The Hazards of a Hot Kitchen

Temperatures are only predicted to rise further in the coming years, intensifying those effects and their impact on local infrastructure. When Hurricane Beryl thrashed the city of Houston in early July, millions of people went without power for days, forcing an untold number of business closures—and countless lost wages for employees. Hurricane Helene devastated businesses and restaurants in its wake, and doubtless Milton will too.

For restaurant workers in particular, the hazards are immediate: Standing over a ripping-hot stove or in front of an oven all day would make anyone sweat, even under the best weather conditions. According to a 2023 survey of restaurant workers conducted by Restaurant Opportunities Centers (ROC) United, 20 percent of respondents “described experiencing a significant heat-related incident or long-term health impact due to prolonged work in extreme heat,” recalling incidents of fainting, dizziness, and heatstroke.

And it’s a legitimate risk: More than 2,300 people in the U.S. died in 2023 as a result of “excessive heat,” according to an Associated Press analysis of Centers for Disease Control data, though that figure is likely underreported.

But there are currently no federal regulations for working conditions in the heat. Only six states—California, Colorado, Maryland, Minnesota, Oregon, and Washington—have passed laws that provide protections for workers in extreme heat conditions, and those laws mostly apply to outdoor workers. Just this July, Cal/OSHA, California’s worker safety agency, introduced new rules for indoor workplaces, requiring employers to have a plan for mitigating heat when temperatures exceed 82 degrees.

Other states, including Texas and Florida, have banned local municipalities from passing their own heat protection regulations, suggesting that local laws were more burdensome to enforce than those at the state level; the Texas ban also invalidated local ordinances that mandated break time for construction workers in the heat.

In July, President Biden proposed federal heat regulations that would apply to all employers under the jurisdiction of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), meaning they would cover both indoor and outdoor workers. Under the regulations, indoor employers like restaurants and commercial kitchens “would be required to identify work areas with the potential for hazardous heat exposure” and enact policies to monitor them.

Employers would also be obligated to provide specific worker protections depending on the heat level: At a temperature threshold of 80 degrees, they would be required to provide employees with cold drinking water and cooler break areas; a temperature of 90 degrees and above (considered a “High Heat Trigger”) also requires mandatory rest breaks of 15 minutes every two hours.

ROC United, a nonprofit organization that works to improve the lives of the restaurant workforce, has held heat awareness trainings for restaurant workers in the past. The organization is actively campaigning to get OSHA to certify the federal regulations, urging workers to submit comments to the U.S. Department of Labor. Over the past couple of years, as OSHA has developed this rule, ROC United has submitted more than 1,000 comments from workers in the restaurant industry.

“When you think about the restaurant industry, you think about these tight, confined spaces with open flames,” says ROC United Deputy Director of Organizing Jordan Romanus. “But we’ve also been trying to focus on making sure that all restaurant workers are included in this process, both the back-of-the-house and the front-of-the-house. If you’re working on the patio and it’s a hot summer day, that is equally brutal to being in the tight, extremely hot kitchen.”

Workers Organize for Change

Last summer, Shae Parker was working at a Waffle House in South Carolina where she says the air conditioner was constantly on the fritz. The first few times, the company would call a maintenance technician to make repairs, but Parker describes them as a series of “quick fixes” that didn’t solve the problem. Parker was one of many Waffle House workers who picketed outside of the company’s Georgia headquarters in July 2023, demanding protections from the heat as well as other important safety measures. Waffle House did not respond to a request for comment.

Heat has also galvanized Starbucks workers at locations other than Austin. Last October, a group of Starbucks baristas in Berkeley, California went on strike, citing a broken air-conditioning unit that resulted in some employees experiencing symptoms of heat exhaustion. “Heat is actually a very common issue at Starbucks stores; we’re hearing about issues with air conditioners constantly,” Austin says. “We’re trying to secure a contract that makes sure any issue that impacts the health and safety of workers is taken seriously, and that the company is held accountable. We have to make sure that our concerns and issues can’t just be pushed to the side.”

Regarding the ongoing bargaining, a Starbucks representative said in a statement that “we are proud of our progress to date. The work together continues, and we look forward to continued negotiations.” 

What happens at Starbucks could have an impact far beyond its own stores. The coffee behemoth has always been a trendsetter—it’s credited with making benefits like health insurance for part-time employees and tuition reimbursement more common throughout the sector—and its approach to heat protections could inform the entire industry’s approach.

In the interim, workers are fighting for what the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health (COSH) calls “heat justice.” COSH, a federation of 26 grassroots worker groups, is advocating for a slightly more comprehensive national heat standard than proposed by OSHA. The COSH standard would require workplaces to maintain a maximum temperature of 80 degrees, and if that is exceeded, ensure that workers have access to water and breaks in air-conditioned spaces.

COSH is also advocating for mandatory training for workers on how to recognize the signs of heat-related illness before they become too severe. “This heat is not just uncomfortable, it’s dangerous,” said Keith Bullard, the deputy director of the Union of Southern Service Workers, at a September town hall. “Heat illnesses at work are 100 percent preventable, and what makes it preventable is not rocket science: It’s air conditioning, it’s water, it’s access to cooling breaks.”

The Ethics and Expense of Protecting Workers

Chleo restaurant. Photo by Read McKendree.

Energy-efficient HVAC upgrades can have a major impact. “Getting rid of an old, inefficient machine is a no-brainer,” says Michael Oshman, CEO of the nonprofit Green Restaurant Association, which offers sustainability certification to restaurants that meet its environmental standards. “It can be hard to justify financially, but when it’s hot and the [electric] bills are getting higher, it makes more sense to make that investment.”

He also encourages restaurants to think creatively, both for their bottom line and the environment. He recommends painting the roof white, which reflects heat away from the building, or putting in a rooftop garden, an upgrade that can both add locally grown produce to the menu and help cool the air well beyond the restaurant itself.

But the costs of these upgrades can be prohibitive in an industry with famously thin margins. In July, Hope and Charles Mathews, the owners of Chleo, a small restaurant in Kingston, New York, closed for an entire week to install an HVAC upgrade to their building, which they own. Their building’s HVAC system piped “makeup air” directly from outside into the kitchen to alleviate the extreme heat of the restaurant’s wood-fired grills, which can burn up to 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit. But when the outside temperature is nearly 100 degrees, that approach offers little relief.

Initially, the couple intended to replace the system with one that would push cooled air into the building year-round, but that would’ve cost them more than $60,000, money they didn’t have to spend. They’ve settled, instead, for a pair of “splits,” a cheaper set of units that would pump cooled air only into the restaurant’s warmest spaces, still a major investment in equipment. Also an investment: increased utility bills that come with more air-conditioning.

“Utilities are very expensive. Honestly, I don’t even know what these new air-conditioning units are going to cost us, which is totally scary,” Hope says. “When your utility bills are already over $2,000 per month, you don’t want to go much higher than that.”

And sometimes, protecting workers from the heat means telling them not to show up at all. The Mathews’ HVAC upgrades happened only after they made a decision earlier in the summer to shutter their doors for a few days during a heat wave. “We’re a mom-and-pop operation, and we have to make decisions sometimes that aren’t necessarily in our best financial interest, but are in the best interest of the people that work with us,” Hope says.

Yukon Pizza owner Alex White closed his Las Vegas restaurant for much the same reasons. During a July heat wave after its HVAC system gave out, the restaurant’s wood-fired pizza ovens were pumping heat into the space, and it was nearly 100 degrees indoors. “Our number one priority is the health and safety of our customers and our employees,” White says. “There’s no reason or need for any of them to be working in those temperatures.”

OSHA’s proposed rules for a national heat standard are now in the final public comment phase, and both workers and business owners can offer feedback on the proposal through the end of 2024. But even if those rules go into effect—and the outcome of the 2024 election will certainly be the main factor—they will only be useful if restaurant owners and operators follow them. In California, lawmakers have had to find “creative workarounds” for its farmworker heat safety rules to force employers to comply.

“We need permanent solutions, and we need support,” Parker says. “We need everyone to get on board and spread the word. Climate change is a workers’ rights issue, and if we don’t fight for each other, who’s going to do it?”

Workers hope that alerting the public—the customers who enjoy the fruits of their labor—will help their cause. “We got to talk to a lot of our customers and people walking by on the street about what was going on,” Austin says of the Houston Starbucks strike. “People really responded to that. They were going inside telling managers that they stood with the workers, and that they didn’t feel comfortable buying from a store where workers are sweating into their drinks or suffering while making them.”

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https://civileats.com/2024/09/30/weathering-climate-shocks-how-restaurants-survive-supply-disruptions/ https://civileats.com/2024/09/30/weathering-climate-shocks-how-restaurants-survive-supply-disruptions/#comments Mon, 30 Sep 2024 11:00:28 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=57887 This is the second article in a five-part series about restaurants and climate-change solutions, produced in collaboration with Eater. “We’re just not going to offer it,” he says. “It’s either unavailable or too expensive for the quality. . . . climate has a lot to do with it.” With all the challenges restaurants have faced […]

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]]> This is the second article in a five-part series about restaurants and climate-change solutions, produced in collaboration with Eater.

“We’re just not going to offer it,” he says. “It’s either unavailable or too expensive for the quality. . . . climate has a lot to do with it.”

With all the challenges restaurants have faced in the past five years—COVID, inflation, price gouging—the impact of climate change on their supply chains has often been overlooked. Yet global warming is steadily affecting fisheries and farms around the world and the foods they yield.

Here in the U.S., extreme climate-related events like forest fires, floods, and drought ruin crops and harm aquatic life. They also cause power outages and disrupt transportation and distribution, which increases the price of all goods, including food.

For many restaurant owners and chefs, the impact is a real, daily challenge, causing a shortage of quality ingredients and sudden fluctuations in price. All of this makes it harder to keep menu prices consistent and run a profitable business. “There’s a lot of topsy-turviness right now,” Platt says.

Staple Ingredients in Short Supply

Salmon is just one of the menu problems Platt has had to deal with recently. Citrus is another. Andina requires a steady supply of key limes for leche de tigre, the marinade that’s used for ceviche, Peru’s flagship dish. Andina sources them mostly from Mexico, where a perfect storm of colder weather, floods, and price manipulations by drug cartels caused prices to fluctuate between $37 and $67 per case from July 2023 to July 2024. Nevertheless, Platt and his brother, Victor, who leads the chef team, did not raise the price of ceviche. “Like most restaurants, we have simply had to decrease or even forgo margins on certain dishes to avoid passing on the sticker shock to our customers,” Platt says.  “You just have to suck it up, you know?”

Ayad Sinawi, chef-owner of Mabu Kitchen in Philadelphia, has had no choice but to suck up the cost increases, which are crippling for a small operation like his. A beloved French restaurant serving bistro classics and Southern comfort food, Mabu has paper-thin margins and no liquor license to bring in extra cash from the bar.

The croque madame at Mabu Kitchen, a French and Southern–inspired restaurant. Photo by Grace Cavallo.

“Prices tend to take a weird roller coaster ride on a weekly basis,” he says. “I get 15 dozen eggs for $25 one week and then $52 the next.” Last winter, when there was a national egg shortage, that price shot up to $89. The shortage was caused in part by farmers culling millions of birds due to an outbreak of avian flu, which, experts increasingly believe, is worsening as climate change alters the migration patterns of wild birds that spread the disease. Other factors are at play as well, like the rising costs of fuel, feed, and packaging.

Mabu’s brunch is tremendously popular, filled with eggy specialties like a French omelette, croque madame and fried-chicken, and waffles Benedict. “We had to charge a little more for our eggs for a while,” Sinawi says. But he did so with extreme reluctance, wanting to abide by his principles of offering excellent yet affordable food. “The business plan was always about being a local bistro, catering to the neighborhood, keeping prices within the parameters that will encourage people to be impulsive [with their orders],” Sinawi says. “The minute I start making it a ‘destination,’ I’m going to lose all my locals. It’s not worth it to me.” When prices went back down to $52 for 15 dozen, he lowered menu prices accordingly. “But that’s still 29 cents [per] egg. That’s a lot for a restaurant!” he says. During the worst of the egg shortage, that added roughly $500 to his monthly costs.

When factoring in rising inflation and hikes in other costs besides food, the financial environment feels increasingly insurmountable for many restaurants. Everything from internet connections to waste removal services has gotten more expensive. For example, Sinawi had originally contracted with a garbage removal service that charged $129 a month. The business was bought out by a bigger company that increased his bill by $40 without warning, meaning he was now expected to pay $169 for the same service with no time to negotiate or plan. (This happened at the same time as the egg shortage.) Three months later, his bill rose again, to $228.

Given these combined financial pressures, it’s no wonder that small independent restaurants often go out of business. According to a report released in February 2024 by the Global Food Institute, 26 percent of single-location, full-service restaurants fail in the first year. Mabu Kitchen is still going strong after two years, but Sinawi admits he doesn’t know how much longer he’ll be able to make it.

