Minnesota farmers go green with organic crops

• Organic farmer

Carmen Fernholz chops corn stalks on a field he and his family farm together in Madison, Minn., earlier this month. Fernholz was certified as an organic farmer in 1975 and produces a variety of crops. (Associated Press)

Talk about it

MADISON, Minn. — America’s vast stretches of farmland are a big resource in the fight against global warming because their soil traps carbon. But not all farmers believe changing their ways to help in that fight would be profitable.

The global warming bill the House passed last summer gives farmers incentives to manage their soil to trap carbon, one of the main factors in global warming.

Carmen Fernholz, an organic farmer in western Minnesota, does things a little differently from most other farmers. For instance, he plants radishes in the late summer after his main crop harvest, but the radishes will never be harvested for food. Instead, he leaves them in the ground all winter long.

“In the spring as the temperatures warm up, [the radishes] start decaying and disappearing,” Fernholz said. “And in this decay process it’s slowly releasing the nutrients that it scavenged the previous fall.”

Those nutrients will help fertilize next year’s crop. But the radishes also help fight global warming. Through photosynthesis, the radishes convert carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, into organic plant matter.

When the radish dies and decomposes, the carbon in the plant also remains stored in the soil. Fernholz said the nutrient benefits are his main objective in planting the radishes, but he also likes knowing they help reduce greenhouse gases.

“The less we can have a carbon footprint, I think the better we are,” Fernholz said.

If the U.S. House has its way, there could be a lot more farms like Fernholz’s in the future. The House passed a bill last summer aimed at reducing global warming, and the Senate will take up the legislation soon.

The House bill would pay farmers to manage their land to store carbon — the carbon is “sequestered,” in agricultural parlance. Fernholz said the legislation signals a change in the world of farming.

“I think the fact that it did pass is definitely a positive,” said Fernholz.

Some farmers worry the bill will raise the cost of agriculture and possibly put them out of business. Others, like James Dontje, say the House bill doesn’t go far enough.

“It was really an attempt to limit how much agriculture had to change,” Dontje said. “It conveys the message of, ‘Leave us alone, we don’t want to change.’ ”

Dontje manages the Johnson Center for Environmental Innovation at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, and is part owner of a farm just across the Minnesota border in northern Iowa. Dontje said a big part of the “leave us alone” message in the legislation concerned protective measures for ethanol made from corn.

“Outside of farm country, the ethanol industry is seen as a political pork barrel project,” Dontje said.

But for many farm-state House members, including their leader, U.S. Rep. Collin Peterson, D-Minn., ethanol is a success story. Although supporters say that ethanol helps reduce greenhouse gases, Dontje said it may actually contribute to global warming.

He said that’s because the fuel helped boost corn prices, causing farmers in other parts of the world to plow up virgin land to grow the suddenly very profitable grain. That land breaking releases significant amounts of greenhouse gases.

The House bill prohibits using the land issue in calculating ethanol’s carbon footprint. Dontje said those sorts of protective measure are the wrong position for farmers to take.

“Carbon sequestration will have some value and that becomes an income stream,” said Dontje. “By adopting an oppositional, ‘keep your hands off approach,’ agriculture might miss some of the opportunities.”

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