But as Civil Eats’ reporting has shown, the food and agriculture system is full of examples of how farmers, ranchers, fishers, chefs, restaurants, grocery stores, and consumers are addressing climate change, with strategies that sequester carbon, slash emissions, save water, reduce plastics, and open new markets.

Farmers, for example, are experimenting with the wild seed relatives of domestic crops that may be able to withstand extreme weather. Researchers have also discovered that kelp growing alongside mussels and oysters can act like a sponge, soaking up excess nutrients while increasing critical oxygen levels in surrounding waters. And lawmakers and the U.S. Department of Agriculture are crafting policies that support local food systems and regenerative agriculture.

Here are some of the most important and promising climate solutions stories we published this year.

As Saltwater Encroaches on Farms, Solutions Emerge From the Marshes
In the Mid-Atlantic, sea level rise due to climate change is already changing what farmers can grow.

These State Lawmakers Are Collaborating on Policies that Support Regenerative Agriculture
Progressive state legislators often find themselves in a David-and-Goliath battle against the conventional ag industry. One organization is equipping them with resources to support producers using regenerative practices instead.

Investment Is Flowing to US Grass-fed Beef Again. Will It Scale Up?
Rupert Murdoch’s Montana ranch is at the center of an effort to get grass-fed beef into mainstream grocery stores; others are using investments to build new markets entirely.

At Climate Dinners Hosted by Chefs Sam Kass and Andrew Zimmern, The Meal Is The Message
To create awareness and inspire action, their carefully curated meals feature coffee, chocolate, and other foods that will become costlier and more difficult to produce due to climate change.

Micro Solar Leases: A New Income Stream for Black Farmers in the South?
EnerWealth Solutions wants to bring the benefits of renewable energy to Black farmers and landowners in the Carolinas.

Can Taller Cover Crops Help Clean the Water in Farm Country?
In Minnesota, a local water quality program might serve as a model for incentivizing the next steps in regenerative farming.

Regenerative Beef Gets a Boost from California Universities
The U.C. system is using its purchasing power to buy grass-fed meat from local ranchers for its 10 universities and five medical centers.

Fungi Are Helping Farmers Unlock the Secrets of Soil Carbon
By tapping into underground fungal networks, farmers are learning how to build lush, spongy soil that supports healthy plants and stores carbon underground.

Florida Banned Farmworker Heat Protections. A Groundbreaking Partnership Offers a Solution.
The Fair Food Program offers the strongest, legally binding protocols to keep people safe when politicians fall short.

Vineyards Are Laying the Groundwork for a Regenerative Farm Future
A new study finding that regenerative practices build more soil carbon in vineyards points to a path for the industry to create broader models for agriculture.

Seeds From Wild Crop Relatives Could Help Agriculture Weather Climate Change
The hardy wild cousins of domesticated crops can teach us how to adapt to a hotter, more unpredictable future.

New School Meal Standards Could Put More Local Food on Students’ Lunch Trays
USDA’s nutrition standards aim to support farmers by increasing the number of schools getting fresh fruits, vegetables, and meats from nearby farms.

Changing How We Farm Might Protect Wild Mammals—and Fight Climate Change
Nearly a quarter of U.S. mammal species are on the endangered species list. Researchers say farming with biodiversity in mind may help stave off further decline.

Climate Solutions for the Future of Coffee
Farmers, researchers, and coffee devotees are refocusing on agroforestry and developing hardier varieties and high-tech beanless brews to save our morning cup of Joe.

Can Seaweed Save American Shellfish?
Seaweed farms on both coasts are beginning to take hold, tapping into decades of painstaking science, and could help shellfish thrive in waters affected by climate change and pollution.

Zero-Waste Grocery Stores in Growth Mode as Consumers Seek to Ditch Plastic
Food packaging is a significant contributor to the plastic pollution crisis. These stores offer shoppers an alternative.

Rescuing Kelp Through Science
Breakthrough genetic research at a Massachusetts lab could save the world’s vanishing kelp forests—and support American kelp farming, too.

The post 17 Food and Ag Approaches to Tackling the Climate Crisis appeared first on Civil Eats.

Now, she says, “it takes us a while to even get a couple of dozen clams. That’s not right.” She points out that most of the shellfish she harvests these days have been seeded manually by the town of Southampton and local universities, “almost like a science project,” she says. “The natural way has been contaminated and polluted by mankind.”

What’s also not right: the quality of the quahogs. “The shells are so brittle,” she says. The increasingly acidic water in the bay makes it hard for the clams to build strong shells. She points to her necklace of wampum—mollusk-shell beads that are integral to Eastern Woodland Native American culture. Hers is a single large indigo-and-white pendant, half an inch thick, the way shells used to be.

Genia, a member of the Shinnecock Nation, has lived along these waters on the South Fork of Long Island, New York, for most of her life. Shellfish are a traditional food source for the Shinnecock; they were also once the backbone of Long Island’s robust commercial fishing industry. Her tribe witnessed the crash of the clam and scallop fishery in the 1990s and then another crash in the 2000s, which further depleted shellfish stocks and threatened the nascent farmed oyster industry. Both were caused by massive blooms of harmful algae.

In 2020, after watching the decline of Shinnecock Bay—a body of water that has fed her tribe for some 13,000 years—Genia worked with Tela Troge, a tribal lawyer, to form the Shinnecock Kelp Farmers, a group of five Indigenous women who grow kelp to fight climate change. The group hopes to heal their afflicted bay and inspire a new generation to adopt more regenerative practices on the water. “We want our children to be able to go out there and clam and collect oysters and scallops and mussels like we used to,” says Genia. Plus, Shinnecock women are water protectors, she says, and being out on the bay is “in our DNA.”

The women’s move toward seaweed as a solution is emblematic of a shift across the country as the world’s oceans change faster than scientists ever expected. Since the 1990s, ocean acidification—caused by more carbon in the atmosphere dissolving into the sea, among other factors—has increased at alarming rates; in the U.S., the West Coast is especially impacted. Increased acidification means crustaceans in their critical larval stage cannot pull enough calcium carbonate from the water to create shells.

By 2015, acidification had become so significant globally that the United Nations addressed the crisis as part of its Sustainable Development Goal 14: Life Below Water. Their guidelines have spurred government investment, university research, and private interest to tackle acidification ever since.

Nitrogen-rich wastewater, another byproduct of rapid human development, feeds huge blooms of algae (known as “red tides” or “brown tides,” depending on the species) that starve other marine life of oxygen. Some algal blooms produce toxins that make shellfish unsafe to eat. The blooms are a particular problem in shallow waterways like Shinnecock Bay.

These twin phenomena of acidification and algal blooms are deadly for all crustaceans, including shellfish. And they can spell disaster for coastal communities, as 3 billion people globally rely on “blue foods” from the ocean, including shellfish, as a primary source of protein.

But recent scientific studies show that as the ocean becomes unfriendly for shellfish, seaweed could offer a solution—in particular, the large brown algae called kelp. Wild kelp forests form the most extensive marine-vegetated ecosystems in the world. They grow on every continent except Antarctica and provide habitat and food for the ocean’s smallest creatures to its largest.

