she called them,” said Taylor. “Her chickens ran through the peach orchard, and that helped keep the insects down and provided manure.”

There was never a lack of food, Taylor remembered, noting that Hampton sold much of her bounty to neighbors and sent boxes loaded with fresh produce and canned goods to her family.

Photo courtesy of Rodale

“She also made pies, preserves, and canned vegetables, even meat—what we call ‘value-added’ today—so there was always food,” said Taylor. “She made soap and even made moonshine.”

Today, Taylor handles the business end of the farm, while Gilmore takes care of the day-to-day operations. They seldom use heavy equipment, but if they must use a big machine, they hire a neighbor.

The couple farm three of their 32 acres, growing strawberries, blackberries, muscadine grapes, persimmons, apples, and pomegranates, plus several varieties of kale, sweet potatoes, Asian eggplants, ginger, and turmeric. They sell their produce through a local co-op in Glenwood, as well as a community-supported agriculture (CSA) program. The portion of their land they are not farming remains woodlands.

Cover Crops and High Tunnels

Cover crops have become an integral part of Lola’s Organic Farm, providing a healthy biomass to the sandy, loamy Georgia soil. In 2013, Taylor and Gilmore received a $9,500 producer grant from Southern Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SSARE) to study cover crops’ role in building healthy soil and suppressing weeds on their farm.

Barley and hairy vetch as a cover crop in a high tunnel at Lola’s Organic Farm. (Photo credit: Candace Pollock Moore / SSARE)

Initially, the farm was plagued by Bermuda grass choking out their cash crops. The rampant turf seemed impervious to extreme weather, and it spread rapidly by above-and-below-ground runners, making it a highly obnoxious weed. Other local farmers used Roundup, burned off the grass, or used tilled the ground to get rid of the grass. But those methods leave dry, barren soil, something Gilmore didn’t want.

During the two-year grant-funded experiment, Taylor and Gilmore tested two plots, growing strictly cover crops such as iron clay cowpeas, buckwheat, and millet on one, and mechanical strategies such as bottom plowing, tilling, and weeding on the other. Their evaluation of the two weed-suppression methods found that the mechanical strategies alone left soil dry and reduced crop yield.

Meanwhile, Taylor says: “the cover crop strategy built healthy soil while suppressing weeds and increasing cash crop yields.” She is now such a fan that no cash crop on Lola’s Organic Farm gets planted without a cover crop incorporated into the soil first.

The success of cover crops in the fields led Taylor and Gilmore to try cover crops in two high tunnels they acquired through a USDA program offering financial assistance to farmers to extend the growing season.

“Tunnels allow a longer growing season, and we can work them during bad weather,” said Taylor.

In one tunnel, Gilmore planted hairy vetch and barley to fix nitrogen, and in the second, iron clay peas to build soil organic matter and resist root-knot nematode. The second season, he and Taylor planted yellow mustard to build organic matter and control soil-borne pathogens—a practice called biofumigation. Taylor said in addition to fixing nitrogen, barley also absorbs heavy metals such as copper, cadmium, and zinc, as well as salt, which can accumulate to toxic levels in high tunnels.

“They’ve done a great thing by taking cover crops into high tunnels for row crops,” said Candace Pollock Moore, Southern SARE program coordinator at the University of Georgia at Griffin. “SSARE grants allow farmers to see how well an idea worked on the farm … There’s as much value in learning what didn’t work.”

Advocating on Capitol Hill

In addition to her hands-on work with small, organic farms, Taylor also finds time for trips to Washington to advocate for her industry. Last year, representing the Organic Farmer’s Association (OFA), she went to the Hill with Rodale’s Diana Martin to secure increased funding in the farm bill for organic research.

“We were successful in raising research funding from $20 to $50 million,” said Martin. “We also protected the Organic Certification Cost Sharing Program, which reimburses up to 75 percent of  certifications costs, which are often a barrier to small, beginning organic farmers.”

While the conventional farm lobby is large and well-funded, small organic farmers rarely have to opportunity to take time off to lobby lawmakers. Taylor’s in-person visits to congressmembers and government agencies allow them to have contact with a genuine farmer, not slick professionals. This March, she and Martin will travel to Washington again to visit NGOs and legislators.

In the meantime, Taylor plans to continue the work she and Gilmore have made Lola’s famous for: pioneering organic methods, and training and advocating for underserved farm communities across Florida and Georgia.

The post Jennifer Taylor Educates and Advocates for Underserved Small Farms in Florida appeared first on Civil Eats.

After years of seeking remedies—everything from antibiotics to GMOs to psyllid-sniffing dogs—with little success, Florida’s embattled citrus growers have discovered a new tool, thanks to the work of researchers at the University of Florida: planting cover crops amidst the orange groves. These crops, which can include legumes, brassicas, or clovers, are not grown for commerce, but instead to improve soil by adding nutrients, helping with water retention, deterring weeds and certain pests, and often attracting beneficial insects.

