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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read More:                                                                                                                                                
The Dangerous Food Additive That’s Not on the Label
Op-ed: The Rise of Ultra-Processed Foods Is Bad News for Our Health

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

Read More:                                                                                                                                       
Food Prices Are Still High. What Role Do Corporate Profits Play?
How Food Inflation Adds to the Burdens Disabled People Carry

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https://civileats.com/2024/08/27/is-recycled-plastic-safe-for-food-use/ https://civileats.com/2024/08/27/is-recycled-plastic-safe-for-food-use/#respond Tue, 27 Aug 2024 09:00:22 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=57374 Since 1990, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the agency responsible for ensuring food contact materials are safe, approved at least 347 voluntary manufacturer applications for food contact materials made with recycled plastic, according to a database on its website. Approvals have tripled in recent years, from an average of seven to eight per […]

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Recycled content in food packaging is increasing as sustainability advocates press manufacturers to cut their use of virgin plastic.

Since 1990, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the agency responsible for ensuring food contact materials are safe, approved at least 347 voluntary manufacturer applications for food contact materials made with recycled plastic, according to a database on its website. Approvals have tripled in recent years, from an average of seven to eight per year through 2019, to 23 per year since then, and they continue to climb. The FDA has already approved 27 proposals through June this year.

Other than Coca-Cola, most manufacturers seeking approval are petrochemical giants such as Eastman Chemicals, Dupont, and Indorama; and lesser-known plastic packaging manufacturers, including many from China, India, and other countries.

“The FDA has been very reluctant to adopt a modern perspective.”

The end buyers of the recycled materials aren’t included in the FDA database, but many popular brands are using recycled content. Cadbury chocolate bars come in a wrapper marketed as 30 percent recycled “soft plastic packaging.” The Coca-Cola Co. in North America reports it sells soft drinks in 100 percent recycled PET (polyethylene terephthalate) bottles, while General Mills says its Annie’s cereal boxes use a liner made from 35 percent recycled plastic film.

Increasing recycled content in packaging may be good news for the planet, but researchers say the FDA has a lax approval process for plastic food packaging that hasn’t kept pace with the science on chemical hazards in plastics. The agency’s approval process for recycled plastics is voluntary and ignores the potential risk of chemical mixtures, researchers told EHN. Companies can seek guidance on their recycling process, but they are not required to. In addition, the FDA relies on manufacturers’ test data when it approves materials, leaving companies essentially in charge of policing themselves. Meanwhile, some studies show that recycled plastic can harbor even more toxic chemicals—such as bisphenol-A (BPA), phthalates, benzene and others—than virgin plastic.

FDA spokesperson Enrico Dinges defended the process, telling EHN the agency “reviews [industry] data against stringent scientific guidelines” and can “use its resources to spot test materials” if it sees an issue.

But researchers say the agency fails to protect the public from the toxic chemical soup found in recycled plastics.

“[The] FDA is most concerned about pathogen contamination coming with the recycled material, rather than chemicals,” Maricel Maffini told EHN. The approval process “is very lax,” she said.

Recycled Plastic Is More Toxic

Globally, just 9 percent of plastic is recycled. Most is recycled mechanically, by sorting, washing, grinding, and re-compounding the material into pellets.

Most recycling centers collect a mix of materials, allowing milk jugs, say, to intermingle with detergent bottles or pesticide containers and potentially absorb the hazardous chemicals from those non-food containers. Recycling facilities that are set up to collect one plastic type, such as PET bottles, can better control potential contamination, although chemicals could still be introduced from bottle caps or the adhesives in labels.

Hazardous chemicals can also be introduced when plastics are decontaminated and stabilized during recycling. Plastics degrade with recycling, “so you may need to add more stabilizers to make the material as robust as the virgin material,” Birgit Geueke, senior scientific officer at the nonprofit Food Packaging Forum, told EHN. “Recycling can therefore increase the material complexity and the presence of different additives and degradation products.”

Geueke, who led a review of more than 700 studies on chemicals in plastic food contact items, said that research on recycled plastics is limited. Despite that caveat, “there are a few studies really showing that contamination can be introduced more easily if you use recycled content.”

One study found 524 volatile organic chemicals in recycled PET versus 461 in virgin PET. Chemicals detected in the recycled PET included styrene, benzene, BPA, antimony, formaldehyde, and phthalates—chemicals linked to an array of health issues, including cancer, and the ability to hack hormones and cause development delays in children, obesity, and reproductive problems.

Most studies have focused on recycled PET, which is “not as prone to picking chemicals up,” in comparison to other plastics such as recycled high-density polyethylene (HDPE) and polypropylene, or PP, Geueke said. “HDPE milk bottles really take up chemicals during all stages of their life cycle, much more than PET bottles, and [those chemicals] are harder to remove, because they stick harder to the material,” she said.

Indeed, a study on recycled HDPE pellets obtained from various countries in the Global South identified pesticides, pharmaceuticals, and industrial chemicals in the pellets.

FDA’s Lax Approach

The FDA must authorize all materials that contact food before they reach the market. To be authorized, a material cannot contain intentionally added cancer-causing chemicals nor any other chemicals that leach from the material at a level of more than 0.5 parts per billion.

But as Maffini pointed out, the FDA recommends, but does not require, the type of testing that manufacturers should do to ensure their products are safe, and it doesn’t always require them to submit any safety data, she said.

“If you tell the FDA the substance or substances used to make the plastic are not mutagenic or genotoxicant, and the exposure in the diet would be less than 0.5 parts per billion, FDA does not expect you to send any safety data [to back up these claims].”

In defense, the agency’s Dinges said, “the FDA has robust guidelines for the underlying scientific data that should be provided” by industry. But he also said, “it is the responsibility of the manufacturer to ensure that their material meets all applicable specifications.”

For recycled plastics, companies may also voluntarily submit a requested review of their recycling process. In this case, the FDA asks companies to provide a description of the process, test results showing that the process removes possible incidental contamination, and a description of how the material will be used.

The FDA further advises manufacturers to conduct “surrogate testing,” which involves challenging recycled materials with, or submerging them into, different classes of hazardous chemicals that could theoretically contaminate the plastic, to determine whether the company’s recycling processes can eliminate those toxic chemicals.

Surrogate testing is the “best available practice” for evaluating chemical migration from recycled plastics, Gueke said, although research shows it works better for PET than for other plastics like PP or HDPE. Though the FDA doesn’t require surrogate testing, Tom Neltner, executive director at Unleaded Kids, said, “I don’t think you’re going to find a market in the industry without having gone through FDA review.”

Neltner, who formerly worked with Environmental Defense Fund’s Safer Chemical Initiative, said that in his experience, big food companies are skittish about using mechanically recycled plastic on packaging that touches food.

According to the FDA database of recycled plastic applications, two-thirds of the approvals are for recycled PET, for a broad range of products from drink bottles to clam shell containers for fruits and vegetables to tea bags. Most of the remaining approvals are for recycled PP for products including clam shells, disposable tableware, cutlery, caps, and lids; recycled HDPE for grocery bags, milk and juice bottles, meat trays, and disposable tableware, and recycled polystyrene (PS) for meat and poultry trays and clam shells.

Most requests are for mechanical recycling processes, though a couple dozen were submitted for chemical recycling, which uses an energy-intensive, largely unproven, process to convert plastics back to their original monomer chemicals. [The FDA no longer evaluates chemical recycling proposals for PET because it says the process produces material of suitable purity for food-contact use.]

Outdated Approach to Evaluating Toxics

“The FDA has been very reluctant to adopt a modern perspective,” Tom Zoeller, professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, told EHN, referring to testing for the effects of endocrine disruptors or for the mixtures of chemicals found in plastics.