A Surge in ‘Unnatural Disasters’

Scully, who is also director of curriculum development for the Global Food Institute, says that the most alarming part of the report to her is the data about global climate incidents. In just the past three years—2020 to 2023—storms have increased by an annual average of 19 percent, floods by 23 percent, and wildfires by 29 percent, according to the International Disaster Database. “I literally called up my colleague and said, ‘you are not going to believe this!’” She hopes this panic-inducing statistic will serve a purpose. “It should be a total wake-up call,” Scully says.

Whether extreme heat, hailstorms, flooding, or forest fires, these unnatural disasters lead to a plethora of correlated financial crises for restaurants. These can range from power outages, air-conditioning breakdowns, delivery delays, and loss of food quality to ingredient shortages that lead to the unpredictable price spikes both Platt and Sinawi are experiencing. Also, crop shortages are directly tied to inflation, the report found, taxing restaurants further. A study from the European Central Bank estimates that by 2035, inflation will increase U.S. food prices by an additional 0.4 to 2.6 percent in a best-case scenario—if emissions are drastically decreased. If they are not, inflation could rise as much as 3.3 percent over its current values.

A Pivot to Local Sourcing—Mostly

For the past two decades, Platt has sourced ají chiles from Peru, which was the only place you could find these flavorful peppers so essential to Peruvian cuisine. But over the past 15 years, he’s been collaborating with a farm in Corvallis, Oregon called Peace Seedlings. “They’ve been patiently hybridizing varieties [of ají] and finding out which seed varietals grow best in this climate,” Platt says. “To my knowledge, we’re the first growers of this product locally.”

Now Andina has diversified its sources of ají: their Peruvian supply is vacuum-sealed fresh organic ají paste, supplemented with fresh ajís—several hundred pounds this fall—from Peace Seedlings. They also purchase frozen ajís from GOYA and other mainline importers. One of Andina’s major ingredient suppliers, Charlie’s Produce, is also experimenting with growing ají chiles in its fields in California. Expanding their domestic farming partnerships gives Andina a more reliable source than Peru, which is facing its own set of climate-change challenges.

However, local sourcing isn’t always a guarantee of supply. In 2011, 90 percent of Texas—one of the U.S.’s largest agricultural producers—was classified as being in “exceptional drought.” The drought was devastating, causing $7.6 billion in losses and lowering the agricultural GDP in the state to a mere .8 percent. According to Tara Scully of the Global Food Institute, it’s highly likely we will continue to see an increase in extreme weather, and ultimately U.S. restaurants will have to start importing more ingredients from other countries. “We’ll have no choice,” she says.

Adapting to Change as the New Constant

Being nimble, quickly finding answers to problems like these, makes all the difference. Buying in bulk is one solution. Andina buys so many limes—50 cases per month—that Platt was recently able to negotiate bulk purchases on an annual basis.

Platt has also staved off price volatility by precontracting with suppliers. That’s what he did with shrimp. He signed a purchasing contract at the beginning of the year to lock in a price for a given number of pounds. “Oftentimes that would save us a lot of money, because they would have some kind of hurricane or another algae bloom or something along those lines that would wreak havoc on the fishery there,” Platt says.

George Frangos, co-founder and president of Farm Burger, resolves supply-chain issues by developing strong, personal connections with a wide network of local sources. The Georgia-based restaurant chain has 11 locations throughout the Southeast, and serves 100 percent grass-fed (and grass-finished) beef burgers, pasture-raised pork burgers, seasonal salads, and, in the summer, peach compote with local goat cheese.

Frangos says he’s learned to avoid surprise price fluctuations by knowing each of his suppliers by name and relying on them to give him and his team a heads-up when prices head south. “We try to work together, so it’s not just an overnight thing of, ‘Our prices are going up 50 cents a pound.’”

One of Farm Burger’s main beef suppliers is Hickory Nut Gap, a fourth-generation family-owned regenerative ranch based outside Asheville, North Carolina, that is a network itself, partnering with 22 ranches across the South. In Hickory Nut, accredited by the Savory Institute, Frangos feels he’s found a resilient partner for his key ingredient. In addition to the animal welfare benefits of most grass-fed beef, there are also likely climate benefits. Another perk: its relatively consistent price. “When there is a shortage of feed from drought or other climate related hardships, the price of grain-fed beef increases, whereas the price of grass-fed beef is very resilient to climate forces,” says Frangos. That said, even grass-fed beef prices have gone up in recent years due to ranchers’ increased operating costs, labor costs, and the cost for hay and silage (reflecting slower grass growth due to heat waves).

In Philadelphia, chef Sinawi resolves the high price of beef through his relationship with his customers. He’s broken his unspoken rule to keep entrees under $30 with only one item: steak au poivre, which he’d been selling for $29. The dish, which Sinawi makes with USDA Choice New York striploin, is seared to order with cracked peppercorns and comes with a Cognac cream sauce that gives it an umami richness. “I had no choice. I took it off the menu for a month and people were asking for it,” he says. Ultimately, he put it back on the menu and raised it to $36. Having conversations with his customers, sharing his pricing challenges with them so they have a context for the increases, is key to their acceptance of the cost.

Plant-Based Alternatives

Quinoa salad with cucumber, corn, olives and cotija cheese at Andina. Photo courtesy of Andina.

Andina has several vegetarian main courses on the menu, and has always offered quinoa, a Peruvian mainstay grain, as part of several dishes. Victor Platt (Peter’s brother), who leads the chef team at the restaurant, will soon be launching a quinoa risotto (“quinotto”). Peace Seedlings is beginning to grow quinoa domestically, but quantities are small, so Victor Platt sources bulk organic quinoa mostly from Bob’s Red Mill (who in turn sources it from Peru and Bolivia—also a climate consideration).

Quinoa has an auspicious climate future, says Peter Platt. “It’s incredibly adaptive. It’ll grow in sub-standard soil, in conditions that wheat won’t,” he says. “It’ll grow wherever you plant it. And it’s one of the world’s most nutritious foods.” He points out that quinoa, like meat, contains all nine essential amino acids, and is delicious when well prepared.

Tara Scully says that many of the chefs she interviewed for the GFI report were reducing the portion size of protein, because it’s now so much more expensive. She heard echoes of this refrain at a Food Tank discussion this past week in New York City about how restaurants can take action on climate change. “Plants are more climate-friendly and they cost less,” Scully says. “So if you’re looking to reduce your costs and also deal with climate change as a chef, it’s a win-win.”

She also thinks consumers—especially younger ones—are willing to pay for vegetable-based dishes because they’re healthier, better for the planet, and taste amazing. Meat seems simplistic, almost too easy to make taste good, while vegetables can showcase a chef’s skill and creativity: “You can transform a portobello mushroom into something that’s over-the-top umami.”

The post Weathering Climate Shocks: How Restaurants Survive Supply Disruptions appeared first on Civil Eats.

https://civileats.com/2024/09/25/the-us-weakens-a-un-declaration-on-antibiotic-resistance/ https://civileats.com/2024/09/25/the-us-weakens-a-un-declaration-on-antibiotic-resistance/#respond Wed, 25 Sep 2024 09:01:29 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=57799 But when those leaders meet at the U.N. on Thursday to adopt the Political Declaration on Antimicrobial Resistance, that concrete goal and others will be missing from the latest draft. After months of negotiations and edits to the proposal, these ambitious—and likely effective—commitments have been replaced with a toothless target: to “strive to meaningfully reduce” […]

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Last May, the United Nations (U.N.) released the first draft of a global plan to tackle antibiotic resistance that aligned with a call from world leaders’ expert advisors to take “bold and specific action.” That included a commitment to reduce the use of antibiotics used in the food and agriculture system by 30 percent by 2030.

But when those leaders meet at the U.N. on Thursday to adopt the Political Declaration on Antimicrobial Resistance, that concrete goal and others will be missing from the latest draft.

After months of negotiations and edits to the proposal, these ambitious—and likely effective—commitments have been replaced with a toothless target: to “strive to meaningfully reduce” antibiotic use in agriculture. Now, experts and advocates are concerned that this new, vague provision, among other weakened commitments, will be included in the final declaration.

“I think it’s a serious mistake,” said Andre Delattre, the senior vice president and COO for programs at the Public Interest Network, which has advocated for reducing antibiotic use on farms as a matter of public interest for years. “We’ve known for a very long time that the overuse of antibiotics in animal agriculture is really problematic for public health. Saying we’re going to reduce without setting targets just shows we’re not as serious as we should be about the problem.”

The news comes at a pivotal moment. While the urgency of antibiotic resistance as a public health threat is well known, a new study released last week upped the ante. According to a systemic analysis of the problem, researchers predicted deaths directly caused by resistance will increase nearly 70 percent between 2022 and 2050, rising to around 2 million per year globally, with another 8 million deaths associated with the issue.

In the U.S., the largest volume of antibiotics are used in animal agriculture. Also, the preventive dosing of animals with medically important drugs—that is, drugs for treating humans—is still routine. This use of drugs can drive the development of resistant bacteria that then threaten human lives. Reducing or eliminating the use of medically important antibiotics in livestock would slow the development of resistant bacteria, experts say, safeguarding the efficacy of important drugs for longer.

“It is estimated that by 2050, as many as 10 million people globally will die annually from antibiotic-resistant infections unless the United States joins with other countries to quickly take aggressive action to address this issue.”

U.S. officials were at least partially responsible for weakening the U.N. declaration’s commitments on animal agriculture. The advocacy organization U.S. Right to Know obtained a document showing that the U.S. was one of a few meat-producing countries that suggested deleting the 2030 goal. The organization also cites the fact that a Washington, D.C. trade group representing the animal drug industry objected to the goal. In response to questions about involvement in the U.N. declaration, a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) spokesperson referred Civil Eats to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). FDA officials did not respond by press time.

Steve Roach, the Safe & Healthy Food Program Director at Food Animal Concerns Trust (FACT), has been tracking U.S. policy on antibiotic use in agriculture for years. He said that on the international stage, he’s seen the U.S. “actively undermining” stronger policies time and time again.

“The U.S. always seems to be aiming for something weaker,” he said. For example, he said the U.S. worked to keep targets for the reduction of antibiotic use out of international food safety standards. The U.S. was also one of five countries—all top users of antibiotics in animal agriculture— that did not sign onto an earlier global agreement, called the Muscat Ministerial Manifesto on AMR, that did include targeted reductions.

And Roach said that this approach on the global stage mirrors how federal agencies continue to approach the issue at home. “We’ve been calling for targets for years, and FDA is always saying, ‘We don’t have enough data to determine how much use is inappropriate. So, therefore, we don’t support targets,’” he said.

The FDA does track the volume of medically important antibiotics sold for use in animals, but it is still not tracking exactly how those drugs are being used on farms. Instead, it has funded small pilot projects and is now in the process of working with the meat industry on a voluntary reporting system.

The agency outlined some of those efforts in a letter sent to Senator Cory Booker (D-New Jersey) last week. The letter was in response to concerns Booker raised in July about updates he felt would weaken guidance the FDA creates for the industry on responsible antibiotic use. Booker’s team was far from satisfied with the agency’s response and said that after more than a decade of attention, they found it incredibly troubling that basic issues of data collection and setting concrete targets were still unresolved.

“It is estimated that by 2050, as many as 10 million people globally will die annually from antibiotic-resistant infections unless the United States joins with other countries to quickly take aggressive action to address this issue. That is why I am deeply concerned that the FDA has caved under pressure from special interests for decades and failed to take any meaningful steps to address this overuse in industrial livestock production,” Booker said in an email to Civil Eats. “Not only has the FDA been unwilling to use its legal authority to reduce the massive overuse of antibiotics on factory farms in the U.S., but the agency is now actively working to block international commitments to address antimicrobial resistance.”

In 2016, the agency banned the use of medically important drugs on farms solely for the purpose of making animals get bigger, faster. That change led to a big drop in overall drug use. But pork producers and cattle feedlots still routinely add antibiotics to feed and water, often for long stretches, and drug use in those sectors has been rising over the past two years.

At the end of August, the USDA reported its recent testing even found antibiotic residue in about 20 percent of beef samples labeled “raised without antibiotics.” And over the past year, companies that once committed to moving their supply chains away from routine antibiotic use have been backtracking.

Multiple experts expressed dismay over what they said now feels like continued steps away from stronger regulations that can adequately protect public health.

“The U.S. government will do whatever it can to fight the serious public health threat of antimicrobial resistance—as long as that action has no impact on anyone whatsoever, as long as nobody has to make any changes to what they’re doing,” Roach said. “It’s really disappointing, because the U.S. could be a leader on this issue, and it just consistently chooses not to.”

In the absence of government leadership, Delattre said, watchdog groups will have to work harder.

“The commitment as it’s drafted now says it’s supposed to aim for meaningful reductions by every member country. Those numeric targets represented an idea of meaningful reduction,” he said. “Whether they’re in there or not, they’re the sort of thing we need to aim for, and it’s what we’ll be holding the U.S. farm animal industry to going forward.”

Read More:
What Happened to Antibiotic-Free Chicken?
Medically Important Antibiotics Are Still Being Used to Fatten Up Pigs
The FDA Is Still Not Tracking How Farms Use Antibiotics

Poultry Implosion. According to a lawsuit filed today, an ambitious plan to create a poultry company dedicated to slower-growing chickens involved rapid company growth that led to its downfall—and ultimately harmed farmers raising its birds. Although Cooks’ Venture set out to raise healthier birds under better farm conditions, it replicated the contract system used by bigger industry players like Tyson and Perdue, placing financial risk on the shoulders of producers.