In the case of Florida citrus, greening affects the soil microbial community and nutrient uptake, decreasing many soil microbes important for the nitrogen cycling necessary for plants’ survival. When the psyllid attacks the trees’ roots, they can no longer absorb the water and nutrients the trees need to thrive.

Juanita Popenoe, agricultural extension agent for commercial fruit production at the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agriculture Science (UF/IFAS), is working with a few Florida growers who are using cover crops to combat citrus greening. She and her colleagues at UF/IFAS are cautiously optimistic.

“Cover crops show remarkable promise,” Popenoe says. “Right now, there’s not enough data available to recommend [cover crops] as a viable remedy for citrus greening, but it looks good.” If trees are healthy, they can still produce good fruit even if they have HLB, she added.

Danielle Treadwell agrees. A UF/IFAS advisor, Treadwell has done landmark studies on cover crops, testing a variety of these plants for use with citrus. Treadwell said cover crops work with other crops in the Corn Belt to conserve water and prevent soil loss.

“Cover crops are near and dear to my heart,” says Treadwell. “They’ve been a thing in the Midwest for a while, but we need more data to set policy for citrus growers.”

Although all these trees have greening, cover crops keep the root systems healthy enough to hold a heavy and good quality crop. (Photo by Juanita Popenoe)

Especially when used in concert with conservation tillage—low-till or no-till methods—cover crops improve soil, she says, “because a partial crop remains, causing less soil disturbance.” Remaining biomass contributes organic material and suppresses weeds, offering farmers considerable savings, she says. However, “farmers change [practices] at a cost,” Treadwell adds, “so we must create programs that county agricultural agents can easily implement.”

Success with Cover Crops for Tree Recovery

Ed James isn’t waiting. One of a few citrus growers who have already adopted cover crops, James has no doubts about their efficacy improving the health of his trees. In fact, he’s become the go-to expert on their selection and use in Florida citrus and regularly shares his knowledge with others. In November, he hosted a UF/IFAS gathering at his J&R Groves in Leesburg, Florida, to show his results improving soil with cover crops.

James has been in the citrus business since he landed his first job at a packinghouse in ninth grade. He studied citrus at Florida Southern College, and for years followed conventional farming methods, using commercial fertilizers and pesticides. Like the other citrus growers, HLB nearly put him out of business.

“I was ready to give up, switch to other crops,” James says. “I pushed over most of my trees, and decided to plant cover crops to get the soil ready for row crops.”

Juanita Popenoe and Ed James inspecting a crop that shows how cover crops can get quite tall and look messy, but that diverse ecology makes a healthy soil. (Photo by Maggie Jarrell.)

Then he noticed that as the cover crops grew, his remaining trees perked up, so he began to investigate cover crops.

As many citrus growers are selling out to developers or switching to alternative crops, James has recovered much of his 45 acres that succumbed to greening. Despite the presence of HLB, he says his trees look healthy and are producing normal fruit.

“A plant’s immune system is in the soil,” he says as he drives his tractor around his groves on a chilly Sunday. “Lots of my trees were sickly, and looked dead, but they’re now transformed.”

He notes that cover crops were popular prior to World War II, but that the rise of chemical fertilizers brought negative impacts. “Everything I’ve learned is about soil,” he said. “Chemical fertilizers leave salts behind and kill soil microorganisms. Combined with a lack of organic matter in the sandy soil, it’s depleted.”

Low- or no-till methods are vital to the method’s success, James has found. “There’s not enough organic matter in Florida’s sandy soil, and if there’s lots of tillage, it weakens the soil,” he says.

He recommends roller crimping rather than tilling for weed control because it doesn’t disturb organic matter built up in soil by cover crops.

“Tilling soil kills the roots of beneficial weeds, and bare soil can blow away,” he says. “We learned that in the Dust Bowl.”

Better Soil, Healthy Trees

Most citrus groves are in central Florida along the Lake Wales Ridge, where crops require extra organic matter to compensate for fine, sandy soil. For citrus, adding biomass through techniques such as cover cropping both increases the nutrients in the soil and also lowers irrigation needs by reducing percolation or drainage losses.

Sarah Strauss is a soil microbiologist for UF/IFAS based in Immokalee, in southwest Florida. While she doesn’t work directly with HLB or trees, Strauss works with a variety of cover crop mixes to improve nutrient uptake in different soils.

“Soil is a microbiome, much like the gut, and different varieties of plants supply different nutrients,” she says, noting all soils are different. “There are many beneficial bacteria that enhance plant health.”

“Anything we can do to improve the trees’ health is good, because they’re very stressed,” says Treadwell. “Being proactive and improving the soil theoretically makes trees stronger.”

A view down the row showing the cover crops early in the season and a good crop load. (Photo by Juanita Popenoe)

The University of Florida’s Popenoe says the polyculture created by adding cover crops beats the monoculture  because different plants have different characteristics. “Daikon radish discourages root weevils, which lay eggs producing larvae that eat citrus tree roots,” she says. “Many [other] cover crops attract beneficial insects.”

