Naomi Starkman | Civil Eats

Soil Health Is Human Health

Naomi Starkman — Thu, 01 Dec 2022 09:00:39 +0000

A version of this interview originally appeared in The Deep Dish, our award-winning newsletter for Civil Eats supporters. Become a member today and get the next issue in your inbox!

In their new book, What Your Food Ate: How to Restore Our Land and Reclaim Our Health, geologist David R. Montgomery and biologist Anne Biklé make a compelling argument that regenerative farming practices result in healthier soil and higher nutrient density in food.

In the book, the husband-and-wife team share the results of their own extensive research and the existing literature on soil health. Conventional farming practices, including tillage and commercial fertilizers, disrupt the necessary, healthy symbiosis between plants and the soil, they write, noting, “We traded away quality in pursuit of quantity as modernized farming chased higher yields, overlooking a farmer’s natural allies in the soil.”

We spoke with them recently about the nutrients that set food grown with regenerative practices apart, and why they believe those practices, including the no-till method’s greater capacity for holding water and preventing soil erosion, could be a key solution to drought in the West.

Fifteen years ago, when you wrote Dirt, there were very few people talking about soil health or about changing farming practices. How have things changed in that time?

David Montgomery: I’m impressed by how things have changed over the last 15 years. It has been very interesting to see the growing interest, not just among people who are interested in reforming the food system, but among farmers looking to farm better and to be more profitable. And there are all kinds of interests that have come together in the last 15 years that give me a lot of hope for continued momentum.

Anne Biklé: Farmers are definitely beginning to change their practices. Initially, a lot of the no-till movement was among conventional farmers. And I’m heartened to see that it has also crept out into the organic world. It’s really important that all farmers are seeing that the less we physically or chemically disrupt the soil, the better off the health of that soil is and then that can ripple out through their operations and pocketbooks. I hope that continues to catch on. I don’t think we’ve run into anybody who said, “I’m against soil health.”

Montgomery: There has been a lot of interest from farmers, consumers, and even companies, in terms of thinking about how they want to position themselves in the marketplace. We’ve spent a lot of time in the last 100 years worrying about growing enough food to feed everybody—and that’s a legitimate concern. But we took our eye off the ball collectively about the way that farming practices influenced the quality of food. It’s heartening to see a growing interest in that because I think we firmly believe we can harvest an abundance of very nutritious food to nourish the world. And if we can set our sights on that, as farmers, as consumers, as companies, and as governments, that can really help reform and change agriculture over the next few decades. Soil health is being talked about at COP 27, and there’s talk about support for regenerative agriculture in the farm bill. People are starting to pay attention.

“We’ve spent a lot of time in the last 100 years worrying about growing enough food to feed everybody. . . . But we took our eye off the ball collectively about the way that farming practices influenced the quality of food.”

You note that how we treat the soil affects how many important compounds are getting into our food supply. Can you say more about that?

Montgomery: We found that there are very clear effects on mineral micronutrients, phytochemicals, and the fat profile of meat and dairy, all of which have been connected to impacts on human health, not just in terms of how we survive, but whether we thrive. We can investigate the medical literature for what they do for us, but you have to look into the botanical and microbiology literature to understand why and how plants take up minerals in the first place. They’re not taking minerals from the soil so that we can be healthy; they’re doing it for their own purposes.

And the way that we farm influences how they’re able to do that. For example, getting atoms of the element zinc out of soil particles and into crops is mediated through partnerships with soil life. And the big player in those partnerships are mycorrhizal fungi, which facilitate the mineral uptake of crops. And there’s very clear literature that shows that plowing and the overuse of synthetic nitrogen fertilizers really impact how well plants are able to take up mineral micronutrients.

You ran an experiment where you looked at 10 regenerative farms that had converted worn-out soil over the course of a decade or two, and you paired those farms with adjacent conventional farms where regenerative practices had not been used over the same time period. In order to give us an idea of the difference in soil health, can you share the story of the wheat farmer who treated adjacent fields differently?

Montgomery: We had the opportunity to conduct two fairly limited but interesting and illustrative experiments. The first one was an informal experiment done by a wheat farmer in northern Oregon who was very interested in whether or not he could grow comparable wheat yields using cover crops and no-till instead of the glyphosate [the herbicide found in Roundup] fallow rotation typically used in his area. He was looking to see: Could he harvest about the same amount, or would the harvest go down?

He found that after two years, his yields were very comparable, and he offered us the opportunity to test the wheat. What we found is that most of the nutrients were higher in the more regeneratively grown crop. The biggest difference was zinc; it was more than 50 percent higher in the regeneratively grown crop. Zinc deficiency is a major micronutrient problem around the world, because we’ve bred modern varieties of wheat, to have high yields in nitrogen-rich environments, but that compromises their ability to partner with mycorrhizal fungi. So, they don’t take up as much zinc, and it doesn’t get into people who eat the wheat.

We hypothesized that the big difference we saw in this one example was due to changes in soil life, and we then went on to do a 10-farm comparison across the U.S. What we found was that, on average, the regenerative farms had about twice as much carbon in their topsoil, and their soil health scores were three times those of the conventional farms.

In terms of what was in their food, the biggest differences we saw were in phytochemicals and in certain vitamins. The phytochemicals were, on average, 20 to 25 percent higher, and certain vitamins were 14 to 35 percent higher on regenerative farms. In terms of minerals, it was all over the map given the geological variability of the continental U.S.

Biklé: One of the interesting things about this research—and something that I hope readers and eaters will think about more—is about things coming literally out of the soil. One of the chapters in the book is called “Rocks Become You,” because we’re trying to get the point across that rocks may be dead, but they are the source for all of these minerals: zinc, calcium, magnesium.

One part of the puzzle is plant health and plant nutrition. But it’s the biological interactions between a crop and its microbiome that is biologically mediated and the engine and the driver on the phytochemicals. And then we’ve got the soil health score, which is a reflection of biological activity. And that, in combination with purely sucking stuff up out of the soil, is the relationship between soil health, plant health, animal health, and human health. It’s all got to be intact and functioning.

I’d really like it if people thought about soil health and asked about its biological integrity, like: What level is that at? Is it low, and sort of limping along with crutches? Or have we got fully functioning robust relationships happening there?

What about the fact many of the current efforts to improve soil regeneratively in the West are being stymied by historic drought?

Biklé: A lot of soils in the West are not in good shape. There’s huge room for improvement there. Because when we start getting more life in the soil, more plants in the soil, you start to retain that No. 1 gold out in the West, which is water. The writing on the wall for drought in the West has been there for a long time. And now it’s really time to respond.

I think that if we can get agricultural regions and soils in better shape, then we’re going to be able to hang on to what water does fall. And that is going to be key—especially in California, the fruit and vegetable breadbasket of our country. And if we don’t get soil turned around in that state, it’s not going to be a good picture at all.

“When we start getting more life in the soil, more plants in the soil, you start to retain that number-one gold out in the West, which is water. . . . If we can get agricultural regions and soils in better shape, then we’re going to be able to hang on to what water does fall.”

Montgomery: The more soil organic matter you have, the higher the water-holding capacity of the soil. And the more water that falls as rain onto a field, it will sink into the ground where it could get to a plant root where a farmer wants it to end up rather than running off over the surface carrying away topsoil, fertilizer, and seeds.

That’s one of the real myths around tillage; a lot of people think that if you till the soil and you break it up, you’ll let more water sink into the ground, but the reality is that by pulverizing the soil surface, you basically create a crust. And then when that next drop of rain hits that crust, it runs off over the surface. The more life you have in the soil, the more [natural] holes that makes in the soil, and the more holes there are in the soil, the more water sinks into it.

If we want to make our farms more resilient to droughts, we would go whole hog into soil-building practices that enable the land to absorb and hold more of whatever water it gets, because the farmer can’t change the rain, but they can change their soil.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The post Soil Health Is Human Health appeared first on Civil Eats.

‘Slow Cooked’: How Food Policy Expert Marion Nestle Persisted

Naomi Starkman — Wed, 21 Sep 2022 08:00:26 +0000

For nearly half a century, Marion Nestle has been teaching and writing about the politics of what we eat. The author of 14 books, her latest, Slow Cooked: An Unexpected Life in Food Politics, is a memoir—and a decidedly personal story of becoming the individual experts have called “one of the nation’s smartest and most influential authorities on nutrition and food policy,” the “leading guide in intelligent, unbiased, independent advice on eating,” and “America’s foremost nutrition warrior.” (My favorite: “food visionary badass.”)

In the book, Nestle recounts a challenging childhood crisscrossing the country and then quitting college to get married at 19. Ten years later, divorced with two children, she decided to resume her studies. She later became a professor in biology and nutrition science at U.C. San Francisco, served as a senior nutrition policy adviser for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and became the chair of the Department of Home Economics and Nutrition at New York University (NYU) in 1988. But it was her 2002 book, Food Politics, that marked a turning point in her life, when she was 66.

Nestle writes, “I knew early on that I loved food and wanted to study it. I wish I had been able to pursue this goal right from the start. Instead, I did what I could manage at the time between raising kids and following my husband[s] decisions, I tried to make the best of my circumstances.” Until she was hired by NYU, she recalls, “I had never thought about what kind of work I might want to do if I had choices.” Once she did have the opportunity to blaze a career trail as a critical analyst of the food industry, however, she did so with gusto.