Rich in minerals, kelp grows quickly and doesn’t require fertilizer. It isn’t seriously affected by acidification or algal blooms, and in some cases, it can even mitigate their impact on shellfish, because kelp soaks up excess nutrients like nitrogen and increases oxygenation in the waters around it. What’s more, the fibrous plant, which can grow two feet a day, also pulls anywhere from five to 20 times more carbon from the atmosphere than any terrestrial crop, something that leading marine scientists are working to quantify right now.

Because of these beneficial properties, kelp is being hailed as a miracle, a panacea for the climate crisis. Scientists, coastal governments, and private industry alike think it could be the cornerstone of a new, blue economy that allows coastal communities in the United States to transition from extractive industries into more sustainable ones.

Bolstered by roughly $380 million in investments since 2018, kelp farmers have proliferated from around zero in 2012 to 108 active farms in 2023, according to Connecticut Sea Grant, part of a national network of university-based programs dedicated to encourage stewardship of marine resources. Seaweed farming, a longstanding tradition in Asia for more than a hundred years, is now gaining a place on U.S. shores.

The Scientists Who Kickstarted American Kelp Farming

Charles Yarish holding Saccharina japonica seaweed offshore of Wando, South Korea, in 2023. (Photo courtesy of Charles Yarish)

Charles Yarish, now a visiting scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts, is considered the father of American seaweed farming. Gregarious and welcoming, Yarish can talk kelp nonstop. In 1976, as a new assistant professor at the University of Connecticut’s Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and also its Department of Marine Sciences, Yarish became increasingly fascinated by kelp’s ability to pull nutrients from the water column. He suspected that farming kelp and other seaweeds could help alleviate water quality issues.

Toiling away at his Connecticut laboratory and conducting experiments in the Long Island Sound, Yarish spent the next few decades proving this hypothesis, focusing mostly on how kelp can pull nitrogen from waterways. “The farming of seaweeds such as kelp not only has business applications but is terribly important for ecosystem services, removing [excess] nutrients from ocean waters and lowering pH,” he explained.

Those early studies have impacted the growth of mariculture studies globally. At UConn, Yarish established an internationally known Seaweed Marine Biotechnology Laboratory, and was tapped to advise the Department of Energy’s current MARINER Program, which has invested $66 million in seaweed aquaculture since 2018.

Charles Yarish looks over recently collected kelp with a student in a lab at the Stamford campus in 2013. (Photo credit: Peter Morenus, University of Connecticut)

In 2016, scientists in Maine, alarmed by their state’s warming waters and increasing acidification, and inspired in part by Yarish’s early work, began studying whether kelp could provide a sanctuary for shellfish. Using the country’s first-ever commercial kelp farm in Casco Bay and funded by a constellation of government, nonprofit, and academic groups, the effort was led by Nichole Price and her team at the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences.

After three years, they determined that co-growing blue mussels with sugar kelp—Saccharina latissima, the go-to variety of farmed seaweed for colder North American waters—led to increased oxygenation in the water. The scientists also documented kelp’s ability to locally raise seawater pH, which allowed the mussels to build thicker shells despite the acidic waters.

Price dubbed this the “halo effect” of kelp. She plans to continue monitoring outcomes to see how farms will fare in the future, since Maine’s waters are predicted to be too acidic for shellfish to calcify for most of the year by 2030.

Price said evidence is growing to support the idea that co-growing shellfish and seaweeds can offset the impact of climate change. The scientific field is tackling some big questions that could benefit the kelp farming industry. Including, she said, “Is it a consistent halo effect, or is it only in these protected bays? Or does it depend on the size of the kelp farm? If it’s a really big kelp farm, can it still create a halo even in exposed areas?”

While scientists race to understand the best growing methods for seaweeds with shellfish, the co-growing concept has been widely marketed by Bren Smith of GreenWave, who was first introduced to kelp by Yarish in 2013, after Smith’s oyster farms on Long Island Sound were decimated by hurricanes. Smith’s brand of co-growing focuses on a polyculture ocean farming model that combines shellfish with seaweed, an idea that he propagated in a book, Eat Like a Fish, and in GreenWave’s instruction manuals for “regenerative ocean farming,” which the group said thousands have used.

Although scientists on both coasts are still studying the effects of co-growing kelp with shellfish species like oysters—which fetch higher market value but generally grow in different environments than kelp—Smith promoted the idea of growing shellfish and oysters together, and is widely known in the industry for popularizing this approach.

Growing shellfish alongside seaweeds or finfish is a practice long used in Asia, especially China. However, it has been slower to catch on in the U.S., in part because of the lack of trials here. Inspired by the Asian approach and by Price’s work in Maine, in 2018 marine scientist Chris Gobler began focusing on kelp’s potential to heal his local waterways in New York, where algal blooms posed a bigger threat than acidification.

Eastern Long Island in particular was burdened with aging, failing septic systems that leached nitrogen into groundwater and ponds, lakes, rivers, streams, and bays. That excess nutrient runoff, combined with warmer waters, essentially fertilized the growth of harmful algal blooms yet again that year. Large swaths of open water were closed to shellfish harvesters by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation.

Although Price was studying the co-raising of kelp with mussels to offset acidification, there was no scientific evidence yet to show how kelp could help shellfish during algal blooms. Gobler, working out of Long Island’s Stony Brook University laboratory, thought that kelp might benefit oysters. Aided by Michael Doall, a former commercial oyster grower–turned scientist who’d devised a way of growing kelp in shallow waters, Gobler launched a three-year study in 2019, hoping to find a solution for Long Island’s troubled waters that could be applied on both coasts.

By 2022, he had his answer: “We’ve learned the seaweeds can inhibit harmful algal bloom and even represent a direct food source for the bivalves as they slough off microbial cells.”

An illustration of the life cycle of sugar kelp, showing how it grows and develops over time. (illustration credit: Nhatt Nichols)

What’s more, Gobler’s lab had proved that raising kelp with oysters led to faster-growing, healthier shellfish. Gobler dubbed the phenomena the “halo effect”—a nod to Price’s studies—noting that the kelp around oyster cages provided a “halo” of increased oxygenation to the oysters as the kelp grew. At the same time, the kelp removed excess nitrogen from the water column. Backed by Gobler’s studies and studies from Price at Bigelow Labs in Maine, the idea of raising shellfish with kelp is now spreading across the country, including to the West Coast, where acidification is even more pronounced.

A Kelp-Farming Breakthrough

Michael Doall, a scientist at Gobler’s laboratory, solved the problem. A former oyster grower, he saw the business potential for a crop that not only had ecosystem benefits but could be harvested in winter, opposite the main harvesting time of summer for oysters—providing two income streams from the same patch of water.

To pave the way for a kelp-meets-oysters business model that would work on Long Island, Doall decided to try growing kelp in shallower waters. In December 2018, accompanied by oyster farmer Paul McCormack, Doall began an experiment on Long Island’s Great South Bay. The two men sank metal screw anchors into the sandy sea floor and strung long nylon lines, inoculated with kelp spores, between them. And then they waited.

Over the next few months, the kelp not only grew, but outperformed their predictions. Doall and McCormack were ecstatic. “It worked really freaking great,” recalled Doall. Gobler, using the findings, then put sugar kelp to work in his breakthrough kelp-and-oyster co-raising study.