“It’s not ‘one size fits all’ with cover crops,” confirms James, who uses at least five different crops in his groves: sunn hemp, hairy indigo, alys clover, and several brassicas, including daikon radish, weed radish, and mustard.

The micronutrients that cover crops contribute, adds Popenoe, can help combat citrus greening. “Some may be antibiotic if they have a higher manganese count, which decreases the titer [concentration] of the bacteria,” she says.

Strauss and her colleagues are conducting field trials showing some cover crops, such as sunn hemp, create more biomass and increase organic matter in soil. These trials also found the bacterial community differed significantly between soils planted with different cover crops and soils containing a no-treatment control group.

Strauss has looked at James’s work with cover crops and said he’s had “fantastic results.” In fact, she recommended growers check out their cover crop options by attending the field day at his grove last November.

Going Organic with Cover Crops

It’s 9 a.m. on a chilly December morning, and Ben McLean has already been out in his citrus groves to check the ground for frost. Most of his trees, in the rolling hills near Clermont in central Florida, succumbed to greening, but those remaining are doing better since he introduced organic soil amendments and cover crops.

“I had to see if they needed irrigation this morning, but it was about 34 degrees, so they were okay,” he says.

McLean knows citrus. His father (who they call “Ben I”) owned groves in Central Florida, and now two of his sons, Ben III and Matt, carry on the tradition. Matt founded “Uncle Matt’s Organic Orange Juice,” which is now a profitable family business, though much of their fruit now originates at organic groves in Mexico, where the orchards hav not been as widely affected by citrus greening.

Like most orange grove owners, McLean has been dogged by HLB. Because his farm is certified organic, they use no synthetic inputs, and McLean uses the two varieties of cover crop he can control without herbicides. Ed James, who is not strictly organic, uses pesticides occasionally on a target basis, and only on trees not near harvest. The McLeans also work with UF/IFAS researchers studying the success of cover crops.

“We grow cow peas and hairy indigo as cover crops between tree rows to fix nitrogen,” he says. “That cuts back on [nitrogen] fertilizer, but we still add manganese, which is expensive.”

McLean monitors the soil annually for zinc, boron, iron, and copper, important minerals needed in Florida’s sandy soil. He’s seeing positive results and stronger trees. So, while cover crops are still in a trial period among researchers, for McLean and others, the results are already in.

Top photo: UF/IFAS specialist and citrus growers scout the grove for insects. Beneficial insects are always around with the diversity of species and flowering in the cover crops. (Photo by Juanita Popenoe)

The post Can Cover Crops Save Florida’s Citrus? appeared first on Civil Eats.

Fred Brockman remembers the day in 2008, when 14 students at Rosenwald Elementary School in South Bay were treated for respiratory problems after exposure to smoke; five with asthma were hospitalized. Brockman spent six years working at Rosenwald, surrounded on three sides by cane fields pressing right up to the fence and said the school was “smoked,” often.

“We had smoke every time the wind blew our way during a burn,” Brockman said. “It would get dark and smoky…lots of the kids had breathing problems.”

Compounding the residents’ health woes is a widespread belief that Florida’s sugar companies only burn around lower-income communities of color. At the same time, advocates believe that the companies practice “green harvest”—a method that both protects air quality and residents’ health—around wealthier, whiter communities and near commercial districts. This process creates additional economic benefits by repurposing field waste that would otherwise get burned.

In early June, a high-profile group of plaintiffs and lawyers filed a federal class action lawsuit on behalf of more than 40,000 residents living by the sugar cane fields near Lake Okeechobee. The suit names a dozen sugar growers as defendants and blames them for health risks and lowered property values as a result of burning sugar cane fields. Residents say the decades-old practice of pre-harvest burning by sugar companies has caused unprecedented levels of respiratory illnesses and other problems from toxic smoke exposure.

Sugar industry representatives did not respond to requests for comment, but according to Tim O’Connor, a state health department spokesman, air pollutants do spike during the actual burning, but it dissipates and the sugar cane burning doesn’t violate federal air quality standards,.

A Tale of Two Cities

Photo courtesy of Nano Riley.

The small, lakeside towns of Belle Glade, Pahokee, and South Bay, referred to as the Tri-Cities, are designated by the State of Florida as a Rural Area of Critical Economic Concern. Belle Glade’s motto is “Her Soil is Her Fortune.” But the fortune doesn’t trickle down: The working-class residents, many of whom are agricultural workers, have an average income of about $37,000. Many are Haitians and Jamaicans who came to the U.S. to cut the cane before the big sugar companies moved to mechanical harvesters.

There’s a saying in Belle Glade that the lakeside town has two exports: sugar cane and wide receivers. Football is leading many of these low-income families out of their limited lives, because if a local player gets into the NFL, they bring a lot of people with them.

“Muck City,” as sportscasters call Belle Glade and Pahokee, has contributed nearly 60 players to the NFL over the years. In fact, there’s a tale that local football players hone their skills by chasing rabbits escaping from the burning fields.