In the legal complaint, farmers say the company’s leadership misled them by misrepresenting the financial health of the operation. As a result, many took on debt to house and care for the chickens in anticipation of a long-term payoff. When the company went out of business without notice, it left farmers in the lurch. The lawsuit also alleges the individuals in charge of the company conspired with the Arkansas Department of Agriculture to kill more than a million chickens after the company folded—so they wouldn’t have to process them or pay farmers for the flocks—and left farmers to clean up the mess.

The lawsuit will be one of the first brought under new rules finalized by the Biden administration intended to better enforce the Packers & Stockyards Act.

Read More:
The Race to Produce a Slower-Growing Chicken
The Continuing Woes of Contract Chicken Farmers

Food-and-Climate Funding.  As companies, advocates, and investors gather in New York City for Climate Week, multiple organizations are calling attention to the flow of capital toward food and agriculture systems that accelerate climate change—and how to redirect those funds.

Given meat’s outsized climate impacts, the global meat industry is at the top of the list. A group of 105 food and environmental organizations sent a letter to the world’s biggest private banks demanding they halt new funding for industrial livestock production and require meat and dairy clients to report emissions reduction targets. Meanwhile, Tilt Collective, a new nonprofit promoting a rapid shift toward plant-based diets, released a report highlighting investment opportunities. According to its analysis, investments in transitioning to a plant-based food system could reduce energy emissions far more than investments in renewable energy or electric vehicles, while also delivering other benefits, like reduced water use and biodiversity loss.

Nonprofits that work directly with the biggest food and agriculture companies are also in on the action. The Environmental Defense Fund released a report for investors on how they can play a role in reducing methane from livestock, while Ceres updated its investor-focused reporting on the 50 biggest food companies’ greenhouse gas emissions reporting and reductions. Their data showed that only 11 of the 50 companies reduced their overall greenhouse gas emissions compared to their base years, while 12 increased emissions. Lack of progress on emissions reductions was largely linked to the food companies’ supply chains. So while many companies did cut emissions from their own operations by shifting to renewable energy, for example, they struggled to reduce those that happened in farm fields and feedlots, which typically represent about 90 percent of a food company’s overall emissions.

Read More:
The IPCC’s Latest Climate Report Is a Final Alarm for Food Systems, Too
Methane From Agriculture Is a Big Problem. We Explain Why.

Fresh Cafeteria Fare. A lengthy progress report on California’s farm-to-school grant program—the largest in the nation—found the state’s efforts are paying off. More local food is getting into schools while supporting farmers. Between 2020 and 2022, the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) distributed about $100 million to increase locally farmed food served in school cafeterias. The results of this program—which includes farm-fresh meals and nutrition education efforts—disproportionately benefitted students from lower-income families who were eligible for free or reduced-price meals. At the same time, the funding went primarily to small- and mid-size farms, more than half of which were owned by women; more than 40 percent were owned by producers of color.

Participating farms were also much more likely to be organic or transitioning to organic production compared to the state average. They were also likely to be implementing and/or expanding other environmentally friendly practices.

Still, despite California’s advantages over other states—namely a super-long growing season that overlaps with the school year and a plethora of farms selling fruit, vegetables, meat, and dairy—the total money spent by school grantees on local food represented just 1 percent of total food budgets. And schools cited many challenges common across the farm-to-school landscape: price constraints, processing capacity, and staffing. “The challenges around changing a complex school food system are substantial,” said Dr. Gail Feenstra, one of the researchers involved in the report, in a press release. “Fortunately, the state’s strategic and innovative investments in the entire farm to school supply chain—meaning funding for school districts, farmers, and also their regional partners, combined with support from CDFA’s regional staff—are beginning to address those long-standing challenges.”

Read More:
New School Meal Standards Could Put More Local Food on Students’ Lunch Trays
Farm-to-School Efforts Just Got a Big Influx of Cash. Will It Help More Schools Get on Board?
Pandemic Disruptions Created an Opportunity for Organic School Meals in California

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]]> https://civileats.com/2024/09/25/the-us-weakens-a-un-declaration-on-antibiotic-resistance/feed/ 0 https://civileats.com/2024/09/25/the-high-cost-of-groceries-experts-weigh-in/ https://civileats.com/2024/09/25/the-high-cost-of-groceries-experts-weigh-in/#respond Wed, 25 Sep 2024 09:00:17 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=57807 Who Spoke: Civil Eats’ Senior Staff Reporter and Contributing Editor Lisa Held moderated our conversation with expert panelists David Ortega, a professor and the Noel W. Stuckman Chair in Food Economics and Policy at Michigan State University; and Lindsay Owens, an economic sociologist and the executive director of the Groundwork Collaborative. What’s at Stake Food […]

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Last Tuesday, Civil Eats held a virtual salon focusing on a hotly debated topic: Food prices and the 2024 election.

Who Spoke: Civil Eats’ Senior Staff Reporter and Contributing Editor Lisa Held moderated our conversation with expert panelists David Ortega, a professor and the Noel W. Stuckman Chair in Food Economics and Policy at Michigan State University; and Lindsay Owens, an economic sociologist and the executive director of the Groundwork Collaborative.

What’s at Stake

• Food prices are up about 25 percent since 2020.
• There’s been a sharp rise in food insecurity. The latest U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) data shows:
  • 13.5 percent (18 million) of U.S. households were food insecure at some time during 2023.
  • That’s up from 12.8 percent (17 million) just the year before.

The full talk: Become a member today to access the full recording and invitations to future salons—along with other benefits that come with being a Civil Eats member.

What’s Driving High Food Prices?

• Dwindling supply plus rising demand, said Ortega.
• Several factors caused supplies to sink.
  • During the pandemic, people rushed into stores and cleaned out the shelves, throwing suppliers into a tailspin. Then, in 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine, leading to a global shortage of wheat, vegetable oils, and other grains. There were also export restrictions on staples such as palm oil, leading to price increases.
  • On top of this, significant drought in the U.S. affected beef prices, and a multiyear avian flu impacted commercial poultry and eggs.
• All of these shortages caused prices to spike.

Meanwhile, What Caused Demand to Rise?

• Fiscal stimulus payments made during the pandemic added more money to the economy. And, at the same time, households accumulated more savings because they weren’t traveling or going on vacations.
  • Now people are spending, but there’s not as much to buy—so the demand drives up prices.

Price Gouging Also Factors Into High Prices

• Price gouging is when suppliers raise prices by 10 percent to 25 percent or more during periods of crises such as a hurricane, power outage, and other triggers in the market.
  • Nearly 40 states have laws banning price gouging, but there’s no law at the federal level.
  • Owens supports a federal ban on price gouging. “I think it’s one more tool that the federal government would have to prevent against this kind of extractive disaster capitalism,” she said. Ortega worried the law could have unintended consequences.
• Price fixing through corporate consolidation is also an issue, with companies joining up with other companies to set a price.
  • Owens said, “I like to use a true crime metaphor: It requires means, motive, and opportunity to commit the perfect crime. The motive is pretty clear . . . companies are out to make a buck. The means is the power and size that these companies have been amassing for decades. But what changes is you finally have that opportunity, under the cover of inflation, to push harder, faster, higher, and longer for pricing. And that’s what we’ve been seeing in the grocery sector.”

The Overall Takeaway

Presidents actually have little power to affect food prices in the short run. There’s a need to address the root causes of high prices, and there are ways our country can do this:

• Take action to make sure our food system is more resilient to future shocks, including those caused by climate, by taking steps like planting drought-resistant crop varieties.
• Strengthen the social safety net to make sure food is more affordable for everyone; support the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
• Build resilience in the supply chain–such as buffer stocks for grain—that would help prepare for the next disruption or emergency.
• Antitrust policy is a critical tool to tackle consolidation over the long term. “In a world in which we have increased competition, we have more players in the space, and that will have good impacts on pricing,” Owens said.

Reading and More

• “Under Trump, consolidated corporations generally benefited. The Trump administration dissolved the USDA agency tasked with regulating anti-competitive practices in the livestock, poultry, meat, grain, and oilseed industries. . . . The Biden administration made some attempts to rein in consolidation. In 2022, for example, President Joe Biden signed an executive order aimed at creating more competitive practices, especially in meat and poultry supply chains. Harris’s plans to go after “price gouging” fall in line with these initiatives.” — from Can Lawmakers Really Tackle High Food Prices? by Nick Bowlin
• Sign up here for Civil Eats’ weekly newsletter–and join thousands of others who want to keep the pulse on food systems reporting and analysis.
• Civil Eats recently removed our paywall—which means our reporting is free now to everyone, everywhere, for at least the next year. To keep the stories free, we need your support. Become a Civil Eats member to support our work, and to stay in the loop about future virtual salons.

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]]> https://civileats.com/2024/09/25/the-high-cost-of-groceries-experts-weigh-in/feed/ 0 https://civileats.com/2024/09/24/where-do-the-presidential-candidates-stand-on-climate-change/ https://civileats.com/2024/09/24/where-do-the-presidential-candidates-stand-on-climate-change/#respond Tue, 24 Sep 2024 09:00:18 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=57676 A version of this article originally appeared in The Deep Dish, our members-only newsletter. Become a member today and get the next issue directly in your inbox. The United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) sounded a final alarm for the planet in March 2023, emphasizing that we need to make “rapid and far-reaching transitions” across […]

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

As Kamala Harris and Donald Trump campaign for the November election, farmers across the U.S. grapple with extreme and unprecedented weather: blistering heatwaves, severe drought, explosive wildfires, devastating storms, and deadly floods. Climate policies have not been a huge point of discussion on the campaign trail, but the next president’s approach to the changing climate will have massive implications, affecting everything from biodiversity to human migration to farmers’ ability to produce food.

The United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) sounded a final alarm for the planet in March 2023, emphasizing that we need to make “rapid and far-reaching transitions” across the board, including in food and agriculture, within the current decade. The report warns that as the climate warms and farmers face increasing challenges, food insecurity and supply instability will rise.

“There is a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a livable and sustainable future for all,” the authors said. “The choices and actions implemented in this decade will have impacts now and for thousands of years.”

Details on the presidential candidates’ specific climate policies remain scant, but their track records, party platforms, and election-season statements point to the sort of approach each might take if elected. And they could not be more different. When it comes to energy production, the largest emitter of greenhouse gases—and the regulations that shape it and a number of other climate-related policies—the two candidates’ opposing approaches would have wildly different implications for the state of the climate—and the resulting stability of the food system.

The 2024 Democratic platform acknowledges the climate crisis as “an existential threat to future generations” and reflects that priority with robust support for clean energy and climate-friendly regulation. Meanwhile, to the Republican mantra of “drill, baby, drill,” Trump has called climate change a hoax and promised to achieve “energy dominance” while eliminating regulation and undoing the Democrats’ progress toward clean energy.

Numerous climate and environment advocacy groups have endorsed Harris for president. Meanwhile, agribusiness interests have poured their money into the GOP.

The Democrats’ Track Records on Climate

President Joe Biden’s administration has weathered mixed reviews on climate. For the past six years, the U.S. has produced more crude oil than any other country, and the Biden administration approved thousands of permits for drilling and fracking on federal land, like the Alaska Willow oil drilling project. And while Harris called for a ban on fracking in 2019 during a presidential debate on CNN, she has since changed her position.

Still, the Biden-Harris administration set the goal of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050 and made unprecedented investments in renewable energy. The $1.6 trillion Inflation Reduction Act (IRA)—which includes $369 billion for clean-energy projects and decarbonizing the energy and transportation sectors—is the most aggressive piece of climate legislation in American history. Harris cast the tie-breaking vote to pass it.

Additionally, under Biden and Harris, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized strong pollution standards for cars and fossil fuel-fired power plants.

Though Harris has not made climate a focus of her 2024 campaign—and has not revealed specifics about her climate agenda this year—her campaign has said she plans to build on Biden’s climate legacy. Some look at her Climate Plan for the People, which she unveiled during her run in the 2020 primaries, as an indication of where her priorities might lie. The plan called for a $10 trillion public and private investment in climate action over the next decade and included funding clean energy, electrifying transportation, and pursuing climate-smart agriculture.

In her previous roles, Harris has held big polluters to account and supported bold climate action, often framing the crisis through the lens of environmental justice, recognizing that poor and minority communities bear the brunt of pollution and looking to reverse the inequities. As California’s attorney general, Harris sued the Obama administration to stop offshore fracking in the Santa Barbara Channel and amassed $50 million in settlements from lawsuits against fossil fuel companies including Chevron, BP, ConocoPhillips, and Phillips 66. And as a U.S. Senator, in 2019, she joined Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) in co-sponsoring the Green New Deal, a plan to transition the country to clean energy while providing job guarantees and high-quality healthcare.

