40 miles in 48 hours for veterans’ mental health
Pasadena runner raises over $6,000 for Infinite Heroes
The Butters’ family flag had been to Afghanistan. To Syria. To Turkey.
Each place the flag had gone on retired Capt. Kyle Butters’ various deployments and other air missions left some dirt on the flag.
Many people have family bibles. Not the Butters. They had a family flag.
The flag now rested in a plastic bag inside a camouflage Camelback backpack. Its latest journey was loops of three miles in a Pasadena neighborhood. Three-point-two-mile loops, to be exact. Butters decided to do a 48-hour run after getting the idea from watching ultrarunner and retired Navy Seal David Goggins. Every four hours, starting at 8 a.m. Thursday, Butters would run the 3.2-mile loops.
The family flag accompanied him on each
run, most times in the backpack. On the first and last run, Butters carried the flag on a pole. Those were more challenging runs because of the flag.
Butters called it challenging, but to his son, Noa, 7, running with a flag was amazing. It had to be nearly impossible to complete the loop, Noa said.
Noa and his 5-year-old sister Hailey stood out on the corner to cheer on their father. Hailey came up with a cheer.
They were asleep during the midnight and early morning runs, but Bethany Butters said she set alarms about 30 minutes after Kyle Butters left so that she knew he made it home safely.
Kyle Butters said he decided to do the run a couple of weeks ago. A friend suggested he turn the challenge into a fundraiser for a cause.
Butters selected Infinite Heroes, an organization that helps provide services and grants to veterans, including for mental and brain health. As of Saturday afternoon, Butters raised more than $6,000 for the organization.
The original goal was $1,000, but Butters surpassed that in less than 24 hours.
Butters wanted his running challenge to be able to raise awareness of suicide among veterans, he said.
Butters does not have social media, he said, but he knew Infinite Heroes could help get the word out. He reached out on a Saturday to ask if they would be interested in being the recipients of his challenge. They responded affirmatively Monday morning.
The retired Army captain said he had been following Infinite Heroes’ work for some time after hearing about them in 2011 when he got back from Afghanistan.
Butters commissioned into the Army in May 2009, the same year he married Bethany. Butters was in the Army for eight and a half years before he was medically retired.
During his time in the Army, he deployed twice. The family moved multiple times. Noa was born in Alaska. Hailey in Oklahoma.
While in the army, he lost fellow soldiers. He saw others that could use the help that Infinite Heroes now provides.
There are places to get mental health help, he said, but stigma about accessing those services persists. For veterans, the pandemic has only worsened the isolation, which increases the need for mental health services.
Butters points to himself as an example. If he sought out more services, his time in the Army may have been longer.
While he ran his 3-mile loops, Butters thought about his fellow veterans and the fallen soldiers, he said.
In the Army, runs typically do not end at the barracks. Soldiers finish just past their sleeping space. In keeping with tradition, Butters added a quarter-mile to his loop, he said.
When Butters was in the Army, he hated running. But after retiring, he found that running gave him some peace. He could think through problems while he ran. He is a no-headphones guy, he said.
While Butters was a consistent runner, to train for the 48-hour challenge, he started adding extra runs during the day, averaging a total of 12-14 miles. He gave himself little time between deciding to do the 48-hour challenge and completing it.
And being able to run as much as he did was almost a miracle considering a doctor told him in winter 2019 that he would not be able to run again due to a back injury leftover from his Army days.
Running is a celebration of veterans, he said. They might not be perfect, but they can still contribute.
Butters spent most of his runs alone, but his parents each joined him on one, with his mother cycling. His neighbor, a Vietnam vet, also drove with him for the last lap.
The challenge turned out to be larger than he imagined, if just purely in the number of donations he raised.
Already, he is talking with Infinite Heroes about possibly doing it again next year. Maybe on a national scale with people running the challenge across the country.
But this time, instead of a few weeks, Butters will have a year to recover and prepare.
We are blessed in this country with an abundant, healthy, and cheap food supply which few civilizations in history have attained. The Green Revolution ushered in huge increases in yield per acre as massive amounts of fertilizers, especially nitrogen, were applied as well as increases in pesticides. We produce so much food and fiber, that over-consumption presents problems including obesity and Type II diabetes and the USDA projects U.S. food exports to reach $151 billion in 2021.
America’s acumen in intensifying agriculture has come with enormous environmental costs. For example, farming is responsible for 59% of the Chesapeake Bay’s nitrogen, 45% of phosphorus, and 48% of sediment from controllable sources. These are the pollutants destroying bay water quality and the critters that live in it. These farm pollutants are by far the most cost-effective per pound to reduce but we are failing badly to meet mandated reductions.
At the root of our failure are public attitudes toward agriculture, unlike such attitudes toward developers and industrial dischargers. These attitudes place farmers on pedestals as “White Hats” with developers castigated as “Black Hats.” The truth is we are all polluters and agriculture is a very leaky business and huge polluter.
Let’s discard some agricultural myths so that we can properly staunch the flow of farm pollutants.
