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.

The post The High Cost of Groceries: Experts Weigh In appeared first on Civil Eats.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

“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.”

The post Where Do the Presidential Candidates Stand on Climate Change? appeared first on Civil Eats.

Its current offerings include 83 acres of almond trees in the San Joaquin Valley, advertised as “an opportunity to invest in a water-secure almond orchard in the world’s most productive almond-producing region.” This property also boasts of senior water rights on the Kings River, suggesting that the land will continue to turn a profit long into the future—a dream of farmers and investors alike.

AcreTrader is just one of many companies launched in the past decade that facilitate the sale of farmland, which has increasingly become a staple in investor portfolios. Recently, it was revealed that this includes the investment portfolio of vice presidential nominee JD Vance, the Republican senator from Ohio.

Vance invested up to $65,000 in private investments in AcreTrader during his stint as a venture capitalist, according to his 2022 financial disclosure to the Senate ethics committee. The investment firm Narya Capital—which Vance launched in 2020 with backing from PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel—was a vehicle for these investments, and a key backer in early funding rounds of the farmland startup. And while Vance is no longer listed as a partner at Narya Capital, according to his 2023 financial disclosure, he appears to still be an investor in the firm—or more technically, multiple legal entities with names including Narya.

“There’s no indication that Vance has divested from AcreTrader, and there’s every indication that that investment remains in place,” said Lisa Graves, the executive director of True North Research, an investigative research group. She points to how Vance sold off his stock in “Narya Capital Management LLC” in 2023, but that’s not the same as the (albeit similarly named) investment vehicles used to invest in AcreTrader.

In a social media post, Sarah Taber, a farm and food systems strategist and the Democratic candidate for North Carolina commissioner of agriculture, describes AcreTrader as “like Uber for buying U.S. farmland.” Like Uber, AcreTrader makes it easier for more buyers to gain quick access to an ordinarily expensive asset. “And who’s one of its key investors, profiting off of every sale?” Taber asks. “JD Vance.”

For Taber, Vance’s large investment portfolio—in AcreTrader and a slew of other opaque start-up companies—raises questions about conflicts of interest and the mixing of venture capitalist and political pursuits. Vance’s 2022 portfolio also included AppHarvest, the start-up company that promised to revolutionize farming and bring good jobs to eastern Kentucky, only to quickly implode.

“There’s an ethical case for any venture capitalist to disinvest from their interests before running for political office,” said Taber, in an interview with Civil Eats. “We don’t know what he’s incentivized to do.”

AcreTrader streamlines the process of investing in valuable farmland across the U.S. and Australia—from the flooded rice fields of the Mississippi Delta to the vast tracts of high-yielding corn in the Midwest—by placing the farmland in a limited liability corporation, or LLC.

“You can then purchase shares in that [LLC] through a simple online process that takes just minutes,” the company explains in a tutorial video for prospective investors. “AcreTrader handles the administrative details for you, and works with experienced farmers to manage the land.”

“It’s just the expansion of the Real Estate Investment Trust [REIT] business model into farmland,” said Taber. “It’s basically like a mutual fund for real estate.”

With the REIT model, instead of buying a single condo, you buy a share in a company that owns 100 or 200 condos. This investment vehicle was established by Congress in the 1960s, opening the doors to large-scale real estate investments for smaller investors. It’s a model that has enabled real estate hedge funds to buy up large swaths of the housing market, driving up demand and prices. Recently, companies have begun applying a REIT-like model to land.

AcreTrader isn’t technically a REIT, but it’s similar in that it enables a wider pool of investors to passively invest in farmland, reaping the benefits of one of the most reliable assets to produce a return. But instead of buying shares in one company, like a REIT, investors buy shares in individual LLCs that own the property.

This ownership model makes it hard to tell who is invested in the farmland and, therefore, more challenging to evaluate ethical conflicts and other risks of this investment, Taber observed. (Vance is listed as an investor in AcreTrader, not the individual LLCs, according to his Senate disclosure forms.)

After a fixed period, typically between five and 10 years, investors sell the land almost inevitably at a higher price than they purchased it, given that farmland appreciates over time. As AcreTrader’s website boasts, “Land is one of the oldest investment classes in existence, which in many cases has produced significant wealth over generations.” On top of their earnings from the sale, investors potentially benefit as well from renting the land to a farmer, without being involved in managing it.

AcreTrader is part of a larger trend of the financialization of farmland. The last two decades have witnessed a sharp uptick in investor interest in farmland as investors seeking to hedge against inflation and stock market volatility have turned to it as a reliable bet. Between 2008 and 2023, the amount of farmland purchased by investors increased by a staggering 231 percent.

In recent years, bipartisan political leaders have pushed to curb foreign investments in U.S. farmland, citing the potential for a national security risk. Earlier this week, the Republican-controlled House passed a bill restricting citizens from China, Russia, North Korea, or Iran from purchasing U.S. farmland. But even so, farmland is more concentrated in the hands of U.S. investors than ever before: Bill Gates, The Wonderful Company, and billionaire John Malone are the top owners of U.S. farmland.

This investor-driven farmland “gold rush” has come with many unintended consequences for agriculture and farmers. It has led to the consolidation of farmland in regions with high-value land, while pricing out the farmers unable to compete with major investors for farmland. This has led land-strapped farmers to either drop out of farming or become tenant farmers, operating farms on rented land.

“What we’ve seen in reality is when investment interests come into communities, they drive up land prices and push farmers to increasingly marginal ends,” said Paul Towers, the executive director of Community Alliance with Family Farmers (CAFF). He says that he consistently observes farmers struggling to buy land, often outbid by investors who have the ability to pay for land entirely in cash.

Even when investors seek to keep farmland in operation, rental arrangements can be challenging for farmers, because it gives them less freedom and security over their land, especially if they have a short-term lease. Towers has observed that leasing (rather than owning) farmland can make it harder for farmers in their network to make the kind of long-term investments in their land necessary for pursuing environmental and climate solutions

“How can a farmer make significant investments in their soil health, if they don’t know if they’re going to be on that property next year?” said Towers. “Why would they invest in hedgerows for beneficial insects and pollinators? Why would they develop more water-holding capacity on their farm?”

AcreTrader promises to be different, however, claiming to partner with farmers in “stewarding land” and “supporting livelihoods.” This includes the language of their leases: “We structure our leases according to industry leading sustainability standards, encompassing specific conditions related to soil fertility, erosion control, groundwater protection, and input management,” states the company’s website. AcreTrader declined a request to provide Civil Eats with a copy of a lease, or to explain the process for determining its sustainability standards.

“For AcreTrader’s typical buyers, the AcreTrader Platform connects U.S. investors to farmers who want to grow their operations, and we believe it’s a good thing to see capital formation in favor of helping the American farmer,” wrote Rob Moore, the company’s vice president, in an email. He also added, “Senator Vance has no involvement in AcreTrader’s operations or strategic direction.”

Some caution against painting all investors with a broad brush, pointing to a potential role for some forms of investors in helping facilitate land access for farmers in some cases. “I do believe that there is an opportunity for investors to think about how to deploy non-destructive capital to access the purchase of farmland,” said Gaby Pereyra, a farmer and the co-director of the Land Network Program at the Northeast Farmers of Color Land Trust. She points to Dirt Capital, which works with farmers in financing farmland, including through shared ownership models. This differs from AcreTrader’s model, which is aimed at helping investors, not farmers, buy farmland.

The ownership of farmland can also be especially important to Black farmers who have been systematically denied land access, and therefore, denied one of the most reliable investments for generating wealth. “Most Black farmers for historical reasons, for family reasonsare seeking to own their land…because it’s related to reparations,” said Pereyra.

“For Latino farmers, on the other hand, the ownership of land is related to self-determination, on being able to do the type of operation that they want,” Pereyra has observed in her work. In some cases, she’s seen that a rental agreement can provide self-determination, but it largely depends on the relationship with a specific landowner.