FDA’s requirement that a chemical not exceed a threshold of 0.5 parts per billion is based on cancer risk, Zoeller said, and while that number is protective for evaluating exposure to a single chemical, “I’m not sure that means a lot, when you consider the 16,000 chemicals that are put in plastic.”

In other words, the FDA’s approach doesn’t account for multiple chemical exposures, even as research shows that chemical mixtures can have significant health impact. A European study, for instance, found that a mixture of nine different chemicals had a greater impact on children’s IQ than what was expected based on individual risk assessments.

“It’s the combination of chemicals that are impacting IQ and basically stealing human potential,” Zoeller said. “We are way behind the curve,” in assessing chemical risks, he added.

Dinges responded that “while it is unlikely that appropriately sourced and controlled feedstock will experience incidental contamination to any appreciable amount, potential incidental contamination is addressed by the FDA’s surrogate testing recommendations.”

Yet the ability to control feedstock is what worries experts. Researchers who found BPA and heavy metals migrating at higher levels from recycled PET compared to virgin PET, stressed that the plastic’s safety depends on transparency and cooperation across the value chain. Moreover, surrogate testing is not required.

Neither does FDA’s approach account for endocrine-disrupting chemicals, which can act at levels in the parts per trillion by disrupting metabolism, Maffini and Zoeller commented. “This concept that there’s a threshold below which there are no effects or no adverse effects is fundamentally incorrect,” said Zoeller.

Dinges countered that the “effects on the endocrine system are just one of many areas of toxicology that the FDA evaluates,” while also repeating industry talking points. “Endocrine activation . . . does not necessarily translate into toxicity,” he wrote. “Consumption of any food (for example, sugar) can activate the endocrine system.”

Such responses have led Zoeller to conclude that FDA has “become a foil for industry,” and that their “precautionary principle is applied to industry, not public health.”

Unless government agencies can do a better job at ensuring manufacturers are keeping chemical hazards out of recycled plastic, experts think it shouldn’t be used for food contact materials.

“I’m not a big fan of recycled plastic and food contact, because it’s really hard to know [if it’s safe], and I think producers have to be more careful than when they produce virgin materials,” Geueke said, adding that she thinks that only recycled PET should be considered because the other types so readily absorb chemical contaminants.

“If you have a very good process and can prove that it gets rid of most of the contaminants . . . but nobody knows whether that really happens or not,” she said.

This article originally appeared in EHN, and is reprinted with permission.

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]]> https://civileats.com/2024/08/27/is-recycled-plastic-safe-for-food-use/feed/ 0 https://civileats.com/2024/08/26/civil-eats-welcomes-momo-chang-as-senior-editor/ https://civileats.com/2024/08/26/civil-eats-welcomes-momo-chang-as-senior-editor/#respond Mon, 26 Aug 2024 09:00:41 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=57354 Chang is a longtime journalist focusing on food, justice, health, and environmental stories. She is the former features editor and writer for Hyphen magazine, where she received national Asian American Journalists Association awards for her coverage of Asian American and Pacific Islander issues. She is also the former content manager at the Center for Asian […]

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Seasoned journalist Momo Chang joins Civil Eats as a senior editor. She is the former co-director of Oakland Voices, a community journalism training program and outlet of the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education.

Chang is a longtime journalist focusing on food, justice, health, and environmental stories. She is the former features editor and writer for Hyphen magazine, where she received national Asian American Journalists Association awards for her coverage of Asian American and Pacific Islander issues. She is also the former content manager at the Center for Asian American Media.

“I cannot be more thrilled to join Civil Eats’ editorial team,” Chang said. “I look forward to helping build on the canon of work that Civil Eats has been publishing for the past 15 years. Food is central to our lives, and Civil Eats maintains a vital role in bringing relevant information, analysis, and storytelling to the public.”

Chang spent her early years in journalism as a staff writer at the Oakland Tribune. Chang’s journalism career has been focused on elevating undertold stories, from the health impacts on refugee Vietnamese American women who work in nail salons to an Asian American farmer saving heritage seeds. Her work has been published in the San Francisco Chronicle, Guardian US, Edible San Francisco, Bon Appétit, PBS, and other outlets.

“Momo Chang is an extremely skilled editor, educator, and award-winning reporter,” said Naomi Starkman, founder, executive director, and former editor-in-chief of Civil Eats. “We very much look forward to working with her as a senior member of our team.”

Chang received a B.A. in Mass Communications and English from U.C. Berkeley, and an M.A. from Harvard’s Graduate School of Education. Fusing her love of education and writing, she jumped into journalism after a short stint teaching at a high school.

In 2019, Chang was a part of a team to receive a James Beard Journalism Award for a San Francisco Chronicle project on Chinese regional restaurants in the San Francisco Bay Area. More recently, she wrote about commercial crabbers operating small vessels in the Bay Area amidst stricter fishing regulations. Chang also brings her deep community connections in the world of journalism and media to her new role at Civil Eats.

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]]> https://civileats.com/2024/08/26/civil-eats-welcomes-momo-chang-as-senior-editor/feed/ 0 https://civileats.com/2024/08/20/how-a-community-gardener-grew-food-for-her-family-quit-her-job-at-mcdonalds-and-started-a-farm/ https://civileats.com/2024/08/20/how-a-community-gardener-grew-food-for-her-family-quit-her-job-at-mcdonalds-and-started-a-farm/#respond Tue, 20 Aug 2024 09:00:21 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=57290 Hernández Reyes grew up subsistence farming with her parents in Oaxaca, and the garden spoke to her. She called a number posted nearby and reached Adam Kohl, the executive director of Outgrowing Hunger, an organization that rents unused land at accessible costs to help immigrants and refugees grow their own food. Hernández Reyes was able […]

The post How a Community Gardener Grew Food for Her Family, Quit Her Job at McDonald’s, and Started a Farm appeared first on Civil Eats.

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When Maximina Hernández Reyes emigrated from Oaxaca, Mexico, to Oregon in 2001, she was still learning English, had no idea where the food pantries were, and knew very few people. She struggled to find a support system in Gresham, the suburb of Portland where she settled, until 2012, when she happened upon a community garden in the city’s Vance Park.

Hernández Reyes grew up subsistence farming with her parents in Oaxaca, and the garden spoke to her. She called a number posted nearby and reached Adam Kohl, the executive director of Outgrowing Hunger, an organization that rents unused land at accessible costs to help immigrants and refugees grow their own food. Hernández Reyes was able to secure a small plot in the community garden and started growing food for her family. This was just the beginning.

Over the next decade, gardening evolved from a hobby to a passion for Hernández Reyes, but it wasn’t how she earned her income. While she worked her way up at McDonald’s, eventually becoming a manager, she gardened on the side as a way to provide her family and neighbors with fresh produce. Eventually, she became a community leader through her work in the garden; her original plot is now an educational site where she teaches gardening to other Latinas.

Maximina Hernández Reyes grows a range of produce, including many types of vegetables and herbs found in her home state of Oaxaca, Mexico. (Photo credit: Elizabeth Doerr)

Two years ago, Hernández Reyes had the opportunity to scale up her own growing operation and turn it into a source of income. She is now in her second season of managing a one-acre farm that Outgrowing Hunger leases in the nearby town of Boring, Oregon. While she named the operation MR. Farms after her initials, she has leaned into people misreading it as “Mister.” The business has been so successful that she was able to quit her job at McDonald’s last year and has transitioned from feeding her family to feeding—and mentoring—her whole community.

Hernández Reyes attributes her success at this food sovereignty endeavor to the support of a network called Rockwood Food Systems Collaborative (RFSC), part of a larger organization called Rockwood Community Development Corporation, which focuses on underserved areas of East Portland and Gresham. RFSC is comprised of nearly 30 organizations, including social services, food justice initiatives, and health and educational institutions.

