Hello Everyone!
I hope you are getting a healthy dose of rain. Time for the News and Notes I know you have all been waiting for! Many things are planned for the coming months and we want to keep you all on top of the latest happenings. The following information will recap the last few months of activities here at HRM and keep you informed on upcoming events.

Want to trade links? HRM’s website has a place for member links to your own website. Let us know if you want to trade links by sending an email to slane@hrm-texas.org with your web site address.

To streamline and hopefully make it to your mailbox more efficiently; we have changed the format of News & Notes.

In the version that comes to your box, you will find the Index of all the articles. Just click on the article's title and the link will take you to the full version of News & Notes and the Article on HRM's web site.

Or if you want to read the entire News & Notes at one time, it is available at News & Notes for March 20, 2007.

• Grazing Planning (2 days)
• Biological Planning (1 day)
• Land Planning (1 day)
• Grazing principles (1 day)

Watch the HRM website, the News & Notes and the quarterly newsletter for more information. You can register for one or all the days by calling the HRM office at 512-847-3822 or register online after April 1.

There are plans for additional classes in different parts of the state.

See the feedback below for what people were saying about the "teaser" class at the Annual Meeting. You really don't want to miss these classes!

In the upcoming weeks implementation should be key for all of you land stewards with multiple grazing animals. Catching raindrops this summer will make a big difference in the holistic health of your lands.

100% of the feedback received from the annual meeting reported that the event meet their expectations! Some even said it was the best annual meeting they had ever attended.

The total land reported for stewardship affected by HRM at this event was 76,806 acres. Some ideas for future events included personal success stories, rain collection classes, horse management, sustainable community, small acreage farms, pros and cons of species breeding, financial planning, youth outreach programs, clean energy and native plants. We hope to organize classes and outings to cover these subjects in the coming months. Youth outreach has an upcoming event to work with children, see the next article.

A valuable field experience at the West Ranch Station, in Ozona Texas, Kids on the Land will begin curriculum development and training May 2007. Progressing in phases, participants will create a learning team, dedicated to creating and delivering a Holistic Management field experience to students in Grades 3-6. This effort will lead to the creation and beta testing of a solid Holistic Management curriculum specifically for kids.

Participants will spend a week at the West Ranch, April 27 – May 3 and again May 11 – 17, with 3 days each session preparing the field experience instructional delivery, and 4 fun-filled days with students. Curriculum will include environmental knowledge and skills, scientific concepts, and science processes rooted in Holistic Management and tied to the National Science Standards.

Peggy Maddox, Director of Education at the West Ranch, is seeking interested individuals, especially those passionate about working with kids. Room, board, and travel stipend provided. Please contact Peggy at 325-392-2292 or mailto:pmaddox@hrm-texas.org.

Some topics for this year's field day may include grass fed beef, stockpile grasses, electric fences, watering facilities, and supplement feed. Located in Iola, TX near College Station. For details please contact Kenda Mahaffey. kenda.mahaffey@tx.nacdnet.net Madisonville, TX (936)-348-2666 ext. 3

While in college at Tarleton State University Michael became interested in Soil Science and organic agricultural practices. After graduating in 1996 with a BS degree in Plant and Soil Science he converted all his chemical fertilization programs to organic and began offering organic pest and fertilization programs. In 1997, Michael founded Soils Alive, LLC of Dallas, Texas and began to build a company that could deliver to Dallas residents the best wholly organic fertilization program and personalized service in the industry.

Continuing his pursuit of all-natural soil treatment and amendment services – this time for agricultural and other large-scale Texas growers, Michael became a partner in Sustainable Growth Texas™, taking on operations for North Texas in and surrounding the Dallas-Fort Worth areas.

We want to thank Michael for his support of HRM of Texas.

Now is an important time to take action in favor of Environmental Flows and Land & Water Conservation, and against designation of land for reservoir sites.

