Food Tank
By Danielle Nierenberg and Alonso Diaz
With record high unemployment, a reeling global economy, and concerns of food shortages, the world as we know it is changing. But even as these shifts expose inequities in the health and food systems, many experts hope that the current moment offers an opportunity to build a new and more sustainable food system.
<p>To understand what it will take to move forward, Food Tank has compiled its summer reading list to delve into the issues that affect our food system today. These 20 books provide insight into food access and justice in Black communities, food relief and school nutrition programs, the effects of technology on global food supply chains, the relationship between climate change and food production, and much more.</p>
1. Be My Guest: Reflections on Food, Community, and the Meaning of Generosity by Priya Basil (forthcoming November 2020)
<p>Priya Basil explores the meaning of hospitality within a variety of cultural, linguistic, and sociopolitical contexts in this short read. Basil uses her cross-cultural experience to illustrate how food amplifies discourse within families and touches on the hospitality and the lack thereof that migrants and refugees experience. <em>Be My Guest </em>is at once an enjoyable read and a hopeful meditation on how food and hospitality can make a positive difference in our world.</p>2. Biodiversity, Food and Nutrition: A New Agenda for Sustainable Food Systems by Danny Hunter, Teresa Borelli, and Eliot Gee
<p>In <em>Biodiversity, Food and Nutrition</em>, leading professionals from Bioversity International examine the positive impacts of biodiversity on nutrition and sustainability. The book highlights agrobiodiversity initiatives in Brazil, Kenya, Sri Lanka, and Turkey, featuring research from the <a href="https://www.bioversityinternational.org/research-portfolio/diet-diversity/biodiversity-for-food-and-nutrition/" target="_blank">Biodiversity for Food and Nutrition Project </a>(BFN) of the <a href="https://www.bioversityinternational.org/alliance/" target="_blank">Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT</a>. Through this analysis, the authors propose that the localized activities in these countries are not only benefiting communities, but are transferable to other regions.</p>3. Black Food Geographies: Race, Self-Reliance, and Food Access in Washington, D.C. by Ashanté M. Reese
<p>In <em>Black Food Geographies, </em>Ashanté Reese draws on her fieldwork to highlight community agency in response to unequal food access. Focusing on a majority-Black neighborhood in Washington, DC, Reese explores issues of racism, gentrification, and urban food access. Through her analysis, she argues that racism impacts and exacerbates issues of unequal food distribution systems.</p>4. Black Food Matters: Racial Justice in the Wake of Food Justice edited by Hanna Garth and Ashanté M. Reese (forthcoming October 2020)
<p>Access, equity, justice, and privilege are the central themes in this forthcoming collection of essays. The food justice movement often ignores the voices of Black communities and white food norms shape the notions of healthy food. Named for Black Lives Matter, <em>Black Food Matters </em>highlights the history and impact of Black communities and their food cultures in the food justice movement.</p>5. Diners Dudes & Diets: How Gender and Power Collide in Food Media and Culture by Emily J.H. Contois (forthcoming November 2020)
<p>In <em>Diners, Dudes & Diets</em>, Emily Contois looks at media's influence on eating habits and gendered perceptions of food. Focusing on the concept of dude foods, the book follows the evolution of food marketing for men. In doing so, Contois shows how industries used masculine stereotypes to sell diet and weight loss products to a new demographic. She argues that this has influenced both the way consumers think about food and their own identities.</p>6. Feeding the Crisis: Care and Abandonment in America’s Food Safety Net by Maggie Dickinson
<p>The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is essential for individuals who face food insecurity on a daily basis. Still, the program fails to reach many, including those who are unemployed, underemployed, or undocumented. <em>Feeding the Crisis</em> provides a historical overview of SNAP's expansion and traces the lives of eight families who must navigate the changing landscape of welfare policy in the United States.</p>7. Feeding the Other: Whiteness, Privilege, and Neoliberal Stigma in Food Pantries by Rebecca T. de Souza
<p>In <em>Feeding the Other</em>, Rebecca de Souza explores the relationship between food pantries and people dependent on their services. Throughout the work, de Souza underscores the structural failures that contribute to hunger and poverty, the racial dynamics within pantries, and the charged idea of a handout. She argues that while food pantries currently stigmatize clients, there is an opportunity to make them agents of food justice.</p>8. Feeding the People: The Politics of the Potato by Rebecca Earle
<p>In <em>Feeding the People,</em> Rebecca Earle tells the story of the potato and its journey from a relatively unknown crop to a staple in modern diets around the world. Earle's work highlights the importance of the potato during famines, war, and explains the politics behind consumers' embrace of this food. Interspersed throughout are also potato recipes that any reader can try.</p>9. Food in Cuba: The Pursuit of a Decent Meal by Hanna Garth
<p>In <em>Food in Cuba</em>, Dr. Hannah Garth looks at food security and food sovereignty in the context of Cuba's second largest city, Santiago de Cuba. Throughout the work, Garth defines a decent meal as one that is culturally appropriate and of high quality. And through stories about families' sociopolitical barriers to food access, Garth shows how ideas of food and moral character become intimately linked.</p>10. Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America by Marcia Chatelain
<p>Scholar, speaker, and strategist Marcia Chatelain provides readers insight into the ways fast food restaurants expanded throughout Black communities. Dr. Chatelain traces their growth during the 20th century and their intersection with Black capitalists and the civil rights movement. This book highlights the dichotomy between fast food's negative impacts on Black communities and the potential economic and political opportunities that the businesses offered them.</p>11. Honey And Venom: Confessions of an Urban Beekeeper by Andrew Coté
<p>In <em>Honey and Venom,</em> Andrew Coté provides a history of beekeeping while taking the reader through his own trajectory in the industry. A manager of over one hundred beehives, Coté raises colonies across New York City, on the rooftops of churches, schools, and more. Coté's<em> </em>passion for beekeeping comes through clearly as he narrates the challenges and rewards of his career.</p>12. Life on the Other Border: Farmworkers and Food Justice in Vermont by Teresa M. Mares
<p>Agriculture, immigration, and Central American and Mexican farm workers may conjure ideas of the Mexico-U.S. border, but in <em>Life on the Other Border</em>, Teresa Mares gives a voice to those laboring much farther north. Mares introduces the readers to the Latinx immigrants who work in Vermont's dairy industry while they advocate for themselves and navigate life as undocumented workers. This is an inspiring read that touches on the intersection of food justice, immigration, and labor policy.</p>13. Meals Matter: A Radical Economics Through Gastronomy by Michael Symons
<p>In <em>Meals Matter</em>, Michael Symons argues that economics used to be, in its essence, about feeding the world but has since become fixated with the pursuit of money. Symons introduces readers to gastronomic liberalism and applies the ideas of philosophers like Epicurus and John Locke to the food system. Through this approach, he seeks to understand how large corporations gained control of the market and challenges readers to rethink their understanding of food economics.</p>14. No One is Too Small to Make a Difference by Greta Thunberg
<p>Greta Thunberg addressed the United Nations at the 2019 UN Climate Action Summit and has since been a global symbol of environmental activism. Her community organizing and impassioned speeches are uncompromising as she argues that climate change is an existential crisis that needs to be confronted immediately. <em>No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference </em>includes Thunberg's speeches and includes her 2019 address to the United Nations.</p>15. Perilous Bounty: The Looming Collapse of American Farming and How We Can Prevent It by Tom Philpott (forthcoming August 2020)
<p>In <em>Perilous Bounty</em>, journalist Tom Philpott critically analyzes the centralized food system in the U.S. and argues that it is headed for disaster unless it sees some much-needed changes. Philpot argues that actors within the U.S. food system are prioritizing themselves over the nation's wellbeing and provides well-researched data to back up his claims. Providing readers insight into the experiences of activists, farmers, and scientists, this is a great read for those starting to learn about the state of the country's food system and for those who are already deeply involved.</p>16. Plucked: Chicken, Antibiotics, And How Big Business Changed The Way The World Eats by Maryn McKenna
<p>In this exposé on the chicken industry, acclaimed author Maryn McKenna explains the role antibiotics played in making chicken a global commodity. <em>Plucked </em>makes it clear that food choices matter and show how consumers' desire for meat, especially chicken, has impacted human health. McKenna also offers a way forward and outlines ways that stakeholders can make food safer again.</p>17. Stirrings: How Activist New Yorkers Ignited a Movement for Food Justice by Lana Dee Povitz
<p>Between 1970 and 2000, food activists in New York City pushed to improve public school lunches, provide meals to those impacted by the AIDS epidemic, and established food co-ops. In <em>Stirrings</em>,<em> </em>Lana Dee Povitz draws on oral histories and archives to recount the stories of individuals who led these efforts. She highlights the successes of grassroots movements and reminds readers of the many women leaders in the New York food justice movement.</p>18. The New American Farmer: Immigration, Race, and the Struggle for Sustainability by Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern
<p>In <em>The New American Farmer</em>, Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern offers a look at farm labor in the U.S. Although most farm owners are white Americans, farm workers are overwhelmingly immigrants and people of color. In this book, Minkoff-Zern details the experiences of farm laborers who are becoming farm owners themselves and outlines the many barriers that workers must overcome during this transition. Through interviews with farmers and organizers, Minkoff-Zern shows that these farmers bring sustainable agricultural practices that can benefit our food system.</p>19. The Story of More: How We Got to Climate Change and Where to Go from Here by Hope Jahren
<p>Hope Jahren breaks down climate change for readers in an accessible and data-driven book. <em>The Story of More </em>explains<em> </em>how greenhouse gas emissions and consumption of natural resources in developed nations exacerbate climate change and outlines the consequences of these actions. Although she argues that the planet is in danger, she also provides a variety of everyday actions, like decreasing meat consumption, that consumers can take to make a difference.</p>20. Vegetable Kingdom: The Abundant World of Vegan Recipes by Bryant Terry
<p>Author, chef, and food justice activist Bryant Terry provides readers with over a hundred recipes to create approachable and flavorful vegan dishes, without relying on meat alternatives. This book is a wonderfully practical recipe book that begins with a list of recommended tools, is organized by ingredients, and even includes a music playlist. Vegans and non-vegans alike will appreciate Chef Terry's <em>Vegetable Kingdom</em>.</p><a target="_blank" href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=Make+this+summer+a+season+of+reflection+and+self-education+with+Food+Tank%27s+reading+list+%E2%80%94+new+and+important+books+from+%40AMReese07%2C+%40GretaThunberg%2C+%40EmilyContois%2C+%40BryantTerry%2C+%40DrMChatelain%2C+and+more&url=https%3A%2F%2Ffoodtank.com%2Fnews%2F2020%2F07%2Ffood-tanks-summer-2020-reading-list%2F&via=foodtank"><span></span></a>
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Vanguard Renewables has sponsored five milk donation events, donating more than 17,000 gallons of milk to Massachusetts and Rhode Island families in need. Vanguard Renewables
By Meg Wilcox
As U.S. food assistance programs grapple with overwhelming demand during the coronavirus pandemic, some in New England are finding support from unusual partners—renewable energy companies.