“Kamala Harris has been a driving force in delivering the strongest climate action in history. She’s ready to build on those gains from day one as president,” said Manish Bapna, president and CEO of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) Action Fund, in a statement. “Harris grasps the urgency and scale of the challenge…. She’ll raise climate ambition to make sure we confront the climate crisis in a way that makes the country more inclusive, more economically competitive, and more energy secure.”

The Biden-Harris administration has also cracked down on corporate consolidation. In many parts of the food system, a few massive companies dominate—the four largest meatpackers control 85 percent of all beef cattle in the U.S., for instance. Some contend that consolidated corporate power positions companies to successfully lobby against regulation that limits air and water pollution and see reigning in corporate power as a vital step in pursuing climate-friendly policies. Biden signed an executive order in July 2021 to promote competition in the American economy, including the meat industry.

While Harris’ running mate, Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota, supported the creation of the now-defunct Keystone XL pipeline project, he generally has an extremely climate-friendly record as well. Last year, he signed a law that requires state power plants to transition to 100 percent climate-friendly energy—like wind and solar power—by the year 2040, eliminating gas and coal-fired power plants. And during the 2023 legislative session, he supported state Democrats in passing around 40 other climate-friendly initiatives.

The Republicans’ Climate Histories

Trump, on the other hand, denies the threat of climate change and makes inaccurate claims about sea level rise. In 2017, he withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Climate Deal, the pre-eminent international agreement to stave off climate change. (Biden rejoined the Agreement on his first day in office.)

As president, Trump dismantled the agencies responsible for protecting the environment and climate, like the EPA, and rolled back more than 100 environmental rules. He also weakened limits on CO2 emissions from power plants and vehicles and removed protections on more than half of the country’s wetlands.

Kip Tom, an Indiana farmer who served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations food and agriculture programs during Trump’s presidency and who currently leads the Farmers and Ranchers for Trump Coalition, said at a Farm Foundation forum in early September that the Biden-Harris administration hurt farmers in many ways, including with regulations like those issued under the Clean Water and Endangered Species acts.

“We have collapsing farm incomes. We’ve got a growing trade deficit. We have the tax policies, which are a threat to our industry,” Tom said. “We have the overreach of some agencies, agencies that should be working to help us bring these new innovations to market, yet they slow us down.”

Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), has acknowledged the problem of climate change in the past, but he changed his views when seeking Trump’s support in his bid for Senate. Since then, he has denied the role of humans in driving climate change, championed the oil and gas industries, and opposed the development of alternative energy sources.

The Democrats Look Forward: Clean Energy and Regulation

While Harris emphasized her support of the oil and gas industries during the presidential debate, the 2024 Democratic platform calls for a continuation of the “clean energy boom” the Biden-Harris administration launched with the IRA. This includes developing solar, wind, batteries, and other clean technologies, modernizing the electricity grid, and running the American Climate Corps workforce training and service initiative. Recognizing that agriculture sector produces 10 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, the platform sets forth the goal of making “our farm sector the world’s first to reach net-zero emissions by 2050.”

Sheep graze under solar panels. (Photo CC-licensed by AgriSolar Clearinghouse)

The platform also supports using federal agencies to set and enforce regulations that protect the environment and combat climate change. In addition to regulating water and air pollution and making polluters pay, Democrats plan to use federal agencies to encourage climate-smart investment. And, it targets these investments “with the goal of delivering 40 percent of the overall benefits to disadvantaged and frontline communities,” or those who are most impacted by climate change.

With the help of IRA funding, for instance, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is paying farmers to adopt climate-smart practices like reducing tillage and planting cover crops. According to the Democrats’ 2024 platform, more than 80,000 farms covering 75 million acres have adopted these practices already. The agency also funds projects that gather data on the efficacy of the efforts.

Harris has not detailed where she stands on breaking up corporate power, though her economic policy includes blocking unfair mergers and a federal ban on grocery-store price gouging. Harris has also tapped Brian Deese, Biden’s top economic advisor, who drafted the actions addressing concentration in the meatpacking industry, to join her campaign.

The Republican Plan: Fossil Fuels and Deregulation

Trump plans to pursue an agenda that is friendly to the fossil-fuel industry. His support for oil and gas companies, which he provided with $25 billion in tax benefits during his presidency, would likely continue. “Under President Trump, the U.S. became the Number One Producer of Oil and Natural Gas in the World,” states the GOP Platform.

Project 2025, the roadmap for a conservative presidency developed by the Heritage Foundation, a think tank that has shaped Republican administrations dating back to Ronald Reagan, also expresses a commitment to “unleashing all of America’s energy resources.” (While Trump has tried to distance himself from the Project 2025 as it has faced scrutiny, many of its authors are his former advisers and shaped policies during his presidency.)

Trump is expected to double down on his deregulatory agenda during a second term. The former president plans to undo many of Biden’s climate and environmental protections and dismantle the IRA by repealing sections that promote electric vehicles and offshore wind projects. (Since the IRA passed two years ago, Republicans have voted to repeal it 42 times.) He has also proposed eliminating key regulations for liquefied natural gas. At a dinner with oil executives at Mar-a-Lago in April, the former president suggested if they contributed $1 billion to his campaign, he would roll back Biden-Harris environmental regulations.

Drill rig working to drill a natural gas well to be fracked next to the Red Hawk Elementary School. Elementary school is the building behind the drill rig in the photo.

If elected, Trump told the American Farm Bureau Federation, “I will slash regulations that stifle American agriculture and make everything more expensive.”

Project 2025 spells out similar deregulatory plans. It calls for demolishing the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration and the National Weather Service, which it describes as “the main drivers of climate change alarm.” (During his previous term, Trump required the term “climate change” be removed from government websites.)

Criticizing the Biden-administration’s EPA for pursuing a global, climate-themed agenda “against the will of Congress,” the document also advocates for shrinking the agency’s power, which would include eliminating its office of environmental justice and civil rights: “EPA’s structure and mission should be greatly circumscribed to reflect the principles of cooperative federalism and limited government,” it says.

The conservative plan criticizes the Biden-Harris USDA for encouraging “climate-smart agricultural practices” and says the next administration should “denounce efforts to place ancillary issues like climate change ahead of food productivity and affordability.” Along those lines, it recommends eliminating conservation programs like the USDA’s Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), which pays farmers to stop farming on low-quality pieces of land to help reduce runoff, improve biodiversity, and hold carbon. And it calls for the president to issue an executive order that removes references to “transforming the food system” from all USDA literature.

On the corporate power front, Trump suggested to oil executive donors at a fundraising event in May that if he becomes president, he will fast-track their merger deals with the Federal Trade Commission.

It should be noted that implementing any of the candidates’ plans would require Congressional approval, which may or may not be achievable with the current configuration of the House and Senate.

Support for the Candidates

As of early September, agribusiness interests had donated $9.9 million to the 2024 Trump campaign and only $2.7 million to Harris.

“President Trump has a strong record of advancing policies to strengthen American agriculture,” Alabama FarmPAC president Jimmy Parnell told the conservative Alabama news website 1819 News. “His administration reduced burdensome regulations, held trade partners accountable, lowered energy costs, and invested in rural economic development.”

Meanwhile, the League of Conservation Voters, the NRDC Action Fund, the Sierra Club, Clean Water Action, the youth-led Sunrise Movement, and a number of other climate-focused groups have endorsed Harris for president. And in August, a group of climate organizations announced a $55 million ad campaign in her support.

“Kamala Harris’s record provides a stark contrast with Donald Trump and the far-right, pro-polluter Project 2025,” said Wenonah Hauter, founder and executive director of Food and Water Action, in a statement. “She has long championed bold clean water legislation, and the Biden-Harris administration provided a dramatic boost to clean energy, tackled corporate consolidation, and passed an infrastructure law that will provide much-needed resources to protecting clean water.”

Harris’ positions do not yet go far enough to tackle the existential threats to our food, water, and climate, says Hauter.“But with a President Harris, we will have a chance to build the political power to move the bold climate initiatives we need.”

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]]> https://civileats.com/2024/09/24/where-do-the-presidential-candidates-stand-on-climate-change/feed/ 0 https://civileats.com/2024/09/23/beyond-farm-to-table-how-chefs-can-support-climate-friendly-food-systems/ https://civileats.com/2024/09/23/beyond-farm-to-table-how-chefs-can-support-climate-friendly-food-systems/#comments Mon, 23 Sep 2024 11:00:35 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=57712 This is the first article in a five-part series about restaurants and climate-change solutions, produced in collaboration with Eater. This may seem like an antiquated concern for chefs in an era of global food distribution systems, but it’s an all-consuming preoccupation for Oyster Oyster, a restaurant named after two ingredients—a bivalve and a mushroom—known for […]

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This is the first article in a five-part series about restaurants and climate-change solutions, produced in collaboration with Eater.

At the height of summer, chef Rob Rubba and his team at Oyster Oyster, a vegetable-first restaurant in Washington, D.C., are preparing for the dwindling of food in the coming winter. It’s a tedious but worthwhile process: drying mushrooms, vegetables, and herbs, making pickles and slaw, and preserving garlic blossoms and coriander seeds in airtight jars before these ingredients vanish with the end of the season.

This may seem like an antiquated concern for chefs in an era of global food distribution systems, but it’s an all-consuming preoccupation for Oyster Oyster, a restaurant named after two ingredients—a bivalve and a mushroom—known for their ecosystem benefits. This radically seasonal, regional restaurant sources its ingredients exclusively from the ocean, climate-adapted farms, and wild plants of the Mid-Atlantic.

Climate on the Menu

Read the stories in our series with Eater:

• Beyond Farm to Table: How Chefs Can Support Climate-Friendly Food Systems As global warming bears down, some restaurants are forging stronger bonds with regional food systems and regenerative farms.
• Weathering Climate Shocks: How Restaurants Survive Supply Disruptions To overcome ingredient shortages and high food costs, some restaurateurs are rethinking their staple ingredients and strengthening their relationships with suppliers.
• Battling Meltdown: If You Can’t Stand the Heat, Work for Change in the Kitchen As climate change drives temperatures up, restaurant staff face uncomfortable, even unsafe conditions with no heat regulations to protect them. Some workers are taking matters into their own hands.

“Toward the end of winter, it gets a little . . . . scary and sparse,” admits Rubba. “Come February, we have this very short farm list. It’s just cellared roots and some kales. Making that creative takes a lot of mental energy.” That’s when Oyster Oyster draws heavily from its pantry of foraged wild plants and ingredients preserved from nearby climate-friendly farms. They lend the food “bright, salty, acidic flavor pops throughout the winter” that wouldn’t otherwise be available, and give his food a joyful exuberance that one critic described as “a garden of good eating.”

Rubba, who won the Outstanding Chef award from the James Beard Foundation in 2023, is one of many chefs reinvisioning the farm-to-table movement in the clarifying, urgent light of climate change. At a time when storms, fires, and droughts are lashing the planet with increasing severity, restaurants like Oyster Oyster source ingredients with a heightened due diligence around their climate and environmental impacts. In doing so, they’re also recognizing that chefs can play a larger role in building food systems able to survive long into the future.

When Ingredients Do Harm—or Good

Oyster Oyster’s approach to regional sourcing comes from Rubba’s stark realization that many staples sold in grocery stores and used in most restaurants have wreaked havoc on the ecosystems and livelihoods of people in other countries. Many of the staple “commodities” imported from overseas come from regions once covered by rainforests and other critical ecosystems that stabilize the climate.

Take chocolate, for instance. The majority of the world’s cocoa is sourced from West Africa, often harvested by children on vast plantations linked to widespread deforestation. Sugar comes with its problems, too. Even when grown in the U.S., the burning of sugar cane emits large amounts of earth-warming carbon dioxide, while dusting communities with toxic ash. Also, these foods require fossil fuels to transport them across the ocean and then throughout the U.S. to warehouses, grocery stores, and restaurants. Rubba also avoids domestic foods that have a large environmental toll. This includes meat, a major driver of earth-warming methane pollution, accounting for 60 percent of food-related emissions.

With a bit of due diligence, Rubba has found local substitutes for all these ingredients. “We don’t use a lot of sweeteners in our food, but we source a really good maple syrup from Pennsylvania that is sometimes reduced down to a maple sugar,” he says.

He and his team use alternatives to other staples, too: They source vinegars from Keepwell Vinegar in Pennsylvania, which relies on sweeteners like honey, maple syrup, fruit, and sorghum from nearby farms to prepare vinegar from scratch. They get their salt from Henlopen, a flaky sea salt from the Delaware coast. They source sunflower and canola oil from Pennsylvania farms. For spices, they work with foragers to gather and preserve Northern spicebush, a shrub native to the eastern U.S. with a delightfully versatile flavor, both fruity and peppery at once. They use a dash of this spice instead of pepper, mixing it with ginger and chiles for a hit of complexity and warmth.

And, just because food is raised locally doesn’t mean it’s grown with climate-friendly practices. “[The farmer] could be spraying with every insecticide, pesticide, fertilizer, and drive a big, stinky diesel truck into my city and sit outside idling for 20 minutes while he unloads all his plastic containers into my restaurant, right?” says Rubba.

