A support group and a lab in the St. Louis area provide resources for people with the allergy to mammal products — and evidence that its effects can be reversed.
Residents walk through the area where the Jersey Valley Dam once operated in Vernon County, Wisconsin, in August 2024. The dam breached during a catastrophic storm in 2018. Officials plan to decommission it and build a new one just downstream to preserve a recreational lake. Tegan Wendland/Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk
This week the Ag & Water Desk team is gathered in Columbia, Missouri. We're visiting the Missouri River, a major tributary of the Mississippi, seeing how farming affects water runoff, learning how to make our stories sing in various formats, and, of course, brainstorming our next big projects. We'll have another update after our meeting, but for now, I wanted to share two important stories from this week.
The first is about aging dams. Dams across the country are, on average, more than 60 years old and facing pressures from urban sprawl and intensifying floods wrought by climate change. The price tag to fix what’s broken is estimated in the hundreds of billions of dollars, meaning dam owners face hard questions about what to do with them. Some communities are choosing to decommission the dams, a decision that comes with concerns about future flooding for those downstream.
“I think we are going to see more dams under stress or even failing,” said Lori Spragens, executive director of the Association of State Dam Safety Officials. “It’s not really fun to look at in the future.”
The full story, by Madeline Heim of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, is here.
Greg Campbell, 66, left, and his wife Cheryl Sachtleben, 66, right, enjoy their beer during the release party of New Roots, a beer made using Kernza seeds, at the Blue Jay Brewing Company in downtown St. Louis, Missouri, on Sept. 4, 2024. Credit: Sophie Proe/ St. Louis Public Radio
Eric Schmid, of St. Louis Public Radio, produced a somewhat lighter story – but one with equally important stakes in the future – about beer made from Kernza. Many agricultural staples today, like corn, soy, wheat and barley, are planted in the ground each growing season. After harvest, the soil is left bare, or farmers plant cover crops in those fields over the winter. Kernza, by contrast, stays in the ground for several years, and it can produce multiple harvests in that time.
“It holds soil in place, helps build new soil, absorbs water, takes up nutrients, hosts a hugely diverse microbiome, and it also sequesters carbon,” said Allison Miller, an evolutionary biologist who studies Kernza at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center.
Kernza could help make agriculture more sustainable, but there hasn’t been a real market for it. Beer brewers are beginning to tap into the alternative grain, with some tasty results.
On a recent weekday afternoon, dozens of people filled the cozy taproom at Blue Jay Brewing Company in St. Louis, Missouri. On tap that day was an American Lager called New Roots, made in part with Kernza.
“I love it—nice earthiness. Still nice and crushable though,” said Bryan Schubert, who owns a brewery in Illinois. “That is, in reality, a good measure of beer.”
In the coming weeks, we're looking forward to sharing a comic about invasive carp, a conversation with author Boyce Upholt, who's written a new book about the Mississippi River called "The Great River," and, of course, more stories.
Thanks as always for keeping up with us, and stay tuned.