Traditionally, food security organizations receive food from anywhere they can get it, and because donations are rarely from local growers, the system often results in processed foods and a reliance on the precarious global food system. The collaborative model, rather than providing one-way charity, is focused on mutualism and community care. Partnerships with local growers create a market that supports farmer entrepreneurship; community members receive fresh produce; and the system is more resilient to global food shortages.

“When people see these vegetables in the farmers’ market, they get really excited. They say, ‘I haven’t seen these in many years!’ or ‘I’ve been looking for these.’”

At Rockwood, when someone shows a knack for farming, especially when it benefits their community, someone from the collaborative connects them with various member organizations that can help them access resources and connections to build a successful farm business. When Hernández Reyes got involved, Outgrowing Hunger provided her with land and put her in touch with the Oregon Food Bank, which buys her vegetables for their pantries, and Rockwood People’s Market, a BIPOC-led farmers market in Gresham, where she sells produce every Sunday. She and other growers are also able to sell produce to local community members, who pay with tokens provided by food systems partners, the local low-cost health clinic Wallace Medical Concern, and the youth services organization Play Grow Learn.

The Rockwood Food Systems Collaborative is one of hundreds of similar networks across the U.S. that are serving as a model for a more resilient food and health system. Others include Hawai’i Food Hub Hui, Cooperative Food Empowerment Directive, and the Mississippi Farm to School Network. Leveraging social capital between and among institutions, these networks, along with community members themselves, create an alternative local food system. This can be particularly powerful for immigrants and U.S. noncitizens, who are twice as likely to be among the 44 million people in the U.S. facing food insecurity.

Civil Eats recently spoke to Hernández Reyes about her journey toward this collaborative model, the organizations that supported her new business, and how growing food offers freedom to immigrant families.

What do you miss most about your home in Oaxaca?

What I miss are the simple things like traditions, family, and my culture. That was before. But now we’ve built the same community here and brought our traditions here. My vegetables are part of those traditions.

At first, they only grew a little bit because I only had one plant from the seeds I brought with me. But we saved the seeds and acclimatized them and now we have more of our traditional vegetables to share with my community: tomatillos and Roma tomatoes (but not like the ones you get from the grocery store; they’re better), green beans from my state, types of Mexican corn, and pipicha, pápalo, and epazote [herbs used in traditional dishes in central and southern Mexico]. When people see these vegetables in the farmers’ market, they get really excited. They say, “I haven’t seen these in many years!” or “I’ve been looking for these.”

What is your role in the Rockwood Food Systems Collaborative and how have these connections helped you?

I was volunteering during the pandemic with Outgrowing Hunger to distribute food boxes to families. Through that, I met people from Rockwood CDC, Play Grow Learn, Metropolitan Family Service, and a lot of other organizations. Then I got involved with Guerreras Latinas [an empowerment program for Spanish-speaking Latinas] where I taught gardening through a program called Sembradoras, which was supported by funding from the Oregon Food Bank.

The connections benefit my business. When the organizations have grant money, they can purchase some vegetables from me—that way, they help me, and then I help the community. There’s this cycle. I want to keep my vegetables in the community; I don’t want to send my vegetables to the huge stores.

How did you get your business off the ground?

I started my business when I saw that my community needed the kinds of vegetables that I grow. And I was thinking, how could I sell my vegetables? I talked to Lynn [Ketch, executive director] from Rockwood CDC, and she asked why didn’t I make it a business. And I said, ‘Yes! Why not?!’ I was a gardener before, but I wanted to get to the next level of farming. I’m motivated to work hard because I want to serve my community; I want to grow more food.

“When the organizations have grant money, they can purchase some vegetables from me—that way, they help me, and then I help the community. There’s this cycle.”

At first, we didn’t have enough money to pay the rent on the land at Outgrowing Hunger. So, Adam gave me some options where I could pay after three to four months of selling vegetables. He always had somebody to help when we needed it and connected me with other organizations.

Another support was the Oregon Food Bank. Because it was my first year of farming, they gave me support by buying my products to give out in the food pantry. They pay you upfront, so with that money, I started to buy the irrigation and everything. Another organization, the Metropolitan Family Service, bought a small amount of vegetables, which helped, too.

Does growing food and the connections to the Food Collaborative offer freedom to the immigrant families in your community?

Yes, it helps a lot. Here at Outgrowing Hunger, the price for rent is not that high. And Outgrowing Hunger helps us apply for grants. There isn’t a lot of space for people to grow their own food at home, so the land for gardening helps so much. But, we need to educate people about how and where to grow fresh vegetables.

The collaborative has helped bring more information to people. For the people who can’t grow their food, the organizations buy the food, and community members receive tokens for free and can get fresh food from the farmers’ market. There are a lot of benefits—people’s hearts are better, they’re healthier, and they have less stress. There’s a lot of freedom in that.

How has working in this kind of collaborative model been different from what you experienced when you first arrived in the U.S.?

There’s a big difference. At some food pantries, they asked for your address, social security information, and documentation. Immigrants were scared to go there, because they would have to share all their information. It was also hard to find out where those pantries were. Now the food pantries don’t ask for that. But also, because of this group of organizations, there’s a lot more information about where people can get more food.

I experienced challenges before I found the collaborative. Organizations didn’t have enough Spanish speakers, and there wasn’t a lot of information available. It was hard to make connections. I also didn’t know my neighbors very well. But now, with this group of organizations, it has changed. They all have Spanish speakers, and there is a lot more information about resources available.

MR. Farms in Boring, Oregon, with Mt. Hood in the background. (Photo credit: Elizabeth Doerr)

What kinds of community members have you met through your work with farming and the food systems collaborative?

I’ve met a lot of people since I’ve started volunteering here, and I made all these connections around my neighborhood. I talk to people and tell them what I’m doing and how I grow vegetables, and I bring them in that way. I’m building community through food. With Outgrowing Hunger, when I got started, we had two Latinos, and now we have 30 Latinos. I talk to them: “You can apply for this; you can get this resource.” I have WhatsApp, and when I learn of opportunities, I share.

One of those families was telling me they didn’t have enough money to buy food. This one woman said she tried to go to the food pantry, but they asked for all these documents. I told her, “I have some vegetables in my garden,” and she was so happy. I asked her why she didn’t have any money, and she said her husband was sick and it was just [her] working, and their rent was so high, and they have three small children. I connected her to Outgrowing Hunger, and she applied for that space in the garden, and she started growing her own vegetables.

What are your hopes for the future?

Oh, my goodness. So much. My dream is to grow my farm, to implement jobs for immigrants or anyone who wants to work. To produce more. Right now, it’s a family farm: my husband, my kids, my brothers, people in the community. I really want to build a program to give jobs to moms in the summertime. They can bring their kids and come to work. I keep thinking and thinking—and I want to do everything!

This interview was conducted in English and Spanish and has been translated and edited for length and clarity.

The post How a Community Gardener Grew Food for Her Family, Quit Her Job at McDonald’s, and Started a Farm appeared first on Civil Eats.

]]> https://civileats.com/2024/08/20/how-a-community-gardener-grew-food-for-her-family-quit-her-job-at-mcdonalds-and-started-a-farm/feed/ 0 https://civileats.com/2024/08/13/on-tiktok-a-revival-of-black-herbalism/ https://civileats.com/2024/08/13/on-tiktok-a-revival-of-black-herbalism/#respond Tue, 13 Aug 2024 09:00:48 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=57219 My childhood memories include my grandmother making garlic tinctures, boiling ginger tea, and delivering spoonfuls of elderberry syrup to me when I was sick. When I had the flu, she’d put slices of onions in my socks to “pull the cold out.” If someone had cramps, she’d brew them a soothing cup of peppermint tea. […]

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Growing up in a Black American family, I was steeped in the wisdom of natural remedies passed down through generations.

My childhood memories include my grandmother making garlic tinctures, boiling ginger tea, and delivering spoonfuls of elderberry syrup to me when I was sick. When I had the flu, she’d put slices of onions in my socks to “pull the cold out.” If someone had cramps, she’d brew them a soothing cup of peppermint tea.