I attended the Senate Natural Resources Committee hearings on these bills last Tuesday and have the following to report so you can make an informed decision.

SB 3 Article1 Environmental Flows - this is consensus legislation that has been developed over several years. It has a broad base of support and needs to be passed.

SB 3 Article2 Conservation - this adds a new category of recognized water conservation - Stewardship of both public and private land. This will give formal recognition to the value of land stewardship in increasing the quantity of both surface water and groundwater supplies. However, the language of SB 476 needs to be added to SB 3.

SB 3 Article3 & SB 765 - Designating Unique Reservoir Sites - the controversy is primarily over:
1) whether they are really needed if good conservation measures are practiced (Dallas Ft-Worth are asking for more water than their plan indicates and do not have conservation measures equivalent to other portions of the State like San Antonio and Corpus Christi;
2) whether one region of the state can cause a reservoir to be built in another region of the state when the local population will be harmed. Region C (Dallas-Ft Worth) have included Marvin Nichols reservoir in their plan even though Region D (where the reservoir would be built) recommends against the reservoir; and
3) designating the land for reservoirs that may not be built causes damage in property values , causes other human tolls that may not be necessary, and keeps the land from being used for other purposes like building the Nueces River National Wildlife Refuge by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

If you would like to read a copy of my testimony, please send me an e-mail request and I will forward a word document to you.
Steve Box
Water Steward
Bastrop, TX 78602
512-300-6609
Steve.Box@att.net

COUNCIL BLUFFS, Iowa -- From the top of a new coal-fired power plant with its 550-foot exhaust stack poking up from the flat western Iowa landscape, MidAmerican Energy Holdings chief executive David L. Sokol peered down at a train looping around a sizable mound of coal. At this bend in the Missouri River, with Omaha visible in the distance, the new MidAmerican plant is the leading edge of what many people are calling the "coal rush." Due to start up this spring, it will probably be the next coal-fired generating station to come online in the United States. A dozen more are under construction, and about 40 others are likely to start up within five years -- the biggest wave of coal plant construction since the 1970s.

The coal rush in America's heartland is on a collision course with Congress. While lawmakers are drawing up ways to cap and reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, the Energy Department says as many as 150 new coal-fired plants could be built by 2030, adding volumes to the nation's emissions of carbon dioxide, the most prevalent of half a dozen greenhouse gases scientists blame for global warming.

Even after a pledge last month by a consortium of private equity firms to shelve eight of 11 planned coal plants as part of their proposed $45 billion buyout of TXU, the largest utility in Texas, many daunting projects remain on drawing boards. Any one of the three biggest projects could churn out more carbon dioxide than the savings that a group of Northeast states hope to achieve by 2018.

Utility executives say that the coal expansion is needed to meet rising electricity demand as the U.S. population and economy grow. Coal-fired plants provide half the electricity supply in the country. "A lot of congressmen ask me, 'Dave, why are you building that coal plant?' " says MidAmerican's Sokol. "And I say, 'What are my options?' " Sokol says he wants to help customers improve efficiency by 10 percent. His holding company, which is more than 80 percent owned by Berkshire Hathaway, includes the utility PacifiCorp in the Northwest and Rocky Mountains as well as MidAmerican; together they generate 16.7 percent of their power from renewable resources. The Iowa subsidiary alone gets 10 percent from renewable. Between 2000 and 2005, the company cut the amount of carbon emitted for every unit of energy generated by 9 percent.

But half of that reduction in the rate of emissions was offset by higher overall output. Electricity demand in Iowa is growing at a rate of 1.25 percent a year, and Sokol says that until new technologies become commercial or nuclear power becomes more accepted, coal is the way to meet that demand.

It remains unclear how Congress will cope with this problem. Although climate-change experts hope that new technology will deliver a way to capture and store carbon dioxide produced by coal plants, that technology remains in the pilot stage; it could take another decade before it is proven.