Using Doall’s growing techniques and the science from Yarish and Gobler’s laboratories, at least 10 sites across New York are now using sugar kelp to pull excess nutrients out of the waterways. They are also collaborating on a recently proposed $700 million project at Governor’s Island that relies in part on seaweed farming to help prepare New York City for climate change.

Although seaweed grown as a bioremediation strategy cannot be used for human consumption—in some cases, as with RETI Center’s project in the Gowanus Canal, the kelp harvested showed high traces of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), a known carcinogen—scientists are experimenting with other potential uses for it, such as a kelp-based concrete.

Kelp Farming for a Tribe’s Future

“We are a frontline community and we have nowhere else to go,” said Danielle Hopson Begun, communications director and hatchery manager for Shinnecock Kelp Farmers. Hopson Begun is equally comfortable out on the bay or giving public talks, where she spreads the climate-saving mission of the group.

“When you’re hearing on the news about sea rise and acidification and you’re able to move yourself from Southampton Village to higher ground—good for you. It is not good for us,” Hopson Begun said. “For us, it [is] a moral imperative to preserve our way of life.”

To start their nonprofit, Shinnecock Kelp Farmers worked with GreenWave and Doall, who provided sorus tissue, the reproductive area of the kelp blade, for propagation. They found a home for their hatchery in a wooden cabin at the nearby St. Joseph’s Villa, a summer retreat for nuns. The wooded estate overlooks Shinnecock Bay, which now holds their kelp lines. For the 2023-2024 season, the farmers planted 30 lines at 100 feet each, a crisscross of golden-brown algae ribbons dancing beneath the water. As a sovereign nation, the Shinnecock did not need New York State’s permission to begin farming, and in 2020, they became the first seaweed growers in the state.

The group dries and processes their kelp by hand, turning the slippery curls of seaweed into hundreds of pounds of nitrogen-rich soil amendment that they use for gardening, sharing it with the local community at farmers’ markets. They lay the kelp out in donated screens, or along the pool fence at St. Joseph’s Villa, first washing the salt off the seaweed and then waiting for the sun to bake the kelp down.

Eventually, the heat crumbles the kelp into a dry, brown powder that plants love. Through this process, the nitrogen sequestered from the water column returns to the soil, a closed-loop nitrogen cycle now in vogue with organic farmers—although Shinnecock have been growing crops using seaweed as fertilizer for thousands of years, said Hopson Begun. Seeing the decline of seaweed in the bay in recent years, and knowing its benefits to shellfish, prompted them to start farming seaweed themselves.

While satisfying, the work is demanding, sometimes requiring the women to get up and work in frigid waters at dawn. For a recent November planting, they waded into 38-degree water during the first snow of the season, unspooling their kelp string as a hushed snow fell. But Hopson Begun wouldn’t trade it for anything. She said, “I love seeing something so small grow into something really incredibly powerful that potentially can make a big difference.”

Is Kelp the Answer for West Coast Shellfish?

In 2007, this reached a crisis: Oyster businesses were devastated up and down the West Coast because baby bivalves simply could not grow.

“When it came time for our [oyster seed] orders to come in, the hatchery said, ‘We had a complete crash. If anything survived, we are going to be supplying our own farms, not you,’” recalled Terry Sawyer, co-founder of Hog Island Oyster Co., a Northern California favorite for its shellfish-focused restaurants. “We were sitting there, flapping in the wind.”

Trained in marine biology, Sawyer is an entrepreneur and lifelong ocean lover. When he and his co-founder, John Finger, realized how catastrophic the situation was, it spurred them to embrace a whole new outlook on marine conservation. Hog Island now regularly hosts marine scientists to study the effects of warming waters on nearby marine life. The company also collaborates with the Central & Northern California Ocean Observing System, providing real-time data from their farm on ocean acidification as part of a global effort to understand why the ocean is changing so fast.

Acidification led Hog Island, based on Tomales Bay, just north of San Francisco, to establish their own hatchery further north in Humboldt Bay, so they could ensure their whole line of production, from larvae to finished oyster. The process took about three years, and cost $125,000 in permitting fees alone, paid to the California Coastal Commission. Sawyer said the decision was the only way they’ve survived a situation that is cyclical for West Coast waters. Hog Island buffers the water at their hatchery by adding soda ash to make intake seawater less acidic, allowing the larvae to grow. The technique is now common practice; West Coast farmed bivalves cannot grow in the open ocean anymore.

“I love to say, ‘If we have a problem, we have to figure out how to eat it,’” said Sawyer, pointing out that seaweeds are a “winner” crop if ocean acidification continues to rise. “We are going to need to look at organisms that aren’t as impacted by pH change.” For now, though, Sawyer has to wait to unfurl kelp lines in Humboldt Bay, as the California Coastal Commission has no regulatory process for inshore commercial seaweed operations.

Instead, Hog Island has been collaborating with GreenWave and The Nature Conservancy on a non-commercial research pilot study since 2021, growing bull kelp at the Hog Island hatchery in Humboldt Bay. The waters are notably less acidic near the kelp lines—a promising result as the Hog Island team waits for California’s permitting structure to change for a commercial kelp farm.

The Promise of Seagrass

However, wild West Coast seagrass meadows and kelp forests are declining, and that makes Hill very worried. Subjected to stress from marine heat, acidification, pollution, predation by sea urchins, and human encroachment, these water-based ecosystems may lose their power to help fight ocean warming. “The more we protect habitats like seagrass meadows and salt marshes, the better chance we have at climate mitigation,” said Hill. She sees promise in seaweed farming for the same reasons.

Helpful marine organisms—like sugar kelp, bull kelp, and seagrass—could help reduce some of the worst climate impacts that scientists are documenting on the U.S. coasts. Raised in quantity, they could bring at least some stretches of shoreline back into balance, allowing marine life to thrive again in our waters.

The Shinnecock Kelp Farmers are starting to see it happen, bit by bit. “The most darling was a little tiny scallop that took up space on one of our lines. They’re endangered,” said Danielle Hopson Begun. “To see that little guy holding to and finding a place in our farm was very satisfying.”

This series was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center’s Ocean Reporting Network.

The post Can Seaweed Save American Shellfish? appeared first on Civil Eats.

https://civileats.com/2024/06/25/chiquita-found-guilty-of-murder-abroad-other-us-food-companies-may-be-next/ Tue, 25 Jun 2024 09:00:00 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=56711 The novel is a parable for how the United Fruit Company, the U.S. multinational giant that rebranded as Chiquita in 1990, sustained its banana plantations across Latin America through ruthless, bloody tactics, confronting consequences only rarely. The fictional massacre is based on real events: In 1928, Colombian troops killed striking United Fruit Company workers in […]

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There is no justice for the families of massacred banana workers in Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude. Their deaths are only remembered by the massacre’s sole survivor, José Arcadio Segundo, who spends the rest of his life trying to convince others in his town of what he witnessed. In the book’s final scene, even the town is “wiped out by the wind and exiled from the memory of men.” The fictional banana company’s power is so vast that it can bend history and memory—and murder its workers with impunity.

The novel is a parable for how the United Fruit Company, the U.S. multinational giant that rebranded as Chiquita in 1990, sustained its banana plantations across Latin America through ruthless, bloody tactics, confronting consequences only rarely. The fictional massacre is based on real events: In 1928, Colombian troops killed striking United Fruit Company workers in a town not far from where Márquez grew up.