And while AcreTrader emphasizes “land stewardship,” Pereyra pointed to how the company currently limits these rental partnerships to “row crop, permanent crop, and timber.” This leaves out diversified vegetable operations, the farms that are often engaged in some of the most innovative, climate-friendly practices. These are also the farms that tend to struggle to access crop insurance, lacking the guarantee of a stable income even when crops fail—which may deter investors.

In general, the company mainly lists farmland with high-value crops that can deliver short-term profits, but aren’t always best for the environment. Take California’s almond industry, a water-intensive crop. “Almonds already use an estimated 28% of the reliable water supply available to California agriculture,” according to AcreTrader’s analysis.

However, the company assures investors that “California’s almond industry isn’t going anywhere,” even as the state implements water restrictions. Instead,AcreTrader advises that investors seek out almond orchards with reliable water rights, expecting these properties to appreciate over time. On the other hand, the company advises against investing in almond orchards without water access, expecting these acres to shrink and be removed from production. It’s an approach to investing that appears to be based on a market analysis of the projected value for farmland and specific crops per region, rather than environmental or climate concerns.

“What a lot of these these kinds of investment models fail to see is that farming is far more than just a short-term return [on an investment],” said Towers. The farming systems that we want to be investing in for our future—farms that can survive droughts, wildfires, erratic water supplies, and other climate extremes—are not always the methods that turn a profit the quickest.

And while it’s hard to fully evaluate AcreTrader’s model, it’s clear that it allows an investor-backed startup to play a role in steering the future of agriculture and the U.S. food system. It begs the question: Should we trust investors with this power—even the many investors that claim to help farmers—over the most fertile, water-rich farmland in the U.S.?

The post JD Vance Funded AcreTrader. Here’s Why That Matters. appeared first on Civil Eats.

In a subsequent speech, Harris blamed high grocery prices on large, consolidated food companies, which have raked in record profits, but offered few further details about what a price-gouging ban might entail. The campaign then added a policy platform to its website, repeating the pledge to install a national price gouging ban.

“As president, she will direct her administration to crack down on anti-competitive practices that let big corporations jack up prices and undermine the competition,” the website states.

Republicans and pro-business groups pushed back immediately after the announcement. The National Grocers Association called the proposal a “solution in search of a problem,” while former President Donald Trump posted on social media about “Soviet style” price caps.

“If you think things are expensive now, they will get 100 times WORSE if Kamala gets four years as President,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. The former president has also mentioned high food prices repeatedly in recent weeks; he informed Elon Musk, in an interview on X, that bacon prices are “four to five times” more expensive than they were a few years ago.

While Trump’s statement about bacon is false, there’s no question that groceries have become increasingly expensive. Food prices ballooned by 25 percent between 2019 and 2023, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), outstripping increases in other important spending categories like housing and medical costs.

And it’s clear that voters are not only taking notice of the high prices, but also increasingly see corporate profits and consolidation as part of the cause. In recent polling focused on voters in seven swing states, 56 percent said food was the hardest essential good to pay for. And 61 percent of respondents, including 63 percent of independents, blamed across-the-board high prices on corporate greed.

Few other goods and services are as omnipresent as food purchases, and food prices are often where everyday Americans feel economic shifts most immediately.

“It’s the most frequent purchase most households make,” said Dawn Thilmany, an agriculture and resource economics professor at Colorado State University. “You eat three times a day. You probably shop at least a couple times a week. There’s almost nothing else like it in our economy.”

In a tight presidential election, where nearly one in five voters is still undecided, food prices could be a key issue, but what can elected officials actually do to bring them down?

Consolidation and ‘Greedflation’

Supply chain disruptions, resulting shortages, and inflation have contributed to high food prices in recent years. Economists note that other factors, like increases in the minimum wage across the country, ballooning energy costs—inflated by the war in Ukraine—and changing consumer behavior have likely played a role. Some pandemic-era habits, like the newfound love for baking bread, and cooking at home in general, seem to have stuck, according to Thilmany. “Even controlling for inflation, we found that people are seemingly allocating a higher share of their budget to food spending,” she said.

But even as inflation has slackened in the past year, prices remain high, and some economists and progressive Democrats argue that large corporations have taken advantage of the recent economic disruptions to keep prices artificially high—a tactic known as “greedflation.”

A recent study by the Groundwork Collaborative found that “corporate profits drove 53 percent of inflation during the second and third quarters of 2023,” and more than a third of the inflation since the start of pandemic—vastly outstripping the price growth attributable to corporate profits in recent decades. Corporations can do this, according to the report, thanks to decades of corporate consolidation, resulting in a lack of competition.

“From the fertilizer industry to the feed production industry to the grocery retail industry, all along this food chain, you have deeply concentrated markets with only a few major players,” said Rakeen Mabud, chief economist at the Groundwork Collaborative, “and that lack of competition means that at every point in the system, these companies don’t have to lower their prices.”

Policymakers can curb this by discouraging consolidation and encouraging competition. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), for example, is attempting to block a $25 billion merger between grocery giants Kroger and Albertsons. A merger would allow Kroger to acquire its main rival, and the FTC argued in a hearing in Oregon earlier this year that the consolidation would be anti-competitive and push costs onto consumers.

Details from the hearing, meanwhile, show that food pricing isn’t all driven by inflation. In a March email to other company executives, Andy Groff, Kroger’s senior director for pricing, seemed to confirm that the grocery chain had raised its prices to higher levels than required by inflationary conditions. “On milk and eggs, retail inflation has been significantly higher than cost inflation,” Groff wrote. In response to questions from FTC lawyers about the email, Groff said that Kroger attempts to “pass through our inflation to consumers.” He also acknowledged that Kroger was able to raise prices in areas where it faced little competition without seeing a drop in sales.

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.

The problem is deeply embedded in the U.S. food system, and it continues to have real impacts. In cities or regions with just a few large food distributors, the consumer costs of consolidation can be stark: USDA data from June shows that, in a few major Midwestern cities with notably scant competition in the dairy distribution supply chain, consumers were paying almost $1 more per gallon of milk, according to The Milkweed, a dairy industry newsletter.

Kansas City, for example, has virtually no competition among its milk producers. One distributor, Hiland Dairy, a joint venture between two large-scale dairy cooperatives, dominates the area Over the past two years, Kansas City has experienced the highest milk prices among 30 major cities, according to The Milkweed. In Chicago, milk prices increased in 2023, even as raw milk costs declined for the two major milk distributors that dominate the local market.

“The food industry is just full of cartels,” said Austin Frerick, author of Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry. “And that’s what cartels do. They gouge.”

Extreme concentration can be seen everywhere in the food industry. Walmart sells approximately one in three grocery items nationwide—and more than half the groceries in dozens of regional markets. Tyson, JBS, Cargill, and National Beef buy and process 85 percent of beef in the U.S. JBS, the largest meatpacker in the world, has agreed to multiple settlements in recent years related to bribery and price-fixing.

Similarly, in the egg industry, a few large corporate entities hoard the market; Cal-Maine alone controls about 20 percent of egg production in the U.S. This concentration allowed companies to keep egg prices high in 2022 and 2023, after supply chain issues and an avian flu outbreak cut into supply, according to Senator Elizabeth Warren’s (D-Massachusetts) office. Cal-Maine, with no reported avian flu cases in its operations, saw profits increase by 65 percent in late 2022.

“In times of crisis like we saw over the course of the pandemic and over this inflationary period, these companies, in many cases, have added to the prices that consumers or downstream purchasers are paying, because they can, because there’s no competition to put them down,” Mabud of Groundwork Collaborative said.

Other Legal Tools to Address Excess Prices

It is one of 38 states with similar laws on the books, including red states like Texas and Tennessee. In Tennessee, two Nashville-based state lawmakers—Sen. Charlane Oliver and Rep. Aftyn Behn—recently urged the state attorney general to join a multi-state collaboration task force with the USDA to address anti-competitive actions in the food industry.