Civil Eats spoke to Nestle (who also sits on Civil Eats’ advisory board) the day before her 86th birthday about her impressive career in food politics and nutrition science, her experiences influencing nutrition policy behind the scenes, and how she overcame the barriers and biases facing the women of her generation to find her life’s purpose after 50.

You write about so many obstacles and challenges, both as a woman, but also within the bureaucracies you faced. How you were able to manage so many instances of blatant discrimination?

Marion Nestle in the lab, photographed for the Brandeis course catalog. (Photo credit: Jessie YuChen)

It just never occurred to me that there was anything personal about the discrimination that I faced. I assumed that it was normal. Women didn’t have options; you were expected to get married and have children and do that as quickly as possible. If you worked at all, it was to support your husband’s career. I had no role models. I didn’t know any women who lived on their own. I was trying desperately hard to socially conform. And then I got married after my sophomore year in college. I look back on it and it doesn’t seem like it was the brightest thing to do. Although I have two lovely children as a result, that’s what everybody did.

I have no memory from those years of anybody saying, “You really ought to try to do more, and you can do more,” until I was advised to go to graduate school by a friend who said, “You’ve got to just do this.” And then I went to graduate school in molecular biology because I knew I could get a job and, even then, I faced so many obstacles.

Your recollection of the politics of the 1988 Surgeon General’s Report on Nutrition and Health, and your involvement with it, was fascinating. The report focused on reducing people’s intake of fat, which became a major emphasis for food companies to manipulate ingredients and food products—i.e., the SnackWell effect, which resulted in a whole array of nonfat foods that were loaded with sugars.

Well, I really believed in the report. It was designed to settle the science—to the extent that the science could be settled—and provide advice for people about what was healthy to eat. And it came out of an office that had a lot of experience with big reports.

I had just written a book about everything medical students needed to know about nutrition, so I was the perfect person to bring in for this report. On the first day, I was told that no matter what the research showed, the report could never say eat less of any American food product, because whoever made that food product, particularly the meat industry, would bring in the Department of Agriculture, and they would stop the report from ever being published. And they weren’t joking. This was not paranoia, it was reality.

Nestle at the Surgeon General’s Report press conference, 1988. (Photo credit: Michael Jacobson)

I spent probably a third of the time trying to manage an Undersecretary at the Department of Agriculture, who was on my case all the time about what that report was going to say about meat. They were going to use saturated fat as a euphemism for meat, and the meat industry could live with that because nobody understands what saturated fat is. It was a very difficult experience. And I just kept persisting—it was one of those “she persisted” experiences. I did most of the writing of that report, endless rewriting of other people’s work. And somehow, in the end, I got away with it, except for the executive summary, which was the one part that still makes me cringe. I didn’t have anything to do with that.

Let’s talk about the 1991 USDA food pyramid. You were involved in many behind-the-scenes machinations. At one point, you write that you felt like “Bob Woodward talking to Deep Throat.”

In 1991, the Department of Agriculture released a new food guide pyramid which had been under research for 12 years. It was totally finished and ready to be printed. And then somebody wrote an article about it in The Washington Post and said that it was going to have meat at the top, in the part of the pyramid that you’re supposed to eat less of. And that was a radical new approach for the Department of Agriculture. The article came out on the Saturday when the cattle National Cattlemen Association was meeting in Washington. They read the article and scheduled a meeting with the brand-new Secretary of Agriculture on the following Monday, and said, “You can’t do that.” And that new Secretary didn’t know anything about the history of it. So, he just said, “Oh, this hadn’t been tested on low-income women and children.” And he withdrew it saying that was the reason.

“I was told that no matter what the research showed, the report could never say eat less of any American food product, because whoever made that food product, particularly the meat industry, would bring in the Department of Agriculture, and they would stop the report from ever being published.”

I was interviewed by the Post, and said something like, “Once again, the cattlemen are exercising their muscle and interfering with dietary guidance policy.” And I got a call that very night from someone I knew at the Department of Agriculture, who said, “I have documents that will prove that the Secretary of Agriculture is lying [about why it was withdrawn]. We’re not allowed to talk to the press. Do you think you could get these documents to the press?”

And I could do that pretty easily. So, pretty soon, all this stuff started arriving in plain brown, unmarked envelopes, posted from hotels and completely neutral places. And I called Marian Burros at The New York Times and said, “You want to see this stuff?” She said, “Do I ever.” And she started writing about it, and then everybody else started writing about it. I eventually put together a press kit of the relevant documents, the Xerox copies of the original pyramid that was withdrawn, other things that showed that everything had gone through clearances, had been researched and focus group tested it, that it had in fact been completely cleared through every level of the Department of Agriculture.

Eventually, Marian got somebody to tell her enough so that she pieced together what the Department of Agriculture was planning to do, she published it, and that forced their hand. A year later, they released the pyramid that was much the same as the original except for a few details meant to appease critics in the meat industry. And it lasted until the 2010 My Plate [guidelines], which replaced it.

I always thought it was a really good design. And it had been researched much more heavily than any other food guide that I’m aware of. My Plate was not researched at all, as far as I know. Or if it was researched, [that research] was never published.

How did you expand on the existing curriculum at NYU when you started the food studies program in 1996? You write, “We knew we were breaking new ground with food studies but we had no idea we would be starting a movement.”

That was a big high point. We went from the concept to the actual program in less than a year. I spent the whole first year trying to explain what food studies was, with this completely blank look on people’s faces. I remember talking to the provost at NYU one night at dinner, and I tried to explain that food is a business that brings in trillions of dollars a year. Everybody eats. It’s enormously influential in people’s health. It affects climate change. It’s related to agriculture, to farm bills, to government, to lobbying, to politics, to sociology, to anthropology, and anything you could think of. I’d waited all my life for this program.

“Food is a business that brings in trillions of dollars a year. Everybody eats. It’s enormously influential in people’s health. It’s related to agriculture, to to government, to anthropology, to anything you could think of. I’d waited all my life for this program.”

There was a program in gastronomy at Boston University at the time. And there was an anthropology program at the University of Pennsylvania in food. Now, I don’t think you can go to a university in the United States, or in most countries in the world, and not find courses about food in society, food and culture, food and climate change. I mean, they’re everywhere. There are whole schools and universities devoted to it. At this point, there are more than 60 listed on the society websites that deal with this. There are journals, series of books and encyclopedias, and everybody’s writing about food. I say bring it on!

How did writing Food Politics change your life?

I had three goals in writing it. I never wanted to go to another meeting about childhood obesity and hear people talk about how we have to teach mothers how to feed their kids better. I wanted to hear people say, “How are we going to stop food companies from marketing junk foods to our kids?” At the time, the American Dietetic Association published handouts on specific food topics that were sponsored by food companies with a vested interest in what those handouts said, and I also wanted the Dietetic Association to stop doing that. I mean, they had Monsanto paying for a handout on genetically modified foods and artificial sweetener companies doing handouts on artificial sweeteners and sugar companies doing handouts on sugar. I just thought that didn’t work. And I wanted better speaking invitations.

You have to be careful what you ask for, because I eventually I got all of those things. I mean, certainly the idea that food companies are marketing to kids is common knowledge now and everybody knows it and is worrying about it. And the Dietetic Association eventually stopped doing those things. And oh, my goodness, did I get better speaking invitations, I mean, more than I could possibly handle. It put me in a position of being able to do more writing, which I love.

You love to write books, research, and talk to people. But this is a very personal book. How are you feeling about talking about yourself?

I grew up in the 1950s and yet I have tried very hard to stay current and move with the changes. And the changes have been enormous. The things I cared about at the beginning of my career are things I still care about very deeply. I want everybody to have access to healthy, affordable diets that are sustainable. I want to stop the food industry from trying to get everybody to eat unhealthily. I understand that they have shareholders to please. But that cannot be the only reason for allowing them to do what they want to do when it is so bad for public health and for the environment. And to the extent that more and more people understand how important those two issues are, that’s my rationale for having written this book.

“The things I cared about at the beginning of my career are things I still care about very deeply. I want everybody to have access to healthy, affordable diets that are sustainable. I want to stop the food industry from trying to get everybody to eat unhealthily.”

What gives you hope and what keeps you going?

I’m privileged to teach young people and they are faced with a world that is much more difficult than the one I faced. People today coming of age now are facing a world that’s really difficult. Maybe five years ago, I could not give a lecture and use the word “capitalism” without turning people off and scaring people. Now, if I don’t, somebody says, “Why aren’t you talking about capitalism?” When I started out writing Food Politics, the first question that I got asked is, “What does food have to do with politics?” Now, everybody gets the politics.

During the pandemic, you saw what happened in the meatpacking industry, with food assistance programs, with supply chains. When people who worked in grocery stores became public heroes. That’s food politics. Everybody could see it. And I think young people get it loud and clear. They understand why capitalism isn’t working for them. They can see the inequities and the unfairness of it and they want to do something about it. That gives me hope!

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Slow Cooked debuts October 4, 2022; to receive a 30 percent discount, visit the U.C. Press website and use code 21W2240 at checkout.

The post ‘Slow Cooked’: How Food Policy Expert Marion Nestle Persisted appeared first on Civil Eats.