“Herbalism is a study of plants and their medicinal properties. However, when it comes to practicing herbalism, it’s an art.”

She had no formal training, but my grandmother knew to use eucalyptus for inflammation and licorice for digestion—and they worked. It wasn’t until I started taking classes to get my certificate in medicinal plants from Cornell University last year, starting my own herbalist journey, that I began to connect what I was learning with what my grandmother had already taught me.

But these traditions didn’t begin with her.

Traditional medicine, or folk medicine, was once the dominant medical system in Africa. During chattel slavery, enslaved Africans brought their knowledge of medicinal plants to America, adapting their practices to the new environment. This legacy of plant medicine has not only survived, but also has become an integral—and rarely credited—part of Black American culture.

In recent years, there has been a resurgence of interest in herbalism, including on platforms like TikTok, where #Blackherbalist and #AfricanHolisticHealth have garnered over 64 million combined views. This movement reflects a broader celebration of the resilience and ingenuity of our ancestors.

Carmen Adams is a Black herbalist registered with the American Herbalists Guild as well as a community health nurse and the founder of Innergy Med Group, a practice that provides wellness plans that integrate holistic and herbal solutions for her clients. She began her journey by studying herbalism and naturopathic medicine to heal her acne, digestive issues, weight gain, and anxiety. Now, after years of helping clients and mentoring aspiring herbalists, Carmen shares her insights and expertise with her 220,000 followers on TikTok, hoping to empower, educate and teach people how to advocate for their health.

I spoke to Adams about herbalism’s historic connection to Black American culture, how social media is giving the practice new life, and why Black Americans haven’t always received credit for their contributions.

How would you define an herbalist?

Herbalism is a study of plants and their medicinal properties. However, when it comes to practicing herbalism, it’s an art.

An herbalist consciously works with plants, whether they’re live, dried, or otherwise. Maybe you’re someone who [forages], so you’re out in nature and you’re picking them. Maybe you’re a farmer interacting with plants, but you’re doing so to extract their medicinal properties. An herbalist may be spending time with plants, whether it’s breathing with them, using them to purify the air, or consuming them to benefit your physical “meat suit.” That’s how I would describe an herbalist, because not everyone has to be in a clinical setting. Not everyone’s mind works that way, and I respect that as well.

Can you share your personal journey into medicinal plants?

I’ve always known I’d work in health care. While on the pre-med track, I began learning things that didn’t quite feel in alignment—different things in reference to pharmaceuticals and policies. I learned that I was pregnant; that was the biggest mental change. I knew there were certain aspects I wasn’t going to incorporate into my personal journey. It pushed me to ask, “What now? What did my ancestors do?”

I remember getting sick as a kid. I had a really bad stomach virus. My mom was in the kitchen, making something her brother used to make for her. It had onions, garlic, ginger, all kinds of stuff. It smelled horrible. I remember taking it, looking at her, running to the front door, and throwing up on the welcome mat. However, from that moment forward, I felt better.

So, I sought out herbalism. Back then, there weren’t many courses. There were different herbalists acting as mentors. I was privileged enough to have a mentor by the name of Dulce King. She was a lovely Dominican woman. . . . Her depth of knowledge was invaluable. I wanted to take her mind and just shake it into mine. That was the birth of my love of herbalism and teaching.

What inspired you to start sharing your knowledge on TikTok?

I’m not a social media person. My assistant felt that people would benefit from learning from me, even if they weren’t clients or mentees. I gave it a whirl, and it just took off.

I’m just sharing my two cents, and if it resonates, beautiful. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t. I started to learn the different misinformation that was out there because it’s so easy to make money . . . I feel sometimes people can get a little drunk on that, which could cause them to overpromise a product that’s going to underdeliver, at best. I wanted to make sure that I share that herbs are [simply] a tool.

In my practice, sometimes we don’t even mention an herb. People may just need a place to vent or feel safe. Their inner dialogue was causing the nausea and anxiety; the peppermint tea wasn’t needed.

Some people use TikTok as an alternative to Google, so it’s important for people to disseminate information responsibly. What are your thoughts on that?

The fact that people use it as Google kind of scares me. Even though I believe self-diagnosing has its place, specialists are specialists for a reason. Anyone can get a TikTok account. Anyone can buy a book, regurgitate it, and then say, “This product can get you that result.” It’s disheartening because I’ve seen [social media remedies] hurt people.

For example, sea moss could be beneficial, but there are some cases where it is not beneficial. I’ve had clients come to me or put themselves in the hospital because [of] something that they saw online—someone promising how it benefited them without understanding certain contraindications.

Are there any herbs you had a relationship with as a child that you still use now?

Ginger, onion, garlic. Broths were pretty big.

One of the first cough syrups I ever made as an herbalist was a honey-onion cough syrup. [I was] learning about nature’s antibiotics and then, feeling spiffy, added garlic to it. [I remember] tasting it and thinking, “This reminds me of childhood. Why does this remind me of childhood?’

Things like that started coming back. I started making my own salad dressings but using my cough syrup as a base. Then it was like, “Ah, yes! Food can be medicine!” It just starts to click.

Are there any remedies that are popular among herbalists today that are safe to try?

There is no cookie-cutter answer to this. It’s out of my scope to diagnose, treat, or prescribe, so I’m simply sharing.

(For eczema and psoriasis), chickweed is a mild, nutritive herb that can be consumed internally and used externally as a fomentation, which is a fancy way of saying using a tea topically.

Nettle! In my personal life, I love it whenever I’m dealing with seasonal allergies.

Oh, and for menstrual cramps, red raspberry leaf coupled with ginger root. Bring some ginger to a boil and combine that tea on top of red raspberry leaves. Remove it from heat, let it steep, and consume that. The ginger is an anodyne or analgesic, meaning pain-relieving. It’s also blood-thinning and a circulatory herb. Red raspberry is touted for being a uterine tonic and a nutritive.

I have read that enslaved Black Americans used cayenne pepper in their shoes or on their feet to treat colds. Have you heard of this?

I have heard the remedy more times than you can believe! Cayenne is a circulatory herb that is also considered a diaphoretic herb, so it can increase your body’s temperature.

Putting cayenne in your shoes can burn, depending on if you have sensitive skin, so you will want to maybe use a carrier oil like olive oil, jojoba oil, or coconut oil. Even then, it feels like Icy Hot.

I’ve used it for camping. It kept my feet warm. So, I think [enslaved Americans] were attempting to increase body temperature to assist. Cayenne is a diaphoretic herb and can cause sweating, so if it’s coming from that place and that’s how that person responded, their body could positively be influenced.

Anecdotes like that are fascinating and important to me as a Black American. Are people holding tradition more closely now?

(More) than ever before. I’m 36. Thinking of my childhood, there was an undertone to religion or maybe they’d tie it to biblical times. Nowadays, people are dipping back into their roots, if they know what those roots are. But some are just going back to the basics and revering nature. That’s how it started with me.

I’ve seen a surge of Black herbalists, particularly among millennials and Gen Z. How has social media opened the door for Black people who want to celebrate these traditions but may not have had the family background or access to that knowledge?

It’s given a platform to everyone, melanated or otherwise. I do think it may be connecting more and more people within the diaspora. There are different cultures that look similar that are learning that they have similar thoughts for health and wellness, utilizing what the Earth provides. It’s a great opportunity to share knowledge and connect. I’ve had individuals join live [streams] and say, “I didn’t even know this was an option!” Stuff like that feels good to know, and it cuts across racial lines.

Why have the contributions Black Americans have made to herbal medicine been overlooked and undocumented?

At one point, it was illegal [for Black people] to read and write. They didn’t have the opportunity or know-how for publishing. Typically, storytelling [was how] things were passed down. All of those factors could be perceived as barriers to how this knowledge was traditionally shared.