This has prompted Rubba to develop deeper relationships with the farms in his network, including an interview process to understand how the food is produced before he buys from a particular farm. Although he sources organic produce, USDA organic certification isn’t his biggest requirement—he’s more interested in the actual farming methods. Certain farming practices and crop varieties can help farms adapt to the erratic, intensified weather patterns and disasters shaking the foundation of U.S. agriculture. Healthy soil can act like a sponge, easily absorbing water during intense flooding and retaining water during times of drought. Some approaches, like agroforestry, can directly fight climate change by drawing down planet-warming carbon.

Rubba visits all the farms that supply the restaurant, asking about their crop rotations, soil health practices, and how the farmworkers are treated. “I love to see the operation, how they do things, what it’s like, and who works there,” he said. “I don’t want to serve food that someone labored over and wasn’t paid correctly for.”

Origins to Table

“We’re in it for the relationships,” said Dana Honn. “The whole idea of farm-to-table has always been so important, but what I realized is that we’re trying to do origins-to-table–we’re trying to tell the story of where our food came from.”

Chefs can be part of the next chapter of this story, not only by telling the history of a food but also by helping build a sustainable market for its future. This is part of the inspiration behind the Honn’s project Origins: Amazonia, the result of a decades-long relationship formed with Juruna Indigenous communities in the state of Pará, Brazil, whose livelihoods and traditional food systems were upended by a megadam. The project is an ambitious, multidimensional effort to tell the story of the violent destruction of biodiversity and Indigenous land, while also helping support a market for traditional Juruna foods like cassava, which allows the communities to cultivate them once more. By focusing on the richest source of biodiversity in the world—one that affects the entire planet, where  deforestation has eradicated at least 20 percent of the rainforest—the Honns hope to help their customers understand what’s at stake there, and by extension, everywhere.

“If there are more people engaged in production of ancestral foods, they actually begin to consume those foods again,” said Honn about the Juruna communities. Many of their traditional plants, like manioc, are also highly adapted to the environment and climate, cultivated over thousands of years. Carmo has been supporting the renewal of these foodways, in part, through a dinner series partly sourced from the Juruna (along with fresh ingredients from the New Orleans area) that also functions as a fundraiser. The money is returned to the Juruna peoples to help restore the agroforestry systems that have long sustained them.

Honn has developed a similar approach to supporting a more sustainable market for Louisiana’s shrinking fishing industry, which has been eroding for decades. The local industry is struggling to compete with cheap imported seafood, which currently accounts for the majority of seafood sold in the U.S. Many New Orleans chefs find it easier to rely on cheaper, imported seafood, readily available through major restaurant distributors like Sysco or Restaurant Depot that source from around the globe. Yet the reliance on imported seafood—at the expense of local seafood—can come with steep consequences.

For instance, shrimp farms in other countries are routinely linked to labor abuses and the destruction of mangroves—a coastal ecosystem critical for adapting to climate change by building carbon-rich soil and buffering against sea-level rise. To address this, Honn has been working with a group of chefs, fishers, and other experts to build back Louisiana’s seafood economy, including shrimp, by developing a more sustainable, local supply chain. They’re developing a program called Full Catch, a set of protocols for harvesting, transporting, and distributing fish from the Gulf of Mexico, including cutting down on food waste by selling and marketing the whole fish.

“When you go to seafood processing houses, they just cut the filet off and throw the carcass in the bin. You have the collars and the cheeks and the pectoral fins and the ribs and everything else that could . . . literally just be cooked and put on a plate,” said Honn. “We sell it every night at Carmo and run out of it every night. Really, people love it.”

Supporting Climate-Conscious Farms

Many farmers don’t grow a fixed amount of each crop every year; instead, they experiment and innovate with different crop plans, the varieties of crops grown, methods of building soil health and minimizing fertilizer use, and other variables. In other words, climate-friendly farming can be a bit messy and unpredictable–a system that is designed to be more responsive to climate disruptions and ecosystem fluctuations, building long-term stability, resilience, and high yields.

The restaurants that support these kinds of  farms also tend to be highly adaptable, adjusting their menu to reflect the needs of farmers. They source according to the schedule of the crops growing nearby, the waning and waxing seasons. For some chefs, this means keeping in constant touch with farms to know when their crops will be ready, and then adjusting their menu accordingly–rather than relying on a predictable production schedule.

Isaiah Martinez, the chef and owner of Yardy Rum Bar, a Caribbean restaurant in Eugene, Oregon, says he keeps close tabs on local farms. “I’m asking them, ‘When are your peppers going to be in season? When are melons going to be in season? When are you going to have different cucumber varieties? When will you have stone fruit?’” He admits that he’s a bit competitive about this, too; he wants to be the first chef that farmers call when a new crop is ready to be delivered, so he builds strong relationships with them.

“I create a relationship where [farmers] feel like they have to tell me first,” he said. “They’re giving me the first handful of perfect peaches, and I’m putting it on my menu.” This approach is also good for farmers: The peach grows according to its own timeline, and the chef is enthusiastically waiting for it as soon as it is ready. He changes his menu usually every three to four weeks, while making smaller tweaks on a daily basis. “When carrots are not very good, we can do beets, and when beets are not very good, we can do collards.”

For peppers, herbs, lettuces and gem beets, Martinez goes to Red Tail Organics, a certified organic vegetable farm along Oregon’s Mohawk River that focuses on the often overlooked edges of the farm. Red Tail  plants hedgerows of elderberries, Oregon Grape trees, and  Cascara trees, native plants that serve as a habitat for wildlife while helping sequester carbon in the soil. They’ve also planted Pacific willow, California incense-cedar, Western red cedar, Ash trees, and Alders along the river that cuts through the farm. Known as a riparian buffer, this prevents erosion, stabilizes the soil, and can absorb storm water, helping the farm adapt to more erratic weather.

Martinez also sources some ingredients from Hummingbird Wholesale, a local distributor in Oregon focused on building a market for regional organic farms that are sustainable in the truest sense of the word. “We have a big, audacious goal that organic becomes the norm in agriculture, as opposed to the 2.5 percent [of U.S. food sales] that it is currently,” said Stacy Kraker, the company’s director of marketing. Hummingbird does this by acting as the missing link between the area’s organic farms, retailers, and restaurants, building a regional supply chain that chefs that quickly tap into. In pursuing what it calls “distributor supported agriculture,” Hummingbird—and chefs like Martinez, who support it—are helping create a local foodshed that nourishes all the life that depends on it, from humans to soil microbes and pollinators.

Hummingbird’s sourcing team considers some of the regional climate stressors, such as prolonged periods of drought, when seeking out farmers. “Some of the farmers we work with are, in fact, dry-land farming, which means that they rely on rain to give them as much moisture as they’re ever going to use,” said Kraker. “So, they’re intentionally choosing to grow crops in the regions that can handle long periods without any rain.”

While Martinez deeply values building direct relationships with farmers, Hummingbird Wholesale allows him to confidently source from nearby organic farms for some ingredients, sparing him a bit of time and research in what can be a lengthy process.

A chef’s vigilant, knowledgeable sourcing can lead to cherishing certain ingredients—and using less of them. Oyster Oyster’s Rob Rubba thinks some foods are best reserved for special occasions, including his restaurant’s namesake bivalve.

His oysters come from Chesapeake Bay, which has lost nearly all of its once-abundant oyster population due to reckless harvesting techniques like dredging. Although Rubba buys from farmers dedicated to sustainably raising Bay oysters, he still sources them in moderation. Part of the idea is simply not taking too much from the earth, especially for ingredients that have historically been extracted like they are an infinite resource.

“I think we have to look at [these oysters] as a luxury,” he said. “It doesn’t mean that they should be limited out of a sense of elitism. I just think in how we consume them—we should just be a little more grateful for them when we do get them.”

The post Beyond Farm to Table: How Chefs Can Support Climate-Friendly Food Systems appeared first on Civil Eats.

https://civileats.com/2024/09/11/why-are-u-s-agricultural-emissions-dropping/ https://civileats.com/2024/09/11/why-are-u-s-agricultural-emissions-dropping/#respond Wed, 11 Sep 2024 09:00:47 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=57627 In recent years, curbing emissions from agriculture and the broader food system has become a bigger piece of the conference’s programming. And this year, the most influential group in American agriculture has been pointing to big strides made. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) annual emissions inventory report showed that emissions from the agricultural sector […]

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The fall has become the season for reviewing climate progress, book-ended by two major climate summits. First comes New York City Climate Week, held between September 22 and 29, followed by the most important global climate event of the year, the 2024 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP29), which will be held in Baku, Azerbaijan, from November 11 to November 22. There, global leaders will gather to fulfill the legally binding promise of the Paris Agreement: to keep worldwide emissions at a livable threshold.

In recent years, curbing emissions from agriculture and the broader food system has become a bigger piece of the conference’s programming. And this year, the most influential group in American agriculture has been pointing to big strides made.

“The impact that the drought is having on pasture is forcing the culling of cattle and reducing the cattle herd.”

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) annual emissions inventory report showed that emissions from the agricultural sector dropped by nearly 2 percent, falling from 10.6 to 9.4 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions between 2021 and 2022—the sharpest drop of all sectors in 2022. In response, the American Farm Bureau’s president, Zippy Duvall, attributed the shift to U.S. farmers adopting climate-friendly practices through “voluntary and market-based programs that support farmer efforts in sustainable agriculture practices.”

However, the report doesn’t support the conclusion that a bump in conservation practices drove the drop in emissions. Instead, while there is plenty of uncertainty, the most likely causes are fewer cattle burping methane and less fertilizer use. Concentrated feedlot cattle farming and fertilizer production are among the biggest drivers of emissions from agriculture.

It’s a significant conclusion, because in the past, industry groups have fought all efforts to draft climate policy around reducing meat and dairy consumption and chemical fertilizer use. Going into climate event season, with the clock ticking even louder, that could happen again.

Fewer Cattle

Duvall is right about farmers adopting valuable conservation practices. For example, many more are planting cover crops, with acreage increasing by 17 percent between 2017 and 2022. But despite the proven environmental benefits of these practices, their real climate impact is still in question.

However, the impact of reducing methane is well understood. And in its report, the EPA explicitly states that the drop of methane emissions was “largely driven by a decrease in beef cattle populations.” Through no fault of their own, ruminant animals, like cattle and sheep, exhale methane as they digest their food. Known as enteric fermentation, this is a top driver of human-related methane emissions in the U.S. In 2022, these emissions decreased by 2 percent, contributing to the overall drop.

Why were there fewer cattle? The decline in numbers isn’t due to any regulations on methane or herd size—a frequent Republican talking point—but rather the impacts of climate change. The record-breaking drought since 2022 has dried the landscape and shrunk the available grassy pasture for raising cattle, explained Ben Lilliston, the director of rural strategies and climate change at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. As a result, farmers have had to make hard choices to prevent the overgrazing of this limited green pasture.

“The impact that the drought is having on pasture is forcing the culling of cattle and reducing the cattle herd,” said Lilliston. “So, when you have fewer cows, you’re going to have fewer enteric [fermentation] emissions coming from the cow itself.”

And it’s not just methane. The EPA also reported lower nitrous oxide emissions from feedlot manure, captured in manure lagoons, “which are major sources of both methane and nitrous oxide,” said Lilliston. “So, when you reduce the cattle herd, you affect both those sources of emissions.”

This relationship has generally held true over time. The EPA has observed a consistent relationship between the size of cattle herds and fluctuations in methane emissions from enteric fermentation. As the report states, “this increase in emissions from enteric fermentation from 1990 to 2022 generally follows the increasing trends in cattle populations.” The agency pointed to how “emissions increased from 2005 to 2007, as both dairy and beef populations increased.” Now, as cattle herds decrease, that trend has reversed.

The multi-year drought continues to devastate ranchers, which could mean further declines in emissions. “Based on USDA statistics, cattle populations have continued to decrease in 2023 and 2024, which tend to drive methane and nitrous oxide emissions from the enteric fermentation and manure management categories as described in the GHG Inventory,” wrote an EPA spokesperson in an email.

Reduced Fertilizer Use

The drop in nitrous oxide emissions could also be driven by less fertilizer use, related to the dramatic surge in fertilizer prices in 2021 and 2022, beyond what farmers could afford. This coincided with Russia’s attack on Ukraine, which disrupted fertilizer supply chains. In response, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) noted that farmers made different business calculations: “Some producers may have chosen to reduce the overall acreage planted, while others chose to maintain acreage but change crop mix or modify other practices,” the USDA commented in a 2022 report.

This is likely especially true for farmers growing corn, the most widely planted crop in the U.S., primarily grown to produce ethanol. “Corn is the main driver of nitrogen fertilizer use,” said Lilliston. But as fertilizer prices surged, “a lot of commodity farmers responded by planting more soybeans, which doesn’t require as much fertilizer,” he noted.

Rather than a permanent shift, this suggests a more temporary fluctuation. Lilliston expects nitrous oxide emissions to rebound in the EPA’s next report, as fertilizer prices leveled in 2023 and the U.S. produced a record corn crop.

“Ultimately, it seems primarily the big story is that there’s less production of U.S. agriculture and [therefore] less emissions. Farmers aren’t necessarily producing food in much more climate-smart ways than they were in 2021, just producing a little bit less of it,” said Dan Blaustein-Rejto, the director of food & agriculture at the Breakthrough Institute.