How to Garden Through Climate Change

Naomi Starkman — Thu, 01 Sep 2022 08:00:04 +0000

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

If you’re struggling with your garden in these times of uncertain and extreme weather, who better to talk to than botanist and long-time organic gardener Sally Morgan, the British-based author of The Healthy Vegetable Garden and The Climate Change Garden?

Morgan, who is also the editor of Organic Farming magazine, owns Empire Farm, a 100-acre organic farm in Somerset, in southwest England. A champion of resilient, low-carbon, and peat-free gardens, Morgan advises how to use sustainable approaches to cope with the challenges of a changing climate through regenerative gardening and permaculture.

In the middle of the U.K.’s recent record heatwave, Morgan spoke with Civil Eats about the importance of employing no-till methods and cover crops in your backyard, the art of loving weeds, and the future of saving seeds.

In many of your books, you talk about the fact that soils have lost between 50 and 70 percent of the carbon they previously held. You also mention how practices like no-till are more important than ever. We’ve reported a lot on no-till farming in the U.S. in terms of large-scale agriculture; can you share how those principles can apply in our own backyards? Why is it important for climate gardening?

I think for gardeners, no-dig or no-till, as you refer to it, has its benefits. Every time you put your fork in that ground and pull up soil, you’re exposing it to oxidization, and that carbon just evaporates. For me, [not disturbing the soil] is capturing that carbon, and putting the layer of compost or mulching material on the surface of that soil protects the soil through the winter months. At the moment, we’ve got a heatwave—it’s about 32°C (89°F)—and [that layer of material] is protecting my soil.

I also have a big thing about peat. Over here we have a big campaign to stop using peat in gardens, in potting compost, etc. In the States and in Canada, a lot of peat is dug up [to make potting soil], and peat in the ground is our best weapon against climate change. It locks up so much carbon, and I just get so frustrated when I see gardeners using peat because they think it’s perfect, weed-free, and cheap.

And, and then mulching! I’ve been mulching my own beds this week with the heatwave coming. It will protect your soil; it will improve the drainage and retain moisture; and [it] gives more organic matter for your soil organisms and leads to healthier soil.

The other thing that a gardener can do is compost everything. Composting and locking in that carbon in your own closed loop in your own garden is great.

What can gardeners use instead of peat?

There’s all sorts of things one can do. Over here, we have quite innovative horticultural companies looking at alternatives. One of the best ones is woodchip. A colleague of mine at the Soil Association has written a book called The Woodchip Handbook, and it’s amazing how woodchips, when allowed to digest, break down, and decay, form a really good basis for a potting medium.

Alternatively, you can use wool bracken and also coconut coir, but it has a few question marks against it because it’s a waste material from coconut plantations, grown mostly in India and Sri Lanka. So, there is this question about is it better to transport the coir, albeit in very compressed form, by tanker from South Asia to Europe and beyond? Or should you dig up the peat? I think it’s better at the moment to use coir. But going forward, if we can use other green materials that are wasted materials—like woodchip, food waste materials, [and] straw—[you] can also form a basis for replacing peat. But you can’t be beat good old compost, and I make a lot of compost here. I will also use loam.

People seem to forget that you can use topsoil as a loam as part of your potting compost. And the lovely soil that moles bring up from their tunneling is great for making potting compost. For me, loam from my mole hill, compost, and also leaf mold, fallen leaves allowed to rot down in a bag for a year or two, provide the most amazing medium. I’ve got three ingredients in my potting compost: one-third compost, one-third rotten down leaf mold, and one-third loam that I’ve got from molehills in my field is perfect. It’s a little bit weedy, but no peat.

Composting is great for boosting soil fertility, and many organic farmers use cover crops, or green manures, to improve their soil structure and fertility. How can you use cover crops in the garden?

I use phacelia, a lovely fast-growing plant. It’s one of the best for bulking up soil and has the most impressive biomass improving rating. It’s got lovely little purple flowers, and is great for bees and parasitic wasps. You can also use buckwheat, which will come in later in the season and grow for four months and be finished off by cold weather. I also use a lot of legumes; I have the most gorgeous crimson clover, which I try and grow ornamentally as well en masse to get beautiful deep red flowers and is nitrogen fixing, adding biomass to my soil.

When I’m finished with these crops, I will cover them with carboard or with a piece of plastic so they rot down and by the time I come to use them later in the year or next spring, I have this lovely fine mulch over the surface which is perfect for planting into. Cover crops are just as good as compost in many respects. And they will give you biomass for your organic matter, may provide some flowers for your pollinators and beneficials, and, all for a cost of this pack of seeds, which is even better.

You’ve been known as somebody who doesn’t actively weed. Are attitudes changing towards weeds?

I hope so. And there are lots of weeds that have benefits. I quite like dandelions. Everybody hates them. But actually, if you keep it under control, and you don’t allow it to seed, then you’ve got the benefit of the deep roots. And it will then act as a companion plant. I think to the young gardener who’s looking for a more biodiverse garden that attracts more insects, and for that, improves the food chain, then weeds are important.

I’ve got quite excited about weeds this year; I’ve been doing a diversity count in my own plot. Every month, I go out and I count the different number of flowers that I can see in my garden because I need natural predators in my garden. And I’ve noticed that out of season, up to 50 percent of the flowers on offer in my garden are weeds. And they all have a pollinator or more. So, I’ve got to live with those. Because if I want bumblebees, small solitary bees, and parasitic wasps to be in my garden in March, say, I need a few weeds, because that’s what they love. Our stinging nettles are so important for early green fly. And that brings in the ladybugs. So, you’ve got to live with a few weeds to have biodiversity in the garden. I hope people will see them for the benefit that they are.

Let’s talk a little bit about extreme weather gardening. One of our team members lives on the East Coast, and says that she’s been having more trouble than usual growing things this year, particularly because there’s been so much rain and constant moisture. What advice do you have about combating extra moisture?

For that type of thing, it’s actually humus, and getting organic matter in the soil, so that the soil is more resilient against extra water. Drainage is quite tricky. I think in the past, I would have suggested adding grit to soil. But now the evidence seems to suggest that grit actually doesn’t do any good unless you put lots of it in. So, I think we’re down to the mulching and making the soil more loam-like so it’ll be able to lose that extra moisture. And maybe use more raised beds, so you can lift that soil off the ground, or give it a bit more drainage. But, it’s really difficult. The other thing that one can do is to look at the variety of crops that you are growing, and see whether there are varieties within that crop type that might be a little bit more resilient against getting wet.

The other thing that I found this year particularly with the cold, wet soil—I’ve not been planting things out quite as early as I would have done; I’ve been planting them in pots about three to four weeks later than usual, so that the soil has a chance to dry out and warm up. And I suspect that going forward, I’m going to be relying more on containerized growing of my crops until the soil has caught up and is ready to be planted. You just have to experiment a little bit with what you do.

Conversely, in the West, we are contending with such a severe drought. You describe water catchment, and graywater guerilla efforts, to help preserve your garden. What other tips do you have for gardening through a drought?

Water harvesting is absolutely everything. But I think we need to be looking at our soils. And again, you need organic matter in the soil because that will give you resilience against drought. Lots of mulching, and maybe deep-bed mulching, will actually do well in a dry environment, because it’s giving you six- to eight inches of material that prevent the evaporation of water.

Look for varieties going forward that are more [drought] tolerant; maybe we won’t be able to grow in the future our favorite crops because the climate has changed too much. We have to look further south to the types of crops that we can grow in a drought environment. The other thing that may happen as the climate becomes more extreme is that maybe we’re growing crops at the wrong time of year. When I travel around the Mediterranean, and I see how they cope with extreme heat in the summer months, they’re not growing their crops in the summer months; they’ve grown them already.

We may have to think about how we garden in the areas that we’re living and adapt. When you look at the way that some of the Native American peoples used to grow in extreme conditions and how they would trap the water—they would grow in waffle beds, or in the Canary Islands in the Atlantic, which is a volcanic island, they are using this idea of volcanic rock around a growing area with very little topsoil in it. And that little environment traps the humidity. If you are suffering from extreme temperatures in summer, you need to look back in history and see how people would have grown 300 years ago and adapt some of those really simple, neat ideas.

You’ve been researching and writing about climate change gardening for so long, what do you think about saving seeds? And how do we know whether we’re saving the right seed for the future?

Isn’t it awful? Five years ago, I would have said to you, “Local is best, grow the seed that is adapted to your own soil and your own microclimate.” Increasingly, I’ve been looking at the work of some of the researchers over here and how they are looking at genetics. And it’s almost like we should be sourcing the seed from the south of you, so that it’s more like the climate that you’re going to experience in the future.

For me in southern England, I’ve been planting new orchards over the last five years, [and] I’ve been looking for varieties that grow well in the southwest of France, two degrees latitude from me, in the Burgundy region of France. In North America, they’re really worried about sourcing saplings for coniferous plantations, particularly up in British Columbia. So, they’ve been looking at seed material from California, Oregon, and Washington and throwing it in British Columbia, because they’re thinking that if the genetics of the same species is more adapted to southern climate, maybe it will do well in British Columbia, in 50 to 100 years.