Despite this history, the banana giant’s pattern of violent repression wiped out by the wind has arrived at a new chapter.

After a 17-year legal struggle, survivors of Chiquita’s violence in Colombia received a rare, groundbreaking legal victory. A South Florida jury found the U.S.-headquartered agribusiness liable for financing murders carried out by the right-wing paramilitary group Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC) between 1997 and 2004.

During these years, Chiquita secretly paid upwards of $1.7 million to the AUC, a designated terrorist organization, to act as a security force pacifying the banana-growing region in the midst of Colombia’s decades-long civil war.

This marks the first time a U.S. court held a corporation liable for human rights abuses committed in another country—which lawyers and advocates describe as a historic legal milestone against transnational corporate abuse.

“The level of this victory is so great,” said Charity Ryerson, a human rights attorney and the executive director of Corporate Accountability Lab. “I hope that we spend the next three decades unpacking what this means, and that it spurs many, many, many additional cases on this basis, so that we can try to redevelop an area of law that does actually keep up with globalization and really protects the people who are most vulnerable.”

The U.S. legal system has not kept up with the globalization of the economy, Ryerson continued, resulting in few legal mechanisms to address transnational corporate abuse, including the absence of a comprehensive U.S. federal statute. Even when U.S. corporations are under fire in a lawsuit, cases involving transnational crimes can be dragged out for decades and historically have evaded a public trial before a jury and a verdict.

“These big companies usually involved in horrific acts in other countries often settle rather than have those facts see the light of day in court,” said Marissa Vahlsing, a lawyer with EarthRights International, which represented the plaintiffs.

In this case, “[Chiquita] tried every defense under the sun,” she said. “They tried to bring it to Colombia. We had to fight for years to keep this in American courts. I think that they felt the plaintiffs would just get tired and the lawyers would get tired and give up.” But they didn’t. “It was a very tiring case, and we’re not done,” Vahlsing said.

The jury ordered Chiquita to pay the family members of eight victims a total of $38 million for its crimes. This is just one of many cases representing thousands of victims—the families of banana workers, social activists, and union organizers—seeking to hold Chiquita accountable for murders in partnership with the AUC. The plaintiffs include many wives and children of the men killed, who often “had to leave their homes, leave their farms, move to cities, take refuge somewhere,” said Vahlsing. “Their lives were turned upside down.”

Beyond its direct effect on its employees and their families, the United Fruit Company has been described as a “pioneer of capitalist globalization,” developing a business model for global, multinational food corporations operating often in resource-rich and poverty-stricken regions of the Global South. This model has continued to be linked to violence and horrific abuses and is rarely held accountable, let alone put on trial before a jury. Still today, many of the largest U.S. food corporations have subsidiaries or parts of their supply chain associated with ongoing human rights abuses.

For instance, the production of cocoa in the Ivory Coast has a long history of documented human rights abuses, including child slavery on the plantations that supply Mars, Nestlé, and Hershey, prompting a 2023 federal lawsuit against the Biden administration. In Indonesia, the supply of palm oil to U.S. commodity traders ADM and Bunge has been linked to deforestation, violent confrontations with state security forces, and land grabs. More recently, an investigation by The New York Times found that PepsiCo supplies its sugar from plantations in India that push young girls into receiving hysterectomies and entering into child marriages to work alongside their husbands in the fields.

The recent verdict illuminates one pathway—a feasible legal avenue for comparable cases—for holding U.S. corporations accountable for human rights abuses abroad. The case was litigated in the U.S. under Colombian law, relying on the bedrock legal doctrine that a U.S. court can hear a defendant in their jurisdiction for crimes anywhere in the world. It’s one of few legal options, following a 2013 Supreme Court decision limiting the capacity for cases of international corporate abuse to be heard under federal law.

“[The Chiquita verdict] helps reinforce that there’s no law-free zone,” said Agnieszka Fryszman, a human rights lawyer with Cohen Milstein, which represented the plaintiffs. “If companies are operating overseas, in an area where there’s a weak rule of law and weak institutions, they could still be held to account here in their home state and home jurisdiction.”

Read More:
Diving—and Dying—for Red Gold: The Human Cost of Honduran Lobster           
Environmental Defenders—Often Fighting Agribusiness—Are Being Violently Silenced Around the World

Wildfire Smoke Is a Health Emergency. The devastating health impacts of wildfire smoke are becoming clearer. A recent study, published in Scientific Advances, found that fine particulate matter from California’s wildfires led to between 52,500 and 55,700 deaths between 2008 and 2018. “These are very irritative, very small particles that could cause damage wherever they go in the body,” Dr. Thomas Dailey, who works in pulmonary medicine at the Kaiser Permanente Santa Clara Medical Center, told CBS News. These health risks are concerning for farmworkers who work long hours outdoors, often with no guaranteed protections. Currently, only three states—California, Oregon, and Washington—have regulations to safeguard workers from wildfire smoke exposure.

Read More:
How Centuries of Extractive Agriculture Helped Set the Stage for the Maui Fires
What Impacts Do the West Coast Wildfires, Smoke Have on Crops?

Farmers Challenging Vehicle Emission Standards. Both the National Corn Growers Association and American Farm Bureau Federation are part of a new lawsuit challenging the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s rule for heavy-duty vehicle emissions standards, which aims to curb smog, soot, and greenhouse gas emissions. The groups claim that the standards transition to electric vehicles will cause economic harm, while leaving out the role of ethanol in lowering emissions from vehicles. It’s not a surprising claim coming from the National Corn Growers Association, which represents farmers growing the corn that is used to produce ethanol, a controversial biofuel.

Read More:
How Corn Ethanol for Biofuel Fed Climate Change

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]]> https://civileats.com/2024/06/12/medically-important-antibiotics-are-still-being-used-to-fatten-up-pigs/ Wed, 12 Jun 2024 09:00:30 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=56527 Putting drugs in feed and water to make animals grow bigger and faster, thereby increasing profits, had been a common practice in industrial animal agriculture for decades. While the FDA didn’t end the practice whole hog, the change meant that going forward, farmers would only be able to use specific medically important antibiotics to prevent […]

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Because scientists have identified antibiotic-resistant infections as a serious public health threat that kills more than 35,000 Americans annually, regulators at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have been working to reign in the misuse and overuse of antibiotics in animal agriculture—which contributes to the problem—for more than a decade. Seven years ago, the agency announced the most significant step to date: ending the use of antibiotics also important in human medicine solely for “growth promotion.”

Putting drugs in feed and water to make animals grow bigger and faster, thereby increasing profits, had been a common practice in industrial animal agriculture for decades. While the FDA didn’t end the practice whole hog, the change meant that going forward, farmers would only be able to use specific medically important antibiotics to prevent and treat disease, not fatten pigs. In 2017, the change contributed to a significant, immediate drop in antibiotics sold for use in animals.

“It was really surprising farmers actually reported their primary reason was growth promotion. Obviously, something is falling through the cracks.”

However, new data released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) suggests some pork producers may be flouting FDA’s regulations by feeding important drugs to pigs primarily to speed their growth.