What does healing mean to you?

Alignment of mind, body, spirit. Balance. It’s your inner dialogue, your stress-coping mechanisms. It’s pain, or lack thereof. It’s what you choose to consume visually, auditorily, or via digestion and spirit. It’s your connection to source, whatever that looks like, religious or spiritual. It’s where you draw strength from.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

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]]> https://civileats.com/2024/08/13/on-tiktok-a-revival-of-black-herbalism/feed/ 0 https://civileats.com/2024/07/29/hunger-doesnt-take-a-summer-break-neither-do-school-food-professionals/ https://civileats.com/2024/07/29/hunger-doesnt-take-a-summer-break-neither-do-school-food-professionals/#comments Mon, 29 Jul 2024 09:00:58 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=57059 “People think, ‘It’s almost summertime; you must get a vacation!’” said Figueroa, the food operations manager for the small district in eastern Maryland. “But I am running around like a maniac.” That’s because while cafeteria workers serve meals in nine Caroline County schools during the school year, they would be operating 24 sites between June […]

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At the end of May, Samantha Figueroa sat at her desk counting the number of sites where Caroline County Public Schools would distribute free food to children this summer. Behind her, color-coded meal plans filled the wall.

“People think, ‘It’s almost summertime; you must get a vacation!’” said Figueroa, the food operations manager for the small district in eastern Maryland. “But I am running around like a maniac.”

That’s because while cafeteria workers serve meals in nine Caroline County schools during the school year, they would be operating 24 sites between June and August. In addition to serving meals at camps and other places children gather during the summer, at 17 of those, her team would be sending applesauce cups, baked ziti, and milk cartons out into communities in a whole new way. Other districts and nonprofits all over the country are doing the same thing this summer.

Vegetables like baby carrots have to be packaged into individual serving sizes before they’re added to meal bags. (Photo credit: Colin Marshall)

Driving it all is a policy change members of Congress, led by Senators Debbie Stabenow (D-Michigan) and John Boozman (R-Arkansas), quietly tucked into a December 2022 spending bill. In addition to authorizing a program that would put extra funds into low-income parents’ pockets for summer groceries, the lawmakers changed a longstanding provision that required schools to serve summer meals communally, eliminating the requirement for rural areas.

While it may seem like a tiny detail, school food professionals and child hunger organizations have long argued that in the past, requiring children to show up and sit down to eat had prevented them from reaching many food-insecure households during the summer months. That was especially true in rural areas, where families are spread out and transportation options can be limited. In low-income districts like Caroline County—where all kids eat free during the school year—they argued, kids were likely going hungry as a result.

This summer, then, marks a turning point.

“It truly is a historic moment. We have the opportunity to do something that folks have been trying to do for a very long time,” said U.S. Deputy Secretary of Agriculture Xochitl Torres Small at No Kid Hungry’s Summer Nutrition Summit in January. “By giving kids the nutrition they need, we’re giving them a foundation of well-being that can—without exaggeration—change the trajectory of their lives.”

But while the policy tweak may be simple, the 400 professionals at the conference were there to talk about the hard part: logistics. It’s profoundly complicated to find hungry kids who are out of school, prepare, pack, and deliver meals to them—and to do it all while following U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) rules that come with unwieldy paperwork. In short, they were laying the foundation for what Figueroa and countless other school food professionals are now working on every week this summer.

Packing Meals to Go

By early July, on a morning when hot air hung heavy over the crisp, browned grass outside Lockerman Middle School, Figueroa had worked through many of those details.

Inside the school, which had been transformed into the district’s summer meal command center, staff members worked in an assembly line packing plastic bags. They opened up boxes of breakfast burritos, Pop-Tarts, and personal pizzas. They reached for individually packed bags of fresh broccoli, cherry tomatoes, and loose oranges. There were chicken patty and potato wedge platters packaged to be easily microwaved, and plenty of milk. Cardboard boxes filled with roasted chickpea snacks, Craisins, and Blueberry Chex were stacked throughout the cafeteria.

A produce delivery arrives at Lockerman Middle School. (Photo credit: Colin Marshall)

It might have felt more chaotic if they hadn’t done this before, but they had. “We have PTSD from COVID,” Figueroa said, “but we learned the rhythm and the way to set this up and make it efficient.”

The USDA calls this kind of meal service—which doesn’t involve kids sitting down next to each other with trays—“non-congregate.” While hunger groups had been advocating for the approach for many years, the pandemic provided the test case for the power of the practice. With emergency waivers in hand, schools and nonprofits were freed up to feed students—now learning in their homes all over the place—however they could manage it.

Figueroa’s team sprang into action in 2020, with bus drivers delivering meals, Parks & Recreation employees donating vehicles, and volunteers from the community helping out. While it was born of necessity, it showed them the possibilities and where, exactly, the need was.

The team of women who unload boxes, prep meals, preserve vegetables, and package bags of meals to be distributed all summer long in Caroline County. (Photo credit: Colin Marshall)

“We were going into neighborhoods, apartment complexes, mobile-home sites,” she said. “Those are the places we went during COVID, where there was a need. Now, we know where those kids will be.”

At Feeding Southwest Virginia, a nonprofit that runs summer meal programs in multiple counties, Director of Children’s Programs Brandon Comer said she saw the scramble to get food to families during the pandemic as a sort of pilot program for non-congregate meal service. Plus, the challenges her team handled during that time made her feel like now they could do anything.

“It couldn’t get any worse than that. Literally, in 2021, USDA made a decision to approve some of the waivers, and we were already halfway through the summer, but we made it work,” Comer said. “COVID just about killed me, but we made sure we fed kids.”

At the peak of her pandemic service, she had 42 meal sites running. This summer, she has 67, 35 of which are adopting the non-congregate option. Many sites are in the arrowhead-shaped span of far southwest Virginia that juts between Kentucky and Tennessee, where rural poverty runs deep.

And now that the change has become law, the USDA issued more specific rules around it, one of which has had huge implications for Comer’s operations. In January, the agency tweaked how it defines “rural,” a change that more than doubled how many Virginia schools qualified this year—up to 120 from 50 last year.

“Some of the areas we were feeding congregate before, but now we can turn them into non-congregate, which enables us to get more kids fed because we’re not spending an hour and a half at a feeding site and then driving 45 minutes and spending an hour and a half at a feeding site and then having to come back,” she said. “We can do three, four, or five in a day now.”

In Craig County on the state’s western edge, for example, a librarian called to propose distributing meals last year, but the area did not meet the definition of rural. This year, it did. When Comer added the site to her routes, the library estimated they’d feed 150 kids. Once word got out, she began upping the number, which is now around 350 kids a week.

Meeting the Need

Back on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, Figueroa didn’t have to worry about that change. “We’re 100 percent rural, so we’re going everywhere,” she said.

Samantha Figueroa checks her timeline of multiple meal delivery routes while boxes of incoming produce are stacked behind her. (Photo credit: Colin Marshall)

While her team fed plenty of kids last summer, the biggest difference this year is “it’s a lot more food,” said Liz Alley, a member of Figueroa’s team who runs the Lockerman operation. Alley pointed to print-outs she had taped to an easel, where below the different locations and routes planned for each day, she was tallying meal counts. By the end of the day, they’d send out 1,400 meals.

Mid-morning, van driver Meghan Hewitt pulled up with her helper, a high-school student fulfilling community service hours. As the two rearranged bins filled with bags of food so that cartons of milk jugs wouldn’t fall over in transit, a tractor trailer pulled in. “Produce is here!” one of the cafeteria employees yelled, as a delivery worker began moving pallets of grapes, apples, peaches, and honeydew melons from his truck into a stationary refrigerated truck used for storage.