Although I will always grow my own parsnip seed, I have been trying something called population seed, mixing up the different varieties. Instead of keeping my own parsnip, which I always do, I’m pushing in the odd other variety. I picked up another variety, which is more prominent in France, and a local community variety, and I’m mixing them all up and allowing them all to cross pollinate to get what we call a composite population, a really muddled population, and it’s a real mix up of all the genetics. I’m hoping that there’ll be individuals within that bed that might be suited to the conditions of this year.

I’m doing this because we’ve had an amazing experiment over here through organic wheat growing, called population wheat. They’ve been growing all different types of wheat together, allowing them all to cross pollinate and taking those seeds and growing them again and allowing them to cross pollinate. When they look at their wheat fields, it’s all jumbled and tall and short—it’s amazing. But they know that in any year, whatever the weather throws at them, there will be some plants in there that are going to do well.

We need to come back to diversity. We need to have diverse populations of seeds, ideally adapted to our own local area, but with a few other varieties tossed in, to allow us to be resilient. We want population parsnips and population beans, and we’re not going to be looking for uniformity. In the future, we’re going to be looking for variety and hope that one variety will survive and do well.

As climate change makes itself felt, we are seeing so many changes in the threats from pests and disease—some are appearing and some are disappearing. On the other hand, we have all these insects, pollinators, and birds now in decline. What should we be doing to maintain a healthy ecosystem and encourage more pollinators and insects in our gardens?

Diversity at every point. We need to grow as much in our own growing spaces as possible. We might be veg growers, but I had lots of flowers in my veg plot. And at certain times a year, it was more like a flower plot than a veg plot. The more types of flowers, the more varieties of vegetables that I grow, that will give me the opportunity to attract pollinators into my garden, and also parasitic wasps and other predatory species to control pests that may get out of hand.

We should get diversity in the varieties of crops that we grow and diversity within an individual crop; so if I’m growing cabbages, I grow four or five different types of cabbages. Lots of different companion plants, lots of different other flowers around the plot. It’s a mixed plot.

I think if every gardener did this, we would have a really good effect, particularly in urban areas where it’s really sad to think the butterflies and bees are in decline. If all of the gardeners are all working towards this diversity, I’m hopeful that we can reverse some of the [negative] changes.

The post How to Garden Through Climate Change appeared first on Civil Eats.

Civil Eats TV: Let Them Bee

Naomi Starkman — Wed, 20 Apr 2022 08:00:23 +0000

When the lightning-sparked Hennessey Fire, part of the LNU Lightning Complex Fire, swept through rural Vacaville, California, in August 2020, queen bee breeder and beekeeper Caroline Yelle thought she had lost her entire business.

“The fire destroyed everything in its path: the bees, my hives, the whole farm,” says the 29-year-old owner of Pope Canyon Queens (PCQ), who lost more than 400 hives. But out of the ashes, Yelle—and a new set of bees—have risen. “It was a huge bump in the road for us, but it has allowed us to do better.”

The aftermath of the LNU Complex Fire. (Photo courtesy of Caroline Yelle)

Now, almost two years later, and thanks to the support of her community, Yelle is back to breeding queens. She works with Carniolans, or Apis mellifera carnica, a hybrid she selected back home in Canada and reproduces in California in hopes that their genetic strengths can make them resilient to the many challenges facing honey bees today. Today, she has about 580 hives.

Pollinators, most often honey bees, are responsible for one in every three bites of food we take, and they help increase U.S. crop values by more than $15 billion each year. However, critical honey bee populations have been in serious decline for more than three decades in the U.S. due to high rates of colony loss, which stems from many factors, including habitat loss, decreasing crop diversity, increased use of pesticides and other toxins, climate change, and pests and pathogens. Other factors include industrial beekeeping practices—particularly in the large-scale almond industry.

This year alone, 2 million beehives—containing about 42 billion bees—were brought into the state to pollinate almond blossoms.

“If there are no bees, there is no food,” says Yelle. “To save ourselves, we have to save the bees.”

The U.S. Department of Agriculture considers commercial honeybees to be livestock, due to their crucial role in food production. However, more bees die every year in the U.S. than all other animals raised for slaughter combined; during the winter of 2020–21, an estimated 32 percent of managed colonies in the U.S. were lost.

‘Give Bees a Chance’

In 2018, Yelle purchased PCQ from her mentor and business partner, veteran beekeeper Rick Schubert, for whom she began working in 2012. She had studied to be a lawyer in Canada, but after receiving her degree, moved to California to follow her dreams to help the bees. Between March and June every year, Yelle breeds roughly 25,000 queen bees. Since building back her business, she says the number of requests for her queens has been on the rise, and beekeepers who’ve received them tell her that their hives are now thriving.

Bee breeder-geneticist Susan Cobey, who has worked with Yelle, is a former manager of the Harry H. Laidlaw, Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility at U.C. Davis. She has worked with Carniolan honey bees for more than 40 years, and has run one of the longest-running breeding programs in the world. Numerous studies clearly show that genetic diversity improves bee colony survival, and Cobey now incorporates honey bee germplasm from several European subspecies into U.S. breeding stocks to increase colony vitality and resistance to pests and diseases.

“Bees are probably one of the most complex animals to work with because they mate in flight, which is difficult to control,” says Cobey, noting that honey bees are sensitive to inbreeding and also at risk of population loss through the breeding process.

Queen bees mate with an average of 15 to 20 drones (male honey bees), so breeders like Yelle and Cobey mate the bees artificially under a microscope by anesthetizing the queens with carbon dioxide. They use a pool of genetic material from numerous drones to provide diversity.

The Carniolan honey bee, originally from Slovenia, a hotbed of successful beekeeping, holds a special place in the hearts of many beekeepers. Also known as a spring bee for its activity early in the season, it is also sought after for its gentleness and productivity, and is also considered highly resistant to the Varroa mite, which has become a major contributor to the demise of bee colonies worldwide.

Intensified Almond Production

California’s ever-expanding almond industry is worth $6 billion, and produces roughly 80 percent of the world’s almonds. Almonds are the state’s top agricultural export, hitting a record export high of $1.1 billion in 2020, with most of the crop sent to India and China. Demand nationally is also at an all-time high, in part because of sales of almond milk climbing each year.

And the need for pollination of hundreds of thousands of almond trees has created a monoculture of sorts for the honey bee: This year alone, 2 million beehives—containing about 42 billion bees—were brought into the state to pollinate almond blossoms.

“Almond production is the economic stabilizer of the bee industry,” says Cobey. “If you’re a commercial beekeeper, you pretty much cannot afford not to go to that crop. But at the same time, you’re bringing bees all together in a really crowded situation and diseases are easily exchanged; pests and parasites are easily exchanged. And you have all different levels of beekeeping [experience].”

Poor beekeeping practices have also led to more bee deaths, and recently, hive thefts. Around 600 hives were stolen across California last year and more than 800 have been taken so far this year, according to Butte County Sheriff’s Deputy Rowdy Freeman, a beekeeper, a law enforcement liaison to the California State Beekeepers Association, and president of the California Rural Crime Prevention Task Force.

The rapid growth of the almond industry and the speed at which millions of trees need to be pollinated every spring has taken a toll on the bees. “There is so much pressure [on the bees—from] being moved from one location to another to the stress from the trucks, and then they get to a new location and they have to reorient to where the food and water is. Then they pollinate the same flowers for weeks,” says Yelle. “As soon as they begin to adapt to that environment, we put them back on a truck and start all over again.”

After the almond pollination period comes to an end, Yelle takes her bees to diverse, organic farms—she calls them “spas” for the bees—to recuperate.

‘Bee Sense’

PCQ is one of the nation’s few women-owned queen bee breeding businesses, and Yelle’s team is mostly female. She believes women are especially adept at beekeeping and breeding. Cobey agrees.

“The women in this industry are very persistent, and I think they have to be overly so to prove themselves. It may be less so now than 10 or 15 years ago, but queen bee rearing is really attractive for women because it’s a little more specialized; it takes a lot more knowledge of the bees,” Cobey says. “I call it ‘bee sense’—you just have a sense of the smells and the sounds and the activity and behaviors. It takes a lot to learn all that. And I think women are maybe more sensitive.”

Caroline Yelle (center) with members of her beekeeping team.

Yelle’s business is still on the rebound, but as California prepares for another hot, dry summer, she intends to continue breeding better, more robust queens. “A queen bee is a reflection of the health of the hive. The bees will follow her habits, so, it might increase the resistance to pests and disease, and help them adapt to a changing environment,” she says.

“My goal is to help the bees survive. When your queen is healthy, it’s a huge accomplishment,” Yelle says. “Let them do their work, and bees will bring food to your table.”

Film and photos © Mizzica Films.

The post Civil Eats TV: Let Them Bee appeared first on Civil Eats.

On the Rural Immigrant Experience: ‘We Come With a Culture, Our Own History, and We’re Here to Help’

Naomi Starkman — Thu, 14 Apr 2022 08:00:15 +0000

Although rural America is proportionally less diverse than the country overall, it’s home to many immigrants and other communities of color. In the meatpacking industry, for instance, foreign-born workers have long done the bulk of the work.

Nebraska is home to facilities run by JBS, Tyson, Smithfield, and Costco and to large Latinx, Sudanese, Somali, and Burmese communities—groups that have been disproportionately impacted by COVID-19. The state has been notorious in its disregard for workers’ lives. After former President Trump used the Defense Production Act to ensure that meat processing plants remained open in 2020, Governor Pete Ricketts’ refused to close a JBS plant despite requests to do so from public health officials and subsequently insisted that only documented workers would be eligible for vaccines.

