(hopeful music) - [Jenny] Throughout the country, people are planting seeds of innovation, harvesting a bounty of ideas to help care for the only home we have, planet earth.

In the second season of "My World Too" discover with our team ideas and sustainability, both new and old from high tech eco innovations to homegrown local solutions, we'll learn about sustainable trends in transportation, housing, energy, food production, climate change, carbon reduction, resource management, and so much more.

Join our field reporters as they explore eco-friendly ideas and lifestyles that help to make our world a little bit better.

Welcome to "My World Too," short stories of sustainable living and earthly innovations.

(hopeful music) Heirloom, hybrid, GMO.

We have all heard these terms before but do we know what they mean?

Field correspondent Nick Schmitz talks to some experts to find out what is in the seeds that we are growing.

(hopeful piano music) - So Jere, I'm looking and I'm seeing a lot of different plants here.

- Yeah, this is kind of the benefit of heirlooms is the diversity of color, shapes, sizes.

You know, each one represents different cultures, different countries, and you know, different families.

- Tell me a little bit about your background.

What is your area of study?

- I'm a broadly trained molecular biologist but my focus is genetics and the project that I've worked on for many years now has to do with plant breeding for sustainable agriculture.

So I'm not a plant breeder, I'm a molecular biologist who's worked with a lot of plant breeders.

- Seeds are one of those things that have been around for a long time.

In the past, you would, if you cross two plants or two plants were crossed you would always select the best and stabilize that.

Whereas now you just cross the two plants every generation for the first generation of seeds and plant that and then the next generation you have to cross the two plants again.

- Generally the goal of a plant breeder is to create a crop variety that has characteristics that are valuable to the end user.

That is farmer, gardener, whoever it is you're going to you're anticipating will use the final product.

And so it's a lot of time making controlled crosses between different plant varieties to try to get the optimal set of traits.

- Matt, these processes that you're talking about, are these things that do naturally occur with plants crossing but in a lab setting you can sort of speed it up and you can sort of be more selective about what traits you're bringing to the table?

- Generally, yes.

If we're not talking about genetically modified crops which are a different thing, most plant breeders are making natural hybridization that is essentially doing what Mendel did, taking one plant, taking another plant, making it pollinate on the other.

Hybrid seeds are very common with vegetable breeding and many crops, corn is sort of the biggest most prominent example of where hybrid seed has just worked wonders in terms of creating new crop varieties.

- And that's basically what an F1 hybrid is.

It's a cross between two different plants that might be a purple wild tomato and a small cherry tomato but when you cross those two plants, you might have a productive high yielding, good shipping tomato or whatever it is.

- And interestingly, what often happens is the F1 hybrid, the first generation hybrid has a phenomenon that we call hybrid vigor and actually outperforms either of the parents in all categories.

Why exactly that happens is a matter of debate between scientists to this day, why genetically you get this, we call it heterosis but the more common terms hybrid vigor.

- When you have this hybrid plant that has all of these characteristics that you're looking for, can you then harvest the seeds from that and plant another generation of that same crop?

- The average person cannot, unless they want to go to a great deal of effort.

For reasons that are genetically somewhat complicated, but essentially most people learn in their say high school biology class, once you get past the F1 generation into what we call the F2 and beyond, because of chromosome behavior and DNA recombination, all of those traits that were uniform, exact match, you know, or uniform combination from the two parents in the F1 suddenly start to get all shuffled around into strange combinations in the F2 and beyond.

What you can do if you have the time and effort and this is what plant breeders do is you can do selection.

You know, in nature natural selection starts to pick out the ones that are not particularly good and then it gets refined, you know, till you get a good, you know, set of characteristics.

Plant breeders don't wait for that and have different criteria than nature does so we're picking out then from those later generations the best possible set of traits.

You can do that over several generations and even speeding it up in the greenhouse that usually takes several years.

And then you can get a uniform plant with all of the great characteristics that is then genetically stable, has sort of stabilized its genes to all the desired characteristics, but that takes a lot of time and effort.

And then you also have an inbred plant now, which is essentially what heirlooms are.

Heirloom plants are what people have done over generations in some cases, centuries.

They have selected and they have created these varieties that probably were hybrids at one time and then over a long period of time, you know, had exactly the characteristics they wanted in a consistent way.

(calm music) - Jere, can you explain to me heirloom seeds.

What does that mean?

- So it means different things to different people, but basically heirloom seed is a non-hybrid non-patented variety that's been passed down from generation to generation.

In the past, pretty much all seeds were heirloom seeds.

That's what seeds were, it was a variety that you would have in your family or your community and it was passed down and from generation to generation.

And it, as far as how old that is, that can mean different things to different people.

A lot of people think it's 50 years or a 100 years, but it's really just a seed overall that's been passed down.