<p><br/></p>
<p>Scratch the surface of these partnerships, however, and the connections begin to make sense. The renewable energy companies are already engaged with the food system, and they're joining with food relief efforts to connect more deeply with the communities where they do business at a time of crisis.</p><p>Take <a href="https://vanguardrenewables.com/" target="_blank">Vanguard Renewables</a>, which has sponsored <a href="https://neal.house.gov/press-releases/neal-assists-donation-milk-south-congregational-church-community-food-pantry" target="_blank">five milk donations events</a>, donating more than 17,000 gallons of milk to <a href="https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/05/06/metro/local-farms-donate-thousands-gallons-milk-those-need-market-dissolves/" target="_blank">Massachusetts</a> and <a href="https://vanguardrenewables.com/4300-gallons-of-milk-to-be-donated-to-providence-and-pawtucket-families-in-need-on-may-27/" target="_blank">Rhode Island</a> families in need, in partnership with <a href="https://www.dfamilk.com/" target="_blank">Dairy Farmers of America</a> (DFA), <a href="https://hood.com/" target="_blank">HP Hood</a>, <a href="https://www.supercow.com/" target="_blank">Guida's Dairy</a> and various political leaders.</p><p>Vanguard Renewables develops <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2020/06/16/climate-solutions-manure/?arc404=true" target="_blank">novel on-farm systems</a> that recycle organic food waste and manure into renewable energy that it converts to electricity or sells as gas. The company takes food waste from food manufacturers and grocery stores, and uses it to fuel its six anaerobic digester facilities in New England, which also produce organic fertilizer and bedding for animals.</p><p>When dairy's main markets shuttered in April, Vanguard Renewables Chairman and CEO John Hanselman noted a sudden large influx of raw milk coming into his company's facilities straight from farms. Hanselman, who'd never before seen that, reached out to DFA to ask, "Hey what can we do?"</p>
<p>DFA was already focusing on <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/11/business/coronavirus-destroying-food.html" target="_blank">milk dumping</a>, and through its charitable arm, <a href="https://www.dfamilk.com/our-commitment/dfa-cares" target="_blank">DFA Cares</a>, it raised the money needed to purchase milk from farmers to make the donations. Vanguard Renewables contributed $15,000, as well as time and logistical support. Hood HP and Guida's Dairy processed the milk into gallon jugs, and got it out to the points of distribution. The National Guard helped hand out the milk jugs.</p><p>"It was a hell of an effort, but it really felt good in your soul as people were pulling up and we were putting gallons of milk in their trunks," said Hanselman. "You know that so many families are just a few paychecks away from not having their nutritional needs met, and that's devastating in a country that has such abundance."</p><p><a href="https://bluewavesolar.com/" target="_blank">BlueWave Solar</a>, a <a href="https://bcorporation.net/" target="_blank">certified B Corporation</a> and developer of community solar projects, is taking a different tack to help feed families in need. It's donating a portion of the subscriptions it receives to two new community solar projects—in Hudson Valley, New York and in Massachusetts—to area food banks.</p><p><a href="https://www.seia.org/initiatives/community-solar" target="_blank">Community solar</a> provides homeowners and renters an opportunity to tap into clean energy, at a reduced rate on their monthly electric bills, without installing solar panels on their homes. BlueWave Solar's projects are typically developed on low-value land, such as along a highway, but they're also developed on farms, which helps stabilize farmers' income. Recently, the company began developing innovative <a href="https://civileats.com/2019/01/22/agrivoltaics-solar-panels-on-farms-could-be-a-win-win/" target="_blank">dual use solar farms</a> which Marsch, calls the "holy grail," because the farmer is able to continue farming the land around the solar array.</p>
<p>For each new subscriber to the community solar projects, BlueWave Solar contributes $50 to area food banks. The company has also donated more than $10,000 to four food banks since the pandemic started, according to Mike Marsch, principal, community solar at BlueWave Solar</p><p>"When COVID hit, it was such a clear need. It's such a hard-hit region, food insecurity being what it is," said Marsch. "As a company, we've supported the food bank. A lot of us have volunteered there. We thought a natural extension was to combine that with community solar."</p><p>Donating to food banks to attract new subscribers is also a creative way for the company to gin up business while sales are low—but local food banks are grateful for the support.</p><p>Paul Stermer, director at <a href="https://foodbankofhudsonvalley.org/" target="_blank">Food Bank of the Hudson Valley</a>, said he's seen roughly 50 percent more people in the area who are food insecure and need help since the pandemic struck.</p>
<p>Stermer is concerned that once the coronavirus relief programs phase out—the increased unemployment benefits, rent forgiveness, expanded SNAP, <a href="https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/136/3245-0407-SBA-Form-3508-PPP-Forgiveness-Application.pdf" target="_blank">Paycheck Protection Program</a>—people will struggle even more.</p><p>"Even once we get past the pandemic, … the impact of what we're seeing today is going to be with us for a while," he said.</p><p>Indeed, a <a href="https://www.feedingamerica.org/sites/default/files/2020-05/Brief_Local%20Impact_5.19.2020.pdf" target="_blank">recent analysis</a> by Feeding America found that progress made in the past decade on food insecurity will likely be wiped out by the pandemic.</p><p>Vanguard Renewables is trying to keep its effort going, said Hanselman, noting "we've got 40 million unemployed Americans and it takes a long time to get those folks back to work."</p><p>But he says, it's gotten harder now to get interest, especially now that the dairy supply chain disruption is over.</p><p><span></span>Regardless of whether the companies can maintain food relief efforts, both will continue building on-farm clean energy systems that support farmers and help make their operations more regenerative.</p>
<p class=""><em>Reposted with permission from <a href="https://foodtank.com/news/2020/06/feeding-families-in-need-renewable-energy-companies-enter-the-mix/" target="_blank">Food Tank</a>.</em></p>
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EcoWatch Daily Newsletter
Tj Samuels / EyeEm / Getty Images
By Danielle Nierenberg and Gabby Lozano
Throughout the United States and around the world, millions of people gather in June for Pride Month, a time to celebrate the LGBTQ+ community and honor their contributions to the world.
<p>Over the past several years, the U.S. has made significant <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/gay-rights/the-stonewall-riots" target="_blank">strides</a> toward equality for people of all genders and sexualities, with landmarks such as the legalization of same-sex marriage by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2015 and the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/danica-roem-will-be-vas-first-openly-transgender-elected-official-after-unseating-conservative-robert-g-marshall-in-house-race/2017/11/07/d534bdde-c0af-11e7-959c-fe2b598d8c00_story.html" target="_blank">election of Danica Roem</a>, Virginia's first openly transgender candidate, in 2017. And on June 15, 2020, <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/supreme-court-makes-historic-ruling-lgbt-employment-discrimination/story?id=71254749#:~:text=The%20Supreme%20Court%20issued%20its,to%20gay%20or%20transgender%20people." target="_blank">the U.S. Supreme Court</a> ruled that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits employment discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.</p><p>Despite this progress, LGBTQ+ people continue to experience discrimination that negatively impacts their physical and mental wellbeing. Transgender and gender-nonconforming people in the U.S., particularly Black transgender women, remain at increased <a href="https://www.hrc.org/resources/violence-against-the-trans-and-gender-non-conforming-community-in-2020" target="_blank">risk of fatal violence</a> and <a href="https://vawnet.org/sc/serving-trans-and-non-binary-survivors-domestic-and-sexual-violence/violence-against-trans-and" target="_blank">sexual assault</a>. Studies also show that LGBTQ+-identifying folks—especially people of color—face higher rates of <a href="https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/National-LGBT-Poverty-Oct-2019.pdf" target="_blank">food insecurity</a> than their straight and cisgender counterparts. And while many LGBTQ+ adults in the U.S. have access to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), some food banks and pantries have <a href="https://www.hungerfreeamerica.org/blog/pride-highlights-work-left-be-done-lgbt-food-access" target="_blank">denied</a> services to people due to their sexual orientation or gender identity.</p><p>In the face of this discrimination, LGBTQ+ community leaders around the globe continue to fight for lasting change. In honor of Pride Month, Food Tank is highlighting collectives, farms, and other organizations that are working to strengthen LGBTQ+ representation in the food system and give back to their communities.</p>
<p><br/></p>
1. Chaseholm Farm, Pine Plains, New York
<p>Located in New York's Hudson Valley, Chaseholm Farm is a third-generation operation run by siblings Rory and Sarah Chase. While Rory oversees the creamery and cheesemaking operations, Sarah manages the farm and livestock. With her wife, nutrition therapist Jordan Schmidt, Sarah achieved Organic certification for the farm and moved to holistic management practices, including 100 percent grass feeding.</p>2. Cuir Kitchen Brigade, New York City
<p>Launched after Hurricane María hit Puerto Rico in 2017, Cuir Kitchen Brigade is a collective that works in solidarity with people impacted by climate change, oppressed by governments, and marginalized due to sexuality and gender identity. Cuir Kitchen Brigade provides food relief on a mutual aid model, runs solidarity and ancestral learning trips to Latin America, and hosts workshops on canning and fermentation to help queer, transgender, Black people, Indigenous communities, and people of color be more resilient to climate disasters.</p>3. Cultivating Change Foundation, San Francisco
<p>Through relationship-building events, partnerships, and discussions, Cultivating Change Foundation seeks to create a global network of LGBTQ+ agriculturists and their allies. Using advocacy and education, the foundation provides resources and materials to help LGBTQ+ farmers feel empowered and elevated within their communities and professional fields. In June, the Foundation typically holds a three-day global agriculture conference in Des Moines, Iowa, to bring together LGBTQ+ agricultural workers, diversity professionals, and other experts working toward a more equitable food system.</p>4. Diaspora Co., Oakland, California, and Mumbai, India
<p>Owned and managed by self-identifying queer women of color, Diaspora Co. is an organic spice business working to decolonize commodity crops from India, while uplifting small farmers. Diaspora Co. reduces the spice supply chain to only involve itself, small farmers, and the consumer. Doing so allows small farmers to earn more money and maintain control over the crops they grow. The company also works with the Indian Council of Agricultural Research to identify additional ways they can support farmers working with Diaspora Co.</p>5. Fierte Agricolé, Saint-Hyacinthe, Quebec