“The EPA report is really not meant to assess the impact of conservation programs or specific farming practices,” added Blaustein-Rejto. “[It] certainly is not looking at the effect of specific voluntary programs or other efforts,” he said.

In general, agricultural emissions experts interviewed for this article agreed that the EPA’s annual greenhouse-gas emissions inventory reflects such a brief snapshot of time that it can be hard to tell if it indicates a larger shift in the food system or a fluctuation based on agricultural market changes and disruptions. The EPA also continually refines its methodologies for calculating emissions, which can make it hard to compare smaller shifts in emissions included in the reports.

‘There’s so much uncertainty in those predictions that I would hesitate to really read too much into any small variation from year to year, outside of demonstrable changes and practices out on the landscape,” said Steven Hall, a professor in the Department of Plant and Agroecosystem Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “The emissions inventories published by EPA are subject to substantial uncertainty.”

“I think the EPA is doing an admirable job at trying to estimate this,” he added. “It’s sort of an impossible task.” The report, perhaps, most clearly shows that we still have work to do in transforming our systems for growing food.

And it points to two simple things that policy wonks and world leaders could be spending more time debating: How climate policy should and could tackle emissions from beef production and fertilizer use. “Unfortunately, the 2022 reductions were not part of a planned strategy to support farmers in a transition toward less emitting, more resilient agricultural systems,” said Lilliston in a commentary on the EPA report. “Instead, the reductions were the result of sudden shocks that caused enormous harm to farmers and their animals. Volatile prices make it nearly impossible for farmers to plan ahead or transition to more diverse cropping systems that require less fertilizer use.”

Going forward, he argued, policy conversations should prioritize transitioning away from industrial animal agriculture, which also depends on fertilized corn for feed. “Instead, policymakers continue to defer to the wants of powerful global grain and meat companies, while climate-related events, such as drought, wildfires, and floods, warn us that change is coming, ready or not.”

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]]> https://civileats.com/2024/09/11/why-are-u-s-agricultural-emissions-dropping/feed/ 0 https://civileats.com/2024/09/10/the-pawpaw-a-beloved-native-fruit-could-seed-a-more-sustainable-future-for-small-farms/ https://civileats.com/2024/09/10/the-pawpaw-a-beloved-native-fruit-could-seed-a-more-sustainable-future-for-small-farms/#comments Tue, 10 Sep 2024 09:00:27 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=57559 Pawpaws are America’s largest edible native fruit, and their ineffable mystique will bring thousands of visitors to the farm’s annual pawpaw festival in late September. They grow abundantly in the wild here in central Pennsylvania and across much of the fruit’s native range, which spans 26 states as far west as the Great Plains and […]

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As the sun beats down from a cloudless morning sky across Horn Farm in York, Pennsylvania, Dick Bono ambles among his pawpaw trees, admiring their pale green fruits like a proud parent. In late July, the pawpaws are fist-sized and hard as a rock, still two months shy of being full-grown and ripe. But soon they’ll soften and sweeten into a fruit revered for its tropical flavor and texture—a blend of banana, mango, and pineapple, so soft it’s eaten with a spoon.

“It was like going to heaven on a surfboard.”—Jean Vargas, pawpaw festival attendee

Pawpaws are America’s largest edible native fruit, and their ineffable mystique will bring thousands of visitors to the farm’s annual pawpaw festival in late September. They grow abundantly in the wild here in central Pennsylvania and across much of the fruit’s native range, which spans 26 states as far west as the Great Plains and from northern Florida to Maine. But the pawpaw’s two- to three-week harvest window, short shelf life, and delicate skin still make it anathema to the rigid needs of grocery stores and a rare find even at farmers’ markets.

Despite the inherent obstacles to enjoying a pawpaw—and perhaps, in part, because of them—interest in the fruit continues to grow. Festivals in several states, mostly throughout September, give people a chance to taste the fruit for the first time or celebrate an old favorite.

Meanwhile, research and plant breeding efforts are underway to explore and expand its potential as a sustainable low-input, high-value crop that could figure into the future of small farms throughout the eastern U.S. If the pawpaw’s greatest admirers have their way, it will also show the way forward for a localized approach to agriculture that operates outside of the mass-produced mainstream.

The pawpaw’s green skin (left) gives way to a custardy interior (right). (Photo credit, left: Kat Arazawa)

Bono and his wife, Judy, manage 52 pawpaw trees on land they rent at Horn Farm Center for Agricultural Education, a regenerative agriculture nonprofit. Dick predicts well over 1,000 pounds of fruit this year, and he’ll need it all to satisfy the 2,000 visitors expected for the festival.

“We bring joy and happiness for that one little weekend in September,” Judy says.

While many at the festival will be getting their first exposure to the pawpaw, Dick, a land conservationist and retired architect, and Judy, a native plant enthusiast, have been enamored for 20 years now. They had tasted the hit-or-miss wild varieties that grow in the fertile soil along the Susquehanna River, but got hooked during a visit to Deep Run, a Maryland orchard with a range of pawpaw cultivars among its 1,000 trees.

They wanted to bring some of that sweetness north to York, so in 2004 they hosted a downtown dinner at Blue Moon Cafe that made pawpaw the star of the show. The French chef they hired turned out chicken with hot peppers and pawpaw, a salad with the fruit sliced fresh, pawpaw bread with pawpaw butter, and a crepe filled, of course, with pawpaw.

The dinner was a hit—and so were the modest events the Bonos began hosting in the driveway of Judy’s plant shop every September, letting friends and neighbors in on their little secret with pawpaw tastings, baked goods, ice cream, and salsas. When they planted their orchard 11 years ago, the gatherings turned into a festival, which soon outgrew anything they could manage themselves. Now, Horn Farm Center runs the show.

What started as a “quaint event,” in the words of the center’s executive director, Alexis Campbell, has expanded into a countywide, four-day festival. The festival includes tastings and cooking demonstrations, giving visitors a chance to appreciate the pawpaw and other crops native to the region, as well as tours exploring ecosystem restoration and biodynamic farming on nearby land.

The Pawpaw ‘Experience’

While Dick Bono describes the subtle differences in fruiting patterns that differentiate one pawpaw variety from the next, a zebra swallowtail butterfly flits among them, a reminder that native plants like the pawpaw support biodiversity. Pawpaws are the only host plant for zebra swallowtails.

Dick Bono and his pawpaw trees growing at the Horn Farm Center. (Photo credit: Kat Arazawa)

As the butterfly flutters between three rows of trees, its black and white wings vivid against their green foliage, Bono introduces the members of his orchard. The Canadian NC1 ripens early, with fewer smooth black seeds than other varieties. The Allegheny’s yellow flesh brings a pop of citrus flavor. The Susquehanna’s firm flesh is sweeter than most, and the Shenandoah, his favorite in the orchard, has a mild flavor and a custardy texture that everyone loves.

So much of the interest in the pawpaw is about curiosity, Bono says, both because of the fruit’s fickleness and the fact that it’s more akin to tropical cherimoya and soursop than anything else in its range. But the flavor keeps people coming back. “The taste,” he says, “is what it’s about.”

Jean Vargas would agree. A self-described “fruit hunter” who says he has tried some 700 varieties, he came from Florida for his first pawpaw festival in 2021. His first bite, which he says tasted of mango, banana, coconut, and vanilla, was “mind-blowing.”

“It was like going to heaven on a surfboard,” he says.

That weekend, Vargas spent nearly $100 on pawpaws, befriended the Bonos and other aficionados, and committed to coming back. He’s visited three years in a row and sounds pained to admit that work will keep him away this September. A festival is the best way to experience everything the pawpaw can offer, he says, even if it’s six states away.

“It’s mystical,” Vargas says.

Chris Chmiel of Integration Acres in Albany, Ohio, started the Ohio Pawpaw Festival in 1999 and has since heard countless stories of people’s relationships with the fruit he says has become “a symbol of our Appalachian heritage.” He had a “communal experience” with some pawpaws when he first launched the festival, asking for their blessing. It seems to have worked. His festival now draws in 10,000 people for pawpaw beers, a pawpaw cook-off, and a pawpaw-eating contest.

“Everyone’s got these stories that the pawpaw has been a part of for them. You don’t get that when you go to the grocery store and buy a banana,” Chmiel says. “It’s an experience.”

Pawpaw’s Agricultural and Ecological Benefits

As pawpaw aficionados often mention, it was George Washington’s favorite fruit, and Lewis and Clark relied on it for portions of their westward expedition. Its cultural connection to Appalachia runs deep. It’s the subject of a folk song and the namesake of towns in West Virginia, Illinois, Michigan, and Kentucky.

Today, it is emerging from this long history as the subject of renewed public interest, thanks to its varied ecological and agricultural attributes. For those investing in sustainable landscapes and watershed restoration, the pawpaw’s roots can hold stream banks in place and prevent runoff. On farms focused on agroforestry and silvopasture—the integration of livestock and trees—it’s a welcome neighbor, including at Integration Acres, where goats graze among the pawpaws but leave their fruit for humans to eat.

And, because it ripens after apples in many places, the pawpaw offers farmers a way to continue harvesting into the fall, and bring in extra income. At a time when most produce we eat is available year-round, the pawpaw’s seasonality is significant, says Tim Clymer, who specializes in unusual fruits at Threefold Farms in Mechanicsburg, an hour northwest of Horn Farm.

He grows blackberries, kiwi berries, persimmons, and figs, which were his primary crop until pawpaws took the mantle. With 160 trees in full production at the farm and nearly 300 more on the way, Threefold will contribute some of the 3,000 pounds of pawpaws sold at the festival.

The pawpaw has other advantages that set it apart from so many mainstream fruits, particularly from a farmer’s perspective. It’s high-value (Clymer sells it for $5 to $7 a pound and it goes for more elsewhere) and low-input (impervious to most insect and fungus pests, it can easily be grown organically). It can survive temperatures below freezing and, as a native fruit, it grows well with consistency in much of its home range.

That range is expanding as climate change brings warmer temperatures north, opening up nearly all of New England as an ideal climate for the pawpaw in the years to come. Increases in extreme weather, in the form of both drought and heavy rains and wind, however, could pose a long-term threat to the pawpaw, which thrives in the moist, nutrient-dense soil alongside bodies of water. For many years, though, festivals like those in Pennsylvania and Ohio will be well positioned to expand the fruit’s cult following.

Seeding a Sustainable System

“I was amazed to see there was this delicious, tropical fruit that grew here,” D’Angelo says. “And not only did it grow here, but it had evolved here.”

He planted his first tree when he was 11. At Project Pawpaw, a crowdfunded initiative focused on research, breeding, and market development, he’s working to seed a more resilient agricultural system, starting with the pawpaw. The organization opened its first large-scale research orchard this spring, planting 800 trees—enough to produce 10 tons of pawpaw once mature—on an acre in South Jersey, and has plans for two more, including one in Wisconsin.

D’Angelo’s goal is to develop pawpaws with firm flesh, great flavor, and thicker skin, so they don’t bruise quite so easily in transport. (The Bonos say they pack them in a single layer, laid over bubble wrap.) A color break from green to yellow, to signify ripeness, would allow farmers to harvest the fruit more efficiently. Currently, the only way to tell is by squeezing each one. With some improvements, the pawpaw could help diversify farms across the eastern U.S., D’Angelo says.

Alongside other native and perennial fruit and nut crops, the pawpaw can be part of a better agricultural future, he says, encouraging people to think beyond just what’s consistent and available in grocery stores. “We need to start embracing things that grow well where we are,” he says.

D’Angelo’s work will take a while to materialize—plant breeding always does. He doesn’t expect to release a new variety for 10 years. But in the meantime, researchers are finding other ways to improve the pawpaw’s viability for small farms. Kentucky State University has over 2,000 trees in its research program, which started in 1994, focused on fine-tuning propagation methods, orchard management, and ripening and storage techniques. Ohio State University started its own research in 2006, aiming to increase the pawpaw’s profitability for local growers. It hosts a conference each year to discuss production and marketing of the fruit.

“If we’re 10 to 15 years from a new variety, we might only be a couple years from telling farmers the best temperature to store their fruit—or we could develop a new harvest crate, so they don’t bruise,” D’Angelo says. “That’s what propelled the avocado.”

At Horn Farm Center, where neighbors tend a flourishing community garden a short distance from young hazelnuts, persimmons and elderberries, Campbell hopes the pawpaw can be part of something bigger than itself. With that in mind, this year’s festival, now called Wild & Uncommon Weekend, will widen its scope beyond the pawpaw to consider a range of native fruits that are central to the farm’s regenerative vision. The broader focus can educate visitors about “bioregional living,” a way of engaging with agriculture to elevate “what’s inherent and special about this particular climate, this particular land,” Campbell says.

Perennial crops like the pawpaw require little or no tillage, allowing them to improve soil health, sequester carbon, and prevent agricultural runoff into waterways, all while creating habitats for wildlife. For Campbell, that makes it a “gateway” to developing more locally focused and ecologically beneficial food systems.