One of the lawsuit’s plaintiffs is Fred Taylor, who was a star at Glades Central High School before an 11-year NFL career. Taylor said he and many of the people he grew up with experienced respiratory challenges and related health problems.

“If nothing more, [the sugar companies] need to promote awareness and get down to the bottom of these health issues because the community is dying,” Taylor said at the press conference announcing the suit. He wants the sugar companies to take responsibility for the problems he believes are caused by burning. “The black snow that comes from the sky, people are breathing that stuff in. They’re getting sicker and sicker every day,” he said.

Taylor and others in Belle Glade anti-burn advocacy groups want the sugar industry to stop burning the fields and switch to green harvest to spare local residents. They point to the burn restrictions in place if prevailing winds would blow smoke toward Wellington, an upscale development 30 miles east of Belle Glade on the way to Palm Beach. Filled with multi-million dollar estates for the affluent and famous, Bill Gates has a home in Wellington, as do Bruce Springsteen and other luminaries.

Communities like Wellington are seldom subjected to smoke from sugarcane burning. The Florida Forestry Service began issuing permits for cane growers to burn in the 1990s, when they received complaints about smoke and haze drifting east toward Wellington and Palm Beach. Now they cannot burn if winds blow in that direction. Tri-Cities residents want those same protections.

‘Green Harvest,’ an Alternative to Burning

The lawsuit aims to require Florida sugar companies to harvest sugarcane without burning it—a technique called “green harvest,” which is practiced in sugar-growing regions around the world. Thailand wants to phase out cane burning over the next three years, and Brazil, the world’s largest producer of sugar, mandated an end to burning in 2017.

“[Sugar companies] burn the cane to remove the outer leaves before harvest,” said Patrick Ferguson, an organizer at environmental group Sierra Club. “But companies around the world use green harvest technology, and in many countries burning is banned.” While Sierra Club is not part of the class-action lawsuit, the group has been conducting a “Stop the Burn” campaign in Florida since 2015.

After the sugarcane leaves or “trash” is burned off, the cane is milled to extract the sweet syrup. The remaining fiber is called bagasse. With a green harvest, machines with cutting blades remove the outer foliage, which can then be collected to make biochar, mulch, and ethanol.

Green harvest is often employed to reduce smog in cities, but advocates say it brings a number of economic and health benefits as well. Brazil has built a thriving industry using sugarcane trash to produce electricity, fuel pellets, ethanol and jet fuels, commercial mulch, and tree-free paper products, along with bagasse.

Ferguson recently returned from a trip to Brazil to study industry practices there, and calls the country the “most advanced cane-growing nation.”

“In Brazil, they utilize the whole plant with green harvest,” he explained, adding that the the sugar trash gets used as mulch, can is also mixed with bagasse to generate electricity and ethanol at sugar mills.

In Australia, the Rocky Point Company started green harvesting sugarcane in 1993, baling the leaf for cattle feed and garden mulch instead of burning it. Rocky Point’s Sugar Cane Mulch sells millions of bags every year by refining raw products from nearby farms.

A mechanical sugar cane harvester in Queensland, Australia. (Photo by Michele Jackson / iStock)

Closer to home, U.S., paper products company Emerald Brand processes agricultural trash into tree-free paper, cardboard, and bio-plastics. They note that “burning and wasting this valuable material takes time and energy away from farmers when processed trash can be made into paper, cardboard, and bio-plastics.”

Advocates say that green harvest is not only cleaner and healthier, it also creates jobs, and in the Glades communities that would be an asset. And yet Glades sugar farmers claim advocates are trying to eliminate jobs by going to green harvest.

“This attack is simply another of their efforts to put the sugar industry out of business,” said Judy Sanchez, a spokesperson for U.S. Sugar Corp, adding stopping the burning “would significantly impact our business and take jobs away.”

But the Florida sugar industry is already working to benefit from bagasse. In March 2018, Tellus—a company jointly owned by the Sugar Cane Growers Cooperative of Florida and Florida Crystals Corporation—opened a $75 million, state-of-the art manufacturing facility in Belle Glade offering biodegradable products such as plates and take-out containers made from bagasse. The facility is located by the sugar mill, powered by solar and renewable biomass from the mill, and according to Tellus officials, employed 50 people at launch, with a goal of hiring a total of 100 employees, 90 percent of whom will be local.

The Tellus facility is a rare exception for businesses seeking to locate in Belle Glade, residents say, because who wants to have to wash soot off cars every day? Some residents say this has caused a job shortage. One compared the practice of burning to hazardous dirty coal jobs, and said the cane industry needs something similar to programs that have trained coal workers for clean-energy jobs that pay better and support families.

What’s Next?

With the hot summer slowing everything down, everyone in this community is waiting to see what happens next with the lawsuit. In the meantime, burning season won’t start again until October.

Kina Phillips is a lifelong resident of Belle Glades, and seven generations of her family have grown up here. Most of her family members have suffered from respiratory ailments, and attended Rosenwald Elementary in nearby South Bay.

