But Schmeiser and his wife, Louise, were seed savers, and unlike more than hundreds of other farmers threatened with a corporate lawsuit, they didn’t settle. Instead, they fought for the right to grow their own seed, claiming that the genetic material from Monsanto found on their farm had blown there on the wind. Their court battle reached the Supreme Court of Canada, resulting in a split decision. It upheld Monsanto’s intellectual property rights requiring the Schmeisers to surrender their 50-year seed stock, but the court ruled that the family owed the company no damages.

The feature film, Percy vs. Goliath, released today in theaters and streaming, dramatizes the couple’s six-year struggle against the multinational corporation, which was purchased by Bayer in 2018. Academy Award-winning actor Christopher Walken plays the stoic Schmeiser (who passed away in October 2020), Roberta Maxwell co-stars as his tenacious wife, and Zach Braff plays their determined lawyer.

The movie opens with the ferocious windstorm that may have transported the GMO seeds to the Schmeisers’ farm and Percy and his farmhand race to save their own seeds before they blow away. The scene suggests that the epic force threatening the survival of family farmers is not nature itself, but the corporate control of agriculture. “These companies are going to swallow us up,” Percy says.

The filmmakers took some creative liberties in making Percy vs. Goliath, including the creation of a fictional anti-GMO activist played by Christina Ricci and a cameo by seed sovereignty activist Vandana Shiva. Although the question before the Canadian courts was limited to patent infringement, the scope of the film is sweeping, including GMO seed contamination, pesticide impacts on health and the environment, farm economies, and corporate ownership of living plant material.

Genetically engineered food crops, including corn, soybeans, potato, and papaya, have been deemed safe to eat by the scientific community but they remain controversial for many environmental advocates, who see them as enabling vast tracks of commodity monocrops, creating a pesticide treadmill caused by the growth of herbicide-resistant weeds, and increasing overall pesticide use around the world.

Meanwhile, the majority of the U.S. seed supply is controlled by just four companies, 90 percent of all canola seeds are now genetically modified, and cross-contamination threatens non-GMO and organic seed production in the U.S. For the last several years, Bayer has been mired in court cases over its herbicide dicamba and the ongoing lawsuits linking glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

The film’s director, Clark Johnson, is widely known as an actor who played high-profile roles on The Wire and Homicide, and he recently directed the feature films S.W.A.T. and The Sentinel. He spoke to Civil Eats about what attracted him to this quiet story about a Canadian farmer and why the questions it raises about agriculture still resonate 20 years later.

You are best known for detective series and crime dramas. What drew you to this story, wherein nobody dies?

I do a lot of cop dramas and it’s fun to do big action movies, but the first film I directed—that got any notice—was Boycott (2001), which is about the birth of the civil rights movement. My next movie is my parents’ life story. We had to move to Canada when we were kids because my parents were involved in the movement with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). And as a kid, [we] rode around in freedom rides and went to peace marches and stuff. My three siblings and I didn’t get to taste grape jelly or lettuce for the first few years of our childhood because of Cesar Chavez’s [boycotts]. So, that’s the kind of thing that I was raised with. But I was drawn to Percy’s story because I knew nothing about it. I didn’t even know what canola was.

So, how did a drama about agriculture lure major film stars like Christopher Walken, Zach Braff, and Christina Ricci?

Because it’s compelling and it’s a true story based on real characters. They weren’t going, “Oh, that guy that does all those cool cop dramas, he’s going to nail this canola movie.” The actors responded to the story and then they responded to how I was going to tell it.

The film’s storyline begins and ends with the Schmeisers’ legal battle with Monsanto between 1998 and 2004. Why do you think this family’s story is still relevant today?

This was pre-internet, mostly. [Percy and Louise] licked stamps and sealed envelopes and responded to everybody that offered up money as word got around through the farming community that they were being bullied by Big Agribusiness. We found a great, sixth-generation farm in Manitoba [to shoot the film] It is organic and they don’t use GMOs at all. And it was really inspiring to tell the story of the Schmeisers on a family farm. There is some relevance to the idea that GMOs can make things better. They were just saying, “We didn’t steal your copyrights.” They just were defending themselves and their honor.

There is some lingering controversy within the farming community over whether the Schmeisers knowingly planted the contaminated seed. The court Supreme Court of Canada stated that Percy was not “an innocent bystander,” yet the film paints him as the victim. Why is Percy the hero of the film?

I wouldn’t have done the movie if I didn’t believe the Schmeisers. They used to weed around the telephone poles, the hydro poles, because that’s where the weeds were. [Percy] noticed that the canola was thriving with the weeds. And he said, “Oh, these are great seeds.” And he used the seeds from that acre. Now, when you get an acres’ worth of canola seeds and save them to seed your land next year, they call that infringement. To me, it was like a no brainer that he wasn’t saying, “Hey, I got free seeds!”

What takeaways about GMOs did you want your audience to leave the film with?

Well, you can just rip it from the headlines that Bayer is dealing with billion-dollar lawsuits because people are getting cancer because they use Roundup. We’re in a challenging time on a number of levels because we are trying to get ahead of nature. I get it. We want to feed the world.

That’s why I didn’t want to just say Monsanto was evil and that’s all there was to it. [I wanted] to open up a dialogue about where their responsibility lies. Their scientists are world-renowned and come up with great ideas that can make farming more practical. Especially now, when so many people [face] food insecurity in the world, I’m happy to find something that we can feed everybody [with]. But you gotta be careful how far you go with that.

After its release in 2020 in Canada, Percy vs. Goliath was painted in some in some circles as an anti-GMO film, but it doesn’t sound like you were saying that at all.

Well, I am in that we’re talking about this particular farm and these particular people and the reaction to them and the battle they took on. You know, Percy II could go into show the Monsanto side, but I’m not interested in doing that. They got people for that. We’re telling the story of how he dealt with their attack. I don’t know that much about Monsanto. I know a lot about big business and big government. As I said earlier, I come by my feistiness and my civil disobedience honestly. And so I’m happy to tell his side of the story.

It’s hardly a whodunnit, so how did you frame this patent infringement lawsuit for a movie-going audience?

Right. We joked about shooting in Canada. The pickup trucks that are stalking him around all the time, keeping an eye on him—he drove them through a mud puddle and got them stuck. Now, [if it was] an American version, the S.W.A.T. version, he would have had a shotgun and gone out in a gun battle. So, it’s not an action movie, but neither was Erin Brockovich. This is a story about one guy going up against a monolith. So, we didn’t rip pages from the headlines, we ripped pages from the court cases.

Did you actually use some of the legal arguments from the trials?

Oh yeah. I mean, if we had changed a comma, the Monsanto lawyers would have been all over us.

Since the Schmeisers’ case wrapped up in 2004, so much has transpired around Monsanto, including the acquisition by Bayer, and the USDA label on bio-engineered food that becomes mandatory on January 1, 2022. Are you at all concerned that this film might seem like old news?

Not at all. I think it’s an “I told you so” moment. The repercussions are being felt right now . . . [farmers] take their spreaders blast that [Roundup] all across their fields. And it doesn’t just stay on the canola, it gets into your kitchen, into your kids’ bedrooms . . . that is no joke. So, it’s a cautionary tale.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The post ‘Percy vs. Goliath’ Is a Cautionary Tale of Corporate Control in Agriculture appeared first on Civil Eats.

After graduating from high school in 1987, Tim Brandt started raising hogs on his family’s Ohio farm. Housed in barns with straw-bedded pens, hundreds of pigs moved freely inside and outside. “We had no crates, no stalls, nothing,” he said.

But his life changed when the whole industry began shifting to modernized hog barns lined end to end with small, individual metal stalls to house breeding sows. The new “crate system,” which became steadily more prominent in the 1980s and 90s, promised increased productivity and decreased labor.

But in Brandt’s experience, his pigs were stressed out, screaming every time he entered the barn, and they produced fewer piglets. “I totally regretted it,” he said.

Later, Brandt joined Coleman Natural Foods as a contract farmer, and around 2017, the brand committed to sourcing crate-free pork from its suppliers. So, Brandt jettisoned the cages in his barns, housed sows in social groups of 50, and hasn’t looked back.

“I know a lot of people who disagree with me, but it works,” he said. His sows are content and their productivity is up. “I felt that this was the way of the future,” Brandt added.

While leading animal welfare organizations and retail marketing experts agree with Brandt’s take, the pork industry staunchly defends the use of gestation crates, saying it keeps pregnant sows healthier and safer. But California’s new law based on Proposition 12, The Farm Animal Confinement Initiative, which bans their use, could disarm the pork industry’s resistance.

Passed by voters in the November 2018 election, Proposition 12 is considered the country’s toughest farm animal protection for laying hens, veal calves, and breeding pigs. It establishes minimum space standards to provide more freedom of movement, ultimately mandating cage-free eggs and crate-free pork.

But the game-changing element of the new law is that it criminalizes the sale of products from farm animals raised in a “cruel manner”—even for meat and eggs produced in other states. Proposition 12 has already been enacted for calves and hens. And once the regulations for pigs go into effect on January 1, 2022, pork raised with gestation crates will be illegal for sale in the state of California.

While the pork industry has fought the legislation with a series of lawsuits, a recent federal court ruling upheld the law. And despite the looming deadline, it is only beginning to come to grips with the realities of Proposition 12 and similar anti-confinement regulations in other states. But market pressures on food service companies, retailers, and grocery stores could make California the leading edge of sweeping changes for animal welfare nationwide.

Anti-Confinement Laws Codify Consumer Concerns

Consumer are clearly concerned about the extreme confinement conditions for farm animals—and risks to public health and safety from factory farms. That concern has culminated in the introduction of a proposed federal Farm System Reform Act and anti-confinement laws in a dozen states.

Currently, 10 states, including Florida, Ohio, and Arizona, have voter-approved statutes that ban gestation crates on commercial farms. In 2016, Massachusetts passed a ground-breaking law, An Act to Prevent Cruelty to Farm Animals, that goes into effect on January 1, 2022. It not only stipulates minimum space requirements for hens, veal calves, and pigs, but also prohibits the sale of any eggs, veal, and pork from illegally confined animals, regardless of where they are produced.

California’s Proposition 12, approved by two-thirds of voters, followed suit. It mandates that any housing structure for these farm animals provide adequate space for “turning around freely, lying down, and extending their limbs without touching the side of an enclosure” and prohibits the sales from out-of-state producers that cannot verify that they meet the minimum space requirements.

Proposition 12 is being implemented in phases. On January 1, 2020, the law requiring at least one square foot of space per hen (and 43 square feet for veal) went into effect—with all hens required to be cage-free by 2023.

The California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) has contacted grocery stores, retailers, and food distributors to prepare them for compliance with the new regulations governing egg production and sales. CDFA Public Affairs Director Steve Lyle told Civil Eats that retailers “have been receptive and engaging” with agency staff on compliance measures.

This doesn’t surprise Josh Balk, vice president of farm animal protection with the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), which led the Proposition 12 campaign. Proposition 12 codified the industry’s own minimum standards established by the United Egg Producers. So, egg producers know that they are already California compliant.

