BIDEN ADMINISTRATION - Pitching the COVID Relief Law

"With a stop in Pennsylvania, Biden begins his pitch to Americans on new COVID relief law" PBS NewsHour 3/16/2021

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SUMMARY:  President Biden is on the road, aiming to sell his COVID relief law to the American public.  His first stop Tuesday was in Pennsylvania with a visit to a Black-owned flooring business near Philadelphia, highlighting the aid that his administration is providing through small business loans and stimulus checks.  Yamiche Alcindor joins Judy Woodruff to discuss.

 

 

"How the economic relief law narrows the equity gap for farmers of color" PBS NewsHour 3/16/2021

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SUMMARY:  The COVID relief and economic package is a massive bill that has a far-reaching impact in ways that many Americans don't know about yet.  One provision calls for debt relief for Black farmers, who have long been denied access to government funding.  John Boyd, a fourth-generation farmer in Virginia and president of the National Black Farmers Association, joins Lisa Desjardins to discuss.

 

 

"How billions of dollars in COVID aid will help schools reopen" PBS NewsHour 3/17/2021

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SUMMARY:  Living through a full year of closed schools and distance learning has taken a heavy toll on students, parents, teachers and school administrators.  The new stimulus bill sets aside roughly $125 billion to help K-12 schools reopen.  Laura Meckler, a national education writer at The Washington Post, joins William Brangham to discuss.

TOXIC SPILL - The Consequences

"Toxic spill causes hardship for the Navajo farmers and ranchers downstream" PBS NewsHour 8/17/2015

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SUMMARY:  It's been nearly two weeks since an EPA accident at a defunct Colorado mine fouled rivers in multiple states, and among the hardest hit residents are the Navajos.  Special correspondent Kathleen McCleery reports from New Mexico.

Editor’s note:  We originally reported that the San Juan River flows into Arizona and then enters Lake Powell.  In fact, it joins the Colorado River in Utah, then flows into Lake Powell, which straddles the Arizona border.  Also, in a map of the Navajo Nation, we incorrectly illustrated the northern border, which more closely follows the San Juan River than our depiction.  We regret the errors.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  It’s been 12 days since an accident at a defunct Colorado gold mine fouled rivers in three states.

Special correspondent Kathleen McCleery has an update on the impact the spill has had on Native Americans and others in Northwest New Mexico.

KATHLEEN MCCLEERY (NewsHour):  The sunflowers in Upper Fruitland, New Mexico, are drooping.

LORENZO BATES, Speaker, Navajo Nation Council:  When you look at them now, they’re all hanging over because they haven’t — they need water.

KATHLEEN MCCLEERY:  On LoRenzo Bates’ farm, it’s not just sunflowers in trouble.  The alfalfa, key for feeding his animals, is stunted.

LORENZO BATES:  This is right now 12 days behind.  This hay has to get me through the winter season.

KATHLEEN MCCLEERY:  Bates, the speaker of the Navajo Nation, tallied his losses so far at $1,000 in just one week, no small amount in this poor region.  It’s all because Bates and thousands of others here couldn’t pull water from the San Juan River, which abuts his land.  Irrigation ditches were shut down after the mine accident earlier this month 100 miles north in Silverton, Colorado.

Efforts by the Environmental Protection Agency to clean up one mine resulted in a breach at another, the Gold King Mine, which has been inactive since 1923.  A three million gallon toxic stew of heavy metals poured downstream, turning the Animas River a shocking yellow.

FARMING - The Bane of Herbicide Resistance

Reminder:  The ultimate goal of nature is for a species to continue living, and you cannot fight Mother Nature.

"Field of weeds:  Could agriculture crisis crop up from herbicide resistance?" PBS NewsHour 11/15/2014

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MEGAN THOMPSON (NewsHour):  Autumn means it’s harvest time in Iowa, the heart of America’s Heartland.  Farmer Jeff Jorgenson is busy harvesting soybeans.  He also grows corn on about 2,000 acres in the southwest corner of the state.

Farming is big business here in Iowa.  This state is the biggest producer of corn in the country.  And it’s second only to Illinois in the production of soybeans.

For Jorgenson – whose family’s been farming for four generations – it’s all about keeping his yields as high as he can.

JEFF JORGENSON, farmer:  Yield monitor’s here.

MEGAN THOMPSON:  And one of the biggest battles he fights is against weeds.

JEFF JORGENSON:  A weed in the field’s going to take moisture, going to take sunlight, nutrients away from the plants surrounding it.  And that’s why we have to keep clean fields.

MEGAN THOMPSON:  But Jorgenson says, keeping “clean” fields has been getting harder and harder.  Like many farmers, he relied for years mainly on an herbicide called “Roundup” that’s manufactured by Monsanto.

Roundup use exploded in the mid-90’s with the introduction of new genetically modified crops that dominate the market today.  The crops were engineered to withstand Roundup.  So farmers could just spray an entire field, and the herbicide would kill the weeds, but not the crops.

JEFF JORGENSON:  Any weed you had in the field, Roundup took care of.  Roundup revolutionized weed management for farmers.

MEGAN THOMPSON:  Jorgenson says it all worked great, for awhile.  He no longer had to spend lots of time plowing to kill weeds.  But over time, Roundup and its generic versions – all of which contain a chemical called glyphosate – stopped working so well.

AMERICA - Fish in the Fields

"Oregon Farmers Surprised to Find Fish in Fields"
PBS Newshour 3/8/2012