“High prices at the grocery store have weighed heavily on Tennessee families, and they deserve to know that their state government is taking every possible step to ensure fairness in the marketplace,” Oliver said in a statement.

In some states, price hikes are illegal beyond a certain percentage increase. Others use standards like “grossly excessive” to evaluate the legality of sudden cost raises. In her recently released platform, Harris said that national price gouging legislation would build on the existing state laws. However, the patchwork nature of state price-gouging laws currently makes this challenging, given the diffuse nature of supply chains and distribution networks.

A bill introduced earlier this year by Senator Warren offers a glimpse of what legislative action might look like at the federal level. Warren’s bill would codify price gouging as an “unfair and deceptive” practice under federal law, allowing both the federal government and state attorney generals to tackle exploitative pricing nationwide.

The law would also target large corporations, those with at least $100 million in revenue. And during periods of severe stock-market shock, as during COVID or, say, during extreme natural disasters, the bill would require large, publicly traded companies to disclose extra information to the SEC, especially the cost of goods sold, gross margins, and pricing strategies.

This proposal and others would require an empowered FTC, one willing to use existing antitrust law and any new legislation to target large corporate entities. During the Biden administration, FTC Chair Lina Khan has aggressively used antitrust law to target monopolies and consolidation, including the Albertsons–Kroger merger. Since announcing her candidacy, Harris has been pressured by populist economists and the left wing of the Democratic party to keep Khan, while billionaire donors have urged Harris to get rid of her, seeking a more business-friendly administration.

Government leaders have other tools at their disposal as well. The American Prospect recently detailed a variety of anti-price gouging tactics, ranging from a vigorous corporate tax regime and expanded enforcement to counter “unfair, deceptive, or abusive acts or practices”—to a greater array of public, not-for-profit institutions like publicly owned grocery stores and credit unions.

Though details remain scant, Harris’s announcement against price gouging could have teeth. Her speeches to date suggest support for legislation similar to Warren’s bill, antitrust efforts against large corporations—including civil penalties—and possible federal support for small businesses. Trump, too, has said he’ll tackle inflation, though policy details are minimal.

Any solution will need to also factor in the impact that prices have on farmers. When commodity prices are low, or supply is too high, for example, a power dynamic widens, benefiting brokers in the middle and hurting farmers. Supply management, where farmers grow what’s needed and are paid fairly in the process, is one policy solution.

But those are long-term issues likely far from most voters’ minds. What many of them are thinking about now is the cost of food.

For Mabud, the fact that Harris’ first big economic announcement focuses on food prices is grounds for hope—especially when combined with a more vigorous FTC and broader conversations about policy tools to take on monopolies.

“Concentration is not just a theoretical concept,” she said. “It’s actually harming people, full stop.”

“The reason I’m heartened by the focus on the high cost of groceries,” Mabud went on, “is because it’s really emblematic of a broader problem in our economy—which is that corporations have too much power and people have too little power.”

The post Can Lawmakers Really Tackle High Food Prices? appeared first on Civil Eats.

“We knew OSHA was going to show up; we knew a lot of different law enforcement agencies were going to show up; and we knew that the workers were going to be undocumented, intimidated, and terrified,” she said.

Sur Legal hosted a Facebook Live gathering to educate workers on their rights and began talking directly to individuals who worked at the plant, many of whom had witnessed the incident and were now traumatized. Ultimately, Anand and her colleagues were able to help about two dozen workers from the plant access what she calls a “life-changing” pathway: they were temporarily granted protected status so that they could help federal investigators identify conditions that might have contributed to the incident—which ultimately represented violations of the law.

In the past, federal agencies have occasionally granted what they call “deferred action for labor disputes” at their own discretion. However, in January 2023, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) formalized the process for the first time to encourage undocumented workers, who might otherwise stay silent due to fear of deportation, to report violations of labor laws on the job.

“It came out of DHS, but we look at it as a labor and a worker-rights policy,” said Jessie Hahn, a senior labor and employment policy attorney at the National Immigration Law Center (NILC). “It’s very much based on the perspective that the Biden administration has, about how best to enforce labor and employment laws and what is going to facilitate that.”

Between January 2023 and August 2024, according to DHS, more than 6,000 workers—many working in the food system—have been granted this temporary protection, which can last up to four years. They include the Georgia poultry workers, guest workers picking strawberries in Florida fields, and tortilla factory workers in Chicago, among others.

However, as the presidential election approaches, it’s one of several immigration policies that are at risk—and that would reshape the legal landscape for food and farm workers.

Both Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump have used strong rhetoric about stemming the influx of new immigrants at the U.S.–Mexico border. But how they might treat the immigrant workforce that powers America’s fruit and vegetable harvests, meatpacking and food processing plants, and restaurant kitchens—a large percentage of which is undocumented—is more complicated.

Harris is currently serving in what some experts say has been the most hardline Democratic administration on border policy in modern history, especially since President Joe Biden’s June executive order limiting asylum claims. As vice president, she was specifically tasked with addressing the root causes of migration in origin countries.

During her years as a district attorney and then as the attorney general of California, her record was nuanced. She was tough on immigrants when they committed crimes, but expressed support for those who did not. Throughout, she has specifically defended the labor rights of immigrant workers, including introducing pro-farmworker legislation, and has been endorsed by multiple labor groups.

The Trump administration—and the 2024 Trump campaign—have taken a harder line on immigration and immigrants living in the U.S. In 2017, Trump implemented a “zero tolerance” border policy for families at the border and ended the deferred action policy, which previously gave the children of immigrants, called “Dreamers,” a path to citizenship. (Harris, a senator at the time, supported the Dreamers.) In addition, the second bullet point in the 2024 Republican Party Platform is to “carry out the largest deportation operation in American history,” with a goal of expelling millions of immigrants. During the recent debate, Trump repeatedly demonized immigrants using sweeping generalizations filled with misinformation about crime. ( Research shows immigrants do not commit crimes at higher rates than U.S.-born Americans.) “We have to get ’em out,” he said. “We have to get ’em out fast.”

People close to the issue told Civil Eats that, given the unspoken reality of how deeply farms and food businesses rely on undocumented workers, they’re more worried about worker abuse increasing under Trump’s leadership than about mass deportations.

“I think they want people to be scared,” Antonio De Loera-Brust, communications director for the United Farm Workers (UFW), said of the deportation threats. “They’re going to push [undocumented workers] more into the shadows, where they’re more vulnerable and exploitable.”

Empowering Immigrants to Report Labor Abuses

Deferred action is one piece of that work UFW has embraced; its organizers have been assisting farmworkers with applications, while the UFW Foundation has been working with the state of California to inform farmworkers about the option. To date, De Loera-Brust said UFW has helped more than 100 fieldworkers apply.

To be eligible, workers must get a letter called a “statement of interest” from a labor or employment agency. For example, if fieldworkers have reported safety violations to Cal/OSHA, California’s worker safety and health agency, Cal/OSHA must then send a letter to DHS indicating interest in launching an investigation before DHS will grant deferred action status. Groups like UFW often help facilitate that process.

Once they are granted the status, workers may be asked to provide information on labor violations they’ve experienced or witnessed. In Gainesville, for example, the nitrogen leak resulted in two federal investigations into what caused the incident and its fatalities.

“Several of these workers came forward to the Department of Justice, which has never been an immigrant-friendly agency, so that was 10 times scarier for them,” Anand said. “But they want to do everything they can to hold folks accountable for those deaths.”

As a result, OSHA investigators concluded Foundation Food Group and three affiliated companies “failed to implement any of the safety procedures necessary to prevent the nitrogen leak, or to equip workers responding to it with the knowledge and equipment that could have saved their lives.” The agency cited the companies for nearly $1 million in fines and a total of 59 violations. Foundation Food Group was acquired by another chicken processor, Gold Creek Foods, in September 2021.

In a later, more detailed report produced by the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board that workers also helped with, investigators again found the deaths had been “completely preventable.”