“Close to 30 percent of the industry is cage free,” Balk said. “Instead of fighting the inevitable, they’re embracing cage free as a business model.”

But pork is a very different story.

There is a formidable gap between the current pork industry standards of 16 square feet per pig and Proposition 12’s mandate of at least 24 square feet. Although California is not a major pork producer, the prohibition on sales will impede not only producers outside of California but any food company operating in the state—from fast food franchises to grocery stores.

And because those changes involve capital investments for renovated hog barns with additional space, new housing infrastructure, and technology like electronic feeding systems, the National Pork Producers Council (NPPC) is putting up a fight to challenge Proposition 12.

“I have a feeling that producers have not absorbed the reality that this is going to happen,” said Balk. “It’s coming to a reckoning.”

Pork Industry Resistance

Less than 1 percent of pork producers are currently in compliance with Proposition 12, according to the NPPC. This means that until producers adopt the new standards, 99 percent of them will be barred from doing in business in California’s economy after December 31, 2021.

Pigs in gestation crates.

In cooperation with the American Farm Bureau Federation, NPPC launched a court challenge to invalidate Proposition 12 as unconstitutional. “Proposition 12 seeks to allow a single state, without any significant commercial hog production, to reach across the country to regulate how farmers across the country operate, imposing onerous regulations, inspection, and permitting requirements, and highly prescriptive measures on livestock farmers,” Michael Formica, NPPC counsel and assistant vice president of domestic affairs, told Civil Eats.

The NPPC lawsuit is currently in federal appeals court with support from 20 states (including top-pork-producers Indiana, Missouri, and Nebraska). A separate challenge by the North American Meat Institute was rejected this month by the 9th District Court of Appeals.

Over the past five years, the industry has shifted away from gestation crates toward group sow housing. According to Formica, about 30 percent of pigs now spend part of their breeding cycle in group housing, but the industry remains resistant to the consumer-driven push to abandon gestation crates. “Proposition 12’s requirement of 24 feet is arbitrary, has zero scientific backing, and will not improve animal welfare,” he said.

Smithfield, the nation’s largest pork producer, claims to produce “crate-free pork,” but investigations reveal that the company has not eliminated gestation crates. They are still a standard in the industry for the first 35 to 42 days of the sow’s 115-day pregnancy.

According to The Food Industry Scorecard, a March 2020 report from HSUS based on a year-long survey of about 100 food companies, “No major U.S. pork suppliers have eliminated gestation crates or, as far as we know, even have plans to.”

So how are major pork producers preparing to comply with Proposition 12?

Tyson replied to Civil Eats with a statement: “We’re currently studying the proposed regulation and don’t have information to share on it.”

Clemens Food Group out of Pennsylvania is one of the country’s largest pork producers. Senior vice president Bob Ruth detailed by email to Civil Eats how the company is transitioning away from conventional gestation crates to group housing, called open-pen systems. But he has concerns about breeding in groups.

Ruth explained that pigs in heat can be aggressive toward one another and even endanger farm workers. Clemens relies on breeding stalls for seven to 10 days; the company is also testing open-pen breeding with animal welfare expert and Colorado State University professor Dr. Temple Grandin and researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, but it is only in the preliminary stage.

Since Clemens buys most of its supply from independent farms, only its in-house raised Farm Promise brand pork will be Proposition 12 compliant, and the brand makes up only 15 to 20 percent of its supply.

There is no doubt among industry experts that Proposition 12 will cause supply disruptions and price increases. At the same time, other industry experts see a valuable market opportunity to increase the production of more humanely raised meat that will pay off down the road. And companies like Coleman, a niche producer of antibiotic-free pork, view Proposition 12 as a step in the right direction.

One Pork Company Investing in Crate-Free

A few years before Proposition 12 became a ballot measure, Coleman Natural Foods elected to shift to crate-free pork. A division of Perdue Premium Meats Company (PPMC), which also owns the pasture-based Niman Ranch brand, the company audited their 100 Midwest contract farms to determine how many of their barns had adequate space.

The goal was to eliminate the use of crates for pregnant pigs and those with newborn litters—to go 100 percent crate-free. “This is not going to be a shell game,” said Jeff Tripician, PPMC president.

Coleman settled on a 20-square-feet-per-pig minimum standard, but then Proposition 12 passed with a 24-feet minimum. Only a third of the farms had adequate space. “How do we convert the other two-thirds to the 24 [feet] or better without firing them?” said Tripician.

Even for value-driven companies like PPMC, converting hog housing is a massive investment in infrastructure. “It’s excruciating to find four more feet [per animal],” he said. So, he understands the reaction from the big pork producers toward the immense changes—and the financial risks—demanded by Proposition 12.

In a typical industrial-scale sow barn, 5,000 animals stand in stalls in which they cannot turn around, Tripician explained. Reduce the number to give them each 50 percent more space and the operation bleeds money if it doesn’t raise its prices considerably. “The meat industry is really good at driving cost out of things and then taking that slim margin as an excuse to not make improvements,” he said. “It’s very scary for them.”

For Coleman’s contract farmers to buy in, Tripician knew that the company had to make their individual investments pay off. As a result, Coleman provided a capital fund for renovations while paying its farmers 25 percent more than commodity prices.

Graphic courtesy of Coleman Natural Foods.

This motivated Ohio farmer Brandt to convert his hog barns, a change that forced him to reduce his herd size from 1,800 to 1,500 with an average of 29 square feet per pig. His costs have increased $5–$10 per 100 pigs, and he admits that group housing requires more work and animal husbandry. But he was surprised when his average litter size increased from 11 to 13 piglets.

“We’ve lost no production,” he said. “The sows are happier, they’re easier to manage, and it has blown my mind,” he said.

But farmers are a diverse group, and even within Coleman, not all of the farmers are at Brandt’s stage. Currently, 40 percent of its producers are in compliance with Proposition 12, but more of its farmers are working to meet California’s requirements because they believe in it and want to stay ahead of the curve.

Currently, Coleman is reportedly the only commercial pork company in compliance with California’s and Massachusetts’ farm animal laws. And while it is ramping up production, niche meat companies like it only constitute 4 percent of the industry. Tripician anticipates a price increase by $.20 to $.50 per pound.

With Californians consuming 15 percent of the total U.S. pork supply, shortages and price increases seem like a given. “It will be very interesting to see what happens,” said Ruth from Clemens. “There is no way that the pork industry will be ready with compliant product.”

However, market experts and animal welfare groups expect that major pork producers will ultimately be powerless in the face of pressure from retailers. And they will likely be compelled to comply.

The Power of Consumer Markets

A February 2019 survey of supermarket decision makers found that over a three-year period, 70 percent of buyers were more motivated to stock humane animal products due to strong sales trends. The report suggested that higher-welfare animal products could follow the sales trajectory of organic foods, “creating a strong burst of consumer demand, pushing these products to the forefront of retailer and supplier plans.”

In the face of the economic crisis caused by the pandemic, value-driven shopping behaviors such as organic products and No Antibiotics Ever meats have dropped slightly, according to Chris DuBois, senior vice president of protein practice for the market research company IRI. But, he adds, “This is just a blip.”

According to new research, 81 percent of grocery consumers view transparency as important for the products they buy, especially when it comes to animal products. And meat purchases have shot up by 31 percent over previous years. “There is a focused group of consumers that pays attention to how animals are treated,” Dubois said. “If the consumers put their foot down, you’ll see the change.”

But a recent report from the global animal rights nonprofit World Animal Protection reveals how far the industry still needs to go to match the demand for humanely raised pork. Between 2012 and 2015, hundreds of U.S. corporations (including fast food restaurants, food service companies, and retailers) pledged to end the use of gestation crates in their supply chain.

While 16 of the 56 companies included in the report have made progress on their goals within five years, others have not followed through, and one-third have abandoned their commitments altogether.

Dubois pointed out that the companies are working on the crate issue, but the actual changes are far from simple. “It’s not as easy as putting words on the page,” he said.

Cameron Harsh, World Animal Protection’s farming campaign manager, said that even after working directly with companies on their animal welfare commitments, transparency is an ongoing issue. “We don’t have information from producers in their progress toward crate free,” he said. It can be hard to know how much progress companies have made or what they’re planning.

Albertsons and Walmart did not respond to Civil Eats request for information. Costco’s corporate spokesperson responded but declined to comment on the retailer’s plans to comply with Proposition 12.

AIdi US, in the middle of a major expansion that includes California, is on pace to become the third largest retailer after Walmart and Costco. The German-owned company is held up as a model of sustainability, but according to animal welfare groups, the chain’s buying policy falls short of establishing a strong commitment to eliminate gestation crates from its supply chain on a clear timeline. (The company did not respond to repeated requests for comment.)

Harsh sees a need for more accountability for all stakeholders that includes compliance mechanisms and legal ramifications. In this regard, “Proposition 12 goes a long way,” he said.

Lyle from CDFA described how the agency’s Animal Care Program will enforce the law “to ensure Californians have confidence that the purchases they make . . . . come from animals raised under the standards overwhelmingly approved in 2018.” The CDFA plans to oversee third-party verifications and shipping documents for products entering the state, and it will conduct investigations of non-compliance.

In working with national food brands, Harsh said that despite what often amounts to resistance to change, they are very much aware of trends in animal welfare and the regulations in California, Massachusetts, and other states.

“It’s really top of mind,” he said. “It’s the end of 2020, and 2022 is not far away.”

This article was updated to reflect the fact that the NPPC court challenge to Prop. 12 is still underway, while the NAMI legal challenge was rejected. This article was also updated to correct the location of PPMC’s farms, and Coleman’s goal to comply with California regulations.

The post Could Crate-Free Pork Become the New Industry Standard? appeared first on Civil Eats.

Along with organic, reusable face masks and a no-signature policy, VV outfitted its trucks with sanitation caddies for on-the-road hand-washing and microwaves to allow drivers to heat their own food on the road, both of which helped reduce their risk of exposure. This high level of agility allowed the certified B-Corp to conduct business as usual, delivering fresh food from more than 200 small- and mid-scale farmers to independent stores, co-ops, and wholesalers in six western states.

The shuttering of restaurants, businesses, and schools continues to ricochet up and down local, regional, and national supply chains. While there has been a spotlight on farm crops going to waste and efforts to keep food banks stocked, the middlemen—the country’s fresh produce distributors—have attracted little notice as they scramble to redirect the flow of food from food service to retail sales channels.

Although grocers, such as the California supermarket chain Raley’s, reported a 40 percent surge in demand for fresh fruits and vegetables in the spring as more people cooked at home, the perishable food industry has lost billions of dollars, according to the nonprofit ReFED’s COVID-19 U.S. Food System Review. Ongoing market shifts have disrupted trucking schedules, caused loading dock delays, and created labor shortages for this sector of the industry.

Months into the crisis, the situation is less volatile, although it remains unsettled as a new surge of coronavirus cases sweeps through states that have reopened restaurants and bars for the summer season—and may have to close again. “There is a lot of shuffling of resources . . . to ensure that food is getting to where the consumer is accessing it,” Mary Coppola of United Fresh Produce Association told Civil Eats.