“My grandson is five and he has to use a breathing machine sometimes, especially during burning season,” said Phillips, 44, who runs the front office for a heart specialist in Belle Glade and says she sees people suffering from the effects of the cane smoke all the time. Phillips says she wants to fight the cane burning so her kids won’t have to, so she decided to speak out to join the Stop the Burn campaign. She has not yet joined the suit, but she’s “looking into it.”

“This is my battle, and they can’t stop me,” she said. “They could go to green harvest and stop burning,” she said. “Our lives are worth that.”

(This article was updated to reflect the fact that Brazil is not currently making biochar from sugar trash and bagasse.)

The post Burning Sugarcane in Florida is Making People Sick. Could ‘Green Harvesting’ Change the Game? appeared first on Civil Eats.

In 2018, the toxic algae colored the water a dull, rusty red and wreaked havoc on the state. The stench was sickening and people were affected by aerosol particles of the algae itself, causing respiratory irritation. By August, hundreds of dead fish littered the state’s popular beaches.

Business owners watched profits disappear as vacationers canceled hotel reservations. Charter boat captains kept their boats in port—no one wanted to go fishing. Some restaurants closed down for good.

The last traces of the algae bloom didn’t fade away until February 2019, and research group Florida Sea Grant estimates that Florida suffered $20 million in tourism-related losses. The Florida Department of Health said treating respiratory illness caused by red tide in Sarasota County alone cost between $500,000 and $4 million. Fishing industry losses haven’t been tallied, but when red tide hit in 2015 and 2016, clam farmers lost $1.3 million.

Fixing the toxic problem is a high priority, and there’s a rush to find answers—the state is moving to commit $3 million a year to red tide research. And while advocates and scientists say there is a clear link to fertilizer runoff from sugar plantations and livestock operations, preventative solutions taking agriculture into account may still be far off. In the meantime, the issue is pitting tourism, one of the state’s major sources of income, against the sugar and agriculture industries.

What Causes ‘Red Tide’?

Although red tide has long been seen as a natural occurrence, some see human activity as exacerbating the recent extensive blooms.

“If a farmer fertilizes a cornfield in Minnesota, it ends up in the Gulf,” said Jack Davis, professor of environmental history at the University of Florida and author of The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea, a monumental study of the body of water and its importance to U.S. history and economy.

Davis describes the Gulf as “one of the richest estuarine environments in the world, with five major states directly benefitting from its resources.” Two-thirds of all U.S. rivers drain into the Gulf, bringing runoff from both urban and agricultural areas. This huge annual nutrient dump—containing nitrogen and phosphorous—has created an enormous dead zone at the mouth of the Mississippi River.

In Florida, he added, “much [of the runoff] comes from the agriculture around Lake Okeechobee.”

Water in Okeechobee usually stays contained, but to prevent flooding, several times a year the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers releases water from the lake into local rivers that lead west to the Gulf, or east to the Indian River Lagoon.

A 2016 blue-green algae bloom in Lake Okeechobee. (Photo by Joshua Stevens for the NASA Earth Observatory)

Davis points to the fact that algae blooms have been on the rise everywhere, in both fresh and saltwater—from Chesapeake Bay to Lake Erie and the Pacific Coast. Since some red tide occurs naturally most years, Davis worries that just calling recent extreme blooms off the Florida coast red tide—rather than algae blooms—runs the risk of “letting humans off the hook.”

But while Davis is adamant about the human impact on red tide, scientists remain cautious, and some are unsure why this latest bloom was so severe.

At Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota, red tide expert Cynthia Heil heads the department researching the algae. “In the case of Lake Okeechobee, there’s an obvious link between agricultural runoff and blue-green algae [cyanobacteria] bloom, but with Karenia, links from human activity to the severity of outbreaks are less established,” said Heil.

Larry Brand disagrees. Brand, a professor of marine biology and ecology at the University of Miami, studies hazardous algae blooms and believes agriculture most definitely plays a major role in red tides.

“Last year, there was a big blue-green algae bloom on Lake Okeechobee, and when water from the lake met the Gulf, it exacerbated the red tide already there,” Brand explained. “The Mote [Lab] won’t say there’s a connection because they receive a lot of state funding,” he added. “Much of the nitrogen reaching the Gulf comes from the sugarcane fields, but there is also a lot released from the exposed muck,” he said.

Lake Okeechobee’s Pollution

Travel inland from Florida’s coast and it’s a different world, one filled with large ranches and sugar farms that stretch to the horizon. The clear blue sky is often clouded with smoke as cane farmers burn the stubble for the year-round harvests (although a recent class action lawsuit is looking to change that).

For thousands of years, water flowed naturally from Orlando southward along the Kissimmee River watershed, around the shallow lake and in a wide swath southwest to Florida Bay. Along the way, wetland plants naturally filtered out pollutants before the water reached the Gulf. Then, in 1948, the Corps of Engineers created the Everglades Agricultural Area (EAA), an elaborate drainage system of pumps and canals crisscrossing a 700,000-acre area of rich muck for agriculture. North of the lake along the Kissimmee River, cattle graze, and vegetable farms spread fertilizer, often in the form of “biosolids,” or treated, recycled sewage sludge that farms acquire from local cities. And all the runoff ends up in Okeechobee.