While it was too late to save the workers who died, one of the affiliated companies that leased the faulty equipment said it developed new safety protocols as a result of the report, and the investigators recommended OSHA issue a new national standard to address the hazards of liquid nitrogen, with specific emphasis on poultry processing and food manufacturing.

It’s an example of how the deferred action policy’s impact extends far beyond the individuals who receive the status, Hahn said. “We are trying to address the chilling effect that occurs in a workplace when people are too afraid to speak up about labor violations,” she said. “When those workers feel protected because they’ve received deferred action, then everyone in the workplace benefits.” In other words, supporters believe the policy makes workplaces safer for all Americans, immigrant or otherwise.

At Centro de Los Derechos del Migrante (CDM), which has headquarters in both Maryland and Mexico, staff members have been documenting the abuse of migrants who come to the U.S. through guestworker programs to work in agriculture and food processing for nearly two decades. Lucy Thames, CDM’s outreach project manager, said the deferred action process has also benefited those workers over the past year.

One challenge for workers in the H-2A program, which is for farms, and the H-2B program, which is for food processing, is that their legal status in the country is tied to their employer, making it difficult for them to report or escape abusive situations. But when guestworkers are granted deferred action, Thames explained, they are able to seek employment with any U.S. employer. “They’re able to leave a situation in which their rights aren’t being respected and identify an employer who might be a better fit for them,”she said.

That’s significant because in recent years, as farms have struggled to find enough workers to plant carrots and harvest tomatoes, the H2-A program especially has ballooned in size. CDM has been particularly focused on helping shape a recent Biden administration rule to expand protections for workers in that program.

Thames said the new rule contains many provisions CDM has advocated for, including allowing protection from being fired without cause, banning retaliation against workers who engage in union organizing, establishing transportation safety requirements, and ensuring support and advocacy organizations are able to visit workers in employer-provided housing.

The Post-Election View

On the other side, while Trump has not mentioned this H-2A rule since it was proposed, Republican lawmakers have been pushing back on many of its provisions. At the end of August, a federal judge sided with 17 Republican-led states in a lawsuit brought against the Department of Labor, blocking the Biden administration from implementing the provisions.

And at the end of Trump’s presidency, his administration published a different H-2A rule, which drew strong opposition from farm labor groups because it weakened worker protections. At the time, his Department of Labor said the rule would “streamline and simplify the H-2A application process, strengthen protections for U.S. and foreign workers, and ease unnecessary burdens on employers.”

The political ping-pong over the H-2A rules shows how, since immigration is so politicized, even small changes to labor policies that primarily impact immigrant workers are often the result of years of back-and-forth that span multiple presidential administrations.

“A lot of the developments that we’re seeing are many, many years in the making,” Thames said. “I think that’s often what we’ve seen in the farmworker movement.It’s decades of work done by advocates and workers themselves.”

Throughout that time, regardless of who’s in charge in D.C., U.S. food production has depended on immigrant workers. Multiple farmers who spoke to Civil Eats laughed at the idea of finding enough U.S. citizens to harvest kale and squash.

One organic vegetable farmer said she pays nearly $17 an hour to her H-2A workers but has still never had a domestic worker apply. (The law requires farmers to post the jobs for U.S. workers before bringing in guestworkers.) Originally, she relied on mostly undocumented workers living in the U.S., but recently has had to bring in more temporary guestworkers on H-2A visas. She’s hoping for a more long-term solution that recognizes the contributions of the immigrants who have powered her farm—some for more than a decade—and that would allow them to live and work without fear.

But with election rhetoric focused on border security and the recent failure of even the most middle-of-the-road legislation, unions and immigrant rights groups are zeroing in on the things that make a difference day-to-day.

Deferred action is “a Band-Aid on a big problem,” said Sur Legal’s Anand, since it doesn’t do anything to resolve longstanding questions around whether the country’s millions of immigrant food workers should be granted long-term legal status. But it has had a real impact on the Gainesville workers’ lives. “Some of these workers have left the poultry industry and found better paying, safer jobs, and they feel really empowered,” Anand said. “Now, they’re speaking up.”

“We don’t know what’s going to happen with this program,” she added, “but by and large, most of our folks that we’ve worked with are like, ‘If it gives me a few years of peace, of being able to be safe and to live my life without fear, I’ll do it.’”

The post Labor Protections for Immigrant Food Workers Are at Stake in the 2024 Election appeared first on Civil Eats.

https://civileats.com/2024/08/28/project-2025-calls-for-major-cuts-to-the-us-nutrition-safety-net/ https://civileats.com/2024/08/28/project-2025-calls-for-major-cuts-to-the-us-nutrition-safety-net/#respond Wed, 28 Aug 2024 09:00:41 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=57389 While the ultraconservative vision has received much scrutiny, its proposal to sharply cut the federal nutrition safety net—and the devastating impacts this could have on food security and hunger—has largely flown under the radar. These plans are detailed in the project’s chapter on the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which calls for drastically narrowing the […]

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Project 2025, the right-wing playbook for the executive branch, has gained feverish political attention in recent weeks as a central talking point of Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign and many speakers at the Democratic National Convention. The sweeping, 920-page document calls for drastic overhauls of federal agencies as well as the erosion of civil rights and the expansion of presidential powers. It’s an agenda many have described as authoritarian.

While the ultraconservative vision has received much scrutiny, its proposal to sharply cut the federal nutrition safety net—and the devastating impacts this could have on food security and hunger—has largely flown under the radar. These plans are detailed in the project’s chapter on the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which calls for drastically narrowing the scope of the agency to primarily focus on agricultural programs. This would involve radically restructuring the USDA by moving its food and nutritional assistance programs to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

“Proposing to reduce benefits to millions of people who are counting on food assistance for their basic well-being is alarming.”

Criticizing the USDA as “a major welfare agency,” the agenda takes issue with the agency’s long-standing nutrition programs that help feed millions of low-income Americans every year, including pregnant women, infants, and K-12 school children. It outlines policies that would substantially cut the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as food stamps, and the Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC). It would also shrink federal support for universal school meal programs.

“We have really effective federal food assistance programs that are evidence-based, and there’s just a long history of seeking to continuously improve them,” said Stacy Dean, the former deputy undersecretary for food, nutrition, and consumer services at the USDA under the Biden administration. Project 2025’s plan would reverse that trajectory. “Proposing to reduce benefits to millions of people who are counting on food assistance for their basic well-being is alarming,” she said.

The proposal to restructure the USDA builds on a previous Trump-era proposal to consolidate federal safety net programs. This included moving SNAP and WIC–which it rebranded as welfare programs, a term often used pejoratively–from the USDA to HSS. It’s a move that experts pointed out would likely make these programs easier to cut, including by designating them as welfare benefits, often deemed unnecessary by conservatives.

“I think the effect would be to make [nutritional programs] more vulnerable to a kind of annual politics on Health and Human Services issues,” said Shawn Fremstad, a senior advisor at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, who researches food assistance programs. He notes that the level of vulnerability would partially depend on whether these programs are mandatory or discretionary spending programs in HHS.

As Project 2025 has gained scrutiny, Trump has publicly distanced himself from the proposal. The project was assembled and published by the Heritage Foundation, a think tank that has long helped set the conservative agenda and informed previous Trump policies. For instance, Trump’s 2018 proposal to restructure the federal government and move nutritional programs to the HHS was originally proposed by the Heritage Foundation.

Many of the policies in Project 2025’s USDA chapter are a continuation of the Trump’s administration’s previous efforts to dismantle the federal nutrition safety net. This agenda stands in sharp contrast to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s recent endorsement of Trump as a president who will “make American healthy again.” Instead, as Trump’s former administration assumed its duties, guided by a transition team that included 70 former Heritage Foundation officials, it repeatedly targeted food and nutritional programs without any sign of changing this policy directive.