By staying true to its roots, VV, the oldest organic fruit and vegetable business in the U.S., has continued to operate efficiently despite the challenges. Since 1974, VV has operated as a for-profit social enterprise—meaning values, including environmental responsibility and social justice—drive its founders’ decisions rather than a simple focus on the bottom line. As a regional distributor, its business model is built on a “value chain” of relationships within its trading network.

VV is owned and led by women, from the management team to forklift operators to the drivers in its green, near-zero-emissions fleet. Bu Nygrens is a 42-year company veteran who has worked primarily as a buyer to coordinate with and support VV’s growers. Nicole Mason is the director of community engagement and has more than 10 years of experience in sustainable food systems development.

Civil Eats talked with the pair about what coronavirus has revealed about short and long supply chains, the true cost of food, and VV’s unique purchasing strategy for kale, among other types of fresh produce.

You have a unique perspective on the entire supply chain. What is different about this moment in terms of the work that you do?

Nygrens: Many people have never seen how their food is grown picked, sorted, transported, and delivered to them. And so, this is a tremendous change. People are starting to look at the food system and the logistics and the labor involved. The risks that farmers take because of weather and transportation—and all the stuff that we’ve been intimately involved with for 46 years—is being revealed.

Mason: Also, the fragility of the system that people thought was so secure for so long. The giant light that’s shining on it right now is showing how fragile it really is and how inequitable it really is.

Most of our food supply depends on a long supply chain operating on efficiencies and economies of scale. What is different about VV?

Mason: Part of what happens in a long supply chain is people and entities get squeezed more the longer that chain is. You get less returns, you get less support, you get less money, and the relationships aren’t as close, right? What we’re seeing is that it isn’t sustainable, and that [it] can’t really work when it’s under extreme pressure. Whereas a shorter supply chain—one that’s more relationship-based, that has a sense of place, and where the people within it subscribe to a common good—binds a system together in a much more secure way.

Nygrens: A chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and the longer a chain is, the more opportunities there are for stress and breakage. If you have a shorter chain, obviously you can repair and react quicker.

Mason: It’s a much less holistic approach to be driven by profit or a transaction than it is to think more broadly about all the people whose lives you’re affecting and the relationships that you want to uphold with integrity and the people that you want to treat fairly. I think it’s just a different framing.

How do you operate with social values as a benefit corporation and still make money?

Mason: It’s a both/and.

Nygrens: You’re touching on the root of it, which is something that I call enough-ism. How much is enough profit? Of course, we want to be profitable. We want to thrive. We want to make enough money at the end of the year that we can reinvest in our staff, our facility, our community, return better opportunities to our suppliers, our growers, and our customers.

But the driving reason for us to be in business is not to make money. And that sets us apart from many other businesses. If we’re wanting an effective distribution system, and not necessarily the cheapest or most efficient distribution system, we’re going to behave differently.

Mason: Some of the ways that plays out in our company are that we give a fair return to farmers; we don’t try to undercut their pricing or what the market is bearing. We also maintain a four-to-one ratio between our CEO and the entry-level wage at our company, and we buy the best equipment on the market. We offer Cadillac health insurance to our staff. There’s a number of ways that we demonstrate our commitment to doing things radically differently than others.

Nygrens: All of that is part of looking at the common good rather than squeezing the most profit to return to investors.

So what is your larger goal then?

Mason: It’s about creating a more sustainable food system where there’s equity and fairness throughout the system and where we as a business can increase access to fresh, organic food.

Nygrens: That’s our mission. But the idea has always been that Veritable Vegetable is one of hopefully many businesses and institutions and organizations that will affect the bigger picture by being a model. Our concentration is on agriculture, on food, on nutrition. But the bigger goal is to create sustainable, vital, and thriving local economies and local infrastructure that citizens can participate in.

What do you say to people in agricultural circles who assert that the food system is working?

Mason: How can you make that claim when within the same square mile, there are people who are food insecure and [others] who are totally food secure? I think if you look at it from a counting calories standpoint, sure, we grow enough food, but there’s a lot at play. [During the pandemic] the San Francisco Marin Food Bank went from serving 32,000 households a week to 52,000 households a week in the snap of a finger.

Nygrens: Yeah, the one in Houston went from 100,000 to 200,000 in one week. I think the food system was broken before COVID exposed the weaknesses in it. We [at Veritable Vegetable] have been talking a lot about why there is still poverty and hunger in this country when there is so much food—we’ve been working towards an equitable food system for a long time. This is nothing new.

Can you help people understand what is missing from the picture?

Nygrens: We don’t want to play the blame game, but we both feel really strongly that policy and leadership—national, regional, and local—are critical. We need to create a level playing field so that all the infrastructures support the creative, smaller businesses in this short supply chain that are responding quickly. If all of the policy and economic support go to huge, consolidated food service businesses and consolidated retail industries, there’s not a true accounting for what food really costs to produce and transport in a humane and sustainable way.

Mason: Our food workers are frontline workers. They’re critical to the health of our society and our nation. And we don’t value that as a career path. We don’t value working on a farm or driving a truck or working in a warehouse nearly as much as we value other pathways in our society.

Nygrens: Or packing fresh tomatoes in Salinas. There are hundreds of immigrant women who are completely invisible to eaters, even food activists.

How does VV operate within your network?

Mason: Distribution is a repeat business, right? So, it’s in your best interest to treat people fairly and with integrity. At Veritable Vegetable, we work with transparency and integrity in mind. We hold our values close even in our day-to-day work. That means that we maintain relationships, and when things get tight or squeezed, we can rely on those relationships to carry us through.

One thing that happens when we talk about the true cost of food is that we pay people fairly along the supply chain. People always say, ‘Well, your produce is so expensive,’ but the answer is that we don’t squeeze anyone. So, we charge a fair price for the food we sell.

Nygrens: It is the business paradigm to buy from fewer sources because when you have fewer transactions, you have less category and inventory management, you have fewer mistakes in shipping as a distributor. Our method of doing business is to try to support as many local relationships primarily as we can.

During the summer months, we might have as many as 10 or 12 people who grow kale as part of their rotation. We can’t buy our kale from only one or two people, because we want to support all these farms. We have to literally knit together a program where we buy kale from a greater pool of people and have to balance the pricing, the quality, the label, identify the farmer, explain to our customers why we have so many labels. That’s a much more expensive investment. And that’s on us. We would make much more money if we bought from two or three growers year-round and we never had to think about it.

Mason: So, when you look at our availability list, you don’t just see kale. You see Full Belly Kale, Riverdog Kale. You see what farm that item comes from. That’s really in vogue now, but that’s something that VV has done since day one. It’s not a faceless, nameless item—it comes from a place.

Nygrens: Even the most old-school institutional food service buyers are wanting, or being pressured, to make changes. And if they need a farm to send kale to a restaurant or a big restaurant chain that has hundreds of locations, they’re not going to want to manage 400 label names. I understand they’re not the size of business that’s going to be able to do what we do. But we have to figure out a way of marrying the two concepts so that there is better pricing for all farmers, fair working wages for all farmworkers, and also an ease of doing business that enables these bigger institutions to continue to function. We just have to figure out a way to improve it.

VV operates in a very male-dominated industry. How have you grown your workforce to be more diverse?

Nygrens: Veritable Vegetable has always been committed to providing opportunities for women. Our belief is that what lifts women up will lift all people up.

We’ve seen in many, many reports from the U.N. that when you provide women control of their local economies, the whole community improves. Women are concerned about sharing, about providing for those in need. And it changes the culture of any location, big or little, when women are in control of the money and the decision making. We’re committed to social justice, and it harkens back to our real commitment [to the idea] that things have to change on every level in our culture, in our society, in the world.

Mason: Back to that light shining on the food system right now—it’s shining on the centuries of inequities and disproportionate allotment of power and wealth. And I think it’s more important than ever that we lift voices and lift people and hold each other, because we have a lot of work to do.

Edited for brevity and clarity.

The post The Nation’s Oldest Organic Produce Distributor Is Weathering the Pandemic appeared first on Civil Eats.

Like thousands of small-scale farmers, Thiel faced a total loss of sales. Then, out of the blue, he got an order for 500 pounds of potatoes, to be delivered to the regional food bank—paid in full. It was the result of a spontaneous community initiative called the Great Potato Drive. Since late March, Thiel has delivered over a ton of potatoes to the food bank, which then distributed them to 19 food pantries in four rural counties. And he has a standing weekly order, thanks to ongoing private fundraising.

As reports of food waste circulate—as well as troubling images of piles of excess potatoes—organizations and community groups are stepping up to bridge the gap between on-farm surpluses and soaring food bank demand. Civil Eats identified an array of programs throughout the United States, some of them long-standing but most of them newly emerged, to help address the 2020 food distribution crisis.

Many farmers routinely donate farm surpluses to local food banks, but the economic shutdown suddenly ruptured the food supply and farm economies—especially those dependent on restaurants and institutional customers. And most food producers cannot afford to give their premium products away.

“They need interim markets, and support in navigating this period and maintaining viability for the future,” said Emily Moose of the non-profit farm group A Greener World (AGW).

What makes these community-driven farm-to-food-bank projects stand out is that all are paying fair market prices to farmers for products that could otherwise rot in fields or go to waste. These emergency food supply chains are feeding communities while also bolstering local agriculture and rural economies.

Created as band aids to get through the pandemic, could they provide the key to longer-term solutions for both regional food systems and food insecurity?

Connecting Farms to Food Banks

In upstate New York, the Kingston Emergency Food Collaborative—a 16-agency group—pitched a GoFund Me campaign on March 18, when the winter farmers’ market was cancelled. Proceeds go to buy produce from Hudson Valley growers to fill grocery bags and create hot meals to feed hungry children and families. In two days, the effort raised $10,000 from more than 150 donors and has already raised nearly $14,000.

In Albuquerque, New Mexico, the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), a Quaker-based group, created “Farm to Food Bank” in late March. The organization aims to raise $40,000 by September to buy vegetables from the farming cooperative Agri-Cultura Network (ACN) and deliver them to Roadrunner Food Bank, the largest in New Mexico, and other sites.

When two college students saw that there was no mechanism in place at the federal level to deal with massive amounts of on-farm food waste, they founded The Farmlink Project in April. According to its website, the group of volunteers has mobilized to pay farmers $4,500 while saving over 200,000 pounds of surplus produce from the field and shipping it to food banks.

And on Earth Day, AGW launched a national fundraiser, Help Farmers Feed Hungry Families During the Pandemic. With 2,000 U.S.-based pasture-based farmers as part of its Animal Welfare Approved certification program, the fundraiser is one way to help farmers redirect their unsold products to food pantries, senior meal programs, and homeless shelters within their communities.

“We saw this as a way to short-circuit food supply chains and get food where it was needed quickly—and help some farms stay in business during the process,” said Moose.