<p>Fierte Agricolé is a nonprofit organization that works to unite LGBTQ+ people in agriculture. Through focus groups, the organization provides a safe space for individuals to discuss their experiences as LGBTQ+ farmers. The organization also works with stakeholders and other professionals to raise awareness on sexuality, gender identity diversity, and challenges that LGBTQ+ people in agriculture may face.</p>6. Finca Morada, North Miami, Florida
<p>Finca Morada is a cooperative ½-acre permaculture farm in North Miami, Florida, that is organized around the concept of "wild culture." They define "wild culture" in opposition to consumer culture, and in favor of interdependence with nature and traditional, Indigenous land management. "At our heart-center is environmental, racial, LGBTQ, gender, social, & food justice, inspired by nature's magic, radical interdependence & wild diversity," they write. Finca Morada means "purple farm" in Spanish, and the farm uses purple as a way to honor the land's previous owner and as a symbol of diversity, the royalty of nature, and the fluidity of binaries between red and blue.</p>7. GayFarmer, Germany
<p>GayFarmer is a professional association made up of over 500 individuals from the LGBTQ+ community who work in professions such as agriculture. The association is helping individuals in green sectors establish professional connections with corporations and other workers. GayFarmer also organizes specialized groups for people of specific LGBTQ+ identities to provide additional support for members. GayFarmer's website also promotes members' products to help them gain visibility in the marketplace.</p>8. Homestead Ranch, Oskaloosa, Kansas
<p>Courtney Skeeba and her partner, Denise Whitesides, operate Homestead Ranch, a small family farm located in Oskaloosa, Kansas, that specializes in sustainable goat farming. The farm strives to reduce waste, nurture the land, and educate consumers on the source of their food. The farm sells goat milk-based shampoo, soap, and other body products online, at local farmers markets, and boutiques.</p>9. Hudson Valley Seed Company, Accord, New York
<p>In 2004, Ken Greene was working as a librarian when he started the country's first seed library, as a way to support local food systems. A few years later, his seed library became the Hudson Valley Seed Company, which he launched with his partner, Doug Mueller. They focus on heirloom, local, and organic seeds, and were one of the first companies to sign the Open Source Seed Initiative. Every year, the Hudson Valley Seed Company also commissions contemporary artists to design storytelling-oriented "art packs" for their seed varieties.</p>10. Humble Hands Harvest, Decorah, Iowa
<p>Humble Hands Harvest operates a small organic farm in Iowa using regenerative practices to grow organic vegetables. To support the LGBTQ+ farming community, the farm holds the <a href="https://humblehandsharvest.com/queer-farmer-convergence/" target="_blank">Queer Farmer Convergence</a>, an annual event uniting LGBTQ+ farmers to reduce the isolation felt by LGBTQ+ farmers and to combat racist and capitalist practices in agriculture. Additionally, the farm created the <a href="https://www.instagram.com/queerdirt/" target="_blank">Queer Farmer Network</a> to revolutionize the agriculture industry and rural community.</p>11. Interlocking Roots, United States
<p>Interlocking Roots is a network of self-identifying queer and transgender Black and Indigenous people of color (QT*BIPoC) who work as chefs, educators, farmers, and food justice advocates. The network organizes gatherings and uses digital platforms, like <a href="https://www.instagram.com/interlockingroots/" target="_blank">Instagram</a>, to create safe spaces for QT*BIPoC people to connect. Interlocking Roots is currently working on a podcast to share stories about QT*BIPoC folks who are using food and agriculture to decolonize the agri-food industry.</p>12. Lesbian Natural Resources, Minneapolis, Minnesota
<p>Established in 1991, Lesbian Natural Resources (LNR) assists lesbians interested in maintaining community land and preserving rural ecosystems. LNR offers a variety of programs to combat food insecurity and racism and help members of their community access land. They also connect members to grants to help them sustain their work.</p>13. Mill Creek Farm, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
<p>Johanna Rosen and her partner, Jade Walker, run Mill Creek Farm. This educational farm and environmental center provides low-cost, chemical-free produce to local communities and people of color in need of assistance. Mill Creek Farm integrates sustainable practices, like crop rotation and companion planting. The farm also engages with the local community by hosting after-school gardening and cooking clubs, field trips, and internships and fellowships to help local youth.</p>14. Moxie Ridge, Fort Edward, New York
<p>Moxie Ridge is a farm and creamery in northeast New York State that specializes in pork, fully free-range chicken and eggs, and a selection of fresh and ripened goat cheeses from goats milked by hand. Moxie Ridge is run by Lee Hennessy, who came out as transgender last year and is committed to respecting land by using traditional management practices. On the farm, he accomplishes brush clearing with the help of the goats, pastures are "mowed" by grazing horses and sheep, and pigs act as tillers and root removers.</p>15. The Okra Project, United States
<p>The Okra Project is a collective addressing food insecurity within the Black transgender community. The collective delivers healthy and culturally appropriate meals prepared by Black transgender chefs to Black transgender people experiencing food insecurity. To lend support globally, the Okra Project developed the International Grocery Fund, which provides US$40 grants to Black transgender people around the world who are food insecure. The Okra Project also established the Byokra series, monthly wellness sessions for Black transgender people.</p>16. Queer Farmer Collective, Denver, Colorado
<p>Queer Farmer Collective is a community organization working to engage the LGBTQ+ community in agriculture, while removing barriers that prevent LBGTQ+ people from participating. Using organized events, the organization hopes to inspire its network to grow their own food and uses donations to provide financial support to various farmers. Queer Farmer Collective also shares resources and advice for their farmers on its <a href="https://www.facebook.com/queerfarmercollective/" target="_blank">Facebook page</a>.</p>17. Rainbow Chard Collective, Canada
<p>The Rainbow Chard Collective is an organization made up of farmers, food activists, and students working to create awareness for LGBTQ+ farmers and promote sustainable agriculture. The Rainbow Chard Collective holds events and workshops, conducts research on sustainable living, and mentors youth individuals by leading workshops at camps. The Collective also advocates for increased government support for small farmers.</p>18. Rise and Root Farm, Chester, New York
<p>Karen Washington, a Black farmer and community activist, wants to build a different agricultural narrative, inclusive of all races, genders, and sexualities. Her farm, Rise and Root Farm, is ¾-owned by people in the LGBTQ+ community. Washington created Rise and Root Farm to be a place of healing for diverse and marginalized communities — particularly important today, as black farmers work to call attention to not only their own contributions to the modern food system but also the impact of the slave trade on the development of global food chains.</p>19. Rock and Steady Farm and Flowers, Millerton, New York
<p>The self-identifying queer- and women-owned cooperative Rock Steady Farm & Flowers uses sustainable agricultural practices and community partnerships to advocate for marginalized communities in the food system. The farm provides food to food pantries, social justice nonprofits, and local businesses, like florists and restaurants. The organization also <a href="https://gaycenter.org/" target="_blank">partners</a> <a href="https://callen-lorde.org/" target="_blank">with</a> LGBTQ+ resource centers to increase healthy food access for and educate youth about agriculture.</p>20. Sweet Digz Farm, Richmond, British Columbia
<p>Kareno Hawbolt and her partner, Kimi Hendess, founded and operate Sweet Digz Farm in Richmond, Canada, where they strive to implement sustainable farming methods to grow vegetables and herbs. Sweet Digz partners with other local farms to expand their market and operates a community supported agriculture (CSA) program. Sweet Digz also manages the SHAREit Forward Fund, an initiative which provides fresh produce to local neighbors in need.</p>21. TransGenerational Farm, New York City area
<p>Founded and operated by Jayne Henson, a transgender woman, the TransGenerational Farm near New York City is using agriculture to connect the LGBTQ+ community and educate them on the agri-food industry. The farm employs regenerative practices, like reusable landscape fabric, and operates a CSA program. TransGenerational Farm is currently in the process of establishing a <a href="https://www.gofundme.com/f/queer-csa-scholarship?utm_source=customer&utm_medium=copy_link&utm_campaign=p_cf%20share-flow-1&fbclid=IwAR1jX92SLO0HGUMZlVETAHKYK-XBytGy7_I9q0fOkOJD5N4rK6AljTmzJR8" target="_blank">CSA scholarship program</a> for individuals who want to join the CSA program, but are financially unable to do so.</p>22. Truelove Seeds, Philadelphia
<p>Truelove Seeds is a Philadelphia-based seed company that partners with over 20 urban and small-scale rural farms to produce rare, open pollinated, and culturally important seeds. Several staff members and growers Truelove works with identify as members of the LGBTQ+ community. Truelove Seeds aims to support community food sovereignty, Indigenous cultures, and regenerative agriculture by including growers as integral decision-makers for seed-keeping.</p>23. Urban Oasis Project, Miami
<p>The Urban Oasis Project works to increase access to local, fresh food in South Florida. The organization runs farmers markets, provides free Food Justice Veggie Boxes to families in need, plants gardens, and more. President Art Friedrich, who identifies as a queer man, told Food Tank that LGBTQ+ identity is important to his work; at times 40 percent of the stalls at their main farmers market are run by LGBTQ+ vendors, many of whom are also people of color.</p>24. Westside Urban Gardens, Los Angeles, California
Nate Looney, a Black transgender farmer and veteran, is the founder and CEO of Westside Urban Gardens, an urban agricultural start-up farm located in Los Angeles, California. Westside Urban Gardens helps members of the LGBTQ+ community by hiring them and teaching viable skills for future employment. Through the use of hydroponic cultivation and aquaponics, the farm uses approximately 90 percent less water than soil-based outdoor farms.Related Articles Around the Web
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Rattan Lal, distinguished university professor of soil science at The Ohio State University, speaks at an IFPRI policy seminar, "Economics of Land Degradation and Improvement," on Dec. 3, 2015. IFPRI / Milo Mitchell
The demands of feeding a planet rapidly careening toward 10 billion people, coupled with the environmental degradation that industry and development has caused, has left much of the world's soil depleted of nutrients. A professor who studies soil science and is looking to improve the dirt for farmers around the world has been awarded the 2020 World Food Prize for his work, as NPR reported.