This agenda includes another conservative policy goal that was pushed for by the previous Trump administration and has been gaining traction on a state level: imposing stricter work requirements as a condition for receiving SNAP benefits. The plan references a Trump-era rule—which was challenged in court and abandoned—that would make it more difficult for states to waive SNAP’s work requirement for able-bodied adults without young children in regions of the country with high unemployment rates or a lack of jobs.

While Project 2025 doesn’t specify how it would tighten work requirements, re-introducing the Trump-era rule is one avenue alluded to in its agenda. The USDA estimated that this rule would have forced 688,000 recipients, unable to meet the work requirement of at least 80 hours per month, to leave the federal assistance program. It’s a rule that experts have pointed out can be challenging for gig workers with inconsistent schedules, people with undocumented health conditions, and people simply struggling to find work.

“You’re taking a vulnerable group of people, and you’re removing their one critical access point to food, which is SNAP,” said Dean. The group of adults affected by this policy “might be unemployed, temporarily unemployed, or they might be in jobs where the hours fluctuate dramatically, or they might have medical conditions that make it harder for them to work but not access to health care to document their health condition,” she added.

The tightening of SNAP work requirements is often proposed under the assumption that receiving SNAP benefits disincentivizes work, but this isn’t supported by existing academic research.

“These rules basically penalize people who are in need of food assistance for no economic gain,” said Pia Chaparro, a public health nutritionist and researcher at the University of Washington who has studied the program. “Research shows that SNAP participation reduces food insecurity but does not act as a disincentive to work. Moreover, research shows that the work requirements don’t lead to increased employment.”

The amount of supplemental assistance people receive on SNAP can stretch a food budget, but isn’t enough to disincentivize working, noted Ed Bolen, the director of SNAP state strategies at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), a progressive think tank. “The theory is that if you get $6.20 a day in SNAP, you’re not looking for work enough or not working enough hours. But $6.20 a day, it’s not going to pay your rent,” he said.

The Trump-era rule was struck down in 2020 by U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell, who determined that it “radically and abruptly alters decades of regulatory practice, leaving states scrambling and exponentially increasing food insecurity for tens of thousands of Americans.”

Since the rule was blocked, employment levels have improved, but food insecurity has not. In fact, the USDA found that levels of household food insecurity soared to nearly 13 percent in 2022, exceeding both 2021 and 2020 levels. This has been attributed to both inflation and the end of pandemic food assistance. In 2022, 44 million people lived in homes without enough food, including 7.3 million children.

“I see these [proposals] as really doing a lot of harm to working-class communities, rural communities, urban communities alike.”

The proposal to tighten SNAP work requirements is one of many that would collectively chip away at federal food assistance programs that have supported low-income Americans for decades. It would also eliminate some of the streamlined processes that allow participants in other social benefit programs to more easily receive SNAP benefits, including a cash-assistance program for low-income families and a program that helps low-income households with the often steep costs of energy bills.

The plan also calls for reforming the voucher program for infant formula under WIC, which provides nutritional benefits to pregnant and postpartum women, infants, and children under 6 years old. Currently, states award contracts to whichever infant formula manufacturer offers the lowest net cost in a competitive bidding process. Project 2025 proposes to regulate this process (though it doesn’t specify how), claiming it’s driving monopolies in the marketplace. At the same time, the plan calls for weakening regulations on infant formula labeling and manufacturing to, in theory, prevent shortages.

“Upending this process could result in a funding shortfall, jeopardize access to WIC for millions of parents, infants, and young children, and result in higher formula prices for all consumers,” said Katie Bergh, a senior policy analyst at the CBBP. “WIC’s competitive bidding process for infant formula saves the program between $1 billion and $2 billion each year.”

Bergh pointed to a recent report from the National Academies of Sciences on supply chain disruptions in the U.S. infant formula market. It concluded that the “competitive bidding process is not the driver of industry concentration at the national level,” while also finding that eliminating the program would lead to higher WIC costs and higher formula costs for all consumers.

In yet another cut to food assistance for children, Project 2025 would also threaten the future of some universal school meal programs. This plan specifically calls to eliminate the Community Eligibility Provision, which was established in 2010 to allow schools in districts with high poverty levels to provide free meals for all students. This provision is widely used across all 50 states, providing over 19.9 million school children with free breakfast and lunch. The alternative, used in schools without CEP or another universal meal program, is to individually assess each student’s eligibility for free meal tickets.

Fremstad, of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, points to how CEP reduces the stigma of students being sorted into a different lunch line based on their family’s income, which can be a source of shame and behavioral issues. It also removes the penalties that low-income parents face when they can’t provide their child with money for school meals.

“We have a situation where there literally is something called ‘school lunch debt collection,’ where some schools have been sending debt collectors after very low-income parents to pay for their [child’s] lunch,” he said. It’s one of the many nutrition program cuts in Project 2025 that would further hurt working families, he continued.

“I see these [proposals] as really doing a lot of harm to working-class communities, rural communities, urban communities alike,” said Fremstad. “And I also see them as bad for middle-class people, who are often insecure in the middle class themselves.”

Read More:
Republican Plans for Ag Policy May Bring Big Changes to Farm Country
WIC Shortfall Could Leave 2 Million Women And Children Hungry
‘It’s Not Enough.’ SNAP Recipients Struggle Amid High Food Prices

California poised to ban food dye in schools. The California Senate is expected to vote this week on a bill that would prohibit K-12 schools from serving food that contains synthetic food dyes. The bill would specifically ban six dyes—Blue No. 1, Blue No. 2, Green No. 3, Yellow No. 5, Yellow No. 6 and Red No. 40. While the F.D.A. has maintained that these food dyes are safe, emerging research has found links between synthetic dyes and behavioral issues in children. The bill is the first of its kind in the nation, which could usher in more nationwide change and similar bills.

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Kamala Harris Proposes Ban on Price Gouging. Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris has proposed the first federal ban on price gouging in the grocery store industry, aimed at curbing high food prices. “My plan will include harsh penalties for opportunist companies that exploit crises and break the rules, and we will support smaller food businesses that are trying to play by the rules,” said Harris, at a campaign speech in Raleigh, North Carolina, on August 16, her first address on economic policies. This would be enacted through a Federal Trade Commission ruling, though details of the ban have yet to be unveiled.

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Food Prices Are Still High. What Role Do Corporate Profits Play?
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]]> https://civileats.com/2024/08/28/project-2025-calls-for-major-cuts-to-the-us-nutrition-safety-net/feed/ 0 https://civileats.com/2024/07/22/republican-plans-for-ag-policy-may-bring-big-changes-to-farm-country/ https://civileats.com/2024/07/22/republican-plans-for-ag-policy-may-bring-big-changes-to-farm-country/#comments Mon, 22 Jul 2024 09:00:43 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=56997 Despite the landscape’s signature flatness, his land “rolls a little bit,” he said. So, 30 years ago, he decided to plant 60- to 100-foot strips of tall grasses within and along the edges of fields to prevent erosion. To pay for it, he enrolled a total of 14 acres, made up of those strips, in […]

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David Andrews’ farm is about nine miles away from the small, aptly named Iowa town of State Center. The 160-acre farm has been in his family since 1865, and Andrews grew up there.

Despite the landscape’s signature flatness, his land “rolls a little bit,” he said. So, 30 years ago, he decided to plant 60- to 100-foot strips of tall grasses within and along the edges of fields to prevent erosion. To pay for it, he enrolled a total of 14 acres, made up of those strips, in the federal government’s Conservation Reserve Program (CRP).

Through CRP, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) pays farmers not to farm on less-productive parcels of land, often in areas that are corn and soy fields as far as the eye can see, to be left alone to reduce runoff, improve biodiversity, and hold carbon. “It’s a great program, and a lot of these farms have some marginal ground on them that would be better off in CRP than growing crops,” Andrews said.

Project 2025 proposes eliminating CRP. The Republican Study Committee proposes ending enrollments in the program, as well.