Meghan Hewitt drives the van slowly through the neighborhood, tapping her horn to alert families of the arriving meals. (Photo credit: Colin Marshall)

In the meantime, Hewitt set out, and after a quick distribution at a small condo complex, she drove north.

The van, decorated with colorful images of fruits and vegetables, passed a warehouse where zucchini, squash, and green beans from local farms was stored. The Lockerman cafeteria team has recently blanched and vacuum-sealed the vegetables to be used for lunch service during the upcoming school year . It passed corn and soybean fields stretching out on either side of the highway.

Then, Hewitt arrived at the destination: a mobile home park that housed many of the immigrant families who harvest the fruits and vegetables grown in the county’s fields.

Left: A little boy holds up his fingers to indicate how many children are at home. Right: Kids follow their mother inside carrying a bag filled with free meals. (Photos credit: Colin Marshall)

As she pulled into the neighborhood, she began gently, repeatedly tapping the horn outside homes where she had identified—a few weeks earlier—that children were present. It was no ice cream truck, but mothers ushered their children out to greet her at the sound of the arrival.

Sweat dripped off her forehead as she carried bags of food and milk jugs to their doorsteps, tallying each on a clipboard with a smile. Families expressed their thanks and then hurried back inside trailers plagued by disrepair as the sun bore down, the strained hum of rusted, aging air conditioners filling the air.

Adding Sun Bucks to Summer Programs

Much further south, in Florida, Sky Beard directs her state’s No Kid Hungry campaign, which provides grants to schools and nonprofits running summer meal programs. She said that last year, even though most schools weren’t able to get the non-congregate programs off the ground in time, she had already heard how the rule change was helping expand efforts to curb child hunger.

“What we heard last year is that this meets the needs of their communities like nothing else,” she said. In her state, it’s even more critical, she said: Despite new survey data showing one in five kids in the state live in food-insecure households, Governor Ron DeSantis’ administration chose not to participate in Summer EBT, the other program that came out of Congress’ 2022 changes. DeSantis also rejected earlier, COVID-related summer food aid dollars for kids and is one of more than a dozen governors, all Republicans, who have rejected the latest federal funds.

Summer EBT, which the USDA has rebranded as “Sun Bucks,” is an extra benefit of $40 per month provided to families whose children qualify for free meals during the school year. In places where the two changes are being rolled out and adopted at the same time, advocates say the combination is a powerful one-two punch.

“With summer EBT in conjunction with our summer feeding programs, it’s an opportunity to make up for the loss of meals that a child will experience” when school is closed, said LaMonika Jones, who runs Maryland Hunger Solutions and D.C. Hunger Solutions, both initiatives of the Food Research & Action Center (FRAC). “We know we had greater participation with non-congregate meals during the pandemic. So, this is an opportunity for us to extend that and for us to continue to make improvements to the summer feeding program.”

In Maryland, Jones has been helping rural districts implement non-congregate meal programs while also helping families access summer EBT benefits. In Washington, D.C., her focus has been on those latter benefits, since the region is entirely urban.

“I’ve been sharing with my staff for the last couple of months as an FYI: ‘Be on the lookout and listen up. Parents may be calling,’” she said. While many students will automatically be enrolled  in Summer EBT through other nutrition-assistance programs, there are always cracks people fall through, and each state’s system for distributing the benefits is slightly different. Jones’ group communicates how the program works so that families know how and when to expect benefits—and what to do if things don’t work the way they’re supposed to.

For example, she said, a benefit card might be mailed in an unlabeled envelope, which gets accidentally thrown away. “That’s another question that I get,” she said. “‘I was waiting for a summer EBT benefit to arrive, but I never got it. What do I do?’”

Jones and her team keep information on hand to direct families to the right offices where they can get help and access resources they’re eligible for.

Challenges and Paperwork

That’s the thing about federal meal programs: While the work of feeding children is as elemental as survival, sustenance, and good health, the most challenging parts of the work often involve administrative headaches and paperwork.

Improved nutrition standards in school meals, for example, have successfully moved the needle on improving the health of low-income students. But for Figueroa’s team showing up to chop broccoli, those standards can make the job harder and often feel like red tape, because the rules are incredibly specific. And what each meal contains during the school year is different than what it must consist of in the summer.

“We’re receiving federal funds, and we want to do it right. We have to do it right. We get reviewed, we get audited, we get inspected all the time, but we also want to feed our kids,” Figueroa said. “Sometimes all of the politics and rules make it hard to just feed a kid a hamburger.”

One of her biggest challenges, which Brandon Comer in Virginia echoed, is monitoring all the different sites, especially as the non-congregate option takes off. The USDA requires that the districts and nonprofits running summer meal programs provide oversight of all the locations at which they distribute meals. Depending on how new the site is, it may mean a member of the management team will have to go to that site multiple times to evaluate its performance.

Another is staffing. “Ever since COVID, we have not been able to [fully] staff,” Comer said. Finding truck drivers is especially difficult, so the team ends up using smaller vehicles, which requires more trips and therefore more time. Still, she is making it work and expects her meal numbers to be 25 to 30 percent higher than they were last summer.

Meghan Hewitt marks each meal distributed on her spreadsheet so that meal totals can later be reported to USDA. (Photo credit: Colin Marshall)

While COVID taught her she could make anything work, both she and Figueroa said they’re hoping these recent policy shifts stick around so that they can ultimately build systems that last, rather than having to figure out new plans as June approaches. “I feel like every year is a trial run,” Figueroa said, “but I’m hoping this is the year where next year, I won’t have to write a million different menus because hopefully we’re in a final rule that we can stick with.”

Whatever happens, each week this summer until school starts, the staff at Lockerman will be unpacking boxes and packing bags of meals over and over, while Meghan Hewitt and others drive their vans around Caroline County, beeping to let families know they’ve arrived.

“It’s not always easy for them to get to us,” Figueroa said. “We’ve got to go to them.”

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]]> https://civileats.com/2024/07/29/hunger-doesnt-take-a-summer-break-neither-do-school-food-professionals/feed/ 1 https://civileats.com/2024/07/24/study-finds-forever-chemicals-are-increasingly-common-in-pesticides/ https://civileats.com/2024/07/24/study-finds-forever-chemicals-are-increasingly-common-in-pesticides/#respond Wed, 24 Jul 2024 13:00:11 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=57034 “Forever chemicals,” officially called per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, are incredibly persistent, widely used chemicals that are now present in soil, water, and human bodies. Some PFAS are now linked to cancers, reproductive issues, and developmental delays in children. Concerns about those health risks are compounded by the fact that authorities have not identified […]

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More and more pesticides approved for use on U.S. farm fields qualify as “forever chemicals,” new research shows, raising questions around their long-term environmental and public health consequences.

“Forever chemicals,” officially called per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, are incredibly persistent, widely used chemicals that are now present in soil, water, and human bodies. Some PFAS are now linked to cancers, reproductive issues, and developmental delays in children.

Concerns about those health risks are compounded by the fact that authorities have not identified all sources of PFAS contamination in the environment. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and other regulators have been trying to understand the scope and impacts of contamination from a wide range of sources, including firefighting foam, sewage sludge, and food packaging. Last year, the EPA proposed the first drinking water limits for four of the chemicals.

The new analysis, published today in Environmental Health Perspectives, represents the latest effort to understand how common PFAS are in pesticides, which are widely used around the country and directly affect food, water, and soil. The researchers, associated with environmental advocacy groups including the Center for Biological Diversity, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), and the Environmental Working Group, found that 66 active ingredients currently approved for use in pesticides qualify as PFAS, and eight approved “inert” ingredients—added to pesticides to help the chemical disperse, for example—also qualify as PFAS.

Most of the chemicals identified are referred to as “short chain” PFAS, which means they are likely less persistent and less toxic than the more common forever chemicals—like PFOA and PFOS—that the EPA has begun to regulate. But more research is needed on their impacts, the researchers say.