<p><a href="https://senr.osu.edu/our-people/rattan-lal" target="_blank">Rattan Lal</a>, <a href="https://senr.osu.edu/our-people/rattan-lal" target="_blank">a professor of soil science</a> and the director of the Carbon Management and Sequestration Center at The Ohio State University, has pioneered <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/farming">farming</a> techniques that prevent soil from losing vital nutrients and even put nutrients back into soil, according to NPR. That work is incredibly important, since data from <a href="http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/357059/icode/" target="_blank">the Food and Agriculture Organization</a> of the United Nations show that about a third of the planet's soil is "moderately to highly degraded."</p><p>When the nutrients disappear, crop yields are lower and less healthy. That's troublesome for the growing demands placed on farmers.</p>
<p>As <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/06/22/880932230/soil-prof-hits-pay-dirt-250k-prize-for-helping-farmers-fighting-climate-change" target="_blank">NPR</a> reported. Lal believes sustainable <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/agriculture">agriculture</a> practices are the "win-win-win option" as the world struggles with the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/climate-crisis">climate crisis</a> and food insecurity. "My philosophy has always been that the health of soil, plants, animal, people, and the environment is one indivisible," Lal said.</p><p>In addition to improving soil, Lal's work showed how plants could pull carbon from the atmosphere and sequester it in the soil to prevent it from combining with oxygen and creating carbon dioxide, which adds more greenhouse gases to an already warming planet, according to <a href="https://www.thehawkeye.com/news/20200614/pioneer-of-research-on-sequestering-carbon-in-soil-is-this-years-world-food-prize-laureate" target="_blank">The Hawk Eye</a> in Iowa.</p>
<p>"This breakthrough research transformed the way the world saw soils," the World Food Prize Foundation, a Des Moines nonprofit that sponsors the annual $250,000 prize, said in its announcement of the prize.</p><p>"As a result, soils are now not only the foundation for increasing the quality and quantity of food and preserving natural ecosystems, but an important part of mitigating climate change, as well," the foundation said in its release.</p><p>The World Food Prize is often described as the Nobel for research in <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/food">food</a>, according to <a href="https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/rattan-lal-2020-world-food-prize-soil-scientist-6471435/" target="_blank">The Indian Express</a>. It was even created by Nobel prize laureate Norman Borlaug in 1987.</p>
<p>Lal is no stranger to prizes, nor to altruism. Last year, he was awarded $450,000 for the Japan Prize, which is issued by the Japanese government, for his work on soil. He gave all of the prize money to Ohio State's <a href="https://cfaes.osu.edu/" target="_blank">College of Food, Agricultural and Environmental Sciences</a>, as <a href="https://www.bizjournals.com/columbus/news/2019/04/22/ohio-state-just-got-a-half-million-dollar-gift.html" target="_blank">Columbus Business First</a> in Ohio reported.</p><p>Lal's work built upon the tenets that farmers already knew about maintaining and building healthy soil. His work that focused on restoring nutrients had the added bonus of removing carbon from the atmosphere, according to the <a href="https://www.toledoblade.com/opinion/editorials/2020/06/20/feeding-the-world-ohio-state-university-rattan-lal/stories/20200618008" target="_blank">Toledo Blade</a>.</p><p>"He's helping the Earth's estimated 500 million small farmers be faithful stewards of their land through improved management, less soil degradation, and the recycling of nutrients," said U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, as the <a href="https://www.toledoblade.com/opinion/editorials/2020/06/20/feeding-the-world-ohio-state-university-rattan-lal/stories/20200618008" target="_blank">Toledo Blade</a> reported. "The billions of people who depend on these farms stand to benefit greatly from his work."</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.kff.org/news-summary/usaid-acting-administrator-provides-statement-congratulating-winner-of-2020-world-food-prize/" target="_blank">Kaiser Foundation</a> reported that USAID Acting Administrator John Barsa said, "The global demand for food is growing faster than the world's population. Agriculture and food systems face the challenge of producing more while using less land and water. Dr. Lal's work has advanced our ability to grow more food while minimizing the environmental impact for agriculture — essential for sustainable solutions to end hunger and malnutrition."</p><p>Lal's adventurous career has taken him to posts in Australia and Nigeria. He has led soil restoration projects in Asia, Africa and Latin America, integrating no-till farming and use of cover crops, mulching and agroforestry to protect soil, conserve water and return nutrients, carbon and organic matter in the soil, according to <a href="https://www.livemint.com/news/india/world-food-prize-rattan-lal-man-who-took-inspiration-from-shastras-puranas-to-help-500-million-farmers-11591935428304.html" target="_blank">LiveMint</a>.</p><p>"[Lal] was really the first person to put soil science on the map," said Marco Ferroni of <a href="https://www.cgiar.org/how-we-work/governance/system-organization/system-management-board/smb-composition/" target="_blank">CGIAR</a>, a global agricultural research group, to <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/06/22/880932230/soil-prof-hits-pay-dirt-250k-prize-for-helping-farmers-fighting-climate-change" target="_blank">NPR</a>.</p>
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Land Loss Has Plagued Black America Since Emancipation, but Collective Ownership Offers a Solution
19 June
Insights + Opinion
Freed slaves harvest land for their own profit on the former plantation of Confederate General Thomas Drayton. ©Corbis / Getty Images
By Julian Agyeman and Kofi Boone
Underlying the recent unrest sweeping U.S. cities over police brutality is a fundamental inequity in wealth, land and power that has circumscribed black lives since the end of slavery in the U.S.
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<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/julian-agyeman-147077" target="_blank"><em>Julian Agyeman</em></a><em> is a Professor of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning, Tufts University.</em></p><p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/kofi-boone-1113883" target="_blank">Kofi Boone</a> is a Professor of Landscape Architecture, College of Design, North Carolina State University.</em></p><p><em>Disclosure statement: The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</em></p><p><em>Reposted with permission from The Conversation.</em><br/><span></span></p><iframe height="1" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/140514/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-advanced" width="1"></iframe>
<p>The "<a href="https://www.pbs.org/wnet/african-americans-many-rivers-to-cross/history/the-truth-behind-40-acres-and-a-mule/" target="_blank">40 acres and a mule</a>" promised to formerly enslaved Africans never came to pass. There was no redistribution of land, no reparations for the wealth extracted from stolen land by stolen labor.</p><p>June 19 is celebrated by black Americans as <a href="https://www.juneteenth.com/history.htm" target="_blank">Juneteenth</a>, marking the date in 1865 that former slaves were informed of their freedom, albeit two years after the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emancipation_Proclamation" target="_blank">Emancipation Proclamation</a>. Coming this year at a time of protest over the continued police killing of black people, it provides an opportunity to look back at how black Americans were deprived of land ownership and the economic power that it brings. An expanded concept of the "black commons" – based on shared economic, cultural and digital resources as well as land – could act as one means of redress. As professors in <a href="https://as.tufts.edu/uep/people/faculty/julian-agyeman" target="_blank">urban planning</a> and <a href="https://design.ncsu.edu/staff/kofi-boone-asla/" target="_blank">landscape architecture</a>, our research suggests that such a concept could be a part of undoing the racist legacy of chattel slavery by encouraging economic development and creating communal wealth.</p>
Land Grab
<p>The proportion of the United States under black ownership has actually shrunk over <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/06/19/why-racial-wealth-gap-persists-more-than-years-after-emancipation/" target="_blank">the last 100 years or so</a>.</p><p>At their peak in 1910, <a href="https://psmag.com/news/african-american-farmers-make-up-less-than-2-percent-of-all-us-farmers" target="_blank">African American farmers</a> made up around 14% of all U.S. farmers, owning <a href="https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/46984/19353_ra174h_1_.pdf?v=41056#:%7E:text=Land%20ownership%20by%20Black%20farmers,acres%20owned%20by%20White%20farmers." target="_blank">16 to 19 million acres of land</a>. By 2012, black Americans represented just 1.6% of the farming community, owning 3.6 million acres of land. Another study shows a <a href="https://thecounter.org/usda-black-farmers-discrimination-tom-vilsack-reparations-civil-rights/" target="_blank">98% decline</a> in black farmers between 1920 and 1997. This contrasts sharply with an <a href="https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/46984/19353_ra174h_1_.pdf?v=41056#:%7E:text=Land%20ownership%20by%20Black%20farmers,acres%20owned%20by%20White%20farmers." target="_blank">increase in acres owned by white farmers</a> over the same period.</p><p>In <a href="https://archive.org/details/timetoact1545usda" target="_blank">a 1998 report</a>, the U.S. Department of Agriculture ascribed this decline to a long and "well-documented" history of discrimination against black farmers, ranging from New Deal and USDA <a href="https://eji.org/news/one-million-black-families-have-lost-their-farms/" target="_blank">discriminatory practices</a> dating from the 1930s to 1950s-era exclusion from legal, title and loan resources.</p><p>Discriminatory practices have also affected who owns property as well as land. In 2017, the racial homeownership gap was <a href="https://www.urban.org/urban-wire/breaking-down-black-white-homeownership-gap" target="_blank">at its highest level for 50 years</a>, with 79.1% of white Americans owning a home compared to 41.8% of black Americans. This gap is even larger than it was when <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/redlining-what-is-history-mike-bloomberg-comments/" target="_blank">racist housing practices such as redlining</a>, which denied black residents mortgages to buy, or loans to renovate, property were legal.</p><p>The lack of ownership is crucial to understanding the crippling economic disparity that has <a href="https://prosperitynow.org/blog/black-and-latino-households-are-short-road-zero-wealth-hollowing-out-americas-historic-middle" target="_blank">hollowed out the black middle class</a> and continues to plague black America – making it harder to accrue wealth and pass it on to future generations.</p><p>A 2017 <a href="https://www.bostonfed.org/publications/one-time-pubs/color-of-wealth.aspx" target="_blank">report</a> found that the median net worth for non-immigrant black American households in the greater Boston region was just US $8, but for whites it was $247,500. This was due to "general housing and lending discrimination through restrictive covenants, redlining and other lending practices."</p><p>Nationally, between 1983 and 2013, median <a href="https://prosperitynow.org/resources/road-zero-wealth" target="_blank">black household wealth decreased</a> by 75% to $1,700 while median white household wealth increased 14% to $116,800.</p>Freedom Farms
<p>Land ownership today could look very different. The idea of collective ownership has a long history in the United States. Even during slavery, a piece of ground was granted by slave masters for enslaved African subsistence farming. The <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/sylvia-wynter" target="_blank">Jamaican social theorist Sylvia Wynter</a> called this land "the plot."</p><p><a href="https://www.aaihs.org/towards-usable-histories-of-the-black-commons/" target="_blank">Wynter has explained</a> how that these parcels of land were transformed into communal areas where slaves could establish their own social order, sustain traditional African folklore and foodways – growing yams, cassava and sweet potatoes. Plots were often called "<a href="https://english.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/DeLoughrey-Yam-Roots-Rot-Small-Axe.pdf" target="_blank">yam grounds</a>," so important was this staple food.</p><p>The connection between food, land, power and cultural survival was subversive in its nature. By appropriating physical space to support collective growing practices within the brutal constraints of slavery, black people also demonstrated the need for common, shared mental space to enable their survival and resistance. Herbalism, medicine and midwifery, and other African American <a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9780807853788/working-cures-/" target="_blank">healing practices</a> were seen as acts of resistance that were "intimately tied to religion and community," according to historian Sharla M. Fett.</p><p>With the end of slavery, these plots disappeared.</p><p>The principles of collective land ownership evolved in post-slavery black America. It was central to civil rights organizer Fannie Lou Hamer's <a href="https://snccdigital.org/events/fannie-lou-hamer-founds-freedom-farm-cooperative/" target="_blank">Freedom Farms</a>, a <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07409710.2017.1270647?journalCode=gfof20" target="_blank">cooperative model</a> designed to deliver economic justice to the poorest black farmers in the American South.</p><p>In Hamer's view, the fight for justice in the face of oppression required a measure of independence that could be achieved through owning land and providing resources for the community.</p><p>This idea of a black commons as a means of economic empowerment formed a focus of W.E.B. DuBois' 1907 "<a href="http://scua.library.umass.edu/digital/dubois/dubois12.pdf" target="_blank">Economic Co-operation Among Negro Americans</a>." DuBois believed that the extreme segregation of the Jim Crow era made it necessary to <a href="https://www.yesmagazine.org/economy/2015/10/07/dangerous-history-what-the-story-of-black-economic-development-means-for-us-today/" target="_blank">ground economic empowerment</a> in the cultural bonds between black people and that this could be achieved through cooperative ownership.</p>