To have that impact, though, the pawpaw needs to be more than a curiosity. The festivals, research, and personal connections with the fruit are all part of that journey.

“The pawpaw and the festival are a small glimpse of what could be,” she says.

The post The Pawpaw, a Beloved Native Fruit, Could Seed a More Sustainable Future for Small Farms appeared first on Civil Eats.

https://civileats.com/2024/09/05/will-seaweeds-farming-fulfill-its-potential-as-a-climate-change-solution/ https://civileats.com/2024/09/05/will-seaweeds-farming-fulfill-its-potential-as-a-climate-change-solution/#respond Thu, 05 Sep 2024 09:00:59 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=57498 Still in its research phase, the 86-acre project is operated by Ocean Rainforest, a company that aims to fight climate change by growing seaweed at scale: 1 million tons a year by 2030. Although an 86-acre terrestrial farm would be considered boutique, the Ocean Rainforest plot, floating in sight of the Channel Islands, represents a […]

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About 5 miles off the coast of Santa Barbara, California, a vast swath of giant kelp—Macrocystis pyriferia, which can grow nearly 3 feet per day—sways just below the surface of one of the world’s first open-ocean seaweed farms.

Still in its research phase, the 86-acre project is operated by Ocean Rainforest, a company that aims to fight climate change by growing seaweed at scale: 1 million tons a year by 2030. Although an 86-acre terrestrial farm would be considered boutique, the Ocean Rainforest plot, floating in sight of the Channel Islands, represents a significant leap in size from the average U.S. seaweed farm of 1 to 4 acres—and a new frontier for ocean farming.

Kelp’s Tangled Lines

Read all the stories in our series:

• The Promise and Possible Pitfalls of American Kelp Farming An overview of our four-part in-depth series examining the growth of the U.S. seaweed industry. With little regulatory oversight and skyrocketing funding, how will this industry evolve?
• 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.
• Rescuing Kelp Forests Through Science Breakthrough genetic research at a Massachusetts lab could save the world’s vanishing kelp forests—and support American kelp farming, too.
• The Hard Work of Bringing Kelp to Market As seaweed farms develop on both coasts and begin to contribute to America’s blue economy, much depends on infrastructure.
• The Future of Seaweed Farming in America The outlook has seemed bright for this crop of multiple uses, including mitigating the impacts of climate change. But major obstacles remain for the seaweed industry.

Supported by $6.2 million in Series A funding, for a total of $22 million from U.S. and European governments, grants, and venture capital, Ocean Rainforest also operates seaweed farms in the Faroe Islands and Iceland that supply the animal-feed, fertilizer, and cosmetic industries. The company’s goal of substantially decarbonizing these industries—with seaweed, instead of petroleum feedstocks, as raw material—depends on the success of this farm. Growing seaweed in the open ocean, with room to exponentially expand, means the Ocean Rainforest team is tackling how to anchor crops in hundreds of feet of water, withstand intense weather, and monitor a farm that lies many miles from shore.

As Ocean Rainforest continues its research, the wider U.S. seaweed industry, still in its infancy, faces significant challenges. Several years of steady investment and scientific breakthroughs have helped it advance, but since 2023, funding has dropped precipitously, and so have retail prices for seaweed-based foods. In the meantime, a lack of government guidance by means of regulation and legislation makes it difficult for farms to gain traction. Seaweed is an extraordinary crop, offering multiple benefits to planetary and human health along with an array of business applications. But it’s fair to say that right now, the industry is having growing pains.

The Investment Slowdown

In 2023, according to Phyconomy, a database that tracks the seaweed economy, seaweed funding in the U.S. abruptly began to sink, dwindling from a peak of about $100 million in 2022 to just $8 million for 2024 so far.

Source: Phyconomy.net (*2024 investment as of August). (Illustration credit: Nhatt Nichols)

“We are in what I call the ‘valley of disappointment,’” says Steven Hermans, who founded Phyconomy. American investors have become more sophisticated about startup investments, including in seaweed, he says. A few years ago, he adds, “They didn’t know anything, and they were like, ‘OK, we’ll toss a couple of million into this.’ Then, Everyone kept their money in their pockets during high inflation . . . [and] people realized . . . it will take a long time to build a market for American-grown kelp. Now they’re asking better questions, and that will ultimately lead to better investments.”

But for some companies, that won’t matter. Since Civil Eats began this reporting project nearly a year ago, two of the largest and most well-known American kelp businesses have gone under: Running Tide, a carbon capture company, and AKUA, maker of kelp burgers.

Founded in 2017 by Marty Odlin, the Maine-based Running Tide was one of the most well-funded kelp companies in the U.S. before it shut down abruptly in June 2024. As its website stated, Running Tide aimed to build “humanity’s operating system for the ocean,” drawing down carbon via seaweed-inoculated wood chips. Seaweed naturally absorbs carbon as it grows, but unless it is harvested, it decomposes and releases carbon back. The chips, on the other hand, would sink to the deep ocean to decay, storing the carbon there for thousands of years, according to Odlin. Running Tide’s revenue goal was to sell carbon removal credits to companies interested in decreasing their carbon footprint.

Running Tide garnered $54 million in Series B investments, including from Lowercarbon Capital, in 2022. In June of that year, an article in the MIT Technology Review questioned Running Tide’s farming and business practices. Meanwhile, the company prepared to relocate to Iceland, having persuaded the Icelandic government to approve its wood-chip sinking.

In fall 2023, Running Tide sank 19,000 tons of wood chips into the ocean, selling the world’s first marine Carbon Dioxide Removal (mCDR) credits to Microsoft and Shopify as part of a voluntary carbon market not regulated by government. In less than a year, the company shut down as criticism about its practices continued to swirl; Odlin cited a lack of American government support for the voluntary carbon market as the reason for the closure.

Although $54 million represented a fraction of the $380 million overall investment in the seaweed industry, some think the carbon-sink goal was too narrow, and overlooked all that seaweed could offer. “The long-term [carbon sink] potential attracted a swarm of speculators that took the industry in the wrong direction,” says Bren Smith, founder of GreenWave, a forerunner in the ocean farming movement. GreenWave received roughly $6 million in 2021.

Sources: Phyconomy.net (*numbers as of August 2024). Gathered from the Department of Energy (DOE) MARINER program, the U.S. Economic Development Administration (EDA) Build Back Better program, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), and private investment (PI), which includes venture capital, family offices, single investors and crowdfunding). (Illustration credit: Nhatt Nichols)

Smith believes that the dip in carbon-fueled funding will encourage the industry to embrace seaweed’s many uses—as a good food for humans and animals, as a game-changing alternative to chemical- and carbon-intensive industries like fertilizers or plastics, and for its proven ecosystem benefits. Also, seaweed doesn’t need arable terrestrial land, likely to diminish as wildfires and extreme weather events like drought increase. “I don’t know if it’s 100 years or five years, but we’re gonna be growing huge amounts of food underwater,” he predicts.

Lack of Federal Funding

The slump in private investment isn’t the only financial challenge for seaweed. Scant federal funding adds to the struggle. In Europe, many ocean startups receive government support, according to Ronald Tardiff, Ocean Innovation Lead at the World Economic Forum, whereas in the U.S., most government funding goes to research institutions rather than for-profit companies. (The Department of Energy, an important source of research funding dating back decades, contributed some $20 million to seaweed research in the 1970s through its MARINER program, and continues to support science; see “Seaweed Investments by Category” below.)

“The E.U. has spent . . . . hundreds of millions of euros on R & D related to seaweed, in a way that the U.S. has not. And many startups have benefited from those E.U. projects,” says Tardiff, pointing out that Ocean Rainforest, a for-profit entity, has received extensive E.U. funding. In China and Korea, where seaweed farming first developed into a larger industry, governments provide kelp seed to farmers for free or at a subsidized cost. The lack of state support in the U.S., says Tardiff, also means the American seaweed market is more tied to market fluctuations than its Asian and European competitors.

The paucity of both private and government funding makes it harder for seaweed companies to handle the high cost of farming and processing. “The ocean is uniquely expensive to operate on,” says Tardiff, who also serves as the Lighthouse Lead of 1000 Ocean Startups, a global coalition of incubators, accelerators, competitions, matching platforms, and VCs that have pledged to back at least 1,000 “transformative” startups by 2030.

Basic seaweed farming equipment, like a boat, costs anywhere from $30,000 to $500,000; a single seaweed-line anchor—and a farm needs multiple—can cost $1,000. Also, because kelp is unusually perishable, it requires million-dollar investments in infrastructure equipment, like specialized dehydrators and freezers, to render it shelf-stable. Much of it is custom-built for this new food business.

Retail Slump Meets Inflation

Declining investment has hit kelp food companies particularly hard, since they’re also dealing with shrinking grocery-store revenues, especially for consumer packaged goods (CPG)—which includes most seaweed foods. Also, high inflation rates mean a seaweed snack or seasoning won’t do as well; when food prices are up overall, consumers are less likely to spend on foods that aren’t familiar.

Describing the current CPG market as “brutal,” Courtney Boyd, founder of AKUA kelp burger company, closed her operation this August. Boyd founded her kelp company in 2016, supported by GreenWave, and for a while it was thriving: She raised $4.5 million in funding from 2020 to 2024, according to Phyconomy. Looking back, Boyd regrets not having invested in farming, instead buying kelp wholesale from middlemen. She eventually began working directly with farmers in 2023, but it was too little, too late.

“With an inflationary environment, if you are a consumer-package company and you don’t have a lot of oversight in terms of what’s happening with the supply chain, you’re in trouble when times are challenging,” says Julia Paino of Desert Bloom Foods, a food investing firm.

Boyd’s company will be taken over by the Maine Family Seafarm Coop, run by Ken Sparta, one of Boyd’s partner farmers. The co-op plans to focus on direct-to-restaurant sales and piggyback off their existing oyster-selling infrastructure, avoiding the cost and complication of grocery-store sales entirely.

A Patchwork of Regulations

While investment in seaweed is lagging, so is America’s regulatory framework. Each state has its own rules around seaweed farming. In Maine, for instance, farmers can only operate on leases after a period of public comment followed by approval, and only if the leases do not interfere with existing maritime operations. In Alaska, seaweed farmers can only cultivate seaweed varieties that grow natively within 50 kilometers of their farm. In California, no regulatory pathway even exists for seaweed farming in state waters. All commercial seaweed farms are on land.

Unlike terrestrial farming, no federal laws govern or guide ocean farming. Nor is there any federal tracking of seaweed landings, despite the edible seaweed business being worth nearly $2 billion in the U.S. This stands in stark contrast to terrestrial farming: At any given time, a citizen can look up exactly how much of a crop is grown, to the acre, on the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) website, going back to the 1900s. This information is intimately tied to subsidies like the farm bill, which provides support to American farming industries like corn, soy, or pork. Without the clear picture that tracking provides, it’s harder for money to flow.

In the case of seaweed, four federal agencies touch seaweed, but only lightly: the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, whose regional offices are responsible for permitting every single seaweed farm in the U.S., but not for following up once those farms are established; the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which funds seaweed projects and education and tracks landings for fish and aquaculture, but not seaweed; USDA, which helps fund seaweed farms, on a limited basis, but doesn’t regulate them; and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which regulates imported seaweed products and domestic seaweed—but only if it’s part of a pharmaceutical product. The U.S. Coast Guard, responsible for mapping fisheries and other structures in the water, does not yet map seaweed farms.

With no single federal agency having oversight, and few guidelines on either the state or federal level, seaweed companies and farmers are left in limbo.

Sunken Seaweed, one of California’s two commercial seaweed farms, has dealt with limbo for years now. Farmer Torre Polizzi raises dulse—a rich, meaty-tasting red seaweed favored by health-conscious consumers for its nutritional properties—in tanks on Humboldt Bay, in Northern California. California has no permitting process for seaweed farms in state waters, which extend anywhere from 3 to 12 nautical miles from land—an unsurmountable distance for most farmers. So, Polizzi is unable to grow his seaweed in the ocean, although dulse is native to the nutrient-rich, cold Pacific.

“That is where 99.9 percent of companies hit a wall in this industry in California,” says Polizzi, the rush of pumped seawater humming in the tanks behind him. Each of his 10 tanks holds 1,200 gallons of constantly bubbling seawater, which tumbles the seaweed so it photosynthesizes more evenly.

Polizzi considers himself lucky to have found a home for his seaweed at all. He and his wife spent five years trying to find a location in California for their farm. They are able to pump saltwater from the ocean, crucial for a land-based seaweed company, through a relationship with Hog Island, the Northern California oyster restaurant and market, which already has a salt-water pumping permit for its oyster operation.

The California Coastal Commission, which oversees the permits, has not issued any new pumping permits in many years. In exchange for the seawater, Polizzi helps oversee a research bull kelp site for Hog Island, Greenwave, and The Nature Conservancy (permitted in the bay because it not commercial).

Even selling his fresh dulse and dried seaweed flakes at the local farmers’ market was a battle: It took Polizzi six months of petitioning California’s legislature to allow seaweed as a “cottage food,” saleable at farmers’ markets.