(Photo courtesy of Pigeon River Farm)

Pigeon River Farm was one of the first to sign on to AGW’s grassroots campaign. Located 40 miles east of Green Bay, Wisconsin, it produces pasture-raised eggs, which it sells through 39 health food stores in the Milwaukee area. When schools and hospitals closed, the market was flooded with cheap eggs, and the farm lost 90 percent of its sales.

“Suddenly, we were faced with hundreds of dozens of eggs with no home,” said farmer Bob Braun, who also grazes cattle and grows produce with his wife, Kim. “Financially, it was a complete calamity,” he said, noting that the community supported agriculture (CSA) model that is keeping some small farms afloat didn’t work for them. At one point, he considered dumping all the extra eggs into his koi pond.

With the AWG fundraiser, the Brauns are now providing Animal Welfare Approved eggs to the Interfaith Food Pantry—three dozen for every $10 raised. And although the eggs usually retail for about $6 per dozen, Braun said this donation-based price is fair.

“It’s just enough to shore us up and over,” he said.

Managing the Logistics

One of the biggest hurdles in preventing on-farm food waste is logistics. Especially with perishable produce like lettuce, food rescue is urgent. But the costs for coordination, packaging, and transportation are all major obstacles that farming economies cannot readily absorb, and organizations stepping in with funding is proving to be essential.

New Mexico’s emergency public health order came during the first wave of spring harvest for the 40 farms in the Agri-Cultura Network, according to ACN Director Helga Garcia-Garza. “With the closing of the schools, senior centers, daycare centers, [and] governmental businesses, we lost our market,” she said.

The 10-year-old sustainable farming organization works with seven Latinx-owned cooperative, family farms plus allied growers in the South Valley of Albuquerque that together supplies institutional buyers plus a 320-member CSA. Shifting to serve the food bank meant redirecting produce from 15 greenhouses and cold frames. “In the beginning it was a little chaotic,” Garcia-Garza told Civil Eats.

One of the people to jump in and serve as a go-between was American Friends Service Committee’s New Mexico Program Director Sayrah Namaste. Operating in the state since 1974, the international social justice organization helps train and support small-scale growers using regenerative practices.

“We’ve never worked on the food bank side,” Namaste told Civil Eats. But it quickly became evident there was a need. “We knew farmers had food that they needed to harvest and wash and get to a customer right away,” she said. “And the food bank was sending me photographs of how empty their shelves were.”

Pre-pandemic, Road Runner Food Bank served 70,000 people in dozens of counties, but unemployment depleted the agency’s annual food budget in just two weeks, according to Namaste. At the same time, the public’s panic buying meant that food bank donations from grocery stores dropped off.

Namaste found herself in a position to carry out more big-picture thinking and coordinating. When one ACN farmer told her he hadn’t had a single sale that week, Namaste rerouted AFSC funds—including money slated for a birthday fiesta honoring farmworker rights activist Cesar Chavez—to establish “Farm to Food Bank.”

With a skeleton staff over the past month, Namaste has delivered beets, carrots, and radishes to food banks within 48 hours of harvest. It’s a crucial service, said Namaste, because, “it’s expensive for a farmer to harvest and package if they don’t know if they have a customer.”

Farmers Russell and Siddiq, from the indigenous-led La Plazita Institute, prepare organic carrots and asparagus to deliver to the Farm to Foodbank initiative. (Photo courtesy of the American Friends Service Committee New Mexico.)

While organic, local produce is not typical for food donation, this Nobel Peace Prize-winning organization’s donor network, including individuals, faith-based groups, and foundations, are making it possible to provide the most vulnerable populations with the most nutritious foods.

Regular farm visits also help Namaste meet other farm needs, like facemasks, gloves, and bleach, to meet new safety protocols. In addition, AFSC is signing agreements with farmers to provide them with seeds, soil amendments, and other supplies to buoy them through the growing season. In exchange, they agree to pay it back by September. “Not to AFSC, but $500 worth of food to the food banks,” Namaste explains.

The farmers have reported back how meaningful it is that the food they’ve grown is going to people in the community who need it most. And Namaste sees the value of maintaining these direct linkages from farms to food banks beyond the current crisis. “The fact that we can take on this logistic and fundraising piece and they can just focus on what they’re really good at,” she said, “which is the hard work of farming.”

Established Programs Leading the Way

The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act passed by Congress provided U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) with $19.5 billion for direct payment and food purchases for farmers. So, Moose noted that there’s a public perception that farmers are raking it in. “The reality couldn’t be further from the truth,” she said.

The fact is that farmers are struggling to get by while waiting for USDA to announce how that funding will be distributed through the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program (CFAP). But Moose has grave concerns that commodity groups, the agency has historically favored, have already lined up to claim all of it. And many sustainable farming advocates think it’s highly unlikely that the USDA will tap small-scale, regional food producers for any of the $3 billion set aside for federal food purchases.

Aside from that, the disaster funding does not cover the day-to-day needs, from feed bills to mortgage payments, that AGW is hearing from their member farmers. “We have very little confidence that any of this aid money will go to independent producers,” she said. (In fact, Politico reported that USDA awarded $1.2 billion in contracts to companies that appear to have little experience working with food banks or farmers, spurning several big produce companies with extensive expertise in food distribution.) Of the farmers interviewed by Civil Eats for this story, none of them had successfully accessed federal aid programs due to lack of eligibility and clear guidelines.

A long line to receive food assistance in Vermont. (Photo courtesy of the Vermont Food Bank.)

But all of them have excess food that would go to waste without responsive community-based responses. One established model, which could serve as an example for other organizations looking to bridge the gap between farmers and food banks during the pandemic, is Mainers Feeding Mainers.

Created by the Good Shepherd Food Bank of Maine in 2010, the innovative program buys local foods from the state’s farms, dairies, and fisheries and distributes them to families in need, establishing a much-needed sales channel.

Over the last decade, organization’s farmer pool has grown from five to 70 producers, and they now supply food to 450 Good Shepherd and partner food pantries and meal sites. Supported through private donations and state funding, the project invested $750,000 in Maine’s agricultural economy in 2018—and is proving to be an especially effective model during the pandemic.

For about 10 years, farmer Rick Belanger has donated potatoes to Good Shepherd Food Bank located six miles from his 200-acre vegetable farm, in Lewiston, Maine. He has also sold his crops to Mainers Feeding Mainers. But this spring, when the grocery chain Hannaford had a glut of processor potatoes in their stores, they wouldn’t buy R. Belanger & Sons’ Russets. Only Mainers Feeding Mainers did.

“It was a godsend for us,” Belanger told Civil Eats from his tractor. While the price is lower than what he’d ordinarily yield from stores or restaurants in Lewiston, he said he’s happy with it. “We’re not going to lose money,” he said.

Modeled on the neighboring program, Vermonters Feeding Vermonters, established and run by the Vermont Food Bank, is in its third growing season. “The heart of the program is that we want to make fresh, local food accessible to all, but we also want to support the local agricultural economy and reduce our environmental footprint,” said Michelle Wallace, director of community health and fresh food initiatives at the Vermont Food Bank.

Vermonters Feeding Vermonters has typically purchased 200,000 pounds of local produce directly from farmers, said Wallace. With the newly unemployed population, the food bank has delivered 62 percent more food this spring. So, they’re doubling the funding for Vermonters Feeding Vermonters, which is possible due to an uptick in donations Wallace describes as “holiday-level.”

In March and April, the Vermont Food Bank spent an extra $100,000 to purchase cabbage, rutabaga, turnips, beets, apples, sweet potatoes, apples, carrots, and potatoes from a total of about 10 Vermont farmers. “We have the systems and we have the infrastructure,” said Wallace, noting that they may need to rent extra trucks.

Impact Moving Forward

Are these community-organization and food-bank driven efforts enough to rescue independent farms?

Tim Gibbons of Missouri Rural Crisis Center (MRCC) is worried for family farmers in his state, especially those isolated in communities that lack strong food hubs like those in Vermont, New Mexico, and Oregon. “The local food system, [is] at risk of going out of business,” Gibbons said. “We are doing everything we can to help ensure [its] sustainability.”

MRCC represents small-scale livestock producers in rural areas that have suffered from consolidation in agriculture, the closing of processing plants, and market losses that are too great to withstand. This includes the 15 independent family hog farmers that make up MRCC’s cooperative marketing effort, Patchwork Family Farms.

Patchwork Family Farms provides a market for those who raise animals the “traditional way,” meaning at a smaller scale than factory farms. The program secured local funds to buy and process the pork and distribute it in 400 food relief boxes to limited-income families hard hit by COVID-19. MRCC is also collaborating with two area restaurants providing free hot meals for children, service workers, and the newly unemployed.

Photo courtesy of the Vermont Food Bank.

But without savings or access to health care, Gibbons worries that many farmers’ situations are precarious. “You lose one generation of hog producers, you lose animals husbandry skills that have been passed down through generations,” he said.

Other farm-to-food bank programs are reporting win-win relationships they hope to carry forward. Vermonters Feeding Vermonters internal analysis of shows real impact for farmers, according to Wallace. “The most notable benefit is the increased stability,” she said.

The combination of dependability and flexibility makes food banks valuable customers. And the program’s evaluations demonstrate that the program can benefit farmers on all scales. “We’re not asking for their seconds, and we’re paying them a price that they set, not trying to negotiate,” Wallace said.

The assets from these transactions are “tangible dollars” that support the local economy while addressing the emergency. And the program has begun to gain traction at the state level: just before COVID-19 shutdown, the Vermont Foodbank and advocates were working with the legislature to ask for a $500,000 appropriation to fund the program.

This small success heartened Wallace who said, “The states have a role to play here; not just private dollars.” The idea may be gaining traction, as New York state recently announced $25 million in emergency funds for Nourish New York to redistribute excess dairy and other farm products to the state’s food banks.

Sayrah Namaste hadn’t heard of New England’s two established farm-to-food bank programs when contacted by Civil Eats. But she was hopeful that AFSC’s quick band-aid solution can provide lessons for for long-term change. “I’ve worked 25 days in a row with no day off just because it’s so new, urgent, and there are so many pieces to figure out,” she said.

There’s no shortage of need. ACN and Namaste are fielding phone calls from cities in New Mexico and several tribes hoping to replicate the program.

With the growing season heating up in the middle of the economic crisis, weather-worn farmers face unprecedented uncertainty. “We gotta keep our farmers farming,” said ACN’s Garcia-Garza. “We’ve got to keep economic activity afloat, because we don’t know where this pandemic is going.”

For their part, the farmers selling to their local food banks sound hopeful. Wisconsin egg producer Braun, who is raising new chicks along with 400 layers, said: “The food supply will be there, and we all need to work together on it.”

Belanger has been tilling his field for the next potato planting. He’s planning to sell Mainers Feeding Mainers from his next crops of asparagus, strawberries, and rhubarb. “We’re going to be okay,” he said. “The local markets here are just flourishing.”

And in eastern Oregon, Thiel is paying two workers to sort through the 50,000 pounds of fall potatoes in his storage shed to make sure they don’t all go bad while he focuses on spring planting. He’s expecting significant losses despite the food bank sales. But, he said, “My nose is just above water, and I’m still breathing.”

Top photo courtesy of the Vermont Food Bank.