The data comes from USDA’s National Animal Health Monitoring System (NAHMS), which collected information on production practices at hog farms housing 1,000 or more pigs between December 2020 and May 2021. At various facilities raising pigs at different points in their life cycle, a percentage of producers reported feeding chlortetracycline, oxytetracycline, tylosin, neomycin, and sulfamethazine primarily for “growth promotion.” All of these drugs are considered medically important by the FDA because they are used to treat infections in humans and are classified as either “highly important” or “critically important” by the World Health Organization.

Public health advocates have long maintained that some farmers would continue to use the drugs for growth promotion because many are still approved to be added to feed for disease prevention. A spike in sales of drugs classified for “therapeutic use” after the FDA ended growth promotion backs up that theory. Now, they see this data as possibly providing more evidence, although they were still confounded by the overt way the practices were reported.

“It was really surprising farmers actually reported their primary reason was growth promotion,” said Steven Roach, the Safe and Healthy Food Program Director at the nonprofit Food Animal Concerns Trust, who has been following the issue for years. “Obviously, something is falling through the cracks.”

An FDA spokesperson declined to provide an interview and instead emailed a statement that read, in part, “The successful implementation of GFI #213 in 2017 means that it is illegal to use medically important antimicrobials for growth promotion purposes in food-producing animals, and all approved uses of medically important antimicrobials in drinking water or animal feed require the authorization (via a prescription or veterinary feed directive) of a licensed veterinarian. The FDA is reviewing the findings and will evaluate them to further our understanding of this issue and assist in our mission to protect public health.”

In response to a request for an interview, a National Pork Producers Council spokesperson sent comments via email. “The pork industry continues to promote judicious antibiotic use of antimicrobials,” they said. “It’s also important to note that veterinarians were not surveyed, and they are the main decision-makers regarding pig health interventions.” The American Association of Swine Veterinarians did not respond to an interview request.

Without more specific details on what each farmer’s veterinary feed directive said and how the data was collected, it’s hard to know whether the statistics are pointing to a serious gap in compliance with FDA’s rules.

A USDA spokesperson said in an email that the agency’s field veterinarians work with producers to collect “nationally representative, anonymized, standardized data on animal health, biosecurity, vaccination, and antimicrobial use,” and noted that participation in National Animal Health Monitoring Systems (NAHMS) surveys is voluntary.

Roach, in analyzing the data, guessed at one explanation. Many of the medically important antibiotics are fed in combination with other drugs that are classified as “non-medically important” or are not antibiotics and therefore can be used for growth promotion. So, for instance, 10 percent of the sites reported feeding chlortetracycline with BMD for “growth promotion.” BMD is not medically important and therefore can be used for that purpose, so it’s possible farmers reported the duo of drugs that way even though one of them was indicated for something else.

USDA’s answers also noted the combinations but went a step further in explaining the practices. For each medically important drug identified, the spokesperson noted that while veterinarians are not permitted to prescribe the drugs “solely for growth promotion purposes,” producers were asked to provide the “primary reason for giving these medications in feed.” (Emphasis theirs.) By that reasoning, if a farmer wants to feed one of these drugs to fatten up his pigs first and foremost, it may be considered OK as long as the drug has a secondary disease prevention benefit.

For many public health advocates, it’s a clear indication that the dividing line between growth promotion and disease prevention is incredibly thin or invisible in many cases. “We’ve always suspected that for some growers the changes were nominal, not actual, that they said, ‘That’s fine, let’s just call it prevention,’” said Lance Price, the founding director of the Antibiotic Resistance Action Center at George Washington University’s Milken Institute School of Public Health. “This provides some empirical evidence for that.”

“You have these drugs that are in current practice not important anymore, but as we become more and more desperate, other drugs become important,” Price said.

In fact, one of the other drugs the data shows pork producers have been feeding for growth promotion, tiamulin, is legal for that use since it’s not considered medically important. However, the FDA is currently reviewing comments on a proposal to move the class of drugs it belongs to—pleuromutilins—to “medically important” status as they’ve are now being used more often in humans. One reason? The drugs are unaffected by resistance that’s developed to other major antibiotic classes, such as tetracyclines and macrolides (which tylosin belongs to).

“We’re still using five times as many antibiotics to raise pigs in the U.S. as they do in the U.K. We could use a lot less.”

According to the experts, then, the only way to truly move all drugs off the conveyor belt toward no longer being effective is for FDA to go a step further and stop allowing the broader practice of putting antibiotics in feed as a prevention mechanism and only allow farmers to treat sick animals.

“We’re still using five times as many antibiotics to raise pigs in the U.S. as they do in the U.K. We could use a lot less,” Roach said. “I would like to see FDA take the next step—and hopefully it won’t take 10 years—to get rid of routine use for disease prevention as well.”

Price also said that given this limited data set that relies on voluntary participation and self-reported questionnaires points to a real issue, it bolsters the idea that federal agencies and researchers need better data overall. “This is an industry that can take thousands of pigs, kill them, package them, and ship them in a matter of hours, but they say they couldn’t possibly track actual drug use,” he said. “They do amazing stuff. They just don’t want to do this.”

Read More:
The FDA Is Still Not Tracking How Farms Use Antibiotics
Ads for Livestock Antibiotics Fly in the Face of FDA Rules. Will the Agency Step In?
What Happened to Antibiotic-Free Chicken?

PFAS Data Debate. The nonprofit organization Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) is demanding the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) retract a memo it released last year that reported the agency found no evidence of PFAS in its tests of commonly used pesticides. EPA initiated the tests after an environmental toxicologist found alarming levels of multiple PFAS in six out of 10 agricultural pesticides he tested.

Ever since the agency announced no evidence of contamination in the exact same chemicals, scientists and watchdog groups have been working to try to understand and explain the discrepancies. To that end, PEER submitted a FOIA request to EPA. The documents released showed the agency omitted the results of other tests that did find PFAS and left out a detail that could cast doubt on the validity of its tests. EPA maintains confidence in its results, telling PEER that the PFAS found in the other tests was attributable to “background levels” and that the detail on testing did not apply because of differences in testing sensitivity.

The debate over which tests should be relied on is likely to rage on, and the stakes are high given PFAS contamination on farms has already occurred due to other sources including sewage sludge.

Read More:
New Evidence Shows Pesticides Contain PFAS, and the Scale of Contamination Is Unknown
PFAS Shut Maine Farms Down. Now, Some Are Rebounding

Tackling the Tournament System. Farm groups including the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition and Rural Advancement Foundation International (RAFI) applauded the USDA for introducing a rule that could significantly change how contract farmers who raise chickens for big companies including Tyson, Mountaire, and Pilgrim’s are paid. “This rule from USDA is a landmark moment for poultry growers in their long struggle for basic fairness in their contracts,” Edna Rodriguez, RAFI’s executive director, said in a press release. The industry has long been known for its “tournament system” that ultimately leaves growers in the dark about how much money they’ll make on each flock and can require them to make expensive upgrades to their infrastructure without warning.

The new rule would require companies to set a fixed base price, change how they’re allowed to calculate performance bonuses, and require them to provide a detailed accounting of how and when a grower could reasonably expect to recoup investments made in infrastructure improvements, allowing them to more effectively evaluate their options. It’s the latest in a series of rules related to chicken farmers introduced by USDA as part of the Biden administration’s efforts to increase competition and fairness in the highly consolidated meat industries. The rules are intended to give the agency the tools it needs to enforce the Packers & Stockyards Act, which has been on the books, but with no teeth, for over 100 years.