Credit Unions and Co-Ops
<p>The accumulation of wealth was not the only desired consequence of a black commons.</p><p>In 1967, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/30/us/harold-cruse-social-critic-and-fervent-black-nationalist-dies-at-89.html" target="_blank">social critic Harold Cruse</a> argued for a "<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40034433?seq=1" target="_blank">new institutionalism</a>" that would create a "new dynamic synthesis of politics, economics, and culture." In his view, economic ventures needed to be grounded in the greater aspirations of black communities – politically, culturally and economically. This could be achieved through a black commons.</p><p>As the political economist <a href="https://www.jjay.cuny.edu/faculty/jessica-gordon-nembhard" target="_blank">Jessica Gordon Nembhard</a> <a href="http://www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-271-06216-7.html" target="_blank">has noted</a> in reference to black <a href="https://www.essence.com/news/bankblack-listing-black-owned-banks-credit-unions-united-states/" target="_blank">credit unions and mutual aid funds</a>, "African Americans, as well as other people of color and low-income people, have benefited greatly from cooperative ownership and democratic economic participation throughout the nation's history."</p><p>The nonprofit <a href="https://centerforneweconomics.org/" target="_blank">Schumacher Center for a New Economics</a> is working to rejuvenate the idea of black commons. In a 2018 statement, the <a href="https://centerforneweconomics.org/publications/proposal-for-a-black-commons/" target="_blank">center proposed to adopt a community land trust structure</a> "to serve as a national vehicle to amass purchased and gifted lands in a black commons with the specific purpose of facilitating low-cost access for black Americans hitherto without such access."</p><p>Meanwhile, shared equity housing schemes and <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-29/alternative-homeownership-land-trusts-and-co-ops" target="_blank">community land trusts</a> <a href="https://www.lincolninst.edu/publications/working-papers/tracking-growth-evaluating-performance-shared-equity-homeownership" target="_blank">continue to grow</a>, helping black families own property, <a href="https://housingmatters.urban.org/articles/how-community-land-trusts-can-advance-racial-and-economic-justice" target="_blank">advance racial and economic justice</a> and mitigate displacement resulting from gentrification.</p>Digital Commons
<p>The disproportionate effects of the <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/need-extra-precautions/racial-ethnic-minorities.html" target="_blank">coronavirus pandemic</a> and unrest over <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/police-violence-pandemic/2020/06/05/e1a2a1b0-a669-11ea-b619-3f9133bbb482_story.html" target="_blank">police brutality</a> have highlighted deeply embedded structural racism. Organizations such as Black Lives Matter and the <a href="https://m4bl.org/" target="_blank">Movement for Black Lives</a> are demonstrating a renewed vigor around collective action and a blueprint for how this can be achieved in a digital age. At the same time, black Americans are also forging a cultural commons through events such as DJ D-Nice's <a href="https://www.oprahmag.com/entertainment/a31860967/dj-dnice-instagram-dance-party-coronavirus-quarantine/" target="_blank">Club Quarantine</a> – a <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/adriennegibbs/2020/03/28/dj-d-nice-just-had-the-best-quarantine-week-ever/#2c57f81c47dc" target="_blank">hugely popular</a> online dance party. Club Quarantine's success indicates the potential for using online platforms to facilitate community building, pointing toward future economic cooperation.</p><p>That's what organizations like <a href="http://urbanpatch.org/" target="_blank">Urban Patch</a> are trying to do. The nonprofit group uses crowdsourced funding to build community spaces in inner city areas of Indianapolis and encourage collective economic development that echoes the black commons of years past.</p><p>The long history of racism in the United States has held back black Americans for generations. But the current soul searching over this legacy is also an unrivaled opportunity to look again at the idea of collective black action and ownership, using it to create a community and economy that goes beyond just ownership of land for wealth's sake.</p>From Your Site Articles
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Wine cultivation, typically associated with more southern slopes in France, Spain and Italy, is now taking off in places like Denmark, Sweden (pictured) and the United Kingdom. Jonathan Nackstrand / AFP / Getty Images
By Martin Kuebler
With hotter summers, severe storms and prolonged dry spells in the forecast, the outlook for Europe's farmers is daunting.
<p>Average annual temperatures are expected to increase anywhere from 1 to 5.5 degrees Celsius (1.5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit), with the strongest warming projected across the south of the continent in the summer months.</p><p><a href="https://www.eea.europa.eu/publications/cc-adaptation-agriculture" target="_blank">A September 2019 report by the European Environment Agency (EEA)</a> noted that heat stress, extreme weather events like flash floods and hailstorms, and water shortages have already changed growing conditions for several crops in Europe — especially for Mediterranean staples like olives and wine grapes.</p>
<div id="7b57a" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="a3140c63ff0a97771d0ad3f85329d728"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1174945780358008833" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">❓How concerned are you about the impact of #climatechange on #farming in #Europe? #Adaptation will be crucial - fin… https://t.co/XPkbPic6DY</div> — EU EnvironmentAgency (@EU EnvironmentAgency)<a href="https://twitter.com/EUEnvironment/statuses/1174945780358008833">1568963878.0</a></blockquote></div><p>Places in northern Europe, meanwhile, could see agricultural benefits from climate change, including longer growing seasons and a shorter frost period "allowing the cultivation of new crops and varieties," said the report. Suitable cropland around the Baltic Sea could more than double by 2100, from 32% of land area today to about 76%, with certain crops now common to southern Europe taking root further north.</p>
UK, Scandinavian Wines
<p>Those climatic changes have already borne fruit — quite literally. In the northern German state of Lower Saxony, where average temperatures have risen nearly 2 degrees Celsius in the last several decades, some farmers have started cultivating fruits typically found further south, such as apricots and nectarines. And wine cultivation, typically associated with more southern slopes in France, Spain and Italy, is now taking off in places like Denmark, Sweden and the United Kingdom.</p><p><a href="https://www.ryedalevineyards.co.uk/" target="_blank">Ryedale Vineyards</a>, in northeastern England, has been producing British wines since 2006. As one of the UK's northernmost wineries, it relies mainly on hybrid disease-resistant grape varieties more suited to northern Europe's cooler regions.</p><p>The warming trend of the past decades has seen the UK's wine industry quadruple in size since 2000, with English vineyards producing some 13.2 million bottles in 2018. But the changing climate does pose other challenges, including unusual weather patterns and increased risk of disease associated with wetter summers. which have been linked to climate change.</p><p>"Unpredictable weather events, droughts and intense summer storms are a real problem and seem to have increased in frequency," said Jon Fletcher, who runs Ryedale Vineyards with his family. In an email to DW, he listed off the challenges: late frosts, destructive hailstorms and dry spells that can last for months. "This year we have already had the sunniest May on record and no rainfall for two months, so the unpredictable weather continues."</p><p>"Climate change is posing a risk for the sustainability of vineyard management at global scale and, particularly, in Europe," said Josep Maria Sole of <a href="http://visca.eu/" target="_blank">VISCA (Vineyards Integrated Smart Climate Application)</a>, an EU-funded project that aims to help Europe's wine industry develop medium- and long-term adaption strategies. He said wine producing areas will increasingly suffer from intense heat waves and droughts and, in certain regions in Spain, more intense spring frosts, which can damage grapevine buds.</p><p>Blaz Kurnik, an expert on climate change impacts and adaptation at the EEA, said these higher temperatures, especially warmer winters, will also favor the introduction of new diseases and pests, including the olive fruit fly. Increasing swarms are threatening Europe's olive oil industry, responsible for around three-quarters of the world's supply. "In the worst-case scenario, up to 80% of [Italy's] olive trees will be affected by this every year," said Kurnik, adding that flies were also infesting Spain's olive groves.</p>Mango, Avocado and Lychee: Europe's Future Cash Crops?
<p>Italy, which ranks second in the world for olive oil production, saw a disastrous harvest in 2018. Bad weather and frost caused production to drop by 57%, representing a loss of nearly €1 billion ($1.13 billion).</p><p>Sicily is one of Italy's top olive oil-producing regions, along with Calabria and Puglia. But some farmers there have begun focusing their attention on crops native to tropical regions, including mangoes, avocado and lychee fruit. </p><p>Tropical crops were first introduced to Sicily back in the 1970s, but recent years have seen an exponential growth of these crops and the introduction of new species such as papaya, replacing citrus fruits which "are no longer remunerative," said Vittorio Farina, an associate professor in agriculture at the University of Palermo.</p><p>"The favorable climate of many areas in the Mediterranean basin is promoting tropical fruit cultivations," he said in an email to DW. "In fact, the predominant mango and avocado production is concentrated in tropical countries, but recently its cultivation has spread outside the traditional geographical regions to the Mediterranean basin and in particular in Egypt, Israel, South Africa, Europe, mainly Spain and Italy."</p><p>Farina said a succession of milder winters has favored the expansion of mango, avocado and papaya orchards destined for export markets further north, though the corresponding drier summers and extreme weather events remain a challenge.</p><p><span></span>"The problem of the scarcity of water resources for agriculture will increasingly impose the introduction of species with low water requirements," said Farina, suggesting the possible introduction of fruit like the cactus pear. "For most other tropical species, irrigation in the warm months in the dry areas is an essential condition for obtaining a quality product." Farina said they were testing precision irrigation strategies to limit the water footprint of the tropical crops.</p>Finding the Right Solution
<p>Margarita Ruiz-Ramos, an associate professor at the Polytechnic University of Madrid, told DW that new crops were also being tested in Spain, including pistachios. However, she stressed that the priority now was experimenting with different varieties of existing crops that could withstand new growing conditions — such as types of fruit that don't rely as heavily on winter chill to produce spring blossoms.</p><p>"There already is the possibility to adapt the variety without changing the [main] crop in the short to medium term," she said, pointing out that some crops could also shift to other more suitable areas within the same country.</p><p>As part of her work at the <a href="http://ceigram.upm.es/" target="_blank">Research Center for the Management of Agricultural and Environmental Risks</a>, Ruiz-Ramos analyzes crop varieties, planting schedules, soil conditions, irrigation options and many other variables to find the optimum strategy for farmers and "design locally tailored adaptations." The most promising solutions are then tested in the field.</p><p>"It's a compromise between different needs. And that's why it's not so obvious as to just bring in some African crops," she said. However, she didn't rule out the fact that dramatic temperature changes could one day lead growers to take a chance on non-native crops.</p><p>Yves Madre, a co-founder of <a href="https://www.farm-europe.eu/" target="_blank">Brussels-based think tank Farm Europe</a>, said the EU's farming sector needs to be more open to new breeding techniques that would introduce drought and disease-tolerance genes to existing crops, which can include genome editing.</p><p>With more innovation and investment, he said the EU would be able to meet its goals in terms of food security and growth, especially in rural areas.</p>From Your Site Articles
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How Proper Crop Protection Ensures Global Food Safety and Helps the Planet
11 June
Insights + Opinion
In recent decades, a wide variety of crop protection products have provided farmers with a set of carefully tailored tools for the production of safe and healthy crops. SBDIGIT / Getty Images
By J. Erik Fyrwald
World Food Safety Day earlier this week reminded us of a harsh reality: Roughly 600 million people around the world suffer from food-borne illnesses, while an estimated 3 million die from illnesses contracted from unsafe food or water.