“Our leadership doesn’t reflect our population; it very much feels like it’s English only, and if you speak other languages, you get looked down upon.”

In the face of this injustice, Gladys Godinez became one of many people in rural Nebraska who sought to inform, educate, and activate her community in the face of the pandemic. The Guatemalan-born community organizer, who moved from California to Lexington, Nebraska, when she was 12, has worked with the Rural Assembly and other groups. Her parents worked in meatpacking facilities, and she was keenly aware of the role her family and community played in maintaining a thriving rural economy, but often felt that the news presented a negative stereotype of immigrants as criminals.

Today, she is the executive director of United by Culture Media, an organization she and her husband started in anticipation of an immigration raid in the migrant community in Lexington. They formalized the organization last year to expand its reach, highlight untold stories, and ensure that diverse rural perspectives are given airtime. Godinez is also the host of the Courageous Mujer podcast, which seeks to uplift Latinas, and is creating a bilingual webcast showcasing not only news, which she says has been vital during COVID, but also positive stories that show the value of all immigrants throughout the U.S.

Civil Eats spoke to Godinez about her experiences as they intersect with agriculture, racial stereotypes, and the way immigrants change and are changed by rural areas.

Gladys Godinez prepares to speak at a car rally on the back of her father’s truck. (Photo credit: Chris Cox)

When most people think about rural America, they don’t really see the immigrant experience—you’ve said in the past that you have felt invisible. Your town, Lexington, has a population of 10,000, and 60 to 70 percent of the community is Latino, and about 10 percent are of African descent. How are you changing that narrative?

Twenty years ago, there was a big wave of immigrants that came to Lexington because a meatpacking facility had opened. They recruited us to this rural community, and held a town hall. And at that town hall, town leaders shared with us that they did not want us here. I was 15 at the time, and I tried to counter that narrative, [by publicly standing up for our rights]. I didn’t know it back then, but that’s what I was doing. And then, 20–25 years later, I came back to my community—it’s hard to claim a hometown when you’re an immigrant, but I would claim Lexington as my hometown—and saw similar narratives, even though our population is now the bloodline of Lexington. Our leadership doesn’t reflect our population; it very much feels like it’s English only, and if you speak other languages, you get looked down upon.

During the pandemic, I went to various leaders asking to have Spanish language information throughout the community, because a third of our residents speak [primarily] Spanish; they didn’t respond. I continuously asked at the public health department and of community leaders, and there was no change. So, we made that change by starting a Spanish-speaking webcast. It was very much me in my basement in front of a computer, putting up a PowerPoint during a Zoom call, and just sharing it on our Facebook page. But it helped, and other communities have followed suit. And we hope to be able to develop that into a bigger platform.

Tell me about your work with Solidarity with Packing Plant Workers.

That started in April 2020, with a group of individuals at a JBS meatpacking plant in Grand Island. We have a network of individuals that are trying to help Latinos and immigrants throughout our state, and they reached out to me, asking, “What can we do to get together to make something? Our voices are not being heard.”

My own journey started with my parents, who were meatpacking plant workers [at Tyson Foods]. They worked there for more than 20 years; they’re retired now, so I knew that they were safe. But a lot of my family members still work there. And in addition to that, a lot of my friends called me, saying, “Gladys, my parents, my mom, my aunt, my cousin, my sister is currently going through this within the meatpacking plant, and we don’t know how to help them.” Initially, this was a statewide initiative, very grassroots, just talking to our neighbors and our family members, about what was happening.

Carlos Godinez, Gladys Godinez’s father, joins a car rally. (Photo credit: Chris Cox)

We started by holding car rallies during COVID throughout the state. We contacted legislators; Senator Tony Vargas was very vocal in regard to meatpacking plant workers and their safety, and put a bill forward through the legislature, but unfortunately, it did not pass. We had billboards throughout the state, we talked to different workers, and testified at hearings. We did what we could with what we had, and we did receive media [coverage]; we started seeing an increase in PPE, bonuses, and hazard pay. We did start seeing our family members taken care of. But we still have more work to do. It’s very grassroots, it’s not an established organization. It’s friends trying to make a difference in our community.

Nebraska is receiving millions of dollars in the American Rescue Plan Act, but none of our state representatives have put a bill forward with financial assistance for meatpacking plant workers. They have labeled it for essential workers, but nobody has defined meatpacking workers as part of that. So we’re currently seeking state senators to introduce bills [including them].

Do you feel like in the process you raised awareness in rural communities about the number of immigrants working in meatpacking jobs?

The Omaha World Herald did a piece, and when they interviewed me, it was very much, “Aren’t you grateful for meatpackers bringing you here and helping you?” I kept telling them, “We are helping the meatpacking plants to be a success and obtain billions of dollars because of our labor.” So, I don’t know if America as a whole understands how much they’re relying on immigrant labor, not only in meatpacking, but in a lot of agriculture; immigrants are working from 3 a.m. to 10 p.m. with their children [with them], still trying to do their best to live the American Dream.

The “Courageous Mujer” podcast episode where Gladys Godinez spoke to her mom, Maria Godinez. (Photo credit: Chris Cox)

What are the other ways in which immigrants change or are changed by rural areas?

The first thing I think of is our contributions to economic development within these communities—of all the small Mexican restaurants and stores we’re seeing throughout rural America. We come to these small towns, which we’re being recruited to from various other states, and nobody’s coming to tell us, “Welcome, here’s your place, here’s how you’re going to be transported to your job, here’s how you’re going to get your next meal.” We’re just brought to a community that we don’t know, and we work very hard. And then, after a while, we earn a little bit, and maybe are able to start a business. And now there are restaurant owners, retail owners. Our current downtown in Lexington is probably 50 to 60 percent people of color business owners.

But we’re not getting the resources that would help us increase our reach within our downtown area. We don’t get grants to clean up our windows, get our displays up, or figure out how to insulate our businesses, so we’re not paying so much for electricity or gas. We don’t get access to loans, especially with regard to COVID, because none of that information is reaching our community.

But there are successes: Good friends in Mitchell, Nebraska are now owners of their own beef processing plant, which I think is a beautiful story.

What do you wish people understood more about the immigrant experience in rural America?

That we didn’t come broken and we don’t need to be saved. We come with a language and a culture, and we come with our own history. And yes, we’re going to come to the U.S. and make history here. But we don’t need somebody to tell us that our language is not important or our history is invalid. If meatpacking plants want to continue to recruit immigrants to rural areas, it would be ideal for them to create a “welcome office” that walks individuals through this process. It’s not assimilation, it’s just explaining how to settle in Nebraska.

We’re worthy individuals as we come, and I hope that individuals [and cities] invest in us. At the very least by listening and understanding that we are bringing value to any community. We need immigration reform, to make this path easier. And we’re not here to make it worse; we’re here definitely to help, and to make it a brighter day.

This interview was lightly edited for length and clarity.

The post On the Rural Immigrant Experience: ‘We Come With a Culture, Our Own History, and We’re Here to Help’ appeared first on Civil Eats.

‘Food Companies Didn’t Get the Memo’—Steven Greenhouse on the Unionization Wave

Naomi Starkman — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 08:00:09 +0000

A version of this article originally appeared in The Deep Dish, a members-only monthly newsletter from Civil Eats. To read the full issue, with exclusive reporting, interviews, photographs, and more, become a member today. The interview, which took place in late February, has been lightly edited for clarity and length, and updated to reflect recent developments.

Veteran journalist Steven Greenhouse is one of the most influential labor reporters in the U.S. Recently named a Senior Fellow at The Century Foundation, Greenhouse was a reporter for The New York Times for 31 years and spent the last 19 years covering labor and the workplace. He has covered myriad topics, including poverty among the nation’s farmworkers, the Fight for $15, locked-in workers at Walmart, and the push to roll back public employees’ bargaining rights.

His first book, The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker, won the 2009 Sidney Hillman Book Prize. We reviewed his second book, Beaten Down, Worked Up: The Past, Present, and Future of American Labor, in 2019. Greenhouse continues to freelance for many publications, and his Twitter account is often the first to follow, break, and make news. We spoke to him about this moment—probably the most significant for workers in decades—and what it means for food and farmworkers.

You’ve noted in all of your reporting, especially during this “Great Resignation,” that American workers are standing up and fighting back to an unusual degree. Some have suggested that 2022 might be the year of the food worker. Do you think this is a new era for labor organizing for food and farmworkers?

“A new era” is a big concept. I began reporting about labor for The New York Times in 1995. And I’m seeing more ferment and militancy among workers now than any time since then, and probably at any time since maybe the 1970s.

The nation hailed the importance of essential workers during the pandemic: We need cashiers at supermarkets, we need food delivery workers . . . because that holds our nation together, it feeds us. Many of these workers were long overlooked and undervalued, and they’re finally getting the recognition that they deserve. And yet, while they were hailed as heroes, a lot of employers didn’t treat them very well. So when it came to contract time, [employers] acted as if it was business as usual.

Second, when it comes to labor negotiations, with inflation rising, companies are just offering raises of 2 to 4 percent. And workers are saying, ‘What the hell? Corporate profits are up, at Deere, Kellogg’s, and Nabisco, and modest raises hardly keep up with inflation. We’re supposed to be heroes, we busted our humps. And now, you’re not showing the appreciation that we deserve.”