Traditionally, everybody kind of selected and developed their own strains and each region had local regionalized varieties and that's what makes heirloom seeds special.

You can grow something that Thomas Jefferson grew or George Washington might have grew, or it might be from your Chinese ancestry or your German ancestry or wherever you came from.

You can go back in your culture and find varieties that are part of your cultural heritage.

Wherever you're at there's stories and traditions and foods that have been passed down as well as the seeds that went with them.

- What are the advantages to an heirloom seed?

- Well, there's definitely a lot to consider and I, you know, it's not necessarily the perfect solution for every single gardener, but I would say most gardeners can find an heirloom seed that will do as well or better than hybrid varieties in their garden.

The other advantages, a home gardener literally has, you know, thousands of choices.

And so there's all different advantages, whether it's, you know, the nutritional benefits.

We've did some different tests here on varieties, nutritional studies, and some of the varieties even in say the same crop, you would think it'd be all somewhat the same sometimes like oh, wow, like the vitamin a might be 10 times what it is in the next variety.

So that's the other benefit.

You have all these colors, which in general represent different minerals and nutrients.

You also have the histories and stories that go along with them and that's probably as important as anything being able to have that traditional part of your culture or part of other cultures and keeping it alive and the stories alive with it.

And also the ability to save your own seed without any patenting or control with corporations or governments.

It's just saving and passing down, you know, what humans have always done and, you know, supplying your own table with stuff that you've grown and saved right from your own property.

You know, that's kind of the benefit, you know.

- When I look around the, the grounds here at Baker Creek, I see a lot of large fields of all the same crop.

Now is that done on purpose to cut down on sort of cross pollenization of seeds, to sort of keep the seeds, I guess, pure is the word?

- It is, yeah.

A lot of the things we're raising here are for seed.

So if it's something we are raising for seed, if we're just raising it for eating or taking pictures, documenting, then we don't necessarily separate it.

But if we're saving seed, we have to isolate it from the other crops.

So some things have to be like melons, for example, have to be like a half a mile apart or so.

So it depends on the crop.

So each crop, we kinda either isolate it by space or even time, you know, when we plant it at different times.

(light music) - GMO.

So we hear this phrase a lot, GMO, genetically modified organism.

Can you explain to me what is different about a GMO versus a hybrid seed.

- Hybrid seeds are hybrids.

They are natural hybridization between plant varieties.

This is all naturally occurring stuff where we're gathering maybe plants from all over the world to find the best hybrid that we can create but it's still natural hybridization.

GMO is a completely different thing.

With GMO you are not obtaining, you're not getting the genetic information, the DNA into these plants by cross pollinating them or any natural reproductive fertilization.

You are taking recombinant DNA in a test tube and you are fusing it together using molecular techniques, usually generating what we call a plasmid, which is a little engineered molecule and you are then using technology to insert it into the DNA, the genome, the chromosome of this plant.

- It's a seed that has been crossed artificially.

Basically, it's not really crossed.

It had genes brought in from another species, another plant, another animal.

It might be a gene to make the fruit a different color, but in more cases or not it's has to do with pest resistance or pesticide resistance more often than not.

So the farmer can spray whatever chemical it's been genetically modified to resist.

You can spray on the plant that would normally kill the plant so now it has genes to resist glyphosate or whatever the chemical may be.

And that way a farmer can spray basically almost, you know, unlimited amounts of chemicals, at least compared to what it used to be on this plant and the plant will survive.

So that's the biggest, probably single advantage that farmers see is, you know, the ability to control pests and weeds.

- You can take genes from an octopus and put it into a corn plant.

So we are talking about taking gene sequences from completely different species that you could never get into these plants through any natural hybridization means and you are inserting them into the genome and expressing them so that the plant now creates some product, usually a protein or an enzyme that it would never have been able to get in any other way.

So that's genetic modification, completely foreign, what we call trans genes now introduced into the plant.

- [Nick] And what is the benefit?

Why would you want to do that?

- There are a lot of reasons, disease resistance, pest resistance being prominent amongst them.

You think like Flavr Savr tomatoes, or one of the early ones that had to do with shelf life.

- The downside is, you know, all the other potential harmful effects the spraying can have.

And also, you know, one of the biggest issues is who owns the seed and who controls the seed.

With, you know, with the heirloom seeds, it's owned by the consumer.

It's kinda like open source software versus genetically engineered seeds and then patented seeds, which most genetically engineered seeds are patented.

The issue is who controls the seed, you know, long term.

So this has implications for what people can do, you know, with those.

And when you are purchasing hybrid seed and always GMO seed, generally farmers, growers have a usage agreement that sort of dictates how they are to use this and what the limitations are on that.

- [Nick] As a home gardener, if you're gonna plant your own produce is there any concern that you would purchase GMO seeds?

- GMO seeds in the United States are not permitted for distribution to individuals who are not growers.