<p>This annual toll touches every part of the world, though the worst impacts are felt in regions like sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, where there is less access to refrigeration and other modern food-preservation technologies. While major improvements have been achieved in some regions since the 1980s, the problem is still vast and urgent.</p><p>Dangers in food supply can occur at any stage of the farm-to-fork process. Many of these relate to food preparation, and every cook must take all available precautions to maintain a clean, safe kitchen. Less well known is what can be done to ensure food safety earlier in the process, beginning on the farms where it is produced.</p>
Agronomists Have an Outsized Role to Play
<p>In recent decades, thanks to successful research and development in the field of agronomy, a wide variety of crop protection products have provided farmers with a set of carefully tailored tools for the production of safe and healthy crops.</p><p>For example, <em><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusarium" target="_blank">Fusarium</a></em> is a common fungus that can produce deadly mycotoxins in wheat, corn and barley. Recently developed broad-spectrum fungicides are now being used to prevent the spread in these crops. These agents play an active role in protecting the health of consumers and avoiding waste in having to destroy the infected grains.</p><p>In the past, pesticides, herbicides and fungicides have themselves sometimes been viewed as threats to the safety of food and water.</p><p>But innovation in crop protection products has come a long way since Rachel Carson pointed out the risk they posed in her seminal 1962 book <em><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Spring" target="_blank">Silent Spring</a></em>. Today's crop protection agents are developed with both human health and the environment firmly in view.</p><p>Over the course of the last 60 years, these agents have become more targeted and more effective and they are applied much more sparingly. Since the 1950s, the agronomy sector has achieved a remarkable 95% decrease in the average application rate of active ingredients per hectare. At the same time, multiple innovations have led to crop yields from farmland more than tripling. These measures to make everyone's food safer have been reinforced with the <a href="http://www.fao.org/fao-who-codexalimentarius/en/" target="_blank">Codex Alimentarius</a>, the open, transparent system of international standards established in 1963 to protect consumer health and promote fair practice in the food trade.</p><img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzM4Njk3OC9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYyNjM2ODg2N30.Wigk1wmc9InvTYnqXGnDW7HagR0FawTu5XgtIoWFowk/img.png?width=980" id="f275d" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="39c3647487932b7e6e87918a22c28d5c" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
Crop-protection has been used more sparingly over recent decades. Source: Phillips McDougall, 2017
A Deep Respect for Health and the Environment
<p>As it happens, more than a few of today's crop protection products are obtained from natural sources or are so thoroughly tested by time that they are considered traditional practices. This means they are commonly found in use on farms that specialize in growing organic produce.</p><p>Those of us working in the field of agricultural science are well aware these advances are not always appreciated by people who wish insecticides and fungicides were not a part of the global food system. Viewed in a certain light, I agree with them. But I have seen first-hand the destruction wrought by pests and the impact of a failed crop on farmers and their families. The devastation inflicted by swarms of locusts this year in Africa and Asia is just one case in point.</p>Addressing the Challenge of Climate Change
<p>The need for effective crop protection products has steadily grown as rising global temperatures have expanded the range of many pests and blights. Just last summer in the Netherlands, a farmer told me he was seeing an insect in his fields he had never seen before.</p><p>Our team researched it and found the pest was well known in Brazil – <em><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuta_absoluta" target="_blank">Tuta absoluta</a></em> is a miner fly whose larvae make corridors in the leaves by eating the cells – and becoming a problem in northern climates as a result of warmer winters. One of our goals as an industry is to provide farmers with the safest and best means of keeping threats like these at bay.</p><p>When viewed at macroscopic scale, advances in agronomy clearly represent an important part of the solution to climate change. The latest crop protection products address climate change directly – by enabling farmers to produce more food per unit of land than ever before in the history of agriculture. This is critical if we hope to bring a halt to the expansion of human activity into regions such as the Amazon rainforest – a precious natural resource that serves a higher common purpose as a carbon sink and biodiversity preserve than as a cornfield.</p><p>Progress has been made on crop protection solutions that help feed humanity safely while protecting the environment, but we should all take a moment on this World Food Safety Day to strengthen our resolve. Even in the face of a global pandemic and myriad other challenges – we must keep moving forward in our efforts to safeguard people and the planet.</p>
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A recently published study found that Cuban rivers are cleaner than the Mississippi because of organic farming and conservation agriculture. Roberto Machado Noa / LightRocket / Getty Images
By Paul Bierman and Amanda H. Schmidt
For most of the past 60 years, the United States and Cuba have had very limited diplomatic ties. President Barack Obama started the process of normalizing U.S.-Cuba relations, but the Trump administration reversed this policy, sharply reducing interactions between the two countries.
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<em><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/paul-bierman-959411" target="_blank">Paul Bierman</a> is a </em><em>Professor of Geology and Natural Resources and Fellow of the Gund Institute for Environment, University of Vermont.</em>
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<em></em><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/amanda-h-schmidt-1028260" target="_blank">Amanda H. Schmidt</a> is an </em><em>Associate Professor of Geology, Oberlin College and Conservatory.</em>
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<em>Disclosure statement:<strong> </strong>Paul Bierman receives funding from the US National Science Foundation. </em><em>Amanda H. Schmidt receives funding from the National Science Foundation.</em>
</p><p><em>Reposted with permission from <a href="https://theconversation.com/cubas-clean-rivers-show-the-benefits-of-reducing-nutrient-pollution-131357" target="_blank">The Conversation</a>.</em></p><iframe height="1" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/131357/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-advanced" width="1"></iframe>
<p>Scientific cooperation is a bright spot in this difficult history. Since the 19th century, U.S. institutions like the Smithsonian and the National Academy of Sciences have <a href="https://www.scielosp.org/pdf/medicc/2018.v20n2/23-26/en" target="_blank">worked with Cuban counterparts</a> to understand topics such as vector-borne disease transmission. Although political friction has often made such partnerships challenging, many scientists on both sides believe their countries <a href="https://www.aaas.org/news/aaas-cuba-partnership-health-diplomacy-celebrated-us-release-medicc-review-special-edition" target="_blank">stand to gain</a> by tackling health and environmental challenges together.</p><p>We are geoscientists who study <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=nZ6d2zUAAAAJ&hl=en" target="_blank">how landscapes change</a> through processes such as <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=h3DEhtEAAAAJ&hl=en" target="_blank">erosion</a>. For the past two and a half years, we and our team of U.S. scientists have been working with Cuban geoscientists to understand the environmental and water quality effects of progressive agricultural policies in Cuba.</p><p>In a recently published study, we show that Cuban rivers are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1130/GSATG419A.1" target="_blank">cleaner than the mighty Mississippi</a>. Why? Because Cuban farmers practice organic farming and conservation agriculture to <a href="https://collections.elementascience.org/cubas-agrifood-system-in-transition/" target="_blank">reduce soil erosion and nutrient loss</a>. In sum, Cuba is doing a better job than the U.S. at keeping farming from hurting its rivers, and its results offer useful lessons.</p>
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A Test Case in Sustainable Farming
<p>Cuban rivers run from the mountains to the ocean through cow-filled pastures, fields of sugar cane and rice paddies, <a href="https://doi.org/10.5343/bms.2017.1026" target="_blank">forests, wetlands and mangroves</a>. Along the way, groundwater seeps into river channels from below. When heavy thunderstorms strike, water pours off the land.</p><p>These flows carry soil and dissolved material into streams, which deliver this load to the coast. Cuba's coastlines have abundant mangrove thickets, underwater seagrass beds and some of the Caribbean's <a href="https://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/cuba/cuba-s-coral-reefs" target="_blank">best-preserved coral reefs</a>.</p><p>We became interested in teaming with Cuban scientists because of their nation's country-wide experiment in organic agriculture dating back to the late 1980s. When the Soviet Union, Cuba's former trading partner, broke apart, Cuban farmers lost access to fertilizers, pesticides and heavy equipment, and had to <a href="https://theconversation.com/cubas-sustainable-agriculture-at-risk-in-u-s-thaw-56773" target="_blank">adopt a more ecologically based aproach</a>. Could their experience provide a blueprint for more sustainable approaches to feeding the world?</p><p>We used the <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/" target="_blank">ResearchGate</a> network to find Cuban collaborators. Supported by the <a href="http://nsf.gov/" target="_blank">U.S. National Science Foundation</a> and the <a href="https://www.ceac.cu/" target="_blank">Centro de Estudios Ambientales de Cienfuegos</a>, the research we are doing in Cuba builds on measurements we have done all over the world.</p>Less Fertilizer Runoff in Cuba
<p>For this study we analyzed water samples from each of 25 rivers in central Cuba, looking for elements from across the periodic table and for bacteria. Our <a href="https://doi.org/10.1130/GSATG419A.1" target="_blank">first results</a> show that Cuba's sustainable agricultural practices minimize the impact of agriculture on river water quality by reducing the amount of nitrogen fertilizer that washes off from fields into local waters.</p><p>Cuban farmers use about half as much fertilizer for each acre of farmland than their U.S. counterparts (3 versus 6 tons per square kilometer per year in 2016). As a result, rivers in central Cuba contain much lower concentrations of dissolved nitrogen than the Mississippi River, which drains <a href="https://www.nps.gov/miss/riverfacts.htm" target="_blank">more than 1 million square miles</a> of America's agricultural heartland. On average, the Cuban rivers we analyzed contained 0.76 milligrams of nitrogen per liter of water, compared to 1.3 milligrams per liter in the Mississippi River from 2012-2019.</p><p>American crop yields per acre are higher than Cuba's, thanks partly to fertilizer use, but the trade-off is stark. Nutrients that pour off U.S. farm fields and flow down the Mississippi River create the <a href="https://www.noaa.gov/media-release/noaa-forecasts-very-large-dead-zone-for-gulf-of-mexico" target="_blank">Gulf of Mexico dead zone</a>, a patch of ocean where oxygen levels are so low that almost no marine life survives. The dead zone forms every summer, fed by spring rainfall, and has covered an <a href="https://www.noaa.gov/media-release/large-dead-zone-measured-in-gulf-of-mexico" target="_blank">average of 6,000 square miles</a> in recent years.</p><p>Cuba's rivers do contain other pollutants. We found high levels of bacteria and sediment in most of the rivers we sampled. DNA analysis suggests that at least some of these bacteria were from the guts of cows. We saw many cows during our field work in central Cuba, and those animals had free access to local streams. Simple solutions, like fencing river banks, could greatly lower bacteria levels in surface waters.</p><p>We also found naturally high levels of calcium, sodium and magnesium in Cuban river water. These materials come from rocks that are naturally dissolved by rainwater. None of them are hazardous to humans, although they might leave scale in tea kettles and alter the water's taste.</p>Enabling More Scientific Cooperation
<p>Although we've done field work on Greenland's ice sheet and in rice paddies of southwest China, this work in Cuba has been a uniquely valuable experience for us, both professionally and personally. We found Cuban culture to be warm and welcoming, even to Americans whose leaders for the most part have shunned the Cuban people for decades.</p><p>Sharing and teamwork are key parts of Cuban culture. When we brought out American snacks during our first visit to Cuba, our collaborators insisted these gifts must be shared with the entire lab staff. In the tropical January sunshine, scientists, technicians, secretaries and directors gathered outside to eat Vermont maple candies and blueberry jam.</p><p>We view this project as <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.367.6483.1274" target="_blank">science diplomacy</a> in action. But our Cuban partners cannot visit us until the United States agrees to grant visas to Cuban scientists. The Trump administration is going in the opposite direction: It has <a href="https://www.state.gov/united-states-further-restricts-air-travel-to-cuba/" target="_blank">suspended commercial and public charter flights</a> to Cuba from the U.S. and imposed sanctions that are designed to <a href="https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/Programs/Documents/cuba_fact_sheet_20190906.pdf" target="_blank">deny Cuba access to hard currency</a>.</p><p>As the COVID-19 pandemic sweeps around the world, scientific cooperation is more important than ever. To us, it doesn't make sense to increase sanctions against a country that has more doctors per capita than any country on Earth and has <a href="https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-response-why-cuba-is-such-an-interesting-case-135749" target="_blank">responded more successfully than many nations</a> to COVID-19. We believe that science in the U.S. would gain from reopening communication with Cuba and sharing knowledge that could help heal the global community. </p>From Your Site Articles
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New Report Documents Global Insect Decline and Calls for Reforming Industrial Agriculture
10 June
Popular
The new report points to various studies documenting insect loss, including 2018 research finding 41% of insect species are in decline and that one-third of all insect species are threatened by extinction. Wikimedia Commons
By Andrea Germanos
A new report released Tuesday draws attention to the worldwide decline in insects and calls for global policies to boost the conservation of both agriculture and the six-footed creatures.
