Chicken industry in Texas
This article by Reporting Texas details the growth of the chicken industry in Texas, and the pitfalls and consequences of the industry.
Texas has opened its arms to Big Chicken, and Big Chicken has been good to Texas. In 2009, the industry contributed $2.1 billion to the state economy and had created 7,700 direct and indirect jobs, according to Texas A&M Agrilife Extension Program. The state is home to three of the four largest growers in the United States: Pilgrim’s Pride, Tyson and Sanderson Farms. While the U.S. Poultry and Egg Association lists Texas as the sixth-most productive state, slaughtering 684 million chickens in 2010, the United States is second to none.
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The communities that seem to owe so much to chickens are also divided by their presence. It has driven once-friendly neighbors to silence and brought an influx of out-of-county (and country) entrepreneurs. Growers live behind guarded gates. Many have unlisted phone numbers. While some families opened their doors for this story, many more hung up the phone, asked to be left alone or suggested that journalists had no place looking into the poultry industry.
How do you feel about all this landing on your dinner plate?
State climatologist: This drought officially worst on record
“If Texas gets less than four-and-a-half inches of rain in the next two months, 2011 is set to surpass 1956 as the driest 12 months on record,” reports The Texas Tribune. State Climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon shares equally troubling statistics in this story about the hot, hot temps we’ve experienced. The conditions are the worst in Central Texas!
Rick Perry and the EPA
Photo by click on morgueFile (http://mrg.bz/B6uiXj)
The Austin American-Statesman published a story yesterday examining this hypothetical scenario: If Texas Gov. Rick Perry runs for U.S. president and wins, how would he change the Environmental Protection Agency? The reporter answers the hypothecial by looking at Perry’s past comments and stances on environmental issues, as well as Perry’s book, “Fed Up!”
The article says:
From his rhetoric and record as governor, one might think that he’d be tempted to dissolve the agency. He has actively loosened regulations in the name of economic development and denied that scientific consensus exists on climate change, ascribing anxieties about greenhouse gases to a “secular carbon cult.”
But on the campaign trail, he is likely to tell a story about environmental accomplishment. He will point to improvements in air quality in the state’s major cities, and he will note that the state leads the nation in wind power. And he will say that Texas has done it by working with industry, not being its adversary.
New residents pointing out environmental problems
I can personally relate to today’s story by Asher Price in the Austin American-Statesman about new residents to East Austin who are working to fix longstanding environmental problems in their areas. East Austin has traditionally been the home to many lower income black and Hispanic Austinites, but that racial and socioeconomic mixture is changing. The city is growing, people are looking for affordable housing, and there is a renewed interest in living in the center of Austin instead of in suburbs.
“You have an influx of new residents coming in who are more environmentally aware and probably know of particular city programs and incentives they can use,” said Oscar Garza, an environmental compliance specialist with the city’s Watershed Protection Department and coordinator of the city’s East Austin Environmental Initiative, an outreach program that began in the 1990s. “They put more focus on environmental awareness, and that infuses that into the neighborhood.”
I guess I count as one of the “new residents.” Aaron and I decided to move to East Austin because we could afford a nice house here, and we wanted to live within walking and biking distance of the city center with all its bars, restaurants and cultural attractions.
Photo by "doortoriver" on Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/doortoriver/)
I enjoy walking my dogs around my new neighborhood, and I’ve personally been shocked by some of the environmental problems–Mostly trash all over the roads. The thing that concerns me the most is there is broken glass littering most of the streets and sidewalks around East Austin. I’m afraid the glass will cut my dogs’ paws when I’m walking them. Aaron says he frequently gets flat tires from running over broken glass. I can imagine children running or riding bikes outside, accidentally falling down and doing a face plant on broken glass.
It’s not good.
Spill is stopped, but damage is done
Photo by "wink" on Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/intherough/)
The World Resources Institute has an interesting article pointing to several studies about ecosystem services in the Gulf of Mexico that may be devalued because of the BP oil spill.
A recently-released study by Earth Economics (PDF) estimates that the Mississippi Delta’s ecological communities currently generate up to $13,000 per acre in ecosystem services each year. Over the next hundred years, this estimate, for just the Mississippi Delta region, translates into a present value of $330 billion to $1.3 trillion, the wide range owing to uncertainties about the value of ecosystem services over that time period. Exposure to residual oil over the course of decades will diminish the value of ecosystem services generated by marshes, wetlands, and coastal waters in the spill’s path.