This article was updated to correct some of the details around the Vermonters Feeding Vermonters program.

The post The Farm to Food Bank Movement Aims to Rescue Small-Scale Farming and Feed the Hungry appeared first on Civil Eats.

“Obviously, that’s not happening [now],” said farmer Kathryn Spann, reckoning with the new reality of banned public events, restaurant and school closures, and work-from-home orders due to COVID-19. “This is the season when our payroll is highest because lots of babies are being born, and we’ve just taken a two-thirds to three-quarters haircut in our revenue,” she said.

Recently, when 90 kids were born over an eight-day period, the farm’s volunteers were all self-isolating at home, leaving Spann and her husband with a shortage of labor. “You can’t just hit the pause button,” she said. “We’ve got all these babies to care for, not to mention the adults.”

Across the country, small-scale livestock producers like Spann are facing catastrophic losses. “Our world has been upended,” reported Indiana farmer Greg Gunthorp to Civil Eats after Chicago chef Rick Bayless closed Frontera Grill, his biggest customer. “It’s like we were hit by a train.”

For Oregon-based regenerative rancher Cory Carman, restaurant accounts—from New York City’s fast-casual Dig Inn to Portland’s white-tablecloth restaurants—make up half of her grass-fed beef business. But she won’t be collecting on any outstanding invoices for Carman Ranch beef. “You cannot demand payment when you know they have no money coming in,” she said.

COVID-19 is a disaster of unforeseen magnitude for all small-scale farmers. But it’s especially challenging for those raising animals. Livestock involve years of planning, with heavy investments in animals that require breeding, feed, and pasture or housing and take months or years to grow while farmers live off loans.

“Farmers are facing heartbreaking decisions,” said Andrew Gunther, executive director of A Greener World, the organization that offers Animal Welfare Approved (AWA) certification. “[They can] slaughter animals with no market and store products at significant cost, change the animals’ diet, hoping the market returns quickly, or effectively dump products into the commodity market at a price below production.”

“Without immediate mitigation, we may lose many small, socially disadvantaged, and beginning farms and the important markets they serve”

In a matter of weeks, the economic outlook for farmers who produce food for local and regional markets—around 8 percent of American farms and ranches—has turned dire. On March 18, the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) estimated that lost sales could total over $680 million between March and May. “Without immediate mitigation, we may lose many small, socially disadvantaged, and beginning farms and the important markets they serve,” according to NSAC.

The $2 trillion CARES Act passed by Congress last week provides $24 billion in emergency aid for farmers and ranchers. But it is unclear to many if it will provide direct assistance to small-scale livestock producers as they endure the pandemic.

As the wave of shutdowns and closures wreak havoc on local economies, nonprofits, businesses, and community groups are mobilizing as ad-hoc rapid response teams. They have a clear call to action: Save small, pasture-based meat producers.

Teaming Up to Assist Farmers Find Markets

Some of the first responders in this farm crisis were shuttered restaurants including Coquine in Portland, Black Cat in Boulder, and Dish Society in Houston, which hosted pop-up markets to create ready-made sales channels for their networks of farms and ranches.

When New Hampshire farmers’ markets closed, Three River Farmers Alliance, a network of local farms in the seacoast region of the state, instituted emergency home delivery service for locally sourced vegetables, meats, and cheeses from dozens of small-scale producers all the way to the Boston suburbs. The Good Meat Project is operating a community switchboard to connect farmers with, and coordinate sales to, customers who are looking to buy locally raised, higher animal welfare meats.

And in the Hudson Valley, livestock farmers created a directory so that if someone gets sick, they can call in help.

“It’s a collective response,” Kathleen Finlay, president of Glynwood, a nonprofit farm and training center serving new farmers and food professionals in the Hudson Valley and New York City. Last week, she jumped in to deliver Glynwood Grazed shares and redistribute pasture-raised meats that could no longer go to restaurants. “It’s just an incredible effort to work together and help each other through this time,” she said.

A second wave of support for small farms came from dozens of agriculture organizations—from state departments of agriculture and farm bureaus to community-based organizations and university extension offices. These entities curated webpages of COVID-19 resources for farmers with FAQs, health safety protocols, financial assistance, and free trainings.

Ranchers gathering at Carman Ranch. (Photo © Talia Jean Galvin)

Within days, the national Niche Meat Processors Assistance Network (NMPAN), an organization that provides technical assistance on meat processing to livestock producers, logged over 300 hundred signups for an April webinar on online sales and logistics, compared to a more typical enrollment of around 30.

Additionally, some sustainable ag organizations pivoted to crisis management. A Greener World ceased on-farm audits to conduct outreach to the farming community. “The stories we’re hearing aren’t good—losses of over 70 percent in orders, farmers … wondering how they’ll buy food for their animals,” Gunther wrote in an email. “I don’t have to explain to you what this will mean in six months’ time if we can’t figure out how to help them now.”

After calling more than 100 livestock producers around the country last week, Gunther had a clearer picture of the impacts—and his staff plans to contact hundreds more. “We’ve got three types of farmers,” he told Civil Eats. First, the most challenged: those who lost their markets without warning when restaurants closed overnight. “Farmers are absolutely understanding of that action, but it doesn’t stop them being in trouble,” said Gunther. If you have 2,000 chickens on a farm, the feed costs are over $500 a week, which without any sales become unsustainable, he explained.

Second, livestock producers who depend on farmers’ markets are on shaky ground. In communities across the country, farmers’ markets are fighting to remain open, and those in cities such as Los Angeles, Madison, Nashville, and Honolulu have been forced to close.

But the last group is experiencing a surge: farmers with existing retail partners and/or direct-to-consumer sales channels in place are doing surprisingly well, Gunther said. This swell in demand brings its own set of challenges, however. “They need to procure a product in a way that’s sustainable and thoughtful,” Gunther said. “It’s a very fragile, young supply chain right now.”

Half of rancher Cory Carman’s business came through restaurant accounts. And when COVID-19 closures killed her wholesale business, her direct-to-consumer sales shot up tenfold within a week, and she has the capacity to meet that demand. Even so, “it’s still a fraction of the business we had with restaurants,” said Carman.

More importantly, there’s a lot more involved in a sustainable livestock business than sales volume. Carman has spent years scaling her grass-fed beef business and partners with several other ranches with the same values and management practices aimed at improving soil health. Having multiple sales channels allowed Carman to ensure she sold every part of the animal—but that’s no longer guaranteed.

Now, she’s sending out inventory lists to regional grocers hoping they’ll buy more. “Our supply chain is so simple,” Carman said. “Everything that made us a little less efficient, a little less competitive before is making us more resilient, more secure, and more responsive now.”

Increased Demand for Meat

For this group of farmers, there’s one bright spot: The recent skyrocketing appetite for all groceries, including meat—one staple the public is buying in bulk in response to the pandemic. Retail meat sales were 70 percent higher this March compared to the same period in 2019, according to the consumer packaged goods data company IRI.

“We’re moving a lot of product in retail,” confirmed Dan Probert, marketing director for the Oregon-based ranchers’ cooperative Country Natural Beef, which sells to Whole Foods, New Seasons, and other independent grocers. And that revenue is going directly to the 90 members, mostly family ranches, ranging from a few head to 1,000 head of cattle, scattered all over the west from Arizona to Wyoming.

Similarly, in North Carolina, when the cooperative North Carolina Natural Hog Growers Association lost two wholesale accounts this week, Whole Foods bought all their pork, according to AGW’s Gunther.

“We’ve made more changes in two weeks than we’d have planned in two years”

While grocery stores are picking up the slack left by other wholesale buyers, direct-to-consumer operations are also seeing an uptick. All the farmers contacted by Civil Eats reported skyrocketing CSA subscriptions and online orders in their regions. That’s good news for some ranchers, but it leaves others, especially new farmers who depend on farmers’ markets, struggling to pivot.

“It sounds easy, but it’s actually hard, and costs money,” said Finlay from Glynwood. Shipping, delivery, and payment processing systems don’t come together overnight.

Greg Gunthorp says that after losing the restaurant business his farm was able to “flex to retail sales” quickly thanks to farmer friends with existing online platforms to sell the pork. “We’ve made more changes in two weeks than we’d have planned in two years,” he added.

But many small-scale livestock producers don’t have the advantage of large social media followings or a recognized brand, like Gunthorp, and most aren’t well-equipped—with the technical skills or staff—to respond to the soaring demand.

Though Prodigal Farms is located near the triangle of Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill, “It’s really hard to suddenly retool the operation to develop a distribution system,” said Kathryn Spann.

She is revamping her website with a plan to ship protein boxes to New York, where she worked as a lawyer for many years. “I know folks are really concerned about having access to quality food [without] leaving their homes,” she said. She’s hopeful that she can set up a new system to process online orders and arrange for shipping containers. “But that might be magical thinking,” she said. All the while, she and her husband, Dave, are tending to 85 does, three bucks, and 110 kids—with more on the way.

Another difference livestock producers face is that, unlike specialty vegetable growers, they don’t have complete control over the processing for their animals. The roughly 800 small-scale slaughter plants around the country are also experiencing a deluge of business, according NMPAN director Rebecca Thistlethwaite.

As for the risk of those meat processors contracting COVID-19 and creating a supply chain bottleneck, Thistlethwaite said, “They’re probably some of the safest food processing facilities out there for keeping workers healthy.” Not only do they routinely practice food safety and sanitation procedures, but most are already offered paid sick time. And unlike giant meatpacking plants that have reported COVID-19 incidents in the past few weeks, these workers are not standing elbow to elbow, she explained.

Creating Resilient Local Food Systems

Strong consumer support for farm-raised meat is one good sign of hope for these farmers. But according to Alice Rolls, president of Georgia Organics, an organization that supports Georgia organic farmers, “it’s not going to replace lost revenues.”

Photo © Talia Jean Galvin.

Along with providing an online portal to products from regional farms and ranches, this organization led a coalition with seven other Georgia food organizations to sponsor The Farmer Fund. The COVID-19 emergency relief effort, originally created to provide economic relief after hurricanes and other natural disasters, now aims to provide direct contributions to farmers, along with farm-to-frontline support for community members in need. Meanwhile, the Chicago-based Food and Animal Concerns Trust launched a national $30,000 emergency mini-grant fund to help poultry and livestock producers capture the boom in online food sales.

“This is a point of opportunity for singing beyond the choir and getting more people and our political leaders to understand resilient communities rely on resilient food systems locally,” said Rolls.

With the CARES Act signed into law, there is new hope for financial relief for farmers and ranchers, but many questions remain. “Farmers are so confused about what they can and cannot access from this federal stimulus package,” said Maia Hardy, manager for the Ag of the Middle Accelerator program at Ecotrust. She works with dozens of independent farmers, 80 percent of them livestock producers who are looking to create viable businesses.

“Small farmers are also at the front lines of this crisis, getting hit not only by business closures but also an unprecedented increase in demand,” wrote Oregon Congressman Earl Blumenauer in an email to Civil Eats. “We need to ensure that they have the infrastructure they need so that our food system can withstand this crisis.” Blumenauer pushed to allocate funding for regional systems that did not make it into the final bill. “I will continue fighting for it,” he wrote.