Yesterday, however, House Republicans included language to overturn the rules in their fiscal year 2025 spending bill and said they were, “reining in harmful regulations that dictate how poultry and livestock producers raise and market their animals.”

Read More:
Just a Few Companies Control the Meat Industry. Could a New Approach to Monopolies Level the Playing Field?
Farmers and Ranchers Head to DC to Level the Playing Field

Eating Well Is Also Better for the Planet. According to a Harvard study published this week in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, people who eat more vegetables, legumes, and whole grains and less meat, dairy, and sugar may significantly lower their risk of several diseases and live longer. Researchers used data from the Nurses’ Health Study I and II, which followed 200,000 participants for 34 years, to look at the impact of adhering more or less closely to the “Planetary Health Diet,” which came out of the EAT-Lancet commission’s 2019 report on the best way to align diets with both nutrition and climate goals.

They found that people whose diets were most closely aligned with the diet’s recommendations had a 30 percent lower risk of premature death compared to those whose diets were furthest away from the diet’s patterns, and that the Planetary Health Diet produced 29 percent lower greenhouse gas emissions. “Climate change has our planet on track for ecological disaster, and our food system plays a major role,” said author Walter Willett, professor of epidemiology and nutrition at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, in a press release. “Shifting how we eat can help slow the process of climate change. And what’s healthiest for the planet is also healthiest for humans.” Since the EAT-Lancet commission first published its recommendations, the diet has ignited significant controversies around meat eating, micronutrients, and cost.

Read More:
Eat Less Meat: A Small Change With a Big Impact
Eating Less Meat Is a Prescription for Better Health

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]]> https://civileats.com/2024/06/11/op-ed-neonicotinoid-pesticides-keep-killing-pollinators-heres-how-we-can-help/ https://civileats.com/2024/06/11/op-ed-neonicotinoid-pesticides-keep-killing-pollinators-heres-how-we-can-help/#comments Tue, 11 Jun 2024 09:00:57 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=56455 As a bee veterinarian, I looked for answers. Where had the animals that had helped feed us so reliably gone? I learned that a wetland near our farm had been contaminated by insecticides, which kill pest insects, but they can also kill bees. I also learned that agriculture had been transformed in the last 20 […]

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For years at our farm in central North Carolina, we fed ourselves from our gardens and orchard. We had plenty of food to share, courtesy of the native bees here. Our apple, blueberry, and squash plants all relied upon insect pollination to make fruit. Then, in 2017, our harvests were interrupted because the bees disappeared.

As a bee veterinarian, I looked for answers. Where had the animals that had helped feed us so reliably gone? I learned that a wetland near our farm had been contaminated by insecticides, which kill pest insects, but they can also kill bees. I also learned that agriculture had been transformed in the last 20 years. Instead of insecticides being applied when needed, the chemicals were being used most of the time on many row crops—and they were a newer, more persistent type called neonicotinoids, or neonics.

Neonics are the most commonly used insecticides in the world. They dissolve in water and can spread over the land, far from the treated fields. Although the poisoned wetland waters never touched our food plants, the pollinators that supported our farm were decimated. Our orchard was barren for years.

“Neonics are so potent that one treated corn seed contains enough insecticide to kill more than 80,000 honeybees.”

During my investigation, I followed the work of insect scientists and beekeepers who, for over 15 years, had raised the alarm that overuse of neonics was a major cause of insect deaths around the world. This startling decline in populations of pollinators and other insects led to the term “insect apocalypse.” Scientists’ work pointed the way to what had happened at our farm: An analysis of water samples from the wetland revealed a particularly persistent neonic.

Neonics are so potent that a single treated corn seed contains enough insecticide to kill more than 80,000 honeybees. If a bee doesn’t die right away, its ability to reproduce, gather food, and fight off disease can be damaged. Among bees, neonic exposure is cumulative: If a meal of contaminated nectar sickens a bee, additional feedings may kill it. Neonics infuse all parts of exposed plants and persist in the soil. They can poison native bee adults and their young as well, disrupting or eliminating whole family lines.

In 2022, a multi-year New York state study of native bee populations found that 24 percent of bee species were at risk of loss, and another 11 percent may have disappeared completely. New York officials took action. Last winter, New York became the first state to restrict the planting of neonic-coated crop seeds; the law will take effect in 2027.

Although 12 other states have restrictions of some kind on neonics, they haven’t controlled their largest use: as a coating on crop seeds. By restricting planting neonic-coated crop seed, New York’s law promises to reduce insecticides in New York’s waterways in future years. But cropland outside New York may remain a risky place to be a bee.

Critical Pollinators Under Threat

In the U.S. and Canada, honeybees kept for honey and crop pollination are all variants of one imported European species: Apis mellifera. But the same region hosts more than 3,600 species of wild bees that pollinate flowering plants and crops alike. Native bees are diverse in numbers, size, and function. Some are specifically adapted to a single species of flowering plant. And among these pairs, the loss of a bee species can mean the loss of the plant dependent upon it.

Because native bees are disappearing, I see every one as precious; each animal can contribute its unique genetic makeup to the greater population. We know from studies of other animal populations that size matters: A large population increases the odds for the genetic diversity required for animals to adapt to today’s environmental challenges. A small, inbred bee population is frequently a population in decline.

We’re already experiencing the consequences of bee loss. A recent global study published in Environmental Health Perspectives showed how inadequate insect pollination can reduce economic and food security through the loss of valuable foods such as fruits and insect-pollinated nuts and vegetables. Matthew Smith and colleagues estimated that worldwide, almost half a million excess deaths from chronic diseases such as heart disease, diabetes, and some cancers could be attributed to the loss of these nutritious foods.

With fewer bees to do the work, multiple countries now rely upon hand pollination for major crops. In the U.S., gardeners are advised to try hand pollination to grow squashes and pumpkins if they have poor yields.

People aren’t the only ones dependent upon bees. Entire ecosystems depend on them. For instance, at our farm, I witnessed the impact of the loss of small, native bees. Native, fruiting viburnum shrubs we’d planted for wildlife weren’t pollinated for years. Eastern carpenter bees, the first bees to return to the farm in 2020 after the barren years, couldn’t pollinate the tiny viburnum flowers because the bees are too big, and our distant neighbor’s honeybees weren’t interested in the musky-scented blooms. The smallest insect pollinators have yet to return, and the loss of wild viburnum fruits has led to fewer local birds.

Beside insecticide contamination, bees face other challenges, too.

High temperatures threaten native bee families in subsoil nests; sprawling development erases bee homes; and bees starve as the forests, meadows, and shrubland flowers that provide essential nectar and pollen are lost to other land uses.

“We know how to support healthy populations of native bees—and we need to act now.”

Varroa mites are parasites that attach to honeybees and transmit lethal viruses to their bee hosts. Mites are a major reason that approximately 40 percent of U.S. honeybee colonies have been lost each winter over the last decade. Mite-infested honeybees can spread viruses to native bees, sickening or killing them.

We have the information we need to slow bee decline. We know how to support healthy populations of native bees—and we need to act now.

