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CapitalPress.com
November 13, 2015
People & Places
Extension educator keys on sustainability
Carlo Moreno helps conventional and organic farmers thrive using fewer inputs
By CAROL RYAN DUMAS
Capital Press
New University of Idaho
Extension Educator Carlo
Moreno has worked in far-
flung parts of the world in the
last 10 years, experiencing ag-
ricultural challenges that have
fueled his passion for sustain-
ability on the farm.
“Safe food should be made
available to all people who
need it; lowering the cost
makes it accessible,” he said.
Sustainable
production
helps decrease the cost by
reducing inputs, and in small-
scale operations it tends to in-
crease yields, he said.
Sustainability has been the
focus of his work — from the
salad bowl of the world in
California to the impoverished
Mexico-Texas border region
and subsistence farming high
in the northern Andes Moun-
tains of South America.
“I like the idea of going
into communities, seeing
what their problems are and
working together to solve
them,” he said.
A couple of things he’d
like to do in his current role
with the university is explore
cover crops for weed and pest
management and work with
organic growers, even though
some stigma is associated
with organic production and
could present a bit of a chal-
lenge, he said.
“Like politics, there’s a
risk of alienation. But you
don’t necessarily have to be
organic to be sustainable,” he
said.
He wants to assist organ-
ic and conventional growers
alike and help empower farm-
ers to experiment to find out
what works in their opera-
tions, he said.
Moreno’s path to agricul-
Associated Press
STOCKHOLM — Levels
of carbon dioxide and meth-
ane, the two most important
greenhouse gases, reached
record highs last year, con-
tinuing the warming effect on
the world’s climate, the U.N.
weather agency said Monday.
CO2 levels rose to nearly
398 parts per million, from 396
ppm in 2013, the World Meteo-
rological Organization said.
Western
Innovator
Carlo Moreno
Age: 36
Title: University of Idaho
cereal crops Extension edu-
cator, Minidoka County
Degrees: Ph.D. in Environ-
mental Studies with a focus
on agroecology, University
of California-Santa Cruz;
master’s degree in entomol-
ogy, University of Maryland;
bachelor’s degree in biology,
San Jose State University
Carol Ryan Dumas/Capital Press
University of Idaho Extension Educator Carlo Moreno looks up from examining plants during a Nov. 4
cover crop tour hosted by soil and water conservation districts near Burley.
ture began with his interest
in insects. He never really
thought there was a career in
insects — a notion his parents
reinforced — so he started
studying biology at San Jose
State University.
While there, he was help-
ing out a graduate student
with a project looking at the
influence of annual flowering
strips on the biological control
of aphids in broccoli fields in
the Salinas Valley. The project
exposed him to agriculture
and integrated pest manage-
ment and opened his eyes to
career opportunities.
The New York native went
on to study entomology while
pursuing his master’s degree at
the University of Maryland.
Pursuing a Ph.D. in envi-
ronmental studies with a focus
on agroecology took him to the
northern Andes in Venezuela
where he worked with peasant
farmers to break down barriers
to production.
Trying to grow enough
food to feed themselves, the
farmers had switched from
native potato varieties to high-
er-yielding varieties. But those
varieties proved susceptible
to invasive pests. His work
there was to understand how
traditional practices could con-
tribute to management of the
invasive potato pest, the Gua-
temalan potato moth, as well
as to local farmer livelihoods.
“I learned that native pota-
toes are not only more resis-
tant to damage from this inva-
sive potato moth pest, but that
they also indirectly help farm-
ers build their social capital
and diversify their livelihood
sources,” he said.
He worked with an innova-
tive farmer who had a strategy
to intercrop the native variety
with the non-native varieties.
It worked, but the other farm-
ers had resisted the strategy,
Moreno said.
“Like anything else, it’s
hard to change people’s
minds,” he said.
Returning from South
America,
Moreno
did
post-doctoral work with the
University of Texas-Rio
Grande Valley through a grant
from the National Science
Foundation to help boost or-
ganic production in the Rio
Grande Valley of south Texas.
His focus was to address
the major barriers facing mi-
grant farmers along the Tex-
as-Mexico border, one of the
poorest areas in the U.S.
The area was steeped in
agriculture and is a major sup-
plier of winter vegetables to
the U.S. Farmers there were
dealing with serious pest and
weed problems, and his work
was mostly directed at organic
practices to manage the chal-
lenges.
He sees the opportunity
to work in Idaho as a chance
to improve his skill set and a
challenge to take what he’s
used in small-scale produc-
tion and work with a different
set of people to promote an
interest in sustainable agricul-
ture, he said.
He’s teaming up with the
Northwest Center for Alterna-
tives to Pesticides for a Dec.
3 Organic 101 workshop in
Twin Falls, at which he hopes
to identify obstacles faced by
organic producers with the
goal of developing research
and extension programs to
help, he said.
He started on July 1 and is
still getting his feet wet, but
said Idaho is beautiful and the
job is “fantastic.”
“Everyone has been very
welcoming, nice and open to
the idea of trying things dif-
ferently, to differing degrees.
I’ve met some really inspira-
tional people and farmers, in
what they’re willing to do and
the challenges they’ve faced
in doing it,” he said.