“It’s kind of sad to think I’ve spent half of my life working on building local and regional food systems and it really could be all over,” said Gunthorp. He speculated that the stimulus bill could help him cover some of his payroll costs, but in the end “time will tell whether our lender and our desire to borrow more funds will allow us to keep the farm.”

In the meantime, he plans to make the best of it because, “that’s what farmers do.”

“It’s going to be a tough year for farmers and producers,” said Finlay from Glynwood. “The moment is now for people to realize that a homogenized centralized food system that values profit over health is one that is fragile. And I hope it underscores the importance of building these de-centralized, robust regional hubs of food production that are healthier and better for the environment.”

Spann from Prodigal Farm admits that this crisis has brought her close to the breaking point. But she said, “My hope is that out of this, we develop an infrastructure that makes it easier for people to do this on a sustained basis and that even while socially distant, we become more interconnected in feeding each other.”

The post Pastured Meat Producers are Facing Catastrophic Losses. These Efforts Could Help Them Weather the Pandemic. appeared first on Civil Eats.

On July 1, a state law that restricts canola cultivation in Oregon’s Willamette Valley will expire. Around the state capitol, two groups of farmers and their advocates are locked in battle over the potential expansion of canola production. It’s the latest flare-up in a 20-plus-year fight over the future of these prime farmlands stretching 125 miles due south from Portland.

Cradled between two mountain ranges, the populous Willamette Valley is one of the most productive and protected agricultural regions in the country. While renowned for its diversity of farm crops and wine grapes that feed a thriving farm-to-table movement, it’s also the epicenter of a lucrative seed industry. Lands for growing grass seed, cover crop seed, and flower and vegetable seeds dominate the corridor’s 1.7 million arable acres.

Within the world of vegetable seed production, brassicas such as kale, broccoli, cabbage, and rutabaga contribute significantly to the valley’s specialty seed market, ranked fifth in the world. The canola plant is in the same Brassicaceae family (commonly known as mustard or cabbage). Also called rapeseed, the yellow flowering Brassica napus is a useful rotational crop for grass seed farmers in the valley, and the oilseed is crushed for oil and animal feed.

While canola has been raised in the Willamette Valley since before World War II, the state has taken a precautionary approach to the crop because it is a notorious cross-pollinator with rampant pest, disease, and weed issues. In 2013, the legislature implemented a 500-acre limit for canola cultivation in the Willamette Valley Protected District and tagged on a mandate for Oregon State University (OSU) to study the fields.

Now, with the July sunset date looming, a fierce debate has reignited between specialty vegetable seed stakeholders and pro-canola supporters.

An Oregon canola field. (Photo CC-licensed by the Oregon Department of Agriculture)

Organic and vegetable seed producers fear that the potential for contamination from cross-pollination from canola, which also has the potential to carry genetically engineered (GE) materials, is so high it threatens the viability of Oregon’s specialty seed industry. Led by the Willamette Valley Specialty Seed Association (WVSSA), they’re seeking the protections of a renewed state law, SB 885, which would extend the 500-acre limit on canola for four more years.

Oilseed growers have long bristled at strict regulations that single out the canola crop from other brassicas and limit the development of an oilseed industry. They are pushing for expansion under a new set of rules from the Oregon Department of Agriculture (ODA) that would go into effect if the legislature allows the cap on canola to expire.

The central question in play is: Is there a way for vegetable seed and oilseed production to coexist? The matter is far from settled, and the pro- and anti-canola groups have found little, if any, common ground.

What’s at Stake for Oregon Farmers

Oregon’s Willamette Valley, with its mild, moist winters, long summers, and fertile soils, is one of few places, along with Chile, Australia, the Mediterranean, and western Canada, ideal for cultivating high-quality vegetable seeds. There is no official data collected on the number of seed companies located in the valley nor how many acres they farm. But industry sources reported to Civil Eats that there are at least 40 and as many as 100 seed companies operating on 10,000 to 12,000 acres. This includes valuable brassica seeds, including most of the world’s supply of European cabbage, Brussels sprouts, rutabaga, and turnip seed, and a quarter of the radish, Chinese cabbage, and other Chinese Brassica vegetable seed, according to a 2010 OSU report.

It’s well-established that when any variety of brassica blossoms, there is the potential for pollen to be transferred by insects or wind to other brassicas. If turnip pollen drifts to Chinese cabbage, for instance, it can produce undesirable traits in the resulting seed. However, the WVSSA has maintained a voluntary system of safeguards for decades that include field spacing (“isolation distances”) and crop mapping (“pinning”).

This same system is in use for GE sugar beet seed production, which was introduced in the valley in 2010. So far, it has worked to prevent sugar beets from contaminating fields of chard (a close relative) as well as non-GE table beets. But growers remain vigilant for transgenic contamination and test every seed lot.

While only non-GE canola is currently planted in Oregon, there is widespread concern that, because 90 percent of global canola seed is GE, it could make the canola seed supply vulnerable. Contamination from cross-pollination or seed mixing would make vegetable seed unsalable to the U.S. organic market or to countries that ban genetically modified materials, including Japan, Europe, and New Zealand. And there is no recourse or compensation for farmers.

Even without the GE issue, anti-canola advocates say low-value canola is a direct threat to the high-value specialty seed market. They point to places such as the U.K., Denmark, and France, where vegetable seed production declined or disappeared in the wake of commercial canola production as a result of disease and pest problems.

Nonetheless, the state-mandated OSU study on those 500 acres of canola has cleared a pathway for expanded canola production. Researchers collected data on the disease and pest impacts—but not cross-pollination—of canola on other brassica crops. It concluded, “The results of this research provide no reasons, agronomic or biological, that canola production should be prohibited in the Willamette Valley when there are no restrictions on the production of other [brassica] crops.” It also recommended an expansion of canola acreage to the state legislature as “reasonable and feasible.”

The Willamette Valley Oilseed Producers Association (WVOPA) touted the findings as a green light for canola production. Over the past two years, farmers have requested permits to plant twice the number of allowable acres. Canola is one of several crops that farmers can grow in rotation with grass seeds to break pest and disease cycles and doesn’t need irrigation. It’s desirable for farmers like Anna Scharf, WVOPA board president, who raises 11 different crops, including grass seed, turnip, clover, and wine grapes on close to 3,000 acres. “Because [canola] is a commodity, as a farmer I can grow the crop and play the market,” she told Civil Eats. “At the end of the day this fight comes down to economics.”

Currently, all canola seed grown in the valley is processed at Willamette Biomass Processors, located about 20 miles west of Salem. If canola production increased, its advocates say the certified organic facility could be used to produce more valuable food-grade canola oil. Growers like Scharf see alarmist fears over canola blocking its market potential She said, “I can grow marijuana easily in this state, but I can’t grow canola.”

The grass seed industry in the Willamette Valley is immense, representing most of the seed crops grown, or about 250,000 acres valued at over $228 million per year. In contrast, the acreage devoted to vegetable seed production is small, but the value is high, reportedly worth $50 million per year. And despite the study’s results, the anti-canola camp remains unconvinced that both an oilseed industry and specialty seed industry can coexist and thrive in the valley.

OSU vegetable breeder Jim Myers was one of the research advisors on the canola report. In his opinion, while the latest research provides more knowledge, the results have limitations. “I think it’s a problem of scale,” he said in a phone conversation with Civil Eats. “When you mix commercial acreage with seed production, then we get into problems.”

Specialty vegetable seeds are bred and selected to meet high quality standards for varietal and genetic purity—requirements that oilseed does not have. Myers detailed how increased acreages of canola with three-mile isolation distances between fields would fragment production areas. What’s more, just a few seeds blown off farm equipment and transport trucks could spread feral weeds, and because canola seed stays dormant in the soil for at least two years, weed problems could persist.

“I think the crux is, ‘What do we do best in western Oregon?’” he said. And that’s not growing commodity crops, in Myers’s view. He added, “It’s hard to know where the [vegetable seed] production would go if it couldn’t be done in the Valley.”

“Is Oregon willing to sacrifice this region to the interests of canola?” said Kiki Hubbard, advocacy and communications director at the Organic Seed Alliance (OSA). “What’s at stake is the diversity of our seed supply and the diverse seed economy currently thriving in the Willamette Valley.”

Countdown to Sunset

Underlying the controversy over canola, there is widespread agreement that the specialty seed industry is unique and valued. But there is no agreement over how to move forward. The oilseed growers insist on their right to farm, while the vegetable seed growers, along with plant breeders and seed companies, fight for self-preservation.

“Coexistence requires compromises,” the OSU report stated. But it also acknowledged the uneven playing field: “Coexistence does not mean that risks, if any, are equally distributed among the sectors.” The report noted that the data could not predict that “unlimited Brassicaceae crop production within the Willamette Valley would not result in production problems.” This is the heart of issue for the specialty seed industry: in the current paradigm of coexistence, they are the ones with everything to lose.

Photo CC-licensed by Ian Sane.

After years of meetings with all stakeholders, the ODA’s draft regulations for canola include an isolation area banning 937,000 acres of the Willamette Valley from canola production. The zone outside of this area, about 1.5 million acres, could be planted with canola by permit from ODA, as reported by The Capital Press.

“Nobody likes it,” said Jonathan Sandau, government affairs director for the Oregon Farm Bureau (OFB), which participated in the rule making. Members of OFB include farmers growing specialty crops as well as farmers who would like the opportunity to grow canola.

“I don’t think you can ban one industry,” Sandau said. “I think the department really strived to find within their existing authority an ability to protect the specialty seed industry.”

In their current form, seed growers say the regulations leave a lot of unanswered questions, including permitting requirements and pinning system details. “There’s a lot of gaps in what they’ve proposed,” says Smith of WVSSA. “I’m worried.” And three organic seed companies, Adaptive Seeds, Moondog’s Farm, and Wild Garden Seed, are located outside of the proposed isolation area.

But Sandau wonders, “If you’re asking for greater protection, how much protection is enough?” At the same time, he acknowledges that no one knows the market capacity for canola or the long-term impacts it could have on agriculture in the Willamette Valley. As a representative from the U.K. seed company Limagrain put it during 2009 discussions about permitting canola in Willamette Valley, “Once the genie of canola production is out of the bottle, you will never put it back.”

With the deadline on the canola law closing in, oilseed opponents may get their wish from the legislature. According to several sources in the Oregon capitol, SB 885—the continuation of the existing 500-acre limit—appears to be moving to a vote and may pass before the end of June. If approved, it would go into effect immediately, with a new expiration date in 2023. If it doesn’t pass, the ODA is mobilizing to present new rules in time for fall canola planting.

But even a four-year reprieve will not resolve the canola war in Oregon. “Either the legislature’s going to act or ODA is going to have a rule,” said Scharf of WVOPA. “No matter what happens, it is very consequential for the state of Oregon.”

Stewardship is one of the hallmarks of the diverse Willamette Valley farm community. So, as the canola schism draws out, many have argued for being “good neighbors.” Even the OSU report urged “the entire agricultural industry to maintain good stewardship practices to protect the status of the Willamette Valley as a premier seed production region.”