And when you're a farmer, you have, you know, a status, you know, and sort of a registered, you know, so it is not possible for a home gardener to even to accidentally plant GMO seeds.

- It's different things that have been passed down, different things that different people have developed in the past, or selected out the wild and keeping these varieties alive.

You know, it's like this little sunflower here I collected a few years ago in Thailand.

This variety comes from Switzerland.

Of course, cowpeas originally came from Africa, but now they come from multiple different locations.

And it's just like a living history book almost- - Right.

- Telling the stories in a life, you know, in a live living plant of different cultures and food tradition.

- [Narrator] In urban areas across the country, concerned citizens are trying to make real change in the quality of the air they breathe.

Our own Mike Wunsch learns about one such organization that is demanding clean air now.

- We are here in the heart of Argentine and Armourdale, it's communities in Wyandotte County.

They are challenged on a day to day basis by the environment, right?

Some examples are, which you can see behind us are the rail yard and right off here is the highway And there's also a lot of industries surrounding the neighborhoods.

- We're in Kansas City.

Wanna talk a little bit about Clean Air Now.

Clean Air Now as an environmental justice organization started here in Argentine, specifically came together because community members were concerned about industrial pollution, rail yard pollution, black soot building up in their homes and the impacts of diesel pollution right, in their neighborhood.

- So what are these fam, what are the issues for these families?

What kind of health issues are we talking about?

- Oftentimes, when you're close to a lot of this air pollution and constant contamination, there's concern for lots of respiratory diseases so you'll see higher rates of asthma in communities such as these.

There's also heart disease problems, and these aren't just like easy little health problems like an allergy that you can just get over with a quick little medication.

This is long term, right, and so you don't always see it right off the bat.

Cancer has been associated with all of this.

So the concern is that this is constantly impacting their health on a day to day basis for the elderly, people our age, and then also for the children.

Clean Air Now is an environmental justice organization that was stemmed from the community.

It started because of a community concern and our focus and our goals is to help push and drive policy, programming, regulations to change.

And ultimately the goal is for health equity, right?

There shouldn't be communities of, depending based off of your income level or the color of your skin, that shouldn't matter whether you have access to clean air, water, or land.

We believe that's a human right.

I'm a first generation Mexican American.

I actually grew up here in Kansas City right in the Armourdale neighborhood so this is very close to my heart being able to work with the community that I was born and raised in.

And my family actually still lives here as well.

- Hello, yes Mae, nice to meet you.

- Hi, nice to meet you.

- Thank you.

Can you share with us what it is that Earthjustice does for Clean Air Now?

- Earthjustice, we're a nonprofit legal organization.

First and foremost, you know, we fight to ensure that everyone has access to clean air, clean water and a livable planet.

And so we do a lot of this work by partnering with communities on the ground and other environmental organizations to, you know, make sure the industry's held accountable to clean up its own pollution and to protect the environment.

So in our work with Clean Air Now, it's an on the ground community organization.

They're very dedicated to cleaning up pollution from the goods movement industry in the Kansas City region.

You know, Earthjustice has been partnering with Clean Air Now for years now to try to, you know, work with them, to try to clean up tailpipe pollution.

- What Clean Air Now wants to happen is that there is equity and justice, right, for communities of color here in Kansas City.

Some communities are intentionally placed near these harms.

And I can give you an example.

You know, I grew up in a neighborhood, it was a low income housing opportu, first time homeowner opportunity for my family, my parents to move to this place.

It was offered through some federal funded project.

When my parents moved there, they were excited, right?

But not knowing that right across the street was a petrochemical facility that formulated pesticides, agricultural chemicals, literally my playground, right, 50 feet away from my home.

And that is a form of environmental racism because government has intentionally tried to find sites that nobody wants and say, well, we can put people of color there.

- Redlining is seen in many cities throughout the nation and it's a systemic form of racism where they intentionally priced homes of people, of color to be of lower amount.

And then they also put them right next to industry.

You'll find that these, the value of the land isn't as high.

And so that makes it very challenging for people to be able to move out or to be able to increase their own wealth, right, because they're not able to sell their home at the value that they had bought it for.

- When we talk about environmental racism, we talk about policies, practices, and programs that have been embedded in local land use decisions.

And not just at the local level, federal level, all across the way, right, putting communities of color in danger.

- The neighborhoods we often see that are right next to rail yard, industry, diesel, everything that you can think of of pollution, we consider them fence line communities, right?

And oftentimes when it's a fence line community you'll see that they're lower income, they also are higher rates of people of color.

In the United States there are fence line communities all across the country from the East Coast to the West Coast.

This is not just a Kansas City issue, it's a national issue and it's a racist issue.

Being first generation you wanna come in and establish a home and be able to contribute to society, but the challenges that come with it, especially in the areas that we live in is that we're right off of the rail yard, we're right off of industry.