<p>The publication, entitled<a href="http://www.foeeurope.org/insect-atlas" target="_blank"> <em>Insect Atlas</em></a>, comes from two progressive networks: Brussels-based Friends of the Earth and Berlin-based Heinrich Böll Foundation.</p><p>"The global loss of insects is dramatic," Heinrich Böll Foundation president Barbara Unmüßig said in a statement.</p><p>The report points to various studies documenting that loss, including 2018 research finding 41% of insect species are in decline and that one-third of all insect species are threatened by extinction. The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) estimated that 10 percent of insect species are endangered, and another study cited in the new analysis found that at least one in 10 bee and butterfly species in Europe is threatened with extinction.</p><p>While there's no definitive count of the global loss of insects, <em>Insect Atlas</em> says the trend is unmistakable.</p>
<img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzM4MzIzNC9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYzNjEwMjQxOH0.EtO7AHP1ex1OAoQv5uEksP4WMI058toIbdDIVPU1t2k/img.png?width=980" id="95b6b" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="db5cb1fb7efc7f13f0b05dae18c0ee5c" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
Insect Atlas. Bartz / Stockmar, CC BY 4.0
<p>That decline has major impacts on food. </p><p>"Three-quarters of the world's most important crops exhibit a yield benefit from pollinators: they contribute directly to around one-third of global food production," says the report.</p><p>The methods used for that production have a huge impact on insects.</p><p>"Alongside climate change and light pollution, the spread and intensification of farming is by far the most important cause of the global decline in insect numbers," the report adds.</p><p>This type of farming is dependent upon expanding pasture—often at the expense of destroying Indigenous land and wild animal habitat—and prioritizes monocultures and therefore insect-killing pesticides, the use of which has steadily increased for the past nine decades, the economic profits of which are predominantly flowing towards just four entities: BASF, Bayer, Syngenta, and Corteva. From the publication:</p><blockquote>What is more, the number of chemical products in use around the world continues to increase. And, their negative effects on the insect world are also becoming more and more evident. This is not just because a growing number of chemicals are being applied; the formulations are also increasingly effective and can be used more selectively<br></blockquote><p>Even when some nations ban certain pesticides over concerns, the chemicals' adverse impacts don't disappear; they just change locations. </p><blockquote>The developed world is waking up to the risks associated with the use of pesticides. The situation is different in the developing world: chemicals that are banned in Europe and North America are still used routinely to control pests. Stricter controls are needed, along with better information for farmers.<br></blockquote>
<img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzM4MzIzOS9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTU5Nzk1MTk5Nn0.P07MnWFqGtf6saMwIqod_QQ-VPe1lueUv1LlTx8PZ1s/img.png?width=980" id="2eaa0" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="78dcbebf9c0f715d0d4e9bbb0e3573ee" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
Insect Atlas. Bartz / Stockmar, CC BY 4.0
<p>Dismantling industrial agriculture, says the report, is essential. "There is no alternative: to protect insects, farming must become part of the solution. Not just for the sake of society, but also for the sake of farming itself—because it, too, needs insects."</p><p>"The evidence is clear: pesticide use is wiping out insect populations and ecosystems around the world, and threatening food production," Mute Schimpf, food and farming campaigner at Friends of the Earth Europe, said in a statement. </p><p>"A handful of corporations control the bulk of pesticide supply, and if left unchecked will continue to use their immense political influence to lock in a system of industrial farming which will continue to wipe out nature and destroy rural communities," she continued.</p><p>One area of reform that would address deforestation and the resulting insect habitat losses is curbing meat consumption and therefore the huge swathes of land on which genetically modified animal feed is grown. "If the developed world were to consume less meat and if agricultural products were no longer used as fuel," says the report, "the pressure on the land areas could be reduced considerably."</p><p>Insect Atlas lays out a number of solutions for global policymakers to pursue. They include:</p><ul><li>Gradually reducing the use of synthetic pesticides by 80 percent in EU agriculture by 2030, starting from 2020 and phase out exports of pesticides banned in the EU;</li><li>Radically reforming the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), including the phasing out of harmful untargeted direct payments, setting aside at least 50% of the CAP budget for environmental, nature, and climate objectives and support farmers in the transition to agroecology;</li><li>Phasing out harmful farming methods like growing genetically modified plants or introducing a new generation of genetically modified insects;</li><li>Taking urgent actions to achieve the targets suggested in the European Farm to Fork and Biodiversity strategies to increase organic farming;</li><li>Reducing the production and consumption of industrial meat and other animal products and supporting plant-based options; and</li><li>Cutting the overall EU demand for agrocommodities in order to reduce global deforestation.</li></ul><p>Schimpf spoke about those solutions and the report on <em>Euronews</em> Tuesday:</p>
<div id="8fdf8" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="375c252c346fe9796c1409d1a05fb0eb"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1270286526702850050" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">What are the consequences for our food supply? "If we continue using pesticides so heavily, farmers will lose the… https://t.co/Kiz6VXe6Mc</div> — Friends of the Earth #BlackLivesMatter (@Friends of the Earth #BlackLivesMatter)<a href="https://twitter.com/foeeurope/statuses/1270286526702850050">1591694883.0</a></blockquote></div><p>Schimpf also drew renewed attention to the <a href="https://www.savebeesandfarmers.eu/eng" target="_blank">Save Bees and Farmers</a> European Citizens Initiative. It's centered on three key demands: a phase-out of the use of synthetic pesticides; measures to increase biodiversity; and support for farmers.</p><p>As of press time, the petition has over 355,000 signatures.</p>
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A worker at a flower farm in Kiambu County, Kenya, piles up roses to be dumped on March 24, 2020. Patrick Meinhardt / AFP / Getty Images
By Peyton Fleming
Gerison Ndwiga, a small rural farmer in Kenya, felt the economic sting of COVID-19 just days after the government announced a curfew and travel restrictions in late March.
<p>For Ndwiga, who grows vine ripe tomatoes and exotic French beans 75 miles north of the nation's capital, the pain was double: He couldn't transport his tomatoes to Nairobi and traders stopped exporting his beans to Europe.</p><p>Within days, he made a tough choice: he left more than 16,000 pounds of ripe beans in the ground unpicked – a loss he estimated at more than US$4,000. "I didn't pick anything because there were no flights in and out of Nairobi," Ndwiga said, noting that most Kenyans have no interest in buying his long skinny beans known as haricot verts.</p><p>COVID-19 is eating away at most sectors of the world's economy. But in Kenya, which has enjoyed a booming <a href="https://www.economist.com/special-report/2020/03/26/many-of-africas-economies-are-doing-well" target="_blank">trade relationship</a> with Europe in recent years, the global lockdown has hit small and large commercial farmers especially hard. Europeans are noticing this as favorite roses and passion fruits are hard to find in stores. Meanwhile, Kenyan producers are pivoting at jet speed to develop new markets closer to home, creating new revenue streams and new outlets for small farmers like Ndwiga trying to sell their crops.</p><p>"After decades of high dependency on exports, the opportunities for tapping local and regional markets are becoming clearer, especially as African economies and income levels grow," said Jane Ambuko, associate professor and Head of Horticulture at the University of Nairobi. "Exports aren't going away, but growing domestic markets opens new frontiers for trade while supporting our local populations, many of whom are small farmers."</p>
<p>Kenya's horticulture industry is a much-heralded success story. Fresh produce and flower exports that totaled $68 million in 1991 sprouted 20-fold to <a href="http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020-03/19/c_138892693.htm" target="_blank">$1.37 billion</a> by 2019, much of it from roses, avocados and French beans. Every day, dozens of airplanes filled with cut flowers, fresh fruits and vegetables take off from Nairobi, most of them heading to Europe. Three million Kenyans were directly involved in growing and processing those crops.</p><p>When Europe closed its borders and economy in March, the flights – and exporters' lifeline – snapped shut.</p><p>"The last two months have been really tough," said Frank Obure, general manager packhouses at AAA Growers Ltd., Kenya's third largest exporter which provides premium roses, fruits and vegetables all across Europe. Obure has wrestled with worker layoffs, cancelled deliveries, rotting crops, safety protocols and devastating rains. "I've never been through an experience like this before."</p><p>How bad has it been? Before the pandemic, AAA Growers was exporting 1.4 million flowers every week. When Holland's vast flower markets were shuttered, shipments dropped to virtually zero. Millions of roses that should have been adorning homes across Europe on Easter Sunday were wilting instead at two flower farms near Mount Kenya.</p>
<p>"We're harvesting and throwing, harvesting and throwing. Upwards of 250,000 stems a day are going into the bin," Obure said, estimating overall flower losses at 70 to 80 percent.</p><p>Fruit and vegetable exports have also been hurt, although not as badly since some fresh produce can be redirected to local markets – at substantially marked down prices.</p><p>All told, with produce exports down by 70 to 75 percent, Kenya's horticulture industry is losing about EU $3 million a day, according to Industry trade group <a href="https://www.coleacp.org/?lang=en" target="_blank">COLEACP</a>. But that figure does not account for thousands of small growers like Ndwiga who have been largely cut off from export markets and Nairobi's informal urban markets due to travel bans. </p><p>Due to paperwork limitations, Ndwiga, who owns 10 acres, says he can only get into Nairobi once every two weeks to sell his tomatoes in informal markets. "I'm selling many of my tomatoes locally at village prices because they're getting overripe." he said, noting that prices are half what he'd fetch in Nairobi.</p><p>Ndwiga's predicament is common, say local industry experts<strong>.</strong> "For bigger companies whose trucks are registered, they don't have problems moving produce into Nairobi, but the small farmers who don't have the necessary paperwork, they're the ones who are suffering the most," said Emmanuel Oriedo, a food and farming system consultant who works with small farmers.</p>
Uncertainty and Hope
<p>To be sure, the situation has improved the past few weeks, particularly as flight restrictions to Europe are loosening a bit and more passenger planes are being converted to carry cargo. But major obstacles remain, including in-country transport bottlenecks and prohibitively high air freight costs. Shipping costs to Europe are averaging $2.80 to $4 per kilogram, more than double previous rates.</p><p>Companies are not sitting and waiting. AAA Growers is scrambling to sell more produce locally through popular Nairobi retailers like Carrefour, Quick Mart and KFC. The company's 'sell-local' efforts began last year, and it gained urgency when COVID-19 hit. Local sales now total 12 to 15 tons a week. </p><p>TwigaFoods, which sells all of its fresh produce within Kenya, responded to COVID-19 with a new e-commerce push. In late April, it launched a <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/28/goldman-backed-ventures-jumia-and-twiga-partner-on-produce-in-kenya/" target="_blank">partnership</a> with e-commerce company Jumia to deliver bundles of fruits and vegetables directly to people's homes. The effort is aimed at affluent Nairobi customers who want to avoid buying at more expensive supermarkets.</p><p>"We'd been thinking about the idea and we were starting to see more home deliveries (due to COVID-19)," said TwigaFoods CEO Peter Njongo. "For now, it's something we'll do in Kenya. We'll see how it works."</p>From Your Site Articles
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A field of organic lettuce grows at a sustainable farm in California. thinkreaction / Getty Images
When the coronavirus pandemic hit, the future of the Cannard Family Farm—whose organic vegetables supplied a single Berkeley restaurant—was looking stark.