But some growers, including veteran plant breeder Frank Morton of Wild Garden Seed, question the presumption that peaceful coexistence between producing oilseed and specialty vegetable seeds is reasonable and feasible. “This is a road paved with good intentions, perhaps,” he said in a testimony to ODA, “but it will lead to a world of conflict without end.”

(Correction: This article was updated to reflect the fact that Willamette Valley canola is not currently sold for biofuels. Craig Parker, CEO of Willamette Biomass Processors, told Civil Eats that the plant used to sell to the biofuels industry, but the economics were not sustainable.)

The post Oregon’s Seed War: Can Vegetable Crops and Canola Coexist in the Seed Capitol of America? appeared first on Civil Eats.

It was successful, in a sense. “We were working our heads off producing a tractor trailer load of milk every two days,” Shank says. Nonetheless, Shank faced financial ruin when the price of milk plummeted in the early 2000s. On top of that, his cows were routinely sick with a stomach ailment called displaced abomasum, which is common to high-production dairy cows and requires surgery. “It was a rat race,” he recalls.

Then, in 2005, while transitioning his dairy to organic, Shank rubbed shoulders with neighbors selling raw milk directly to consumers. Once he began taking the possibility seriously, he recognized there was “a pretty big demand for [raw milk].” Consumers are driven by the love for the taste, its promise of valuable nutrients, enzymes and probiotics touted by the Weston A. Price Foundation, and the idea of supporting small-scale, pasture-based farms.

In fact, he realized people were willing to pay more for it, and to travel miles for it. And when he did the math, Shank estimated at retail organic milk prices, he could earn nearly 10 times what he had been getting in the commodity market.

“Dairy is an incredibly consolidated system. The farmer has no bargaining power,” says Judith McGeary, an attorney and board member with the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund, a national advocacy group that works with farmers to protect and defend their rights to sell products their farms. “Raw milk provides this polar opposite; you have this product in high demand by consumers who value it, and all that profit goes to the farmer.”

Shank licensed his farm, The Family Cow, with the state department of agriculture and began selling raw milk in 2008. Now, his farm is the largest raw milk producer in Pennsylvania.

He’s not alone. While many American farmers suffer through the dairy crisis or quit, others are choosing the economic opportunity created by the raw milk movement. In doing so, these food producers find themselves in the crossfire of a longstanding war over the risks and benefits of fresh, unprocessed milk. And it’s a fight that shows no signs of dying down soon.

Growing Demand

In 1987, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) outlawed interstate sales of raw milk and established the Pasteurized Milk Ordinance (PMO) after years of study, public testimony, and a petition from a citizen health group led by Ralph Nader. The agency determined unpasteurized milk too hazardous for a warning label, since the risks were not related to misuse. Only an outright ban could protect the public health, a federal judge ruled.

Although raw milk is legal in a number of other countries, for over 30 years, the federal government has firmly maintained that only pasteurization—the process of heating milk to over 161 degrees Fahrenheit to kill pathogens, including Campylobacter, E. coli and Salmonella—makes it safe for human consumption. The food safety website from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) states, “Raw milk can carry harmful bacteria and other germs that can make you very sick or kill you.”

Cheese rounds that have been inoculated with mold cure in the aging room to produce Chapel’s Country Creamery, “Bay Blue” cheese. (USDA photo by Bob Nichols)

Nonetheless, most states have passed an array of regulations that permit access to raw milk. In 2004, raw milk was illegal in 19 states and that number has gradually shrunk to just five in 2019. No state has moved to further restrict the raw milk licensing, and several inched their way toward increased access in 2018, according to the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund.

As of January 2019, 12 states have legalized retail sales, while 16 states allow on-farm sales of unpasteurized milk. Eight states permit herd share agreements, where people “buy” an ownership stake in a cow from the farmer and are entitled to the milk it produces. And in four states raw milk can only be sold as pet food.

Currently, West Virginia’s Farm Fresh Raw Milk Act calls for reversing the ban on raw milk sales through herd shares. Massachusetts, which allows on-farm sales, is considering a bill that would permit delivery of raw milk, increasing sales opportunities for small-scale dairies in the state.

Despite dire warnings and legal hurdles, Americans’ taste for unprocessed, fresh-from-the-cow milk appears to be widespread and growing in popularity among well-educated, health-conscious consumers. While there is no national data on raw milk consumption, a frequently cited 2007 CDC survey put raw milk consumption at 3 percent of the U.S. population at the time.

But recent data from state licensing agencies indicates that the market has grown significantly since then. For example, in Washington state, where it’s legal to sell raw milk in stores, there were six raw milk licensed dairies in 2006. Now there are 32, according to the state department of agriculture. The number of permits for on-farm sales in New York state grew from 12 to 37 during the same time period. In other states, like Montana, state agencies have created agreements to look the other way.

On the sales side, California’s largest raw milk dairy, Organic Pastures, which has products available in 450 stores, reported an 18 percent growth from January 2018 to 2019. Other independent dairy producers, including The Family Cow, have maxed out their milk production to meet the robust demand.

There is also a bustling illegal trade in raw milk with several high profile FDA busts for distributing the substance across state lines. The most recent raw milk scandal involves the investigation of a brucellosis exposure from a single cow on an unlicensed Pennsylvania farm whose milk was traced to 19 states.

The Question of Safety

The public thirst for raw milk roils health authorities, heightening the CDC’s public health campaign to warn people away from “raw milk myths” and the “real dangers” of the product. Of particular concern is the fact that illnesses contracted from raw milk can be severe with complications, and they tend to disproportionately affect children under the age of five.

The official hardline position that no raw milk is safe to drink rests on a study of outbreaks between 2007 and 2012. The CDC concluded that outbreaks associated with drinking unpasteurized milk are higher in states that permitted raw milk sales and lower in states where raw milk sales were prohibited. But some advocates point to a 2018 study published by the journal PLoS that makes a different argument. In that case, the researchers analyzed outbreaks from unpasteurized milk using CDC data from 2006 to 2016 by state and found that total outbreaks attributed to raw milk had actually fallen during the 12-year period by 74 percent.

Further, the evidence did not support any correlation between legalization and increased outbreak rates. “Indeed, examining data up to and including 2016 shows that increased legal access after 2010 has been concurrent with generally declining outbreak rates, irrespective of change in consumption,” the authors wrote.

This year so far the CDC has reported outbreaks of Listeria in pork products, E. coli in romaine lettuce, and Salmonella in tahini. Raw milk advocates point out that leafy greens are the most frequent cause of outbreaks (defined as any food-borne illness affecting two or more people), but they also make the point that no one is calling on Americans to stop eating salads.

But government officials insist that milk is different. “The thing you have to remember about milk is that it is a wonderful media for bacterial organisms to grow and thrive in. It makes it a little bit different than a head of lettuce,” says Dr. Bill Barton, Idaho State Department of Agriculture administrator and state veterinarian.

Marion Nestle, author and professor in the Department of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health at New York University, has written frequently about the debate over raw milk. “The issue with outbreaks caused by pathogens in raw milk is that the pathogens are almost entirely killed by pasteurization—making those outbreaks almost entirely preventable,” she told Civil Eats via email. “It’s much harder to prevent outbreaks due to lettuce or meat.”

Proponents for raw milk are quick to point out that that no food is guaranteed to be safe and pasteurized milk has caused its own outbreaks, including a 2007 Listeria outbreak in Massachusetts that caused three deaths.

“Raw milk is riskier than pasteurized milk,” said Nestle. “How much riskier? It’s hard to say, although a [PLoS] paper says that trends are in a safer direction. I suspect that’s because raw milk producers are being more careful about food safety procedures and maybe even doing some testing, which is all to the good.”

State Regulations and “Food Freedom”

Idaho, the third-largest dairy-producing state in 2010, is an interesting example of a place where producers and lawmakers are working together to reduce risk. The Idaho legislature passed new dairy regulations to allow small herd permits and herd share programs. “We weren’t naïve enough to think raw milk wasn’t being sold prior,” said Dr. Bill Barton, Idaho State Department of Agriculture administrator and state veterinarian.

Chapel’s Country Creamery owner Holly Foster in Easton, MD has to constantly stir the milk curd of fresh raw milk so the milk curd does not set until whey has separated from the curd. (USDA photo by Bob Nichols)

There are 109 licensed herd share licensed farms out of a total of 460 dairies, according to Barton. Each type of dairy license mandates regular facility inspections, milk testing, and herd testing for brucellosis and tuberculosis. Idaho also allows Grade A dairies to sell unpasteurized milk to stores, which are subjected to the same federal PMO standards as any other conventional dairy.

Idaho is on the leading edge of state regulations that give farmers more ways to produce, distribute, and sell raw milk. “We don’t necessarily take a position on whether it’s safe or not,” says Barton. “Our role as an agency is a regulatory role. We administer a raw milk program.”

The national shift away from the FDA’s prohibitions toward legalization stems from sustained pressures on state legislators to provide consumers with freedom of choice, part of the farm-to-table movement that’s led to a number of cottage food laws and food sovereignty movements.

“Our position is that people should be able to choose what they eat,” says Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund’s McGeary, who notes that recent regulatory changes have been hard fought by the mainstream dairy industry and health authorities. The organization is joined by a legion of “food freedom” advocates who accuse the government of maintaining a double standard when it comes to the only food banned from interstate commerce.

“Fluid raw milk is the only food category where anything less than perfectly safe is unacceptable and where governments attempt to ban it,” Joseph Heckman, a soil science professor at Rutgers University who writes about organic agriculture, told Civil Eats via email. A resident of New Jersey, which is the only state that has banned raw milk outright, Heckman sees the disconnect. And he travels to Pennsylvania and elsewhere to buy raw milk for his family.

Mark McAfee is president and chairman of Raw Milk Institute (RAWMI), a non-profit created in 2011 to educate dairy farmers and promote risk-assessment management plans and production standards for raw milk. “There are some people who are really stuck on ‘Don’t tread on me,’ freedom at all costs,” he says. But the 18 farms approved by RAWMI, including The Family Cow, represent a segment of the industry committed to education, training, and rigorous food safety standards.

The heart of the issue, according to both Heckman and McAfee, is the fact that all fluid milk is not the same: a dairy farmer producing milk for pasteurization follows a different set of production practices than a farmer selling milk to bottle for customers. “The FDA does not differentiate raw milk produced for people … versus raw milk produced for the pasteurizer,” McAfee says. “It is politically expedient to just trash all raw milk.”

McGeary sees the discussion as broader than food safety. She points to fact that FDA has no incentives to change long-standing laws and regulations that benefit large producers and retailers. “The problem is they aren’t really thinking about how small farms should address safety,” she said.

Building a Local Economy

Every week, Oregon farmer Charlotte Smith of Champoeg Creamery supplies 100 families with raw milk sold out of a farm stand 30 miles south of Portland, Oregon. State law limits Smith to milking just three cows, so she always has a waiting list. But the income is enough, supplemented by eggs and chickens, to support this fifth-generation farm year-round.