As of March 2024, the most recent month for which data is available, more than 301,000 farms had close to 25 million acres enrolled in CRP; that’s a lot of acreage, but it represents less than 3 percent of U.S. farmland.

Project 2025, a conservative Republican presidential transition blueprint spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation, proposes eliminating CRP. The Republican Study Committee (RSC), an influential caucus of House conservatives, proposes ending enrollments in the program, as well.

It’s just one of several cuts to federal programs serving commodity farmers that Republican operatives and lawmakers have recently proposed in policy documents. Project 2025 also proposes reducing crop insurance subsidies and “ideally” eliminating commodity payments altogether. The RSC’s budget, meanwhile, proposes putting new limits on commodity payments, reducing crop insurance subsidies, and ending enrollment in another popular conservation program called the Conservation Stewardship Program.

While cutting government spending may seem like a run-of-the-mill party goal, many of these programs have long been politically sacred in farm states. If implemented, the plans could transform the nation’s safety net for farmers growing corn, soy, and other row crops.

Most Washington insiders say that’s unlikely to happen and point to the RSC-heavy House Agriculture Committee’s recent farm bill draft, which puts more money than ever into commodity programs and leaves crop insurance intact. Plus, the most powerful groups representing commodity crop interests—the American Farm Bureau and the National Farmers Union—both typically lobby hard to keep farm payments flowing.

But while conservative advocacy groups and far-right Republicans have unsuccessfully proposed similar cuts in the past, Republican politics have shifted further right in the age of Trump, and fiscal conservatives wield increasing power within the party. More than 83 percent of House Republicans are now members of the RSC, compared to about 70 percent in 2015. Former RSC chair Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) is still a member—and is now the Speaker of the House. On a 2018 panel, he said the RSC is “now mainstream.”

“I don’t think we’re going to go to a ‘no government intervention in agriculture’ approach. It’s just not likely, but it’s certainly the dream of every conservative agriculture prognosticator.”

In early July, Trump attempted to distance himself from Project 2025, but many of its architects are former Trump administration officials and have worked on the party’s 2024 platform. The Heritage Foundation claims that during Trump’s last term, he embraced two-thirds of their policy proposals within his first year in office. A spokesperson for the Heritage Foundation declined a request for an interview on Project 2025.

“I think it’s more likely that [elected Republicans will] just do what the commodity groups and Farm Bureau want,” said Ferd Hoefner, a policy expert who has worked on nine previous farm bills and is now a consultant for farm groups. “I don’t think we’re going to go to a ‘no government intervention in agriculture’ approach. It’s just not likely, but it’s certainly the dream of every conservative agriculture prognosticator.”

With so many competing interests at play, the party’s true plans for agriculture are as muddy as an unplanted field in spring. And with Trump leading in the polls after a shocking few weeks of politics, anything now seems possible.

Cuts to Conservation Programs

Andrews got out of farming in 1999. His own operation had been diversified, with cows, pigs, and various grains and alfalfa grown in rotation. But when he hung up his hat, he rented the land to a farmer who was—for better or worse—following the crowd.

“He put it all in corn and soybeans, which is natural. That’s what everybody does nowadays,” Andrews said. But CRP had worked so well for him in creating the erosion control strips, he decided to enroll nearly all of his acres for a time. “When I moved back to the area, I told him that I thought the farm needed a rest, because continuous corn and soybeans is very hard on the organic matter. I told him I was going to put it in CRP, and he said he didn’t blame me. That’s what I ended up doing.”

CRP enabled Andrews to preserve the land, restore its fertility, and sequester carbon, because instead of a farmer paying him to rent the cropland, the government paid him—less, but enough—to fallow it.  But the program has long been a target of conservatives as an example of wasteful spending. Project 2025 proposes eliminating it entirely, while the RSC would prohibit new enrollments in both CRP and the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP).

CSP pays farmers to implement conservation practices on land they are actively farming. The program is so popular that even after the Biden administration added money to the pot through the Inflation Reduction Act, only 40 percent of applications were funded in 2022.

Jonathan Coppess, the director of the Gardner Agriculture Policy Program at University of Illinois, said that while he doubted Republican lawmakers would be able to eliminate CRP altogether, they could slowly gut the program in the same way that some have weakened CSP over the last decade. Initially, CSP was capped based on acres, and lawmakers began cutting the acreage cap. Then, they changed the structure to a funding cap, which further shrank enrollment. The changes effectively cut funding for the program in half between 2008 and 2023.

Most conversations about conservation funding right now are focused on Republicans’ efforts to strip the focus on climate-friendly practices from extra conservation money provided by the Inflation Reduction Act.

“It can be kind of a death spiral type thing, where fewer farmers can get the funds, so the Congressional Budget Office projects less spending, so the baseline shrinks,” said Coppess, who previously worked on federal farm policy as a Senate legislative assistant and as administrator of the Farm Service Agency at the USDA. “Eventually that becomes self-defeating for the program, because farmers are angry because they spend all this time signing up and they don’t get in. So, the farmers turn on it and you can slowly kill off the program over time that way, because it loses its political support.”

The current House draft of the farm bill includes some small tweaks to CRP, but it’s unclear what the impacts of those changes would be. Instead, most conversations about conservation funding right now are focused on Republicans’ efforts to strip the focus on climate-friendly practices from extra conservation money provided by President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.

Changes to Commodity Programs

The Republican plans to cut environmental funding—especially for climate projects—are to be expected. But nowhere is the tug-of-war between fiscal conservatism and farm support more apparent than in their proposals for the future of commodity programs, which essentially pay crop farmers when prices fall beneath a certain level. Those programs primarily benefit growers of corn, soy, wheat, cotton, and a few other commodity crops. But because so much acreage is devoted to those crops, the groups that represent their interests, like the National Corn Growers Association and the National Association of Wheat Growers, hold considerable sway in D.C. And most Republicans (and Democrats), especially in farm states, generally try to court them.

However, over the past few decades, progressive Democrats and farm groups such as the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, Farm Action, and the Environmental Working Group (EWG) have called attention to the fact that the largest, wealthiest farms have received close to 80 percent of the nearly $500 billion paid out between 1995 and 2021. As a result, they’ve fought for payment caps within the programs as a way to limit spending and distribute funds more fairly.

Surprisingly, the RSC budget does something similar by proposing that only farms with an adjusted gross income below $500,000 receive payments. “This was a policy proposed in the FY 2021 Trump Budget and would ensure that commodity support payments are going to smaller farms that may struggle obtaining capital from private lenders,” the RSC budget reads. Project 2025 goes even further and proposes “ideally” eliminating commodity programs altogether.

But when House Republicans released their latest farm bill draft, it included increases to commodity payments, at a projected cost of an additional $50 billion. In other words, they veered in the exact opposite direction.

In response, the Heritage Foundation has been pushing back on the spending bump, in conjunction with other conservative think tanks, as well as the progressive EWG.

The unlikely policy alignment is politically convenient on this one point, but in the end, the two sides have differing goals. The progressive groups want policymakers to shift funding away from commodity programs into more funding for conservation, research, local food, and specialty crops; the conservative groups just want to cut spending, period.

“Every farm bill, hope springs eternal that there will be a left-right coalition that can win some major changes,” Hoefner said. “There have certainly been many tries at that,” he added—and they haven’t stuck yet.

Another issue that’s kept those groups far apart is ethanol, which many progressive groups see as a false climate solution. Traditional farm groups, on the other hand, fight like hell to keep in place the Renewable Fuel Standard—the policy that sets a minimum amount of ethanol required in gas and other fuels. The RSC budget proposes eliminating the standard altogether.

“There’s way more interest in that issue among commodity groups than what happens in the farm bill,” Hoefner said. It’s been a sticky issue for Republicans in the past. Florida Republican Ron DeSantis once supported eliminating the standard, until he tried to run for president. Trump boasts often of his support for ethanol, but his administration exempted more than 30 oil refineries from the standard, allowing them to avoid selling ethanol,  angering commodity groups.