The CO2 level fluctuates
throughout the year and the
monthly average crossed the
symbolic 400 ppm threshold in
March 2015. The WMO said
the annual average “is likely to
pass 400 ppm in 2016.”
Pushed by the burning of
coal, oil and gas for energy,
global CO2 levels are now 143
percent higher than before the
industrial revolution. Scien-
tists say that’s the main driver
of global warming.
WMO said methane levels
reached a new high of about
1,833 parts per billion in 2014.
About 40 percent of methane
emissions come from natural
sources and about 60 percent
from human activities, like
cattle breeding, rice agricul-
ture and the extraction of fossil
fuels.
“Every year we report a
new record in greenhouse
gas concentrations,” WMO
Secretary-General
Michel
Jarraud said. “We have to act
now to slash greenhouse gas
emissions if we are to have a
chance to keep the increase in
temperatures to manageable
levels.”
World governments are
meeting in Paris later this
month to craft a new U.N.
pact to rein in greenhouse
gas emissions. More than 150
countries including top green-
house gas polluters China, the
United States, the European
Union and India have pledged
to cut or curb their emissions
in the next decade.
Meanwhile, climate change
is already transforming the
Earth, melting Arctic sea ice,
intensifying heat waves, and
warming and acidifying the
ocean.
Climate scientists say that
if global warming continues
unabated, dangerous effects
could include flooding of
coastal cities and island na-
tions, disruptions to agricul-
ture and drinking water, and
the spread of diseases and the
extinction of species.
Wyoming Game and Fish considers migration route protections
By CHRISTINE PETERSON
Casper Star-Tribune
CASPER, Wyo. (AP) —
Nearly all of Wyoming’s big
game animals migrate, and in
much the same way. They wan-
der from lush, green mountains
in the summer to dry, wind-
swept prairies in the winter.
And recent mule deer re-
search has shown their move-
ments are surprisingly precise.
Pathways trickle together like
county roads that merge into
highways before becoming in-
terstates.
Those paths, with food-
rich spots along the way, al-
low Wyoming’s elk, deer and
pronghorn to take advantage
of the best seasonal vegetation
available in an arid, high-eleva-
tion state. It’s what keeps them
healthy, with their numbers in
the thousands.
Research shows the high-
use areas and stopover points
are critical to the animals’ fu-
tures. As a result, some say they
should be protected.
The Wyoming Game and
Fish Commission discussed
Friday changing its policy to
recognize these big game in-
terstates and stopovers and
recommend no oil and gas
development on federal lands
within them. If it passes, Wy-
oming would become the first
state in the country to formally
recognize some of the most cut-
ting-edge big game research.
Sportsmen and conserva-
tionists say that this is a crit-
ical move to protect some of
Wyoming’s largest deer, elk
and antelope herds. Energy
companies and agricultural in-
terests, on the other hand, are
concerned this could be another
example of unnecessary gov-
ernment overreach.
“In order to be sustained
for the long term, (migrations)
have to be sustained for their
entire length. If any one part
of the corridor becomes so de-
graded animals can’t or won’t
go through it, it puts the en-
tire corridor at risk,” said Matt
Kauffman, director of the Wyo-
ming Migration Initiative at the
University of Wyoming. “We
absolutely should expect that
if we lose these migrations, we
will have far fewer animals in
our big game herds.”
Part of the controversy, and
enthusiasm, behind migration
research is its relative infancy.
Only in the last 10 to 15 years
have GPS collars allowed re-
searchers to continuously track
movements of elk, deer, and
pronghorn. And only in the last
several years has it become part
of the public debate.
The longest migrating mule
deer herd in the world was dis-
covered in 2013 in southwest
Wyoming by wildlife research-
er Hall Sawyer. The herd, he
found, migrates more than 150
miles from the Red Desert in
the winter to the Hoback Basin
in the summer. About 5,000 an-
imals complete all or a portion
of the trip. The discovery gar-
nered national interest with fea-
tures in the New York Times,
National Geographic and Field
and Stream.
As researchers learned more
about the importance of these
corridors, routes and stopover
points, wildlife managers have
begun to realize they should
update their policies to try to
lessen human impact on those
landscapes.
The proposal Game and
Fish Department officials of-
fered the commission on Friday
included an update to add bot-
tlenecks — places where ani-
mals move through restricted
areas — and stopovers into pol-
icy language. It also suggested
Game and Fish recommend no
oil and gas development such
as well pads on the surface in
the animals’ high-use corridors
and stopover points.
Even if the policy is adopt-
ed, said Scott Smith, Game
and Fish’s deputy chief of the
wildlife division, it applies
only to recommendations to
the Bureau of Land Manage-
ment and U.S. Forest Service.
Game and Fish ultimately has
no authority to decide where
development can and cannot
occur.
The department already
recommends no surface use
occupancy for migration cor-
ridors less than half a mile
wide, and up to four well
pads per square mile for larg-
er corridors. This would sim-
ply change the precision of
the recommendation, Smith
told the Casper Star-Tribune.
Saturday, Nov. 14
Center, Albany, Ore. 541-967-3871,
wvaexpo.com/
Friday, Nov. 20
mill Resort and Spa Casino, Reno,
Nev.
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Capital Press
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Index
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