We're seeing a lot of family and a lot of friends that we have that work in these type of environments and it's deteriorating them.

And the struggle on top of that is not only the low paid wages that they're getting, but also they don't have health insurance, they don't have that type of resources or access to it.

And so it only causes a greater, greater burden for them on a day to day basis just to try to survive.

We're here to work, right, we're here to be able to provide for our families, to provide a better future for the children and that's what industry pulls on.

They pull on the need for work, the need for workers that are willing, or they don't have many options to pay, to get paid higher because of maybe lack of education that was provided available to them, or also just the need to be able to provide food on the table.

- All of our projects are community led and guided, right, meaning that people from the community are the experts, meaning that those that are impacted by environmental racism, redlining and the industrial pollution that are the ones really leading these efforts because if we don't have them at the table, we cannot make solutions or decide for them because without those voices, we really don't, really decision makers at the moment don't have a grasp of what it really means to be living at the front lines of the climate crisis.

They don't live there, they don't live in those neighborhoods.

They live they're disconnected with the realities, right, of what's happening on the ground.

So it's very important that the decisions be driven by community.

- So this is our Clean Air Now team made up of community members working in the streets.

- This is a personal air monitor.

It measures PM 2.5, which is just particulate matter.

So it's particulate matter that's pollution.

And 2.5 is just the size of it.

Obviously the air moves around, right?

So the stationary air monitors are useful for that data, but this is useful for monitoring pollution while you're moving around and while the pollution is also moving.

- So this device here is it's a black carbon monitoring.

So the black carbon is, comes from diesel pollution from the heavy duty truck, the concentration of trucks that also happens in these communities but also from the rail yard.

And so this measures black carbon in real time- Filter- - So it's just coming through this tube?

- Yes, so we would set it up and set it here, for example, for maybe 24 hours.

However, we do, we also have some monitors that are a stationary monitors we can set up for long periods of time.

- What we have here is an air monitor stationed at a residential home.

And we have these all throughout Argentine and Armourdale.

The community decided on their own based off of what they're being exposed to and what they, what they're around where to place these air monitors.

What's important about this one in particular is that it's a residential home that runs a childcare center.

So the family here, they use this information real time data that they can look up on their phone and see what is the air quality and that's important because then they determine, can the kids go out and play today based off of the air quality.

- A lot of our work is also driven by using that data as a tool, right?

We cannot say that data is what's gonna drive the change because we have so much data out there in the world that we should not be looking for well, that we shouldn't be saying, hey, we need more, we need more.

We have enough data.

But what we have noticed in our work that this information which is not accessible to local community members is that also supports their lived experiences.

- So as part of Earthjustice, I work on our Right To Zero campaign.

So Right To Zero, this campaign is really a coalition effort where we are, you know, working to electrify our transportation system and our buildings and power it all on a zero emissions clean energy grid.

And all of this is with the purpose and the goals of addressing health, air quality and climate issues.

And one of the reasons why it's so exciting to work on our Right To Zero campaign and to work with partners like Clean Air Now is because we have all of the technology that we need to go to zero emissions.

So technology is not really the issue.

I really see our work is about, you know, working with agencies to require them to mandate that industry cleanup and adopt the zero mission technology that we have and that they can develop if we don't have it yet.

And to really take back and take on the burden that they've been, the industry has been putting on communities for decades.

It should really be something that, you know, the corporations that are making millions of dollars every year should be paying for, rather than the communities that have to front this burden.

- So what we wanna see is a transition to a cleaner economy, clean energy, and retraining the workers and this infrastructure money, ARP money is also for that purpose, right?

So we need to take advantage at a critical moment where we are to make sure that we're moving in that direction.

We want zero emissions but zero emissions in environmental distance community, prioritizing those communities.

These community members, there is cohesiveness in this neighborhoods, right?

People come similar cultural backgrounds.

And so what we want is just future for them, right?

We want them to have a healthy, longer life because the life expectancy here is shorter by 22 years and that's a huge number.

This community really wants a better future for their children, right?

They want to make sure that they can live in a community that's safe, where they can breathe clean air and have clean drinking water.

- We deserve to have health, right, we all deserve to be healthy.

And if we don't have our health then we don't really have much of a quality of life.

- [Mike] I really appreciate what you're doing for Clean Air Now and wish you guys great success.

- Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us.

(uplifting music) - The Massawa Quality Farms is a no-till, no fossil fuel machine farm primarily growing fruits and herbs.

Food security is really important to me as someone who has been food insecure in my life.

One of the projects that I've worked on actually utilizes instructions from a codex from the 1500s.

- We're now starting to see television ads for electric cars.

I would love to have all my neighbors around here having one of these babies parked in the garage, but will that transformer in my backyard handle all those cars?

(uplifting music) (low melodic hum) (light hum) (high pitched hum)