The peat is another source of nutrients. “The natural peat in the Everglades is fine underwater, but when it’s drained and exposed to air it breaks down, releasing lots of nitrogen,” Brand said, noting that restoring parts of the [cane] fields in the EAA by flooding them would stop much of the nitrogen pollution.

Big Sugar’s Influence

The sugar industry rules the land, thanks to the Sugar Act of 1937, which protected U.S. cane and beet growers from much cheaper Cuban sugar. As a result of the government subsidies given to sugar producers in the EAA, U.S. consumers pay more for sugar than the world market price. Although today many legislators believe it’s no longer necessary, the subsidy was again enshrined in the 2018 Farm Bill.

Two sugar giants lobby to keep the policy in place. U.S. Sugar is a company privately owned by the Mott Foundation that farms more than 230,000 acres of land and produces 700,000 tons of sugar per year, making it the largest producer of sugar cane in the nation. Florida Crystals, owned by the Fanjul family, farms 190,000 acres, with estimated revenues of $5.4 billion. These two companies, and the growers in the Florida Sugar Grower’s Cooperative, produce most of the nation’s sugar.

Bullsugar, an advocacy group that monitors the sugar industry and its impact on Florida’s water quality, notes that one out of five teaspoons of sugar consumed in the U.S. comes from the Everglades, giving Big Sugar in Florida the money to influence policy, which relates back to the EAA’s management.

According to Alex Gillen, a lawyer and the executive director Friends of the Everglades, which recently merged with Bullsugar, “We know the science, but the problem is political, and we need a political solution. Governor Rick Scott cut back water management staff under the [Florida] Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and now there aren’t enough people to do proper water quality monitoring.”

Sugarcane fields in Florida

During Scott’s administration, from 2010 to 2016, growth management bills regulating subdivision development were gutted, Gillen said, leading to increased toxic algae blooms in the lake and escalating discharge-fueled red tide blooms, economic catastrophes on both coasts; the collapse of Florida Bay, and a water-starved Everglades. Much of the runoff comes from leaky septic systems.

But while many blame the algae-tainted water on the sugar industry, sugar growers maintain that they’re doing their part to stop the pollution.

“All the sugar is grown south of the lake,” said Judy Sanchez. spokesperson for U.S. Sugar. “We make sure all the water runoff from the cane fields contains less than 57 percent nutrients, twice the minimum 25 percent required by area water management.”

Sanchez said the runoff is from ranching and agriculture north of the lake, part of the Kissimmee River watershed that drains from as far north as Orlando.

Gillen acknowledges that population growth is also part of the problem. “Since 1948 when the Corps created the canal system, the population around Lake Okeechobee has risen from a few thousand to 2.5 million” he said. With the current estimate of 1,000 newcomers a day, Florida is seeing more lawn fertilizers, more septic tanks, and more water usage.

“Climate change may also be a factor … as we have more extreme weather events, stronger hurricanes in the Gulf, and warmer weather, it may create more virulent algae blooms,” Mote’s Cynthia Heil added.

What’s the Fix?

Maggy Hurchalla is a long-time Florida environmental activist and former Martin County commissioner who has served on the water commission and the regional planning board. She said the legislature only offers lip service to most regulation attempts, and believes that restoring water flow and eliminating the record phosphorous from agricultural runoff is the best fix—which means mandatory source control and monitoring the industry.

“Gathering dirty water and trying to clean it is less efficient than treating it at the source,” she said, referring to reservoirs planned to retain polluted water.

“It seems like everyone who ran for state office in 2018 promised to save the environment,” said Hurchalla. And yet, she added “the legislature has done nothing except appropriate taxpayers’ money to clean up private for-profit messes. Agriculture won’t accept the blame, because they say everyone’s at fault, and we have to treat all the causes. But they seem to be unwilling to treat any of the causes.”

In September 2018, Governor Rick Scott announced $2.2 million backing new red tide mitigation technologies, including the use of specialized clay.

“The clay used in aquaculture in South Korea adheres to the [Karenia brevis] cells so they sink to the bottom,” said Heil. “We’re testing it in a couple of canal areas in St. Petersburg, but we need permits to do this.”

Across the Gulf’s coastal regions, cities and counties are also enacting mandatory “black-outs” for fertilizers during rainy summer months to keep homeowners and golf courses from adding to pollution, but farms are exempt from the ban. Although there’s controversy on the direct causes of red tide, everyone agrees runoff provides excess nutrients that feed the blooms, increasing their length and severity.

“Runoff definitely contributes to coastal pollution,” said Heil. “We need to look at below-ground septic tanks, leaky sewers, and agricultural runoff.”