How We Can Slow the Decline of Bees

If we grow food, have a yard or garden, and we must control pests, pesticides should be the last option―not the first.

We can choose organic food options to reduce bee exposures to neonic-treated crops. Organically grown foods don’t use neonics.

We can create or leave healthy spaces for bees to live, such as dead wood, bare soil for ground nesting bees, or clusters of undisturbed plants for bumble bees that like to nest in rodent tunnels beneath those plants. In warm years, these habitats may be particularly valuable if they’re located on a north-facing slope, as they provide bees a cooler place to raise their babies.

Even without a yard, we can plant more flowers to feed bees. Pots of flowers or herbs can support tiny families. Regardless of the size of a flower garden, choosing flowering plants free of harmful pesticides is crucial. Unfortunately, “pollinator-friendly” plants are not necessarily free of contamination. Plant consumers need to ask questions about how the plants are grown, as there are no rules or signs required to identify pollinator-safe plants. The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation offers resources for those who want to better support bees and butterflies.

Finally, beekeepers can prioritize timely Varroa mite control to keep honeybee colonies strong through the winter while also protecting native bees that share local flowers.

Today, our farm is recovering. More native bees are active, and more fruit trees were pollinated this year. But I fear that we may never enjoy the diversity of animals that used to live here. Native bees have small territories. When populations disappear, new bees must rediscover the land and settle to raise their families.

Join me in working to support the native bees who do the work of providing an abundant food future for us and for all the other creatures that depend upon them.

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]]> https://civileats.com/2024/06/11/op-ed-neonicotinoid-pesticides-keep-killing-pollinators-heres-how-we-can-help/feed/ 2 https://civileats.com/2024/05/20/getting-schooled-on-preserving-and-storing-food-with-civic-kitchen/ https://civileats.com/2024/05/20/getting-schooled-on-preserving-and-storing-food-with-civic-kitchen/#comments Mon, 20 May 2024 09:00:19 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=56224 A version of this article originally appeared in the “Revitalizing Home Cooking” issue of The Deep Dish, our members-only newsletter. Become a member today and get the next issue directly in your inbox. “We’re super concerned with the longevity of what we bring in and don’t want to waste it, so we have all kinds of […]

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]]> A version of this article originally appeared in the “Revitalizing Home Cooking” issue of The Deep Dish, our members-only newsletter. Become a member today and get the next issue directly in your inbox.

San Francisco’s Civic Kitchen buys enough fruits and vegetables every month to completely fill 10 shopping carts. More than 250 students take classes each month at the school, which is geared toward home cooks. In the last year, inflation has driven up Civic Kitchen’s food costs by 10 to 15 percent, says co-founder and instructor Jen Nurse.

“We’re super concerned with the longevity of what we bring in and don’t want to waste it, so we have all kinds of storage techniques,” Nurse says.

For example, the cooking school, like all professional kitchens, uses the first in, first out (FIFO) system so that the oldest food in its refrigerators, freezer, and pantry are used first.

Below are more food storage and preserving tricks and hacks from Civic Kitchen and 18 Reasons, a San Francisco nonprofit that promotes home cooking to increase food security.

Produce. For many types of fruits and vegetables, the key is to wash, dry, and store them in the refrigerator or pantry. After Civic Kitchen receives a produce order, for example, they fill a sink or large container with cool water and add most types of fruits and vegetables (see note below on berries) to soak before scrubbing everything—Nurse loves using Japanese tawashi brushes—and laying them out to dry completely on a wire rack or towel without touching. “If we do that and store in our pantry or fridge, it lasts a really long time and anything you reach for is already clean,” Nurse says.

Tomatoes and potatoes can be washed and dried but shouldn’t be stored in the refrigerator. Potatoes can go into a brown paper bag once dry to shield them from light, which turns them green. Onions don’t need to be washed before storage or refrigeration. If your mushrooms are very dirty, wash them (quickly, to keep them from soaking up water) right before use.

Ethylene gas is released as produce ripens and can speed up ripening in nearby produce. Onions produce a lot of ethylene, so Kayla Whitehouse at 18 Reasons recommends storing them away from potatoes. Bananas also ripen quickly and produce ethylene, so store those away from apples.

Berries. For delicate berries such as strawberries or raspberries, Nurse spreads them out, unwashed, on a paper towel-lined sheet pan in a single layer, without touching. Then she layers another paper towel on top, followed by a layer of plastic wrap. Finally she stores them in the refrigerator to be washed right before using. For sturdier berries, such as blueberries and blackberries, she’ll follow the same procedure but washes and dries them first.

Herbs. Nurse advises against washing fresh herbs directly under hard running water, which can bruise the leaves. Instead, fill a large bowl or sink with cold water and float the herbs for a while. Lift them out and use a salad spinner to dry them as much as possible. For multiple kinds of herbs, nest a dry towel between the bunches in the salad spinner to keep from getting mixed up. Gather the stems in the same direction like a flower bouquet. Store the herbs upright in the refrigerator in a container with a little bit of water covering the stems. Or wrap the stems in a paper towel folded lengthwise, keeping the leaves loose, and store in an airtight container or Ziploc bag. “You throw a few bunches of herbs in there, squeeze out the air, zip it up, and it will last for at least two weeks,” Nurse says. This technique doesn’t work with basil, which should be washed right before using—and never refrigerated.

Herb storage (Photo courtesy of Civic Kitchen)

Ginger. Civic Kitchen stores half-used ginger in the freezer with the skin on. “You just grate it or use it straight from frozen, and it’s wonderful,” Nurse says. She notes that it’s easier to grate with the skin on and recommends choosing young ginger with fresh, fine skin and washing it before using.

Animal Protein. Most raw proteins last longer in the refrigerator than people think, Nurse says. She recommends buying and cooking fish within a couple days, and within three to four days for other types of protein. Throw out food if it smells off or looks discolored. Once cooked, most proteins will last three to five days.

Freshness. Nurse noted there can be a big difference in freshness and shelf life of what is available at a farmers’ market or farm stand vs. the grocery store. “I can say absolutely without a doubt that the produce and herbs from the farmers’ market typically last at least twice as long as what you get in the grocery store,” she said. Although some things may be cheaper at a grocery store, buying from a farmers’ market or farm stand also ensures that more of your dollars are going directly into farmers’ pockets.

Storage containers. Nurse recommends using clear, airtight containers that are stackable and nest well with each other, such as square- or rectangle-shaped containers rather than round ones. Although some people steer clear of plastic due to safety concerns, Nurse doesn’t have a problem with food-grade plastic containers like Cambro. She advises placing labels in the front of containers, rather than on top, so you can quickly see what needs to be used first.

Labeled foods in Civic Kitchen’s pantry (Photo courtesy of Civic Kitchen)

Freezing. If you can’t cook your food or eat your leftovers in a timely manner, “your freezer is your friend,” Nurse says. Whitehouse recommends blanching vegetables before freezing them to retain texture and flavor; she also recommends buying frozen vegetables to save money on out-of-season produce. Overripe bananas can be frozen with or without their skin and used in smoothies or banana bread.

If using Ziploc bags to store food in the freezer, Nurse says it’s important to squeeze out as much air as possible because many freezers are designed to cycle through freeze and thaw periods; as they cycle up and down in temperature, food will refreeze, which can lead to freezer burn if the food is exposed to air.