Companies say the new coal plants are better than old ones, though both use the same approach: pulverizing coal, then burning it in huge boilers to power giant turbines. The new $1.1 billion MidAmerican facility will be one of the nation's biggest, with 790 megawatts of capacity. Its boilers and pulverizers will devour 400 tons of coal every hour, 3.5 million tons a year, Sokol says. Combined with an existing plant next door, it will require a fresh train of coal every 16 to 17 hours; each train will be nearly 1.5 miles long and lug 135 cars about 650 miles from Wyoming's Powder River Basin.

While newly constructed plants cough up a tiny fraction of the pollutants environmental regulators have focused on in the past -- sulfur dioxide, mercury and nitrogen oxides -- they emit only 15 percent less carbon dioxide. They do that simply by being more efficient. Scrubbers like those used to extract other pollutants from a plant's exhaust don't exist for carbon dioxide.

Environmentalists worry that the new pulverized-coal plants, built to last 40 to 50 years, will saddle the country with high greenhouse-gas emissions for decades. Peabody Energy, for instance, has proposed two giant 1,500-megawatt plants, one for western Kentucky and one for southern Illinois. "Each of these coal plants is making bad global-warming policy, project by project," says Bruce Nilles, a Madison, Wis.-based Sierra Club lawyer who is fighting the Midwest plants. "It's a high priority to convert these investments in coal plants into something cleaner and smarter." If coal plants must be built, environmentalists prefer integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) plants that they say will make it easier later to capture carbon dioxide and store it underground. Only a handful of those are being planned.

Holistic Management: Building a Profitable Ranch
OLSA is sponsoring a course in holistic management with the help of Kerr Center and RMA. The purpose is to help you build the farm/ranch of your dreams. Most of us in the agriculture business are here because we want to be. However, too many times our dreams are turned into nightmares because it is so difficult to manage the need to keep the land productive, make a profit, and not work 20 hours a day. Every decision is connected to every other decision, so when we begin to make decisions that account for all three areas up front, we begin to make progress towards our goal, instead of fighting the fires that consume our energy and profits. Holistic Management is a positive, proven process for creating the profitable farm or ranch of your dreams.

This course will be held April 25-27 at the ARS Grazinglands Research Lab west of El Reno. The instructors are Walt Davis and Peggy Sechrist. The cost is $300, for more information or to register for any of the events listed here contact Kim Barker at 580-732-0244 or email oklsa@pldi.net.

ARS Grazinglands Lab Field Day
The ARS Grazinglands Lab is having a field day to talk about their research and show off their facilities on April 28, 2007. This is open to the public and lunch will be provided, so plan to come to learn how holistic management can help you reach your goal, and stick around and look around the Ft. Reno Grazinglands research lab.

Question: I need some advice about native grasses (as in What do we have?) And covering bare or partially bare spots around the house.

Answer: In terms of bare ground, anything you cover it with is a good thing - helps keep the soil cool and moist and helps plants trying to get a start to survive. What nature puts on there is litter - no not used McDonalds wrappers - nature's litter is leaves, dead blades of grass, little sticks - anything that can shade the soil and eventually turn to soil.

Lots of folks like compost covered with a little mulch - ground up cedars is what I am using these days. And when I cut the cedar seedlings that insist on coming back up, I toss each one onto a spot of bare ground. I bought some moldy hay for the horses (part of a large order and not supposed to be moldy - so I spread the bad bales on the bare ground. Some folks use cardboard, but that is usually to keep weeds from growing in the garden, while the chosen plant gets to grow up through a hole in the cardboard.

Perhaps you can get one of the Master Gardeners or Master Naturalists who have been through the training to come take a look; or your TPWD biologist or NRCS agent,or Texas Cooperative Exension agent. A do-it-yourself method is to match the plants on your place to one of the plant database websites like the one A&M has. A google search for TAMU plant database turned up a bunch of them. Here is one http://texnat.tamu.edu/plant.htm

There is an Austin Chapter of the Native Plant society http://www.npsot.org/Austin/ They have plant lists and informative meetings - look through their sites

The Wildflower Center has a search engine on its website that will take you to photos and common names with the scientific name link to more info pretty good resource: http://wildflower.utexas.edu/gallery. They also have people who will take you around their land and help you learn to see the different plants.