And third, a lot of essential workers put their lives on the line: Cashiers at Walmart, Trader Joe’s, and Safeway faced customers every day and risked catching COVID. And some of these companies, fearing that they might lose business, told their customers, “Hey, you don’t even have to wear a mask into our store.” And that stuck for workers, that really endangered them. Many workers got sick or had to be quarantined and weren’t getting paid sick days. All these things helped contribute to this surge in worker anger, militancy, and strikes.

“Starbucks holds itself out as a more progressive company, so a lot of workers want to hold it to higher standards.”

My sense is a lot of food companies just didn’t get the memo that their workers often gave their all to keep factories and supermarkets running. Workers at Hershey are now trying to unionize, saying, “I worked 72 days straight.” Kellogg’s was trying to make people work 12-hour days, and workers felt that instead of being rewarded when the company made money, the company was making things worse for them. And [food workers] are saying, “Don’t you see that there’s a labor shortage? That we have more bargaining power, that we can go across the street to another employer that will pay us more and treat us better?”

You’ve been writing about and following the incredible rise in unionizing at Starbucks. Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich tweeted that Starbucks is raising prices after they reported a 31 percent increase in profits and that the company’s CEO’s pay increased by almost 40 percent last year to more than $20 million. These union victories are inspiring other food workers. Why do you think Starbucks matters?

For one, it’s really one of the sexiest, best-known brands in the fast food sector. Starbucks holds itself out as a more progressive company, so a lot of workers want to hold it to higher standards. And it’s the fast food brand where there’s been a unionization breakthrough. This is a big deal.

Starbucks generally offers better benefits than other fast food companies, and I give [former CEO] Howard Schultz credit for that. But during the pandemic, Starbucks workers felt poorly treated and they wanted a voice on the job. The workforce at Starbucks is different than at Chipotle; it’s more countercultural and arguably better educated. And they’re more [likely to be] Bernie Sanders sympathizers. It’s more understandable that they would be the first ones to take the leap.

As of today, workers at 96 Starbucks locations have petitioned for union elections, and I imagine by the time this runs, there’ll be over 100. I strongly believe that the union will win in a lot of these places, despite Starbucks’ aggressive efforts to beat it back. [Editor’s note: as of March 22, the total is 149 stores, including a unanimous win for the union vote in a Seattle Starbucks location.]

The question is: Will this spread to McDonald’s, Chipotle, or Burger King? The vast majority of Starbucks are corporate-owned and operated. Once workers are unionized with a uniform contract, there is more leverage. Whereas at McDonald’s or Burger King, if you’re trying to unionize, you’re often dealing with a franchise owner who owns multiple stores. I think it’s very smart for Workers Unite, which is part of the Service Employees Union, to go after Starbucks because so many stores are generally company-owned and operated.

“We’re the only industrial country that doesn’t have guaranteed paid parental leave, paid sick days, or paid vacation.”

Many workers at McDonald’s, Burger King, and Chipotle are workers of color, and there are also many immigrant workers, who are generally very sympathetic towards unions. Many immigrants are from Latin America, or come from countries where unions are strong and very popular. Generally, African Americans are more favorably disposed toward unions than Caucasian workers. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a huge fan of unions. And unions, despite their legacy of discrimination, since the 1960s, have done great things to lift up African American workers. So, I imagine, in a few months, the Starbucks’ wave will start hitting some other big fast food chains.

What about the workers’ rights movement at grocery stores, like Kroger? Their business is booming, but their workers are allegedly being left behind. At a number of the stores, almost half a million employees have reported being homeless, receiving SNAP, and relying on food banks.

I was The New York Times economic correspondent based in Paris for five years. A lot of European economists I interviewed talked about the economic model in the U.S. as a “low road model.” A lot of U.S. fast food companies, and some supermarkets, pay minimum wage or just above minimum wage, and provide scant benefits. We’re the only industrial country that doesn’t have guaranteed paid parental leave, paid sick days, or paid vacation.

What happened with Kroger is it just hasn’t kept up with costs. A lot of Kroger workers are only making $10 to $13 an hour. And in many locales across the U.S., that is not enough to feed your family. Workers are saying, “Wait, you’re a big, prestigious, highly profitable company. It’s time for you to step up and do more to share your prosperity with us.” [Editor’s note: on March 21, 47,000 unionized workers began voting on whether to authorize a strike against Kroger at 500 stores across Southern California.]

We’ve reported that, historically, farmworkers have not unionized, and we’re following other developments related to overtime pay on farms. Do you see traction for farmworkers in this moment?

Farmworkers are not treated nearly as well as other workers because a lot of lawmakers say, “Oh, they’re just immigrants, we don’t have to care about them as regular workers.” Farmworkers remain a disfavored group, and that’s very unfortunate. They are among the most hardest working people in the nation with the most arduous jobs and people who do such hard work should be treated at least as well as other workers in my view.

Farmworkers are gaining some traction in the sense that laws are being passed, but we’re seeing very little progress on the unionization front. We’re finally seeing some regulations to protect farmworkers when they work in 100-degree heat. New York state recently passed a law that guarantees overtime to farmworkers, but only after 60 hours of work, whereas for typical workers, overtime is after 40 hours. Washington state passed a law that guarantees overtime over 55 hours, but by 2024, overtime will be after 40 hours, so that’s good. A lot of community groups, immigrant groups, Latino groups are pushing hard to lobby and we are seeing some progress to lift standards for them.

In the U.S., it’s very hard to unionize because employers fight against unions more than any other industrialized country on Earth. Many [large] farm companies act like large corporations in fighting tooth and nail against unions.

And if you’re an immigrant worker, and especially an undocumented immigrant worker, and you’re sticking your neck out to support a union, you might unfortunately get fired. And good luck finding another job. Because farmworkers are often seasonal, moving from farm to farm, from state to state, it makes it much harder to unionize and it means they have less invested than a worker at Amazon, Walmart, or Starbucks who has been there for five years might, and says, “I’m going to stick my neck out to push for a union, because I have hope to be here a long time.”

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The post ‘Food Companies Didn’t Get the Memo’—Steven Greenhouse on the Unionization Wave appeared first on Civil Eats.

The Godfather of California Organics is Optimistic About the Future of Food

Naomi Starkman — Thu, 06 Sep 2018 09:00:26 +0000

If you’re a farm nerd like me, Warren Weber is something of a rock star. Weber, now 77 and semi-retired after decades of organic farming in California, doesn’t remember me fawning over him more than 15 years ago as I made a cross-country pilgrimage to visit his jewel-like Star Route Farms, the oldest organic farm in the state, nestled in the tiny, oceanside town of Bolinas, California.

But for me, and many people, Weber—who founded the farm in 1974, and a year before helped craft the state’s first organic certification standards—defines the history of organic farming in California. His commitment to sustainable practices, and his involvement in organizations such as California Certified Organic Farmers (CCOF), the Organic Farming Research Foundation (OFRF), Marin Organic, and the Marin Agricultural Land Trust (MALT), make him a hero to many.

Last year, Weber and his wife Amy sold the 100-acre farm to the University of San Francisco (USF) for $10.4 million, and when I spoke to him recently, he was happy to report that the entire operation, including the staff, farmworkers, crops, and accounts remain the same a year later. USF will utilize Star Route Farms for occasional academic use (faculty will use it for teaching purposes, field trips, etc.) beginning in spring 2019.

A hoop house at Star Route Farms in Bolinas. (Photo courtesy of Star Route Farms)

Since then, Weber has moved off the property, but continues to lease their land in Coachella Valley and spends his time consulting with farmers on succession and other farming issues. He wants people to know he’s for available to consult for hire and pro bono; he’s eager to help continue to forge the future of food in California. Anyone who cares about agriculture in California should put Weber on speed dial.

Weber spoke on a panel last month at the Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture (CUESA) with Alice Waters, third-generation peach farmer Nikiko Masumoto (who is also the daughter of author and peach farmer Mas Masumoto), and others about the future of organic farming in California, the challenges of farming in the state, and what it takes to make it as a farmer in 21st-century California.

Civil Eats spoke with Weber after the panel about what’s keeping him busy, if he misses farming, what his life is like now, and what’s next.

Your farm sold for $10 million. Do you think that raises questions about the larger landscape and what it takes to keep high-dollar land in agriculture?

It’s a challenge, but it also depends on what part of the state you’re in. The market value of land has typically always been ahead of its agricultural value. It’s one of the reasons that commercial agriculture land is leased out; we have a lot of commercial farm land that’s leased out in the state. The best way to operate as a farmer is to lease. It works because people can get long-term leases (five or 10 years) and that’s long enough to establish yourself. If you’re doing permanent crops, like orchards or grapes, it’s harder to justify a shorter lease.

I did this in the desert in late ‘80s, early ‘90s; I started leasing there, as the business developed, and then I was able to take on a mortgage, and have enough profits to own the land. But a farmer may end up leasing forever.

The Bolinas farm is really an urban farm, and it drove up the cost. It didn’t have to be an institutional buyer; it could have been a family, but if they wouldn’t have known how to farm, they could have leased it out. We looked for a long time for a buyer, [we talked to] land trusts and other individuals; I went through a lot of different scenarios.