Preserving. Extra onions and other vegetables can be pickled with a quick brine, which will extend their life for a month and provide fun toppings for tacos and sandwiches. Onions can also be caramelized, which will keep for a week or be frozen. Lemons preserved in salt and sugar can add a kick to salad dressings, sauces, cocktails, and marinades. For herbs about to turn, Nurse recommends making a simple green sauce that can be added to meat, sandwiches, pasta, or dressing, or can be frozen for later use.

Avoid the danger zone. Nurse advises home cooks to beware of the danger zone, the 40° F to 140°F range in which bacteria can quickly grow. The saying goes, “Keep hot food hot, and cold food cold.” Food safety experts recommend discarding perishable food that has been held in this temperature range cumulatively for more than four hours.

Cooking Tips From the Civil Eats Team

Introduction by Lisa Held

Perhaps unsurprisingly, many of the Civil Eats’ team are enthusiastic home cooks. Some of us have been to culinary school, some have picked up favorite recipes from their parents, and others have found inspiration in the wide world of recipes and how-to videos now available online. Here, the team shares some of the best tips and tricks we’ve learned along the way. We’d love to hear your tips as well—send us an email!

When it comes to home cooking, we all pick up knowledge in different ways.

Part of my story involves marrying an award-winning chef. (I know, what a brag.) In almost all ways, it’s a dream. He cooks for me constantly, and for that, I am unceasingly grateful.

But for an enthusiastic home cook, it can also be complicated. I love to cook and always thought I was pretty good at it. But when we first got together, my “skills” suddenly seemed ridiculous. I was filled with anxiety chopping vegetables in his presence and terrified any time he took a bite of a dish I’d made. (To be clear, he is only ever supportive and uncritical; it’s just about my internal desire to measure up in all ways at all times.)

Over time, that fear was whittled away by love and partnership. And along the way, I got better at cooking. The best part is that the pure joy he gets from making and sharing something delicious rubbed off on me. While some people dread the question, his eyes light up when he asks (sometimes literally at 10 a.m.), “What do you want to have for dinner tonight?” But I also use more salt and pepper than I ever did before and know how to make many more simple condiments. (Try this: diced white onion, cilantro, lime juice.)

“One extra step.” If time is the only variable that matters, you can live without this. Especially because yes, there will be more dishes. But one thing I noticed is that chefs always add an extra step that happens before the main “cooking” event. I never would have bothered with it in the past, but I have realized it can really improve the outcome. For example, boiling hard vegetables like potatoes or broccoli that are going to end up sautéed, roasted, or fried. Or sweating eggplant: Cover slices or dices with plenty of salt, let it sit for 20 minutes, put it in a towel, and squeeze out the water. —Lisa Held

A final touch. I used to laugh at the idea of carefully plating or garnishing a weeknight dinner for two, but there is something so lovely about someone putting a plate in front of you that looks like it was made with care. The most simple bowl of rice and beans comes to life with a little cilantro garnish on top. —Lisa Held

Garlic oil at the ready. For years I have sautéed garlic in olive oil before using it in pesto or other sauces that don’t get cooked; it mellows out the flavor and significantly reduces my garlic-breath woes. For the last six months or so, I have been doing that “one extra step” that Lisa mentions and sautéing more garlic and oil than I immediately need, and keeping the extra in a jar on my counter. Being able to quickly add garlic oil to any dish makes it a little more magical, and it makes pesto that much quicker to whip up. —Matt Wheeland

Storage and presentation. Anything that’s getting stored in the fridge gets masking tape with an ID and a date. It takes two seconds, and I think it really does help you make sense of what’s in your fridge, which helps you come up with dinner plans more quickly and avoid food waste. —Lisa Held

Consult internet experts. When I want to figure out how to make something come out great, I go to YouTube to find tricks. I recently learned how to make fluffy omelets and how to pop the best popcorn every time! —Kalisha Bass

4 words to cook by. Samin Nosrat’s principle of “Salt Fat Acid Heat” is really helpful for figuring out how to cook and season to taste. It’s the idea that good-tasting food strikes a balance between salty, fatty, and acidic elements, while also considering how it is cooked (heat). So if the food doesn’t quite taste right, it’s likely one of those factors needs adjusting. —Grey Moran

Look to simple, veggie-forward recipes for inspiration. We got into a rut with menu ideas to prepare for two kids and with limited time. We found ourselves making pasta, tacos, or a plate of rice and roasted vegetables over and over, ad infinitum. While we’re not ones for prescriptive diets, we’ve recently found inspiration with Mediterranean diet-inspired recipes, which prioritize vegetables, whole grains, legumes, and heart-healthy fats. The new ideas have spiced up our rotation: spinach and feta frittata! Lemony roasted shrimp and asparagus! Tuna melts! The variety has been refreshing, and the kids have been happy. We look for recipes that are simple and require as few ingredients and steps as possible. —Christina Cooke

Simple, high-quality ingredients. The one tip I share the most is really the simplest: Buy the best ingredients you can afford and let them shine. Because I don’t eat meat, I often spend more on fresh vegetables at the farmers’ market as well as high-quality olive oil—and I use a lot of it. People often seem amazed how really good olive oil can transform vegetables, not only in cooking and roasting, but also as a finishing touch and in salad dressing. Caramelized baby cauliflower, fennel, spring onions, and carrots, for example, can be transformed into a simple delicacy with a peppery olive oil and salt. —Naomi Starkman

Cook with, and for, friends. The Civil Eats team is tired of me talking about my soup swap, but it’s one of my favorite cooking improvements in the last few years. Throughout the winter, a neighbor friend and I exchange a quart of soup every week. I’ll make a slightly larger pot of soup—which takes almost no extra effort—and I get an extra meal by swapping with my neighbor. It’s like two meals for one! Plus, I get to try a bunch of recipes that I never would’ve discovered on my own. —Matt Wheeland

For kids, find recipes that can be deconstructed. With two kids, ages 3 and 5, who each have particular tastes, we look for recipes that sound tasty to my husband and me—but can be served in deconstructed form as well. That way, we can enjoy the whole dish as intended, and they can enjoy the individual components they find most appealing. We recently prepared a variation of this farro, chickpea, spring veggie, and feta salad, for example. While we ate the marinated salad all mixed together, the kids enjoyed farro, roasted chickpeas, and slices of avocado, and could avoid the radishes and lettuce, which they were less likely to eat. —Christina Cooke

Finishing touches. Ice cube trays are great for freezing small portions of extra sauce; the cubes can be stored in a Ziploc bag in the freezer. For example, you can pull out a few cubes of stock, pesto, or chile sauce for a quick addition to a dish. We also typically have fresh herbs, citrus, and good olive oil and butter on hand for finishing a dish. —Tilde Herrera

Preserving family memories. The act of passing on a family recipe can often be forgotten or put off for years. Sometimes it’s best to be the initiator and ask to learn how to make your mom’s famous chimichurri or arroz con pollo. Not only will seeking guidance on how to prepare beloved dishes allow another generation to experience the love of cooking that spans decades, but it will also honor the cooks themselves. Take this as a sign to ask that family member about their iconic dish and then be sure to pass down the knowledge in your own time. —Marisa Martinez

All interviews in this issue have been edited for length and clarity

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