FIRST MYTH: Better regulating agriculture may make farming unprofitable and then the land will be converted to development.
FACT: All regulated industries make such doubtful claims about job losses and being put out of business. The threat to farms is negated because billions of dollars in federal and state monies are available to farmers for Best Management Practices (BMPs), nutrient management, and easements. In 2020, government payments to farmers were nearly 40% of their total farm income. Despite COVID 19, farmers had higher profits in 2020 than in 2019 and their best net income in 7 years.
The ethanol boondoggle has enriched corn growers, raised corn prices, and cost taxpayers more than $50 billion in subsidies while increasing nutrient and sediment pollution.
In an authoritative study, there was an increase of 676,000 acres of Chesapeake forest converted from farmlands over a 15-year period, a very positive development for water quality even though forest cover declined overall from development. The best land use conversion we can make to save the bay is to convert nitrogen intensive corn and soybean fields, especially around chicken houses, back to the forest and wetlands they once were. This would result in massive reductions in bay-choking nutrients and sediment. There is simply no logical reason to keep a major pollution source in business, especially with government subsidies. Like all industries, agriculture must stop polluting surface and groundwaters.
SECOND MYTH: The conversion of farmland to housing or commercial development results in more pollutants flowing to the bay.
FACT: Farmland, especially cropland such as corn and soybeans, produces much more nutrients and sediment per acre on average than developed land, especially where the development employs good stormwater management. For farms producing and using animal manure, the nutrient loadings would be even greater.
U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) scientists recently documented that Eastern Shore lands dominated by farms and chicken houses contributed more nitrogen and phosphorus per acre than any other lands including along the Susquehanna River and from heavily developed areas. Preserving farmland without much stricter regulation of fertilizer and animal manure is bad public policy. We should be supporting solar generation on farms rather than prohibiting it as Anne Arundel County has done.
THIRD MYTH: There is widespread adoption of sound nutrient management and BMPs to reduce nutrient and sediment flows on the vast majority of farmland in Maryland and the other bay states.
FACT: Not true. One comprehensive study by USDA’s Natural Resource Conservation Service found that 80% of bay watershed cropland lacked adequate nutrient management and other water quality measures. EPA inspectors reviewing farm compliance with state requirements in central Pennsylvania and in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley showed widespread failure to implement required BMPs to comply with state laws on manure management and erosion control.
Enforcement of existing regulations remains weak, including in Maryland, and there is minimal field tracking of the effectiveness of farm BMPs paid for by federal and state funds. USGS scientists recently reported no overall nitrogen or phosphorus reductions from agricultural lands during a 20-year study period concluding “agriculture provides the largest source of nutrients to the bay watershed…. Annual nitrogen applications to cropland increased by 24%….production of poultry, which produces more nutrient-rich manure [than livestock], increased by 50%. In the Choptank River [dominated by agriculture and chicken farms], flow-normalized nitrogen and phosphorus fluxes have been increasing for several decades.”
FOURTH MYTH: It’s the corporate or large factory farms that cause problems for the Chesapeake Bay and not the small farmer.
FACT: Agriculture covers 2 million acres or 32% of Maryland land area with 12,400 farms and 6,000 fulltime farmers. These farms average only 161 acres each and 96% are family owned. Farming practices have been intensified with greater crop yields and some chicken farms growing 1.5 million broilers a year. Maryland produced 300 million broilers last year, mostly from small family farms.
FIFTH MYTH:If the environmental community simply cooperates with the agricultural community to greatly increase money for farmers to adopt BMPs and drops efforts for stricter regulations and enforcement, we will achieve the necessary reductions in nutrients and sediment flows to restore the bay.
FACT: No environmental program in North America has been successful in gaining substantial pollution reductions without mandatory laws/regulations and their proper enforcement. My 1982 legislation establishing the Maryland Agricultural Cost Share Program has resulted in more than $175 million for BMP grants. Many other state and federal programs have doled out more than $3 billion to bay watershed farmers to abate pollutants. The carrots (money) are one step, but the sticks (regulations) are essential or the bay recovery is doomed.
The Chesapeake Bay Foundation has decided to follow this myth and has gained $21 million for its coffers in federal grants to fund agricultural projects while lobbying for hundreds of millions more in direct farm grants. This strategy has failed miserably to achieve the necessary nitrogen reductions. The American Farm Bureau sued to block the entire EPA Bay recovery plan and even helped kill a key bay bill in Congress. But CBF still persists in their foolhardy approach to reining in farm pollutants.
As CBF notes, farm BMPs are typically 40 to 50 times less costly per pound of nitrogen reduced than stormwater retrofits from developed land. They also note that Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia— the states that account for 90% of the watershed’s pollution—are relying on farms to make 52%, 93% , and 77% respectively of their remaining nitrogen reductions to meet federal requirements by 2025. This is simply not possible without much tougher regulations and enforcement.
The choice is simple: crack down on agricultural pollutants with stricter regulation and enforcement or accept a seriously degraded Chesapeake Bay.