“What our research showed is that this issue is a lot bigger than many people have thought, and the trend is really worrisome.”

Plus, overall, they found that fluorination (a process that can create PFAS) is increasingly used by chemical companies in the manufacture of pesticides, to make them stick around for longer. While 14 percent of the overall active ingredients currently used in pesticides qualify as PFAS, 30 percent of the ingredients approved in the last decade qualify.

“What’s clear is that some of the most widely dispersed pollutants across the world are becoming increasingly fluorinated, which means that they’re becoming increasingly persistent, and we don’t really have a grasp yet on what the consequences are going to be,” said Nathan Donley, one of the paper’s authors and the environmental health science director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “What our research showed is that this issue is a lot bigger than many people have thought, and the trend is really worrisome.”

Of course, fluorination is not unique to the pesticide industry, said A. Daniel Jones, a professor of biochemistry and molecular biology and the associate director of Michigan State University’s Center for PFAS Research. Common medicines like Prozac and Lipitor, for example, meet some definitions of PFAS. “We could get rid of lots of really important drugs if we got rid of all of the organic fluorine,” he said. “At the same time, we do want to start moving away from non-essential uses of persistent organic chemicals. Any chemical that outlives me is probably not good to have moving around the environment.”

The study contributes to the still-developing picture of how significant of an issue PFAS in pesticides might be. In 2022, testing done by environmental groups found the chemicals in common pesticide products, which has since been partially attributed to leaching from plastic containers. The EPA took steps to address that contamination. However, an independent researcher also found alarming levels of the most dangerous PFAS in multiple pesticides that wasn’t attributable to plastic containers. EPA then did its own tests and announced no pesticides were found, but the agency is now facing allegations of misconduct related to that testing.

The EPA did not respond to requests for comment by press time.

Short-Chain PFAS Are More Common in Pesticides

Complicating the issue is that thousands of PFAS exist, and there are multiple ways to define them. Some fluorinated chemicals are PFAS, some are not. The EPA uses a narrow definition, and therefore does not consider many of the chemicals the researchers identified in the new study as PFAS. However, they do qualify using a broad definition adopted by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

One of the aspects at issue is the length of the carbon chain. All PFAS contain a chain of carbon atoms connected to fluorine atoms, and it’s widely understood that the longer the carbon chain, the more problematic the chemical, in terms of both environmental persistence and health impacts.

“We do want to start moving away from non-essential uses of persistent organic chemicals. Any chemical that outlives me is probably not good to have moving around the environment.”

Most of the active and inert ingredients now being used in pesticides are short chain and are not from the class of PFAS that have been the focus of regulatory efforts so far, so a looming question is: Are they of serious concern?

“From my perspective, ultimately, it doesn’t matter whether you think these are PFAS or not,” Donley said. “They are forever chemicals, and the fluorinated parts of these pesticides will be around for the birth of your grandchildren’s grandchildren.”

While these chemicals are “certainly persistent,” Jones agreed, their impact across the board is unknown.

In terms of health, one of the reasons PFOS and PFOA are so dangerous is that they can stay in the human body for up to a decade, wreaking havoc all the while. “The longer they’re in us, the more opportunity they have to do harm,” Jones said. “Generally, we do know that shorter chain compounds don’t stay in your body as long as the longer chain compounds. So the short-chain compounds are probably not nearly as bad for us as the long-chain compounds, but that doesn’t mean they’re completely innocuous either.”

In the environment, their persistence is complicated, since even those that do degrade in a reasonable amount of time can break down into other compounds that don’t, Donley said. Of course, that doesn’t mean those other compounds are necessarily toxic. For example, Jones has extensively studied one of the compounds identified in the paper, trifluoroacetic acid (TFA), as a substance into which PFAS can break down. He pointed to a recent assessment of toxicity in mammals that found TFA doesn’t pose significant health risks.

In addition, because these chemicals are so widespread in other products, it’s hard to pinpoint how significant pesticides may be as a source of contamination. For example, research shows refrigerants and other non-pesticide chemicals are a much more significant source of TFA pollution.

While most of the chemicals identified in the paper are not the most common pesticides used, some have been used in high volumes in the past, and others are seeing increased use.

In the 1990s, for example, farmers annually sprayed about 25 million pounds of an insecticide called trifluralin, which the researchers identified as PFAS. While its use has since plummeted, in 2018, farmers still used 5 million pounds on crops including cotton, alfalfa, and fruits and vegetables. Use of the herbicide fomesafen—also identified as PFAS in the new study—has gone in the other direction, increasing from just 1 million pounds in the 1990s to nearly 6 million pounds in 2018, primarily on soybeans.

And some of the 66 chemicals identified in the study are used as the active ingredient in a much larger number of products. For example, Bifenthrin, a major water contaminant in the U.S., was an ingredient in 247 different pesticide products registered in Maine in 2022.

Regulatory Implications for PFAS in Pesticides

Regardless of how the chemicals are categorized or how widely they’re used, one of Donley’s primary concerns is that the EPA’s process for evaluating pesticide safety may not be set up to properly examine what the impacts might be when short-chain PFAS break down in the environment.

“When you start getting into breakdown products, the system falls apart pretty quickly, and they’re not getting a whole lot of information on what these breakdown products are doing in the environment,” Donley said. “There are just a lot of question marks there.”

He also questions whether the EPA is effectively evaluating and regulating the additive ingredients called “inerts.” Due to the way the nation’s pesticide law was written, those chemicals are considered confidential business secrets, so companies don’t have to list them on pesticide labels.

So while the paper’s authors were able to identify eight approved inerts that qualify as PFAS, four of which are currently used in products in the U.S, there’s no way to know which products contain them. One such chemical, for instance, is approved for use on food crops and is present in 37 products, according to the EPA. Since the agency doesn’t share the names of those products, we don’t know if they are in wide use—or hardly used at all.

In regulatory recommendations at the end of the new paper, Donley and his co-authors say the U.S. should require all pesticide ingredients, including inerts, to be disclosed on labels. They also recommend the agency evaluate all PFAS pesticides and the compounds they break down into for environmental persistence, expand environmental and biomonitoring programs for PFAS pesticides, and assess the cumulative impacts of all the pesticides and the compounds they break down into based on the “total organic fluorine load in the environment and food.”

Michigan State’s Jones called the goals lofty and said they’d require an enormous amount of resources—which the agency currently does not have. “A more circumspect approach might begin by prioritizing items that present the greatest risk to human health, but should also evaluate the health effects of any proposed alternatives,” he said.

Even before the study, in the absence of more aggressive EPA action on the issue, states have been stepping in. Maine, Minnesota, Maryland, and Massachusetts have all passed laws that specifically tackle PFAS in pesticides in some way. Maine and Minnesota have already begun the process of identifying PFAS in pesticides, with a goal of understanding their impact and eventually ending their use.

“We’re only regulating the tip of the iceberg in terms of the federal EPA drinking water standard. The more we find out about PFAS, the more concerning they are.”

Pesticide companies now submit PFAS affidavits when they register their products in Maine. The Minnesota Department of Agriculture, which uses a broader definition of PFAS than even the OECD, issued an interim report earlier this year that identified 95 pesticides that qualified as PFAS. The agency also began looking at contamination in groundwater, rivers, and streams.

“There’s a lot coming out that’s going to make it easier to piece together, state by state, what’s happening,” said Sharon Anglin Treat, an environmental policy expert who has been working on PFAS contamination in Maine. “We’re only regulating the tip of the iceberg in terms of the federal EPA drinking water standard. The more we find out about PFAS, the more concerning they are.”

That’s why, Donley said, the overall trend of fluorinating pesticides to make them more persistent is something regulators should be paying attention to.