Florida’s natural pine and wetland mosaics could also pose a solution by filtering water before it gets released into major bodies of water. “Runoff of phosphorous from a natural wetland is 1/40th of that from a developed area—whether agricultural or urban,” said Hurchalla. “The faster we develop under existing rules, the worse our problems become.”

Yesterday, governor Ron DeSantis signed into law SB 1552, which creates the Florida Red Tide Mitigation and Technology Development Initiative, and provides $15 million over the next five years to Mote Marine Laboratory to research red tide. He has also asked Congress for $100 million to fund Florida Forever, a program aimed at restoring and maintaining wetlands in the state. He initially received $23 million, then, in mid-May, President Trump signed a bill offering $200 million.

Alex Gillen said that these funds may help address the problem, but it may also fall in the “earmark” category of money marked for a single purpose, and face challenges from uninvolved legislators.

“Some of that funding comes from Pell Grant money, so that’s a problem,” he added, noting that taking money from the popular grants for college students would not receive much support.

Back at the Gulf, University of Florida’s Jack Davis believes it’s long past time to focus on preserving the living shore with mangrove forests, coastal marshes, and seagrass beds.

“These create filters, a carbon sink, plus a habitat that makes a defense against pollution,” he said. “And we must encourage regenerative farming that won’t create such toxic runoff that ends up in the Gulf.”

Top photo: Red Tide caused by Dinoflagellates off the Scripps Institution of Oceanography Pier, La Jolla California. (Public domain photo by P. Alejandro Díaz and Ginny Velasquez)

This article was updated to reflect the fact that Alex Gillen is now the executive director at Friends of the Everglades, which recently merged with Bullsugar, where he was the policy director.

The post Toxic Red Tide is Back in Florida. Is Big Sugar to Blame? appeared first on Civil Eats.

“It’s cool in the early morning, but even the winters are getting warmer,” said Jeannie Economos, project coordinator with the Farmworker Association of Florida. “By the afternoon, it will be in the 80s in the sun.”

Most people are unaware that the abundant produce available in modern supermarkets—tomatoes, strawberries, even oranges—is all picked by hand. And because farmworkers are often paid by the piece, they pick as fast as they can, even when that means neglecting to take breaks and drinking water. Even nursery workers do piecework, especially in Florida where the nation’s ornamental plant industry has skyrocketed. When it’s hot, the stress of this rapid harvesting takes a hefty toll on the body.

The summer of 2018 was the fourth-warmest since record keeping began and it caused serious problems for farmworkers, who already face a legion of health challenges. The National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reported that 23 states across the West, South, and Northeast recorded above average daytime highs, while in the contiguous U.S., night-time lows averaged 60.9º Fahrenheit, 2.5 degrees warmer than previous summers. Scientists from NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center suspect the current El Niño weather pattern may last well into 2019, making this year’s upcoming summer the hottest yet.

Central Florida faced record-breaking temperatures when the usual cooling afternoon thunderstorms didn’t occur; and in California’s Central Valley, Fresno recorded daytime highs of 100º or more on all but four days in July. Hotter temperatures make it much easier to become dehydrated in the midday sun, and the risk of heat stroke is serious. But it’s the constant daily heat exposure that causes health problems down the road.

A farmworker picking citrus in Florida. (Photo courtesy of Nano Riley)

In response to these often-invisible conditions, a number of researchers, advocates, and lawmakers are working to gather data, train workers, and push for new legislation to protect workers. “This is a public health issue,” said Economos. “But it’s also a justice issue, because people who feed us deserve strong protections from the effects of climate change.

OSHA Inaction

The U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has no regulations for heat stress, despite well-documented temperature increases. OSHA’s general-duty clause requires employers to provide a safe workplace with access to potable water and shade, but offers no specific standards to guard workers who labor long hours in excessive heat. Advocates say that’s not enough.

The nonprofit consumer advocacy organization Public Citizen presented petitions to OSHA to provide better heat protection for farmworkers in 2011, which was rejected. In July 2018, a coalition sent another petition to OSHA requesting regulations for heat stress, and is still waiting for a response. Heading the campaign are the United Farmworkers (UFW) and Farmworker Justice, joined by 130 other organizations. Eula Bingham, head of OSHA under President Carter and a pioneer of worker protection for rising temperatures, and Ellen Widess, the former head of California’s state-level OSHA, have also both endorsed the petition.

“It’s a growing campaign bringing together environmental groups, labor, public health, academics, researchers, faith-based groups, and other concerned parties to champion a common goal,” said Shanna Devine, worker health and safety advocate for Public Citizen’s Congress Watch.

The Research

On October 31, 2018, Public Citizen released an in-depth report called “Unworkable,”documenting heat-related problems in Florida’s farmworker community.

“We used Florida because the data was nuanced, but the campaign recognizing heat stress is national,” said Devine. At this time there are only three states that have any legislation governing heat stress, she added. “California and Washington protect outdoor workers, while Minnesota protects indoor workers only.” Meanwhile, she said, “Florida has no standards at all.”