Here is a different plant search site: http://www.ci.austin.tx.us/growgreen/plantguide/searchplant.cfm

Thank you to all of our Members. We hope you find this local information helpful. Contact us with any questions you might have. We are always glad to help. Keep an eye out for up coming events and postings.

News & Notes Editors/Staff Peggy Cole - pcole@hrm-texas.org
Jamie Corson - jcorson@hrm-texas.org
Sharon Lane - slane@hrm-texas.org

• Land Stewardship In the Hill Country - http://www.cibolo.org/calendar/event/land-stewardship-in-the-texas-hill-country

Iowa, Dec. 26 -- Consumers of any age can improve their health with one New Year's resolution. "Avoid eating genetically modified organisms (GMOs)," says expert Jeffrey M. Smith, who points to evidence of mounting health risks associated with gene-spliced foods.

Smith urges consumers to cross off brands that contain genetically modified (GM) ingredients, which are in 60-70% of foods sold in the U.S. The principle offenders are non-organic soy and corn derivatives and canola and cottonseed oils. Thus, Ragu tomato sauce would be off limits, since it contains corn syrup and soybean oil, but Light Ragu or Barilla brand sauces, which contain olive oil and no corn sweetener, are non-GMO.

"Consumers in the U.S. are being used as human guinea pigs by biotech companies, which rushed their GMOs to market without adequate studies and before the science was ready," says Smith. "Once Americans learn they are feeding these high-risk foods to their children, they will demand non-GMO alternatives." In Europe, where consumer knowledge about GMOs is considerably higher, shoppers' concerns prompted food manufacturers there to remove all GM ingredients. Smith sees this trend building in the US, with more and more healthy brands declaring ingredients "Non-GMO" on the label.

Smith's new book, Genetic Roulette: The documented health risks of genetically engineered foods, due out in the spring, links GMOs to risks such as allergies, immune system dysfunction, potentially pre-cancerous cell growth, stunted organs and death. "Many of the beliefs about DNA that were popular when GM foods were introduced ten years ago," he says, "have been proven wrong. Swapping genes between species turns out to have far more unpredicted dangerous side effects than we thought."

Animals choose non-GMO

Smith also documents how several animals, when given the option, choose non-GM food over GMOs. These include cows, pigs, elk, deer, raccoons, squirrels, mice, rats and geese. He says a non-GMO New Year's resolution will help people elevate their choices to match the wisdom of the animals.

Cloned food may be FDA deja vu

“The FDA’s recent announcement declaring milk and meat from cloned animals as safe,” says Smith, “reminds us of their 1992 approval of GM crops. When the agency’s internal files were made public years later, they revealed that the FDA’s GMO policy was dictated by corporate manipulation, not sound science. Warnings by government scientists were ignored by political appointees from the biotech industry.” Smith adds, “And like GMOs, the FDA does not want labels on cloned food, thereby forcing the entire population into their dangerous uncontrolled experiment.”

Jeffrey Smith is the author of Seeds of Deception, the world's bestselling book on GMOs. He is the founder and executive director of The Institute for Responsible Technology (IRT) and a leading spokesperson on the risks of GM foods. Go to www.responsibletechnology.org for eater-friendly tips for avoiding GMOs at home and in restaurants. Jeffrey M. Smith is the author of Seeds of Deception, the world’s bestselling book on GM foods. His forthcoming book, Genetic Roulette, documents more than 60 health risks of GM foods in easy-to-read two-page spreads, and demonstrates how current safety assessments are not competent to protect consumers from the dangers. He is available for media at media@responsibletechnology.org.