“We are here in California. We have some of the best marine science institutions in the world,” says Polizzi. “We have the ability and tech to create the cleanest [seaweed farms] in the world. But we can’t implement them.”

Seaweed at Scale

Ocean Rainforest’s research farm off the coast of Santa Barbara, California. Submerged between these buoys, a vast grid of giant kelp grows upward toward the sunlight. (Photo credit: Alexandra Talty)

Most of America’s seaweed growers are small operations near the shore. Ocean Rainforest’s “seaweed island” is miles from land and dwarfs them by several degrees of magnitude. It does share a similar growing technique with smaller farms, setting out buoys that support horizontal lines, inoculated with kelp, that then sprout fronds and grow under the sunlight. Instead of a few lines, though, there are hundreds here, arranged in immense grids under the ocean surface.

As a research farm, Ocean Rainforest is testing various seeding methods, grow depths, and length and spacing of lines to create a model that’s efficient, economical, and replicable. They need to be able to monitor the site from shore and created an intricate buoy system so that they can see from the coast if anything disturbed their seaweed lines overnight or after bad weather. The company is also developing a harvesting machine that will reap the seaweed “using minimum cost and time.”

If this project, set in a federal Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ)—a strip of water that can stretch from 3 to 200 miles offshore—is successful, other farms could begin putting buoys in EEZs as well. The U.S. boasts the most EEZs in the world, a whopping 3.4 million square miles. That’s a lot of ocean to potentially cultivate.

“There is no silver bullet when it comes to climate change, but seaweed can be part of that solution,” says Eliza Harrison, until recently the director of California operations at Ocean Rainforest. Proponents of open-ocean farming say large-scale operations in EEZs could fulfill sustainability goals that smaller farms closer to shore can’t: namely, substantial water bioremediation and enough raw material to supplant petroleum products in plastics and fuel. “Can you take this biomass that is naturally growing, can you cultivate it and then use it as a food and feed product, or use it as a way to improve people’s well-being?” says Harrison.

While smallholder seaweed farms can boost maritime economies and provide job alternatives to commercial fishing, the lower quantities they yield makes it difficult to justify millions of investment in infrastructure. Additionally, seaweed from smaller farms wholesales at around $1 to $2 a pound, according to industry experts, a price that’s not competitive in industries like plastics or textiles, where raw materials can start at $.70 (for PET polyethelene) or $.67 (for cotton) per pound. Large-scale farmed U.S. seaweed has yet to be marketed, but experts say that larger, automated-harvest farms could price their raw kelp more competitively, hitting below the $1 mark.

Replacing fossil fuel–derived plastics, a major contributor to global warming, with a climate-positive material like seaweed seems like a no-brainer. But some scientists have serious concerns about scaling up kelp farms. For one thing, huge kelp monocultures could threaten native kelp forests, responsible for drawing down a large portion of the world’s carbon—around 56 million tons annually, according to a new study by Plymouth Marine Laboratory. That’s equivalent to taking nearly 13 million cars off the road a year. Even more staggering, marine algae produces 50 percent of the world’s oxygen.

That threat has already surfaced in China, which farms most of the world’s kelp. In 2021, seaweed farming in the Northern Jiangsu Shoal, combined with warmer waters and human pollution, helped create green tides that sucked up oxygen and suffocated marine species for 81 days. Pests and bacteria infections are concerns, and so is the introduction of non-native seaweeds that could crowd out the native ones, or introduce new, disease-causing microorganisms. If the U.S. were to allow thousands of acres of farms in the EEZs, could that affect already suffering kelp forests in states like Maine and California?

These kinds of questions, and the fact that the industry is still new and evolving, say some experts, may explain why state and federal agencies and policymakers have been taking their time with guidelines. Rules laid down now could protect—or jeopardize—seaweed in U.S. waters. Those rules could also determine whether small seaweed farms will play an important and valued role in America’s future, or begin to vanish, replaced by ever larger farms, repeating the history of farming on land.

An Ocean Rainforest crew member hauls up a line of giant kelp. Still in its research phase, the seaweed farm hopes to harvest a million tons a year by 2030, to prove that open-ocean plots can be the path to large-scale seaweed farming. (Photo credit: Alexandra Talty)

The Beginnings of a Roadmap for Kelp

Slowly, some regulations are starting to take shape. A few states are beginning to safeguard against potential monoculture impact on wild kelp stocks. In Alaska, a “50-50 rule” protecting seaweed diversity requires every farm to collect its reproductive tissue for breeding kelp from at least 50 different plants, within 50 kilometers surrounding the farm. Maine mandates that farmers cultivate seaweed strains that are native to the state.

There’s action at the federal level, too. A bill proposed in Congress in 2023, the Coastal Seaweed Farm Act, would direct the USDA and NOAA to establish an Indigenous seaweed farming fund to help Native Americans continue cultivating a food that has sustained them for thousands of years. The act would also create a joint study on how to responsibly scale seaweed in the U.S., and implement regulations based on those findings that would protect marine environments, measure the impacts and benefits of seaweed farming, and establish guidelines for monitoring farms.

Another bill, the Sustaining Healthy Ecosystems, Livelihoods, and Local Seafood Act—known as the SHELLS Act—proposes that the USDA create an office of aquaculture to promote funding, create regulations to guide the industry, and more. “The SHELLS Act is a crucial step toward enhancing U.S. food security and environmental sustainability through responsible aquaculture practices,” said co-sponsor Congressman Nicholas LaLota (R-NY) in an email. His district is home to the state’s first commercial seaweed farming operation and a thriving Indigenous seaweed farming co-op.

If passed, the SHELLS Act would create a federal body that could help seaweed farming could evolve responsibly; the Advisory Committee, according to language in the bill, would “acknowledge the history, use, and preservation of Indigenous and traditional aquaculture practices and ecological knowledge.” Mapping of seaweed farms—critical for maritime navigation and, potentially, wildlife corridors if large swaths of the country’s EEZs are cultivated—could become a requirement.

The bill might incentivize a new round of investors, since seaweed harvest could be tracked just as simply as corn or soy. And it might give small farmers a boost. “Shellfish harvesters and seaweed farmers play an essential role in our food supply, but historically they haven’t received the support they need to reach their full potential,” said Congresswoman Suzanne Bonamici (D-OR), the bill’s lead sponsor, in a press release. The SHELLS act, she said, “will help shellfish harvesters and seaweed farmers grow their small businesses while expanding blue carbon ecosystems that help address the climate crisis.”

The past two years have been undeniably difficult for the seaweed industry, says Julia Paino of food investor Desert Bloom Foods. However, she sees promise in this ocean crop; it reminds her of to how tofu came the U.S. in the 1980s. She would know—that’s when her father brought the unknown food to American shores with his company Nasoya, convincing thousands of Americans to try a very healthy, unfamiliar food that was immensely popular in Asia, and ultimately to build the platforms and infrastructure that enabled its success.

“There’s a lot of similarities . . . You have something that’s been around for hundreds and hundreds of years, right? This is not a novel ingredient source that was just created in the lab. This isn’t cultured meat. This is something that is steeped in significant cultural history, [with] a lot of tremendous health benefits, and now we know, also planetary benefits. It’s a matter of helping educate consumers, right?” says Paino. “So, there’s even more opportunity, I think, around what can be done with kelp. You’ll continue to see excitement across a lot of investors—hopefully coming from a more informed place of, ‘What is it? How is it grown? What’s the type of infrastructure you need for it to thrive and be successful?’”

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

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]]> https://civileats.com/2024/09/05/will-seaweeds-farming-fulfill-its-potential-as-a-climate-change-solution/feed/ 0 https://civileats.com/2024/08/19/tim-walzs-bipartisan-approach-to-agriculture-and-conservation/ https://civileats.com/2024/08/19/tim-walzs-bipartisan-approach-to-agriculture-and-conservation/#respond Mon, 19 Aug 2024 09:00:27 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=57273 All of it coalesces into an image of a guy with rural roots and deep ties to agriculture. Since Harris’ announcement, climate advocates have applauded her pick, pointing to Walz’s solid climate bona fides. Farm groups across the political spectrum, including those that work to shrink agriculture’s carbon footprint, have, too. During his six terms […]

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Soon after Vice President Kamala Harris selected Tim Walz as her running mate this week, pictures of the Minnesota governor began to spread across social media—of Walz holding a piglet, of Walz on thrill rides at the state fair, of Walz and his rescue dog.

All of it coalesces into an image of a guy with rural roots and deep ties to agriculture.

Since Harris’ announcement, climate advocates have applauded her pick, pointing to Walz’s solid climate bona fides. Farm groups across the political spectrum, including those that work to shrink agriculture’s carbon footprint, have, too.

During his six terms in Congress, Walz was a member of the House Committee on Agriculture, where he was instrumental in ensuring that soil conservation measures made it into the 2018 farm bill. At the time, the farm bill—the massive piece of legislation that guides the country’s nutrition and farm policy—failed to acknowledge agriculture’s role in contributing to climate change, and barely hinted at its potential role in slowing it.

“Many bills he’s co-sponsored or led are about creating a future for rural communities where we can keep more farmers on the land, where we can allow farmers who are stewarding the land to succeed and make money.”

Walz, who spent his early years working on his family’s farm in rural Nebraska, found a political work-around of sorts. That year he introduced the Strengthening Our Investment in Land (SOIL) Stewardship Act, which boosted existing farm conservation programs and incentivized farms to adopt certain practices that improve soil health, ultimately making soils better able to sequester carbon.

“Even as short a time ago as 2018, the word ‘climate’ does not appear in the farm bill,” said Ferd Hoefner, who was policy director at the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition at the time. “He made soil health, through the SOIL Act, the acceptable thing one could talk about when one was trying to talk about climate mitigation through agriculture.”

Hoefner noted that the last time the term climate change appeared in a farm bill was in 1990, an indication of just how polarized and partisan the issue has become in farm policy debates since then. After that, it “was verboten to even mention the word,” he added.

The provisions of the SOIL Stewardship Act were ultimately included in that year’s farm bill. Farm policy observers also point to one of Walz’s biggest farm-related accomplishments, which was introducing bills in 2014 and 2018 that help small-scale, veteran and beginning farmers access credit and funds for land, equipment and crop insurance. Provisions of these bills made it into the final versions of those years’ farm bills.

The Land Stewardship Project, based in Minnesota, has long pushed against the trend of increasing consolidation in agriculture, which has seen the rise of ever-larger farms, mostly run by large corporate entities. This week the council applauded Walz’s record of working against this ongoing shift.

“What we’ve seen through his time in Congress and his time in the governor’s office is that issues around the future of agriculture and rural communities aren’t partisan—they cut across political lines,” said Sean Carroll, policy director at Land Stewardship Action, the organization’s political arm. “Many bills he’s co-sponsored or led are about creating a future for rural communities where we can keep more farmers on the land, where we can allow farmers who are stewarding the land to succeed and make money.”

Consolidation, Carroll noted, has exacerbated a system of farming that has become a major source of greenhouse gas emissions. Large livestock facilities generate more liquid manure, which emits methane, a short-lived but potent greenhouse gas. The crops grown to feed those livestock, mostly corn and soybeans, are especially fertilizer intensive. Agricultural land use, including fertilizer use, is the largest source of nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas even more potent than methane. (While carbon dioxide is the most abundant greenhouse gas, methane is 80 times more powerful at trapping heat in the atmosphere, and nitrous oxide is 265 times more powerful.)

“The consolidation is what’s causing the climate problems from agriculture,” Carroll said.

Walz has had to balance the economic interests of his farm-heavy state with the climate and environmental issues caused by the agriculture industry, which generates about $26 billion for the state annually. Much of that money comes from emissions-intensive forms of agriculture, including concentrated animal feeding operations that, in Minnesota, primarily raise hogs, or row crop farms that grow corn for ethanol. Minnesota is home to 19 ethanol refineries.

“Gov. Walz is the perfect choice to serve as Vice President Harris’ running mate,” said Geoff Cooper, CEO of the Renewable Fuels Association. “He brings Midwestern pragmatism and sensibilities to the ticket and would ensure rural America’s ‘flyover country’ has a strong voice in a potential Harris administration. Dating back to his days in Congress, Gov. Walz has always been a passionate and effective advocate for renewable fuels and agriculture. He has a deep understanding of the challenges and opportunities facing the ethanol industry.”

Ethanol is facing increased criticism from environmental groups that challenge the purported climate benefits of corn-based fuel. Some research says ethanol’s carbon footprint is greater than that of gasoline.

But in corn-producing states like Minnesota, questioning ethanol spells political death, and Walz has had to tread a bipartisan path. In 2020, Walz, along with three Midwestern Republican governors, appealed to the Trump administration to reject the oil industry’s attempts to exempt small refineries from being required to blend biofuels into their mixes. (One of those Republicans, Kristi Noem of South Dakota, said Walz was “no leader” and called him a “radical” on social media Tuesday.)

“On biofuels he’s indistinguishable from all the other Republicans and Democrats in Midwestern states,” Hoefner said, “which is bowing at the altar of almighty corn.”

This article originally appeared in Inside Climate News, and is reprinted with permission. It has been updated to correct the name of the Land Stewardship Project.

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