A farmworker picking citrus in Florida. (Photo courtesy of Nano Riley)

The report compiles information from Emory University’s Woodruff School of Nursing and the Farmworker Association of Florida. The Emory study collected Florida workers’ blood and urine samples before and after fieldwork to monitor for symptoms of heat-related stress, and provided workers with digital monitors like those worn by athletes.

Valerie Mac and Linda McCauley, both registered nurses with Emory University, monitored Florida’s farmworkers for the last four years, taking vital statistics throughout the day to document the effects of heat. Even before work, they found that 75 percent of workers were dehydrated. On at least one day, 80 percent of workers had a temperature of at least 100.4º F. Mac compares the increased temperature to having a fever every day of your life.

“We checked core body temperature,” said Mac. “We also shared information with the workers who participated and let them know if they showed any abnormalities, which they appreciated.”

She says the response from small farmers is very encouraging. “They are interested in ways to keep workers productive and safe in order to compete with the big operations, so they ask to work with us,” said Mac. “We’ve had good luck with them because they know these interventions have to occur.”

Some workers are testing new devices, such as cooling vests and special caps that help keep workers cool in the heat, but these are expensive and not available to most workers, said Mac. A California teenager also developed an app to warn farmworkers about dangerously high temperatures, though it is currently targeted at California farms and farmworkers.

According to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), during the summer months of 2018, Florida’s outdoor workers in every county were exposed to dangerous levels of heat between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m., exceeding NIOSH’s safe limit for moderate labor at least 45 percent of the time.

According to Public Citizen, 130 million U.S. workers earn a living outdoors, notably farmworkers and construction workers. Between 1992 and 2016, nearly 70,000 of those workers suffered serious heat-related injuries, and 783 people died. OSHA’s most recent statistics from 2016 lump all heat-related incidents together, so specifics for farmworkers are unknown.

But it’s clear that farmworkers are among the most impacted. Not only do they bear the brunt of sun and heat, but they often work very long hours. In Belle Glade, where workers have toiled in the rich muck on Lake Okeechobee’s shores for a century, they line up before dawn to take buses to the fields.

In the tiny Southwest Florida farming town of Immokalee, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers has advanced a Fair Food Program, which includes a requirement for access to shade and available potable water. The program includes audits and a complaint mechanism for workers, but it has no legal teeth. And for those working on farms that haven’t signed on to the program, protection is nonexistent.

Educating Workers

“We have not been very fair to these people who provide our food,” said Antonio Tovar, the interim executive director for The Farmworker Association of Florida.

Tovar has worked with Florida’s farmworkers for 14 years, and travels the state educating workers about heat-related injuries, symptoms, and the long-term effects of persistent heat stress, such as kidney stones and kidney disease caused by dehydration.

Seasonal farm workers pick and package strawberries in Salinas, Calif.

Tovar also believed that heat-related incidents are under-reported. Heat stress can be easily misdiagnosed or ignored because the symptoms—such as feeling light-headed, having a headache and nausea—mimic pesticide poisoning, the other major hazard for farmworkers.

“When I teach workers how to spot heat stress, most everyone in the group knows someone who’s experienced problems,” said Tovar. “Last year in Collier County, a worker suffered brain damage after a heat stroke, and now cannot walk or talk, and two others have died—that we know of.”

Another hurdle is language. Besides written information explaining heat stress, signage needs to be pictorial because many indigenous Central American workers speak a Mayan dialect, and understand neither Spanish nor English.

“Right now we are teaching classes in Creole because we have many Haitian workers,” said Tovar. “But there are lots of Indigenous people who speak Maya.”

Lawmakers Push for Change

Some members of Congress have seen the writing on the wall, and they’re stepping forward to propose new laws regulating heat exposure for outdoor workers.

Public Citizen’s Shanna Devine says the group is working with Representative Judy Chu (D-California), and Senator Michael Bennett (D- Colorado) on a pair of heat protection bills that will be introduced in the house later this year. “This administration wants to roll back worker protections,” said Devine, who sees the bills, which include requirements for water, shade, training to identify heat stress, and whistleblower protection—as a potential counter-measure.

“Whistleblower protection is very important, because many farmworkers fear deportation, or just losing their jobs if they report their bosses,” adds Devine.

Advocates are optimistic, as farmworkers have received renewed attention in the new Democrat-controlled House. Earlier this month, Senator Kamala Harris (D-California) and Representative Raúl Grijalva (D-Arizona) reintroduced “The Fairness for Farmworkers Act,” which would grant farmworkers the right to collect overtime pay for the first time since they were excluded from the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act.

“We need more employers willing to work with us,” said Mac. “We want to show that implementing these measures either maintain or increase productivity for the farmer’s bottom line. Heat stress slows workers and the physiological effects can injure them if not addressed.”

This article was updated to correct the dates of Public Citizen’s petitions to OSHA for heat-stress regulations.

Top photo: Agriculture workers pick strawberries from a produce farm in Camarillo, Calif. (Photo credit: Joshua Rainey / iStock)

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