<p>Ross Cannard is the son of an iconic leader in the local organic movement in California. "Iconoclastic," Ross says with a chuckle. Bob Cannard built his 30-year career by rejecting organic certification in favor of his own "better than organic" breed of "natural process agriculture," enriching the soil on his Green String Farm with crushed rock and compost.</p><p>He and his son have long sold the fruits of their labor to the famous restaurant Chez Panisse, where, since 1971, chef Alice Waters has pioneered an elegant cuisine based entirely on fresh, local foods straight from the farm.</p><p>But in March, the stay-at-home order hit, and the restaurant closed.</p><p>"You're a farmer. Plants are already in the ground," says Evan Wiig, director of membership and communications for the Community Alliance with Family Farmers. "You make plans months and months in advance. You can't just turn on a dime."</p>
<p>Waters was worried about the vulnerable situation her workers and producers were finding themselves in. She rushed to establish a subscription CSA, which stands for community supported agriculture, offering weekly food boxes that could be picked up at the shuttered restaurant, filled with goodies from her regular producers like Cannard.</p><p>"I'm trying to connect our network with the people who would like to have that food in their home," she said on Michael Dimock's podcast, <a href="https://www.rootsofchange.org/flippingthetablepodcast/available-episodes/" target="_blank">Flipping the Table</a>, on March 26. "We can sort of skip the restaurant for now. … We could help people do the cooking in their own kitchen."</p><p>Cannard augments that market with his own local CSA, setting up a farm stand in the parking lot of Baker & Cook, a café in nearby Boyes Hot Springs, now serving only takeout. Along with produce, Cannard has his olive oil available, as well as wine from a friend's vineyard, and flowers from another local farm. Friends and neighbors are among his 100 or so customers.</p><p>This CSA model, where buyers invest in a farm's annual production upfront in exchange for a regular share of the harvest, is built on long-term relationships between farmers and consumers. It's those relationships, farmers say, springing from the fertile soil of Sonoma County, that are making survival possible. New local grassroots networks and nimbler digital marketplaces, too, are popping up to provide critical lifelines. And despite the strange, isolating atmosphere created by the coronavirus, the region is now bursting with spring growth.</p>
Building Food Communities
<p>Family farms in California and across the country have been hit hard by the impact of the coronavirus on their markets. But in the health-conscious Bay Area, where celery was already one of the first groceries to disappear from the produce rack, demand for fresh local produce has shot up. The challenge is in redirecting food from farms to new customers.</p><p>Sonoma County has historically been an agricultural region. When the organic food movement sprang up in the 1970s, this area was one of its early proponents. The first farmers markets and CSAs appeared in the 1980s and flourished, but the burgeoning network was later eclipsed by an inflated wine industry, much of it owned by distant corporations.</p><p>According to a 2018 crop report, 60,000 acres have gone to grapes, with only 500 acres in food crops. Land prices have skyrocketed, the cost of labor has gone up, and increased regulations have all made it harder to run a viable business here. Many farmers had turned to "boutique" specialty crops for restaurants.</p><p>"Farmers are always in an uphill battle, especially ecological farmers," says Wiig of the Community Alliance with Family Farmers. "I often hear them say, 'I'm working my butt off and hoping for the best.'" That's even more true now, as the pandemic strangles economies the world over.</p><p>For farms with existing CSAs, Wiig says, this is a really good time. "In the beginning of March, most CSAs were struggling to fill boxes. Now some now have waiting lists, some in the 100s."</p><p>But for those who didn't have CSAs established, Wiig says, this is a really tough time. "We've been able to keep farm markets open as essential businesses, but crowds have decreased with people afraid to go out, and sales are down."</p><p>Community Alliance was quick to jump in, becoming a "matchmaker" for producers and buyers on its website. They're also providing all kinds of information for farmers about how to start and run a CSA, including useful software, relevant legislation, available funding sources, and a series of four webinars showcasing successful farms.</p><p>Farm Trails, a local nonprofit with 250 farmer members, also leapt into the fray. The organization has been building relationships between farmers and consumers for 47 years by organizing farm visits and hosting educational events. Two days after the shelter-in-place shut down regular sales outlets, Farm Trails had put up a new page on its website and invited its members to post their offerings.<span></span></p><p>"We know our farmers well," executive director Carmen Snyder says. "We did outreach to them to see what they had. Spirit Works had plenty of alcohol, so they started making lavender sanitizer, giving it away to first responders and health care workers, and selling the rest at the local hardware store."</p><p>In the online marketplace's first two days, web traffic on Farm Trails' site went up 1000%.</p><p>"Many people have been on the fence about CSAs," says Sonya Perrotti, who runs the 1-acre Coyote Family Farm in Penngrove. "This was the push." While she has always sold most of her produce in a CSA, Perrotti benefited from the new digital marketplace. She has now sold out of her 100 shares and plans to expand.</p>
Scaling Up Support
<p>F.E.E.D. Sonoma, a food hub that aggregates produce from dozens of local farms, was another quick responder. When the pandemic hit, it went from serving Bay Area restaurants to building a cooperative of farmers, filling food boxes for distribution at F.E.E.D.'s Petaluma warehouse and other drop spots in the county.</p><p>"Our local food system is extremely diverse," says co-founder Tim Page, who has the energy of a visionary combined with the skills of a businessman. "We have a ton of small farms but we don't have the infrastructure to support them. That is what F.E.E.D. is trying to establish." Since converting the restaurant supply business to a CSA, it has gone from 90 boxes to 450. Ultimately, the goal is 1,800 or more.</p><p>"I grew up in L.A.," Page says. "Every single farm is gone. The same thing will happen here if the general public does not understand the importance of it.</p><p>"That understanding was on display at the Sonoma Farmers Market, which now operates with strict restrictions and safety precautions because of the virus. "We think F.E.E.D. is going to save us," said Candy Wirtz, co-director of Paul's Produce, a well-established farm in Sonoma, as she weighed out my purchases. The CSA model could be transformative for Paul's and other farms across the country.</p><p>Subscribing to a CSA is a lifestyle change for consumers, to be sure. It means eating what's in season and learning to cook unfamiliar vegetables. But it's a change that many people are making now because of the stay-at-home orders. "People just have to learn to cook again instead of eating out," says Judith Redmond, part-owner of Full Belly Farm near Sacramento.</p><p>In light of this newfound commitment to CSAs, Perrotti, of Coyote Family Farm, says: "My hope is that this solidifies instead of going back to the way things were. I hope the importance of local farming stays at the forefront."</p>Farms With Futures
<p>To help small farmers stay in business during the crisis, Community Alliance is also advocating for stimulus dollars. "Most often subsidies go to a small number of the largest farms, or to buy food that goes to food banks from far away, while local farmers can't sell their food," Wiig says. "We want food banks to buy from local farms."</p><p>This seems like a win-win. Millions of tons of food is being plowed under as 60 million people are now going hungry, 17 million of them since the pandemic began, according to Feeding America, the national network of food banks.</p><p>But it's complicated. David Goodman of the Redwood Empire Food Bank puts it plainly: Local food is too expensive. "We distribute nine and a half million pounds of produce annually," he says. "It costs about 9 cents a pound, 3 cents to transport. With 82,000 people to feed, it would be a luxury to think of tending to local needs by buying locally."</p><p>That reticence is partly because the food bank system is tangled in bureaucracy. The USDA decides what to purchase and from where. Because of the distances between sites, the federal agency has tended to favor foods with long shelf lives, such as canned and processed foods, and long-lasting produce like apples and potatoes. "If local food is what we need, there has to be a plan," Goodman says.</p><p>Such a plan might be where short-term disaster relief meets long-term resilience. Michael Dimock is president of Roots of Change, a nonprofit organization that advocates for transforming California's food system. To get serious about preparing the food system for future disasters, Dimock says, the government needs to be involved. Roots of Change is now advocating for a tax on sugary beverages to help foot the bill.</p><p>Dimock says the state needs a paradigm shift for farms to remain viable in the face of multiplying disasters to come—not only pandemics, but fires, floods, and other symptoms of climate change. "How bold will people get in the months ahead to demand real change? My hope is they will get more radical."</p><p>Food is fundamental. While farmers have yet to face the full economic impact of this pandemic, their collaborative efforts, along with local grassroots networks, could mark the beginning of a new economy laboring to be born.</p>
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