Crop Insurance Complications

Some of the disconnect between Republican ideals that point toward farm program cuts and what gets into policy may simply be attributable to the reality of politics, Coppess said.

“There’s the cognitive dissonance kind of challenge that we see with any heavy focus on budget issues,” he said. “So, we wanna cut spending, we wanna balance the budget . . . and that always is easy to say and sounds good, but it is really difficult to do in practice, because every one of those items has a constituency. It is a difficult governing reality.”

As the weather has become more unpredictable due to climate change, for example, crop insurance has become a bigger political priority for farm groups and also the most expensive farm program, outpacing commodity spending.

During farm visits, Johnson said, “the most common thing we heard from producers was, ‘Don’t screw up crop insurance.’”

Both Project 2025 and the RSC budget propose reducing the portion of premiums paid by the federal government so that farmers shoulder more of the cost, while the RSC budget proposes a crop insurance subsidy cap of $40,000 per farmer. Project 2025 says farmers should not be allowed to get commodity payments if they get crop insurance subsidies.

All of those cuts are at direct odds with the powerful National Farmers Union’s 2024 policy book.

And at a panel on the National Mall hosted by the Association of Equipment Manufacturers in May, House Ag Committee members Dusty Johnson (R-South Dakota) and David Rouzer (R-North Carolina) both seemed to be reading from that policy book, despite the fact that both are members of the RSC.

During farm visits, Johnson said, “the most common thing we heard from producers was, ‘Don’t screw up crop insurance.’” Rouzer described crop insurance as one piece of a strong farm safety net. “If you want to preserve green space and rural areas, [then you need to] have a good, strong, safety net in place so that our farm families can continue to make ends meet and continue to do what they do best, and that’s feed and clothe the world,” he said.

Neither Dusty Johnson nor David Rouzer’s offices responded to requests for interviews.

An Opaque Future for Farmers

Time will tell if elected Republicans will act on the farm program cuts proposed by the most conservative members of their party. While some of the dynamics of farm-state politics are longstanding, others are changing.

Hoefner points out that in the 1980s and 1990s, Democrats and Republicans both represented many districts with commodity interests. Today, it’s nearly all Republicans. But rural areas are also being hollowed out as farms disappear or get bigger, which could one day shift power away from those farm states.

Consolidation in seeds, pesticides, grain trading, and meat (which most commodity crops funnel into) has also shifted power to commodity groups. These, in some ways, represent row-crop farmers, but they are also dominated by the ag industry. As a result, some conservative lawmakers from farm states have told Civil Eats they hear from industry, not farmers.

That’s one reason both Coppess and Hoefner said what will likely happen is what usually happens: Lawmakers will put out budgets and proposals that bolster their fiscal conservative credentials but then will govern in a way that bucks those policies to keep the support of ag industry players with deep pockets. “They would never dream of saying any of those things when they’re meeting with their farm constituents,” Coppess said.

In Rep. Dusty Johnson’s case, when asked about conservation programs at the May equipment manufacturers’ panel, he answered with political dexterity, praising conservation programs but indicating he may in fact be on board with the RSC proposal to eliminate CRP.

“Conservation is critically important,” he said. “I think this farm bill is gonna acknowledge the importance of working lands conservation even more than past farm bills have. That’s not to say there’s never a role in idling acres, but, listen, we can do some incredible things with soil health, water quality, habitat, while working those lands.”

Back in the middle of Iowa, one of the outcomes Andrews is most excited about when it comes to how CRP has impacted his farm is that its effects didn’t end at the borders of his fallow fields. On his own farm, he’s reduced soil loss, built organic matter, and watched wildlife return. But it’s also improved the sustainability of the surrounding farm landscape, where most farmers are doing plenty of planting and harvesting.

“I’ve got two or three farms that their water drains onto my farm, and some of that water is carrying chemicals and nitrogen, and my land is really cleaning up their water,” he said. “I think it’s a great program . . . but there’s not as many CRP acres around as what there used to be.”

If the conservative budget hawks get their way, there could be even fewer.

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]]> https://civileats.com/2024/07/22/republican-plans-for-ag-policy-may-bring-big-changes-to-farm-country/feed/ 2 https://civileats.com/2024/01/23/these-state-lawmakers-are-collaborating-on-policies-that-support-regenerative-agriculture/ Tue, 23 Jan 2024 09:00:09 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=54985 As Georgia state senator Kim Jackson began her welcome speech, she instructed the group to look around the room. “We are female; we are male. We are queer; we are people of color; we are Indigenous. We are rural, urban, and suburban,” she said. “Now raise your hand if this is what your [state’s] ag […]

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On a crisp weekend this past fall, 30 state legislators from across the nation descended on TomKat Ranch, an 1,800-acre ranch focused on regenerative agriculture in Pescadero, California, an hour south of San Francisco. In addition to learning about regenerative farming practices, the diverse group had gathered to understand how state-level agricultural legislation can bring about climate resilience, food security, and social equity.

As Georgia state senator Kim Jackson began her welcome speech, she instructed the group to look around the room. “We are female; we are male. We are queer; we are people of color; we are Indigenous. We are rural, urban, and suburban,” she said. “Now raise your hand if this is what your [state’s] ag committee looks like.” Despite all hands staying down, “this is exactly why we’re here,” she continued, “because we all have a stake in ag.”

The two-day workshop, which was organized by the State Innovation Exchange (SiX), a nonprofit, non-partisan national policy, resource, and strategy center, highlighted the power of states to drive progressive change in food and agricultural policy. Against the backdrop of a carefully managed perennial pasture, the gathering focused on legislative approaches to promoting regenerative farming and ranching practices, which the group believes can galvanize support across partisan and rural-urban divides.

The national farm bill often “sucks a lot of the wind out of the room,” says Kendra Kimbirauskas, the senior director of agriculture and food systems for SiX, making state-level initiatives seem like “the little sibling of federal policy.” But local and regional actions can counter the country’s “highly centralized and dominant” industrial food and farm system, she adds, and lay the blueprint for transformative large-scale measures.

Packed with experiential learning sessions with experts and advocates, field walks, and farm-to-table meals featuring ingredients sourced from nearby growers, the forum in Pescadero was primarily designed to connect lawmakers, says Kimbirauskas. Reinforcing the network can arm legislators with the resources needed to tackle “tough decisions” in their State Houses, she adds, and expose them to perspectives outside the typical ag lobbying groups on abstruse measures and less-obvious implications of bills.

Attendees at the TomKat Ranch tour organized by the State Innovation Exchange (SiX). (Photo courtesy of SiX)

And because agricultural policy is typically shaped by large agribusiness interests, advocates say efforts to foster greater inclusivity is paramount to changing the status quo. “This,” proffered Jackson, a Black urban farmer from a multi-generational farming family and Georgia’s first openly gay senator, “is how we raise our collective voices.”

Power of State Policymaking

The Cohort for Rural Opportunity and Prosperity (CROP)—a subset of SiX’s Agriculture and Food Systems program—currently includes elected officials from 43 states who are positioned to advance socially and ecologically responsible rural, agricultural, and food policy.

When it comes to deciphering rural and farm-related issues, progressive legislators often face a steep learning curve, says Kimbirauskas. Many tend to hail from urban areas and are better versed on issues such as public health or education; even those with farming roots may not have direct field experience. As a result, they may lack the capacity to be “champions for food and ag policy,” she notes, despite the broad impacts of farming legislation on cities, the environment, and the larger food system.

Historically, that space has been dominated by state level farm bureaus and the larger federal, Kimbirauskas says. Heavily backed by large agriculture trade groups with deep pockets, the nation’s most powerful agricultural lobbying group is, generally speaking, the sole voice leading those conversations at the state level. “The corporate ag lobby absolutely knows the power of state policymaking,” she says. “That’s why they have a stable of lobbyists in every state house across the country.”