There are all sort of different kinds of farms. And there was no reason that Star Route needed to be replicated by the next person; it didn’t need to be the university to do so. There was a lot of different potential there and a lot of possibility to grow lots of different crops. I had an idea of growing mushrooms in the extensive woods there. And we thought a lot about creating a Stone Barns Center for Food & Agriculture, with a chef like Dan Barber there as well.

What advice would you give to a new or young farmer today?

At any level of farming, it has its challenges. The margins are difficult because of the nature of the price of food. It’s a sustainable nut to crack. [I’d advise a new farmer to] look at how you’re really doing [financially] and be aware of it. You could be caught short at the wrong time when something happens, either in the marketplace or on your expense side or if you lose your crop, or there’s competition. If you can live with those margins, it’ll work out. But you’ve got to be a good business person. That’s one of things that Farmlink does so well; they’re focused on helping farmers to be better business people.

What’s your take on food tech?

On one level, it’s kind of scary. I just believe that we really need nature in our agriculture. Organic farming is based on soil organisms creating nutritious and healthy food. These high-tech efforts—growing in a soil-less medium, or inside of a factory with artificial light, just giving the plant the spectrum of light it “needs”—that’s a brave new world and I’m not too fond of it. There’s “culture” in agriculture and that means biodiversity in our farming. I’m just old-school, I guess.

Pumpkin Harvest in Bolinas (Photo courtesy of Star Route Farms)

There’s always been tension between agriculture and environmentalists. And there are folks who think that growing food like this is better for the environment, but we need to find a balance between our natural resources and those used for food production. I don’t know how that battle will play out.

How do you feel about not farming every day?

I miss the farm. A lot of it was the aesthetics of the farm, but I miss the people. I do not miss the responsibilities, however; it got to be too overwhelming. Especially in California; the regulatory environment is difficult, and so are labor, water, and environmental issues.

What do you see as the future of food and farming in California?

People eat. Unless we start eating pills and ersatz food, people are going to want to continue to eat organic food. It has challenges, but it has a great future ahead of it. Fashions and business cycles swing. We might swing into some unfortunate phase, but organic agriculture has really proven itself. We can look back and say, yes, we can grow organic crops commercially, and we can grow almost every crop, and from a cultural point of view, we’ll always have young people who will want to do it. And that’s all we need, young people who want to do this. I’m optimistic.

Top photo: Warren Weber, profiled in The Lexicon of Food.

The post The Godfather of California Organics is Optimistic About the Future of Food appeared first on Civil Eats.

Bay Area Chefs, Farmers Come Together to Celebrate Civil Eats

Naomi Starkman — Fri, 14 Oct 2016 09:00:11 +0000

For the past seven years, our tiny team of writers and editors has worked hard to bring a diverse array of perspectives to the forefront while shining a light on the food system stories that matter most. We’ve been gratified that our work has been awarded and recognized. Now, for the first time, to help support our work, we’re hosting an in-person celebration in San Francisco on Tuesday, November 29, which is also #GivingTuesday.

We are thrilled to bring our community together to celebrate the vital work of our writers and editors, and showcase their important stories. Civil Eats’ advisory board member Chef Alice Waters and many other food movement movers and shakers will be in attendance. We’ll be featuring the bounty of the Bay Area, and we are so grateful for an incredible outpouring of support from some of the best farmers, producers, and chefs, including:

And we are also thankful for additional support from our event sponsors: 11th Hour Project, Annie’s, Bon Appétit Management Company, Chelsea Green Publishing, Cienega Capital, Clif Bar, Food Tech+Connect, Stonyfield, TomKat Foundation, Redwood Hill Farm & Creamery, UNFI, and World Centric.

Civil Eats is a non-profit, independent media site. We’ve never taken advertising and rely on our subscription service, independent donations, and foundation grants to pay our writers and editors. Every part of the event is being donated, from the generosity of our host location, The Village, to the chefs and producers, to our all-volunteer event team.

We are hoping this benefit will help us raise enough money to continue our award-winning reporting. In a media landscape that often rewards entertainment over critical thinking, we count on your support to help us continue to do the work we do!

As journalist and author Mark Bittman has said, “There has never been a more important time to support independent food policy journalism. I hope you’ll join me in supporting the vital role Civil Eats plays as the primary source for balanced, national conversations about our food system, food politics, and food policy.”

We hope you are able to join us, and if you aren’t able to attend in person, please consider making a donation via the eventbrite link (or via PayPal), signing up for a subscription, and sharing our Facebook invite. Thank you from all of us at Civil Eats!

The post Bay Area Chefs, Farmers Come Together to Celebrate Civil Eats appeared first on Civil Eats.

Digested: Buying the Farm

Naomi Starkman — Fri, 23 Sep 2016 09:04:33 +0000

At the end of the 2009 documentary Food, Inc., Indiana corn and soybean farmer Troy Roush tells the film’s audience: “You have to understand that we farmers, we’re going to deliver to the marketplace what the marketplace demands … People have got to start demanding good, wholesome food of us. And we’ll deliver. I promise you.”

It’s a simple frame—supply will naturally meet demand—but when it comes to certified organic food, it hasn’t quite worked out that way.

In the seven years since the film debuted, demand for organic food has soared to nearly $36 billion in 2014. At the same time, the supply of organic ingredients is trailing far behind, forcing many food companies to import organic raw ingredients from overseas. While organic sales reached nearly 5 percent of total food sales last year, organic farmland makes up only about 1 percent of U.S. farm acreage.

Farmers like Roush and many others want to meet the growing demand for organic, but are faced with several challenges to increasing acreage. Most significantly among these is the three-year transition period set by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) in which farmers can’t use chemical fertilizers or pesticides. Farmers take a hit on upgrading to new practices (specifically paying for more labor and new equipment) and can’t generally market their transitional crops at a premium during this period. In addition, affordable farmland and crop insurance have largely been unavailable for organic producers.

Despite these challenges, more farmers are transitioning to organic than ever; last year, the number of certified organic operations in the U.S. grew by almost 12 percent—more than double the growth rate of 2014. In order to meet the growing consumer base, some businesses are seeking to level the (organic) playing field by investing directly in organic farms and farmers.

Take Nature’s Path. The company has been investing in farmland since 2008 to ensure that it has enough organic grains to produce its cereals. Nature’s Path also joined Stonyfield Farm, Organic Valley, Clif Bar, and others to form the Organic Grain Collaboration to work together—and not compete—to address key challenges in expanding the supply of organic grain in the U.S.

Since 2009, General Mills has increased the organic acreage it supports by 120 percent and is now among the top five organic ingredient purchasers—and the second largest buyer of organic fruits and vegetables in North American. This summer, the company announced a strategic sourcing partnership with Organic Valley, the largest organic cooperative in the U.S., which will help about 20 dairy farms add around 3,000 acres to organic dairy production over the next three years.

Some companies, such as wheat flour supplier Ardent Mills, largely owned by ConAgra and Cargill, are offering long-term contracts to transitioning farmers. The company aims to double organic wheat acres in the U.S. from the current 260,000 to 520,000 by 2019 and will pay farmers more for transitional crops. “One thing that has been very beneficial to us is that folks like Ardent Mills have added value to the crops we’re growing during transition,” Reed Gibby, founder and chairman of an Idaho-based agribusiness that invested in 2,000 organic acres last year, recently told the New York Times.

Restaurants and retailers are also getting in on the act. Chipotle has provided financial incentives to help bean farmers transition from conventional to organic production in the Pacific Northwest, paying higher prices for the beans without being able to market them as organic. Fast-casual, organic-focused Dig Inn is set to buy its own farm and hire its own farmers. This move could spur a trend; for its first store in the Midwest, the salad chain Sweetgreen, which is also committed to locally grown foods and sustainable farming, had to develop a new farm supply and distribution system from scratch.

Earlier this year, Costco, now one of the nation’s biggest sellers of organic food, announced plans to support farmers directly in order to ensure a steady supply of organic crops. The company is following in the footsteps of other retailers that have instituted programs to support suppliers—and presumably themselves—along the supply chain. For over a decade, Whole Foods Market has made $14 million in loans to support local producers. Seattle-based PCC Natural Markets has supported the preservation of farmland through its PCC Farmland Trust, which the co-op founded in 1999.

While it’s obviously a boon for these companies to have a direct supply—and even better the planet to invest in organic and transition away from conventional—the trend raises questions about the benefits to farmers.

Farming is a tough business and many farmers are being forced to sell their land or retire without succession plans or add agritainment attractions to be able to survive. Will investments by a large food producer ultimately keep small family farms on the land? Or are farmers being locked into exclusive agreements, signing onto long-term contracts that amount to vertical integration? And are there other opportunities for farmers to gain access to land and/or transition to organic in some meaningful way?

One promising alternative is the new “Certified Transitional” program developed by OTA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). These transitional products will contain ingredients made from crops harvested one year after the transition to organic begins, but before the three-year period ends. According to the OTA, the certified transitional label has the “potential to support producers … by providing exposure to the certification process and organic regulation, access to USDA support programs for producers, and, potentially premiums for their certified transitional crops.”

Cereal maker Kashi announced a partnership with Quality Assurance International, an USDA-accredited certifying agency, and South Dakota-based Hesco to launch the new label, and even has a new cereal made with wheat from transitional farmland called Dark Cocoa Karma.