“In the ’70s, we were dealing with things like DDT and aldrin and chlordane, really persistent chemicals,” he said. “The EPA kicked that to the curb. Now, we’ve almost come full circle. Whereas the 1970s was the age of the organochlorine [like DDT], now we’re living in the age of the organofluorine, and the persistence is really nerve-wracking, because it wasn’t until decades later that we figured out the long-term consequences of using DDT. . . and we’re still dealing with the ramifications.”

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]]> https://civileats.com/2024/07/24/study-finds-forever-chemicals-are-increasingly-common-in-pesticides/feed/ 0 https://civileats.com/2024/07/24/farmworkers-push-krogers-shareholders-for-heat-and-labor-protections/ https://civileats.com/2024/07/24/farmworkers-push-krogers-shareholders-for-heat-and-labor-protections/#comments Wed, 24 Jul 2024 09:00:47 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=57037 Farmworkers took this a step further at Kroger’s annual shareholder meeting in late June, directing their plea for stronger human rights to the major financiers whose dividends depend on the under-recognized labor of farmworkers. They called upon the company’s shareholders—whose top investors are Vanguard, BlackRock, and Berkshire Hathaway—to support a proposal that Kroger publish a […]

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For years, U.S. farmworkers have been pressuring Kroger, the nation’s largest supermarket, to come to the table to establish stronger labor protections on the farms supplying its fruits and vegetables. Specifically, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), a worker rights organization in Florida, has repeatedly asked Kroger to join its Fair Food Program, which has implemented the strongest heat protections in the nation.

Farmworkers took this a step further at Kroger’s annual shareholder meeting in late June, directing their plea for stronger human rights to the major financiers whose dividends depend on the under-recognized labor of farmworkers. They called upon the company’s shareholders—whose top investors are Vanguard, BlackRock, and Berkshire Hathaway—to support a proposal that Kroger publish a “just transition” report examining “how the risks to workers are changing due to rising temperatures” in its agricultural supply chain.

In a speech at the meeting, Gerardo Reyes Chavez, a former farmworker and current organizer with CIW, painted a picture for shareholders of the stark reality faced by U.S. farmworkers laboring under record-breaking temperatures—with no mandatory right to shade, water, or breaks in most states. The proposal, introduced by Domini Impact Investments, one of Kroger’s shareholders, adds pressure to the company to address these growing risks.

“Kroger’s current supplier policies contain vague expectations and do not include binding obligations that effectively keep workers safe.”

“We must establish the gravity, indeed, the dire urgency of this resolution. The stakes of a just transition for Kroger are nothing less than life or death for the farmworkers who put food on all our tables,” Chavez said in his address to the shareholders. “Even just taking a break to drink water has been met with harassment and violence from a supervisor. I know this because it is the reality I myself have lived as a farmworker.”

Kroger did not respond to a request for comment by press time.

Meanwhile, earlier this month, the Biden administration unveiled a heat protection rule, the first federal standard of its kind, which would require employers develop an emergency plan for heat illness and provide outdoor workers with shade, water, rest breaks, and training to manage and identify heat risks. But its pathway to implementation is murky. The rule likely won’t be finalized until the end of the year. Also, it may be halted under a Trump administration, and it will likely be challenged in court by industries already fighting it.

Currently, only four states—California, Oregon, Washington, and Colorado—have mandated similar rules to protect farmworkers from extreme heat. In the meantime, the consequences are dire: Farmworkers are 35 times more likely to die of heat stress compared to workers in other industries.

The investors supporting the proposal claim that Kroger’s existing policies are failing to protect workers from climate risks and other human rights abuses, pointing to the death of a worker at Kroger’s distribution center from heat stress in 2023. Investors also cited Kroger’s track record of supplying from multiple farms linked to modern-day slavery, including sourcing from a watermelon farm in Florida where workers—held against their will in a barbed-wire encampment—escaped by hiding in the trunk of a car.

“Kroger’s current supplier policies contain vague expectations and do not include binding obligations that effectively keep workers safe. For monitoring, Kroger relies on social audits or voluntary self-assessments, which have been widely critiqued and discredited for their failure to deliver human rights outcomes and remediate harms,” states the proposal.

Instead, the proposal encourages Kroger to join the CIW’s Fair Food Program, which it describes as “the only farmworker program with a demonstrated track record of success in protecting farmworkers in U.S. agriculture from climate-related risks.” (Previously, Domini Impact Investments filed a proposal asking Kroger to join the Fair Food Program as a pilot program, but it was determined to be against SEC rules.)

The Fair Food Program offers binding labor protections through a contract between farmworkers, farmers, and major food retailers, which is monitored by an independent council that operates a 24/7 trilingual complaint line. The program has been widely recognized for rooting out some of the most persistent abuses, including sexual assault and forced labor, that often plague corporate supply chains. The shareholder proposal asks Kroger to examine how its current policies compare to the Fair Food Program.

The investors’ proposal also took issue with the company’s “siloed approach” to environmental issues without considering workers. For instance, “Kroger’s recently released nature-based strategy, developed to reduce pesticides with the goal to protect pollinators and biodiversity, does not make any mention of farmworkers who apply pesticides,” shareholders noted in the proposal. It’s estimated that pesticide exposure unintentionally kills around 11,000 people per year, particularly farmers and farmworkers.

In the end, despite Chavez’s plea, just over 80 percent of shareholders voted against the proposal; while 460 million shareholders voted against the proposal, 98 million voted for it. Prior to the annual meeting, Kroger’s board of directors had advised its shareholders to vote against adopting the proposal, according to SEC filings.

“We will continue to encourage Kroger to join the Fair Food Program, because we think it will deliver meaningful human rights outcomes.”

“The company already provides robust annual reporting on sustainability and social impact topics and engages stakeholders to inform content,” stated Kroger’s board of directors, citing the company’s existing environmental, social, and governance (ESG) strategy. “People are at the heart of Kroger’s purpose-driven approach and shared-value ESG strategy: Thriving Together. As outlined in our ESG report, we aim to advance positive impacts across three strategic pillars—people, planet, and systems.”

Mary Beth Gallagher, the director of engagement with Domino Impact Investments, the company behind the shareholder proposal, was still encouraged by the percentage of shareholders who voted in favor of adopting her proposal. “It signals that enough of their investor base sees this as a risk that they should be managing differently,” she told Civil Eats.

“We will continue to encourage Kroger to join the Fair Food Program, because we think it will deliver meaningful human rights outcomes,” Gallagher said. “It will protect against this risk, and it will strengthen its human rights programs and performance.”

Read More:
As the Climate Emergency Grows, Farmworkers Lack Protection from Deadly Heat
Florida Banned Farmworker Heat Protections. A Groundbreaking Partnership Offers a Solution.
Nighttime Harvest Protect Farmworkers From Extreme Heat, but Bring Other Risks

Major Farmworker Union Endorses Vice President Kamala Harris. The United Farm Workers, the largest farmworker union in the U.S., endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris just hours after she announced her campaign for U.S. president. “Kamala Harris stood with farmworkers as CA’s attorney general, as U.S. senator, and as vice president. There is work to be done, and we’re ready. Sí, se puede!” said the union on the social platform X. The endorsement came hours after President Joe Biden’s departure from the race on July 21.

Read More:
What a Surge in Union Organizing Means for Food and Farm Workers
How Four Years of Trump Reshaped Food and Farming

U.S. Farmers Turn to Drinking When Stressed. A new study from the University of Georgia found that one in five U.S. farmers use excessive alcohol to cope with high levels of stress. “It really is a public health issue because there are drastic, traumatic outcomes associated with not being able to ask for that care, using alcohol to cope, and then feeling hopeless,” Christina Proctor, the study’s lead author, said in a press release. She identified mental health care stigma and lack of rural healthcare access as barriers to farmers receiving the care they need.

Read More:
Can Farmers Help Each Other Navigate Mental Health Crises?
Climate Anxiety Takes a Growing Toll on Farmers

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