Depending on the state, legislators may be severely under-resourced and overworked—nationwide, their salary averages less than $44,000, with state lawmakers in New Hampshire and New Mexico working as volunteers, requiring many to hold second jobs.

“The corporate ag lobby absolutely knows the power of state policymaking. That’s why they have a stable of lobbyists in every state house across the country.”

State budgets can also hamper in-house agricultural knowledge. Less than half a percent of Hawaii’s annual budget, for instance, goes to its department of agriculture, thereby limiting the robust collection of crop statistics and other data critical to making industry decisions. Recently, the state also slashed 20 percent of university extension staff.

As an “organizing vehicle” designed to help “disrupt the legislator-to-lobbyist pipeline,” CROP equips progressive leaders with robust support and expertise to fill these voids, says Kimbirauskas. Rather than relying on ag industry lobbyists to shape boilerplate legislation—a tactic frequently used by conservative national policy organizations such as the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)—SiX connects lawmakers to policy advocates and agriculture-based organizations to share information and strategies in creating more effective policies.

Although organic practices are federally certified, “regenerative” methods—which hold many commonalities—are not typically strictly defined or certified. However, for the same reason, they are also often seen as more accessible to growers and less divisive than organic agriculture. And when done right, regenerative farming has been shown to have multiple benefits that appeal across partisan, racial, and geographic divides, says Renata Brillinger, executive director of the California Climate and Agriculture Network (CalCAN), an advising partner to SiX.

Along with reducing the need for synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides, practices that build healthy soil, for example, make land more resilient to drought, flooding, wildfires, and erosion. And the perks go far beyond the pastures, Brillinger says: “We get cleaner air and water, healthier communities, and a huge reduction in greenhouse gas emissions” through carbon sequestration.

As the gains become more obvious amid the growing challenges of the climate crisis,“the more conservative champions [can] get on board,” Brillinger adds, “because they [also] appreciate the benefits to the farmer and the farm economy.”

Since its implementation in 2017, California’s Healthy Soils program—part of the state’s suite of Climate Smart Agriculture initiatives aimed at mitigating the impacts of climate change and fostering sustainability across various sectors—has influenced similar policies throughout the country. Last year alone, six states passed bills that advance healthy soil management policies, programs, and funding.

For lawmakers from states short on resources or lagging in support for these measures, frontrunners like California help gauge effectiveness and build momentum for similar measures back home, says Brillinger. Along with sowing the seeds for incentive programs and educational resources down the line, more moderate initiatives can make it possible to collect federal funds.

Last April, Montana took a notable step in promoting good soil practices by designating an official Healthy Soils Week. Rather than laying out imperatives, the state act helps “gently lead people” towards regenerative practices, says the bill’s author, State Senator Bruce Gillespie, by recognizing the benefits of soil conservation and range management, particularly through rotational livestock grazing.

Despite being one of the country’s driest states, agriculture is Montana’s leading industry, “so there’s a big opportunity here” to promote the merits of building and preserving rich soil, adds the third-generation rancher, who was not in attendance at the Pescadero event. In addition to absorbing precious precipitation, he points to the fact that well-managed pastures can capture carbon, harbor wildlife, and become more resistant to erosion.

The “win-win” proposition has the support of Gillespie’s Republican and Democratic colleagues alike, he says, as well as farmers and conservation groups in the region. He hopes that Montana’s actions inspire other states in the grassland region—a sizable area that includes Wyoming, Nebraska, and the Dakotas—to adopt similar measures.

In the best-case scenario, state-level initiatives can influence federal policy, says CalCAN’s Brillinger. Congress is currently mulling the Agriculture Resilience Act, which would incentivize farmers and ranchers to engage in climate-friendly practices if its language gets included in the next farm bill. That proposition has been markedly influenced by similar state policies including California’s Converting Our Waste Sustainably (COWS) Act, which aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through pasture-based manure management.

Laying the Foundation for Change

Nevertheless, in most farm states, the existing legislative structure firmly favors commodity agriculture and the companies it benefits, making even incremental policy changes daunting, says Liz Moran Stelk, executive director of the Illinois Stewardship Alliance (ISA), a Chicago-based nonprofit organization. Built to serve “a massive, complex, and incredibly productive and efficient food system,” its presence, she adds, is unyielding.

In past decades, the large-scale consolidation of the food supply chain has reduced processing, aggregation, and transportation to a handful of companies. As a result, smaller producers often face greater hurdles in adopting any practices that sit outside the mainstream. Without access to markets and appropriate infrastructure (think: organic grain elevators and slaughterhouses) growers can’t fetch added premiums for sustainable practices. “It’s hard to do the right thing,” notes Stelk, “if you’re getting paid the same as your neighbor who doesn’t do anything extra.”

“It’s hard to do the right thing if you’re getting paid the same as your neighbor who doesn’t do anything extra.”

Several Western and Midwestern states, however, have managed to promote conservation-minded practices through modest incentives. The Illinois-based Saving Tomorrow’s Agricultural Resources (STAR) Program sets standards for regenerative practices such as crop rotation, tillage, and nutrient applications. Based on their level of stewardship, the voluntary grading system awards farmers with one to five stars, with “pay-for-performance” incentives based on their rating.

Created in 2017, STAR programs have spread to more than 10 states, and a national organization was established earlier this year. As momentum builds throughout various regions, it has spawned wider discussions about incentivizing other parts of the supply chain for regenerative producers, says Stelk.

‘Context Is Everything’

Although the weekend workshop in Pescadero revealed many approaches to strategic state-level governance, it also exposed stark differences in the operational landscape. “Context is everything,” says Hawaii State Representative Amy Perruso, whose state’s plantation history has resulted in a distinct political and agricultural landscape. Big ag continues its outsized presence on the islands in the form of seed companies—GMO seed corn is Hawaii’s top cash crop—so the power they exert “is a big obstacle to systemic change,” she says.

Yet exposure to the broad implications of regenerative farming was eye-opening, says Perruso, in understanding the larger framing of agricultural policy. In the aftermath of her state’s devastating recent wildfires, the effectiveness of policies that promote managed grazing—which reduces fire risk by increasing soil moisture and keeping invasive grasses in check—seem self-evident, she notes.

In addition to bolstering climate resilience, many regenerative practices are also the cornerstone of Native Hawaiian farming systems, which prioritize soil and water stewardship. And because propelling these efforts can impact food sovereignty, it also carries “strong political implications,” she adds.

Perruso’s insight also underscores the importance of considering the diversity of stakeholders invested in regenerative farming. And Indigenous perspectives are especially relevant to shaping effective state-level food and agricultural policy, says Yadira Riviera, associate director at the nonprofit First Nations Development Institute (FNDI).

As a presenter at the Pescadero workshop, Rivera reminded lawmakers that Native farmers, ranchers, and food producers—including foragers and harvesters—hold deep-rooted, traditional expertise. Their insight is essential to creating sustainable, culturally sensitive, and region-specific policies, she says.

Soliciting input from a broad pool of stakeholders also helps lawmakers formulate more effective policy, says Riviera. Funding for fencing, for instance, may not have obvious regenerative benefits, but for farmers and ranchers practicing managed grazing—which requires rotating livestock between multiple fenced paddocks—it’s an absolute necessity.

CalCAN’s Brillinger believes that building a more resilient food and farming system is in everybody’s interest, so collective action is imperative to shoring up effective policies. And unlike the drastic climate solutions needed in the energy and transportation sectors, many agriculture- and land-based strategies don’t require expensive, high-tech approaches, she notes, and can be easily implemented—given the political will. “The benefits are just so multifaceted,” she says, “that it’s kind of a no-brainer.”

And finally, the weekend gathering highlighted yet another perk to regenerative farming: “mind-blowing” produce cultivated in rich healthy soil. “It was such an experience eating that food,” says Perruso, of the generous spreads served on the ranch. “I’ve never tasted vegetables like that.”

Civil Eats receives funding from TomKat Educational Fund. We also receive funding from FNDI to support our Indigenous Foodways reporting.

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