Beyond the businesses that buy the crops directly, there are also some programs and loan opportunities to help farmers help themselves. Since 1988, the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) program has advanced profitable and environmentally sound farming systems that are good for communities through a nationwide research and education grants program. In California, farmers can borrow money from Farmlink or from a group of Rural Development Corporations that make loans to farmers and small businesses. The farm Capay Organic borrowed money to buy land from its community supported agriculture (CSA) members by creating a Green Loan Program. It’s a direct public offering (DPO) through the state of California that’s only available to state residents, which is admittedly an expensive way to raise funds, but is also being used by other California businesses.

Access to land is a serious issue for both conventional and organic farmers. We’ve written about how institutional investors—including hedge funds, private equity, pension funds, and university endowments—are buying up farmland as an investment, and it’s worth reading the Oakland Institute’s report, Down on the Farm: Wall Street: America’s New Farmer, which looked at investors and pension funds, such as TIAA-CREF, the Hancock Agricultural Investment Group (HAIG), and UBS Agrivest—an arm of the bank’s global real estate division—and found that these groups have a bottomless appetite for farmland.

But there are those who are trying to invest responsibly, including Farmland LP, Agriculture Capital Management Partners, Sustainable Farm Partners, Vilicus Capital, Iroquois Valley Farms LLC, and Dirt Capital Partners, all of which invest in farmland, either in partnership with sustainable farmers, or to their benefit.

There are those who are supporting the idea of an organic checkoff program as a way to promote more organic production. And just this week, Politico reported that the Rodale Institute launched an advocacy group aimed at “uniting the nearly 20,000 organic farmers in the U.S. and give a voice to their policy issues.” It will be represented in D.C. by Elizabeth Kucinich, the wife of former Congressman Dennis Kucinich. Maybe this group will be able to bring organic farmers’ voices to the Hill to lobby for more support.

As is often the case, public policy has been slow to meet the market’s demands. However we get there, let’s hope that farmers have a winning place in the race for organic.

The post Digested: Buying the Farm appeared first on Civil Eats.

Digested: Can Small Food Brands Scale Up Without Selling Out?

Naomi Starkman — Fri, 19 Aug 2016 09:00:23 +0000

As consumer eating habits continue to change, food giants are on the hunt for halo-glowing boutique brands to bolster their sagging revenues. Small is big business for U.S. food, and along the way, many producers of organic and artisan food products are seeing the benefits, and the challenges, of selling to larger companies. But will this Wild West of food mergers mean better food for the masses or just more consolidation in the marketplace? And does selling always have to mean selling out?

First, let’s consider the landscape. Organic and non-GMO products are no longer considered niche; their sales are growing nearly three times as fast as their conventional counterparts. Many Big Food brands’ bottom lines are careening as consumers seek out options they believe to be better for their health and the environment. In the last year alone, U.S. food mergers and acquisitions added up to $116 billion in deals, the largest total dollar amount in two decades. Some recent acquisitions to consider:

Campbell Soup Co.’s 2013 $249 million purchase of the baby food brand Plum Organics (the soup company also bought Bolthouse Farms for $1.22 billion in 2012); General Mills’ 2014 $820 million purchase of the organic mac n’ cheese company Annie’s; Perdue’s 2015 buy-out of humane-focused meat supplier Niman Ranch (for an undisclosed amount); and Hormel’s $775 million purchase of organic meat company Applegate last year and its recent grab of Justin’s nut butter company.

Earlier this month, Danone announced a $10 billion takeover of WhiteWave Foods Co., the company behind Silk soy and almond milk, Horizon organic milk, and Earthbound farms. While The Street’s Jim Cramer took note, calling the deal out, others are not so sure. Advocacy group Food & Water Watch called for the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to block the merger, citing that the deal would double Danone’s market power in the U.S. and the Cornucopia Institute, an organic industry watchdog, said they were formally challenging the acquisition “based on the serious erosion of competition it would create in the consumer marketplace and the negative economic impact it would have on U.S. organic dairy farmers.”

Consolidation in the food market is real. According to Philp H. Howard, Associate Professor in the Department of Community Sustainability at Michigan State University, at almost every key stage of the food system, four firms alone control 40 percent or more of the market, a level above which these companies have the power to drive up prices for consumers and reduce their rate of innovation.

In his new book, Concentration and Power in the Food System: Who Controls What We Eat?, he reports that researchers have identified additional problems resulting from these trends, including negative impacts on the environment, human health, and communities. (Professor Howard is also responsible for this important graphic [PDF] depicting the consolidation in the organic industry.)

The Food & Power blog by Leah Douglas at the think tank New America also expertly details consolidation in nearly every aspect of the food system. This includes supermarket mega mergers, Bayer’s failed $65 million bid to buy Monsanto (Bayer is now considering a hostile takeover), Dow Chemical’s planned merger with DuPont, and ChemChina’s acquisition of Syngenta. Senator Charles Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, sent a letter this week to antitrust enforcers noting that the latter two major agriculture technology and seed company mergers could hurt competition in the industry and make it harder for smaller companies to compete.

The biggest players aside, I do wonder why the smaller brands are selling in the first place and whether these beloved companies are in fact “selling out.” Justin Gold, the founder of Justin’s, said he decided to sell his 14-year-old Boulder-based nut butter company to Hormel for $286 million because it promised to help scale up his company and because of the independence with which the parent company has treated Applegate and other brands. (For more on Hormel, read this fascinating piece in Fortune.)

The same can be said of the recent news that my neighbors, the much-heralded artisan cheese company, Cowgirl Creamery, would merge with Swiss-based Emmi, which also bought nearby Redwood Hill Farm and Creamery last year and Cypress Grove Chevre in 2010. For many fans, this came as a shock and disappointment. I couldn’t help but think: aren’t Peggy Smith and Sue Conley—the founders who are in their 60s, and have run the business for nearly 20 years—allowed to have some sort of exit strategy? Why is it that we expect small producers not to grow and succeed?

“We did not build our business to sell it,” Conley told me. “For the last 20 years, we’ve financed everything by mortgaging our homes, and borrowing money from banks and personal friends.” Conley said she and Smith are at an age where they’re not willing to take the risk of borrowing money and they needed capital for the purpose of building a new production facility. And she said that Emmi was the right company for them, because it’s allowing them to operate independently. Conley had seen how Emmi provided valuable guidance, capital investment, and expertise for Cypress Grove, while allowing them to retain their brand value.

The fact that selling often seems like the most practical option may ultimately speak to the bind in which many artisan companies find themselves. Most have invested a great deal more capital into hand-crafted ingredients than today’s conventional food companies do, and—as Conley suggests—getting out from under the debt of the initial investment isn’t always possible otherwise.

“Evaluating the options from a variety of perspectives, it was clear that there is only a limited level of debt that the company can take on prudently,” said New Resource Bank’s Founder Peter Liu, who advised the Cowgirls. “Technology companies have access to IPOs and venture capital, options that are not really available to artisanal food businesses. Finding patient equity capital is a challenge for small businesses and a common issue that comes up in succession planning discussions.”

Sometimes it works out for the small guys when they sell, sometimes not. Starbucks bought up San Francisco-based bakery chain La Boulange for $100 million and ended up closing all of its 23 locations just three years later, much to the horror of some Bay Area bread lovers. (After that fiasco, some San Francisco locations were reborn last year under a different company.) Starbucks itself is struggling against pressure from the small guys and is opening a new line of higher-end café stores, perhaps to compete with the cool kids?

Other tales of corporate marriages gone awry include the plummet in sales that occurred when Kellogg Co. bought Kashi, the change in consumer perception that happened when Coca-Cola bought Odwalla juice company (and more recently, acquired a minority stake in Suja cold-pressed juices), and Hersey’s purchase of bespoke chocolate companies Scharffen Berger and Dagoba.

Small food companies risk a lot by scaling up this way because if they’re owned by a public company they may have no choice but to keep growing until they’re doing something very different than what they started with. As artisan food becomes All-American, it’s unclear whether or not the quality—let alone the identity—of the products can be maintained, threatening the authenticity their consumers sought in the first pace.

Is it possible for small brands to scale and retain their uniqueness and their local fan-bases? Maybe. Small companies are often distinct, which is great, but not if they can’t survive. That’s why companies are attracted to big players like Hormel and Emmi, which will provide capital to grow, but agree to leave the small companies alone. Still, I keep wondering why there isn’t more capital available to the small businesses in the first place? Why isn’t there some sort of major good food fund for the small guys who don’t want to sell? And how do small businesses protect vision and mission in without having to become public?

Long-time entrepreneur and investor Will Rosenzweig pointed out that it’s not just capital that’s missing; big companies bring bigger ecosystems and better infrastructure that small companies just can’t build—even with financial support. “It isn’t just a linear equation; it’s a step-function equation,” he explained. “From buying power, to processing and distribution power, as they move up the food chain, small companies are forced into this situation.”

Observing that the artisan grab is the same play made by big food scooping up organic over the past few decades, Rosenzweig urged today’s entrepreneurs and investors to sharpen their pattern recognition skills. “The warfare for the consumer’s long-term share of stomach is a brutal, expensive game.”

The post Digested: Can Small Food Brands Scale Up Without Selling Out? appeared first on Civil Eats.