“I milk three cows and my neighbor who milks 300 cows could probably make as much money as me if he sold all his cows and milked three,” she says. In fact, Smith has become so successful at direct-to-consumer marketing that she’s turned her expertise into a side business called 3Cows Marketing to help other independent farmers of all kinds learn how to become profitable. One client selling raw milk in Michigan is helping pull her family’s conventional dairy farm out of debt.

Smith is also seen as a hero of the raw milk movement. She began producing it 10 years ago in hopes of healing her children’s severe eczema, and when it worked, she began championing its health benefits. Although the health claims from drinking raw milk remain roundly discounted within the American health community, her customers tend believe that it has a range of nutritional and medicinal qualities.

Smith is ready to take anyone on a tour of her tidy, hay-scented milking barn, to demonstrate the protocols, safety standards, and bacterial tests she runs routinely. “When you produce milk the way I [do], you’re going to get safe raw milk 100 percent of the time,” Smith says. “We have hundreds of checks in place to make sure that happens.”

Smith tests her milk for pathogens monthly, although Oregon regulations don’t require it. There are also significant advancements in testing technologies available to farmers. According to McAfee of RAWMI, results that used to take several days are now possible within 11 hours. Organic Pastures has instituted testing protocols that he insists make the milk “ultra-low risk.”

Jersey and Holstein cows of Chapel’s Country Creamery in Easton, MD graze on grass at the farm. The dairy produces artisanal cheeses with high quality fresh raw milk, rich in cream. (USDA photo by Bob Nichols)

“Anybody selling to the public is going to want to embrace this technology because it gives you information that’s forward looking,” he adds. But government officials are unconvinced that there is any way to test for pathogens in a way that ensures the milk is safe to drink.

Farmer Edwin Shank disagrees. In 2012 and 2013, his operation was linked to an outbreak of Campylobacter. In response, Shank built an on-farm laboratory and instituted a test-and-hold protocol to ensure that the milk tests at levels at or below the federal standard for pasteurized milk. “We do milk totally different from the way we used to,” Shank says.

The milk that leaves the farm is below the federal PMO standard for Grade A milk. “The FDA is setting the standards of what they believe is clean and safe milk. How can they use the same standard and say ours is not safe?”

Heckman argues that it’s high time to reevaluate the blanket opposition to unpasteurized milk.

“More progress towards food safety can be accomplished by providing education and training programs for dairy farmers,” he said, adding that universities and extension offices could play a role in providing the education and resources to mitigate the risks.

In the process, such a shift may help more farmers to find real economic sustainability. For Shank, the shift to selling raw milk is allowing him to begin passing a profitable business on to his six children. “It’s not a walk in the park,” he says. “But there’s no way my boys would have stayed on the farm if it stayed the way it was in 2008, when there was no future in it.”

Correction: The original version of this story incorrectly attributed the PLoS study to the National Library of Medicine. 

The post Could the Raw Milk Boom Be a Lifeline for Struggling Farmers? appeared first on Civil Eats.

An employee who began showing up late for work confided in Krouse that he was struggling to control his opioid use after suffering injuries from a car accident. Krouse offered work accommodations and personal support, even going to the employee’s house following a call for help. But a short while later, the man was found dead in his home from an overdose.

“I wish I had known then what I know now,” he said later, referring to the resources available for helping people with addiction. “It’s a horrible problem and very difficult to deal with.”

Rampant drug abuse has long been perceived as an urban plight. But when it comes to opioid painkillers—including oxycodone, hydrocodone, fentanyl, and heroin—rural communities are on the frontlines.

Five of the states with the highest rates of drug overdose deaths—Ohio, Kentucky, West Virginia, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania—are predominantly rural. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has reported that rates of overdose death in rural areas have been rising higher than they have in urban areas since 2006. Today, the agency says, people living in rural areas are almost twice as likely to overdose on opioids as urban residents.

Drug overdoses killed 72,000 people in 2017, according to the most recent estimates from the CDC. Claiming nearly 200 victims per day, drug overdose has become the leading cause of death for people under 50 years of age. But it does not only affect the young: In 2015, adults in the 45-to-54 age group experienced the highest death rate from overdose.

In rural areas where demographics skew older, the societal impacts of nonmedical opioid use run deep. And that population is declining not only due to lower birth rates, out-migration of young adults, and an aging population, but also from mortality of working-age adults from opioid overdose, according to a report from the Economic Research Service (ERS).

And for those working in agriculture, the impact was even higher. Three-quarters of farmers, ranchers, and farmworkers polled had been directly affected by opioid misuse, addiction, or overdose—this may be caused in part by the fact that agriculture workers do such physical work, and are more likely to be prescribed opioid painkiller than many other Americans. The CDC reports that every day, approximately 100 farmers and agricultural workers incur injuries that prevent them from working, and one out of five has at some point received a prescription for opioids.

A recent survey of rural residents found that 45 percent of adults were “directly impacted by opioid abuse, either by knowing someone, having a family member addicted, having taken an illegal opioid, or dealing with addiction themselves.”

It’s a dire situation that has put pressure on farming organizations and rural development agencies to step out of their comfort zones and address the crisis. Two national membership organizations, the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) and National Farmers Union (NFU), have banded together for the first time. In October 2017, they jointly commissioned the rural survey and have since built a cooperative awareness-building campaign called Farm Town Strong.

“Opioids have been too easy to come by and too easy to become addicted to,” AFBF president Zippy Duvall said in a statement. “And because opioid addition is a disease, it’s up to all of us to help people who suffer from it and help them find the treatment they need.”

Likewise, the Office of Rural Development heeded the call to action after President Trump declared opioids a national public health emergency in October 2017. As the agency within the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) charged with economic development, housing, and utilities in rural communities, the Office has targeted the problem as an urgent matter of rural prosperity. Over the past year, it convened a series of regional roundtables in cooperation with AFBF and NFU to identify programs and funding for prevention, treatment, and recovery as well as resource-sharing initiatives.

“Perhaps you are from a community or a region of our country where we can no longer pretend that all of rural America is ‘Friday Night Lights’ and your town has had to face this issue head on,” said Anne Hazlett, assistant to the Secretary for Rural Development, at a roundtable in February 2018.

Hazlett addressed an audience of law enforcement officials, medical and public health professionals, and business people, along with AFBF and NFU staff. Acknowledging the immense toll on civic resources, businesses, families, and quality of life in small towns across the country, she called on all rural advocates to become “engaged.”

Speaking publicly for the first time, farmer Dan Krouse stressed to the audience that opioid misuse not only incurs real costs and lost productivity but also puts untold stress and emotional toll on everyone involved. “I would rather just spend my time farming,” he said, “but unfortunately this is an issue that demands my time.”

Opioid Misuse in Rural America

America’s rural communities constitute 72 percent of the nation’s land mass and just 16 percent of the U.S. population. Rural life is characterized by wide open spaces, which translates into long distances to services, including medical care, and a lack of resources ranging from broadband communication to treatment centers. A large segment of the rural workforce is employed in agriculture, manufacturing, and natural resource industries including forestry, mining, gas, and oil. But there are wide economic disparities from county to county; in many, the job opportunities can be limited, low-paying, and seasonal.

For the first time in recorded history, America’s rural population is declining. The ERS report projected that this trend would increase the “dependency ratio,” a reduction in the population of wage earners relative to other non-working residents, including children and the elderly. And it would further impede the economic recovery that has lagged in most rural areas since the 2008 recession.

The opioid epidemic compounds these obstacles: The National Advisory Committee on Rural Health and Human Services stated in 2016 that “widespread drug abuse inhibits the growth of industry, increases the difficulty in attracting new residents, and creates bleak futures for current residents.”

As a researcher at the Center on Drug and Alcohol Research at the University of Kentucky, Jennifer Havens was not familiar with the AFBF/NFU survey results, but she wasn’t surprised by the high rate of impact among farmers. “When you’re in a town of 5,000 and there are 100 people using, that’s a lot of people,” she said. “There are so many more social connections than in urban drug-using communities.”

In the AFBF/NFU survey, 77 percent of farmers reported that it would be easy for them to obtain large quantities of opioids without a prescription, compared to 46 percent for all rural adults, a striking finding that has put a spotlight on farmers as an especially high-risk group.

So why are people who work in agriculture hit harder by the opioid crisis than other rural residents?

Farmers at Risk

While the farming community has been caught off guard, Havens, along with several other researchers, investigated the reasons behind this rural phenomenon in a 2014 study. Because agriculture is one of the most hazardous occupations with a high rate of injury, there is widespread availability of the drugs, the authors hypothesized. It’s an ideal formula for over-prescribing in the most under-resourced communities. And the issue has only compounded as it went largely unnoticed for decades.

“This did not happen yesterday,” said Randy Parker, Utah state director for USDA Rural Development.

Like other officials covering rural areas, Parker sees the source of the problem of physicians overprescribing opioids compounded by the distances to medical care. “Many times, physicians will prescribe 10 days [of opioids] and see how you’re doing,” he said. “With people out there 100 miles from a physician, they may give them 30 days [worth].”

And while opioid prescriptions have been dropping nationally since 2012, Parker noted that local officials, business people, and the medical community are just beginning to grapple with the Gordian knot of legal, economic, and social problems associated with addictions in small towns. Meanwhile, deaths from illegal fentanyl and other synthetic opioids in the drug trade have shot up since 2013, according to a report from the Pew Charitable Trust. Fentanyl-related overdoses vary from state to state, but constitute what the CDC calls the “third wave” of the opioid crisis (after prescription drugs and heroin) that are affecting even “far-flung parts of the country.”

Farm economics have played a role, too. As another state farm bureau official put it, “When you can’t feed your family and you sink into a depression you turn to self-medicating.” According to a 2018 study, overdoses rose by 10 percent above the national average for every $10,000 reduction in net farm income. Along with declining farm incomes, natural disasters, and other weather events are all potential factors in exacerbating the rural opioid crisis. “Our results confirm that economic factors, including income and especially unemployment, as well as population density—or rurality—are important,” the authors wrote.

The challenge of addressing the epidemic is only compounded by the fact that it’s occurring in places where stoicism has cultural currency. “These folks out in rural parts of Utah, they’re hard-working and they get hurt in some way and are looking for some relief,” Parker said. “‘I’m a hardworking guy and I’m going to get through it.’ That’s a little bit of what’s going on out there.” Parker, who was the longtime CEO of the Utah Farm Bureau and has a history with member farmers and ranchers, sees the roots of the problem in the “self-sufficiency mentality.”

With so many pills in circulation, nonmedical use of opioids skyrocketed as relatives and friends purchased or helped themselves to the available supply. In the rural-urban opioid study, Havens and her co-authors hypothesized that the close social and familial networks within small towns has also greatly facilitated drug sharing. Additionally, they identified that using pain relievers like Oxycontin and Vicodin carries less of a stigma than with other illicit drugs that are smoked or snorted. Only alcohol and marijuana are perceived as less harmful.

The study also noted that the stress of living in economically disadvantaged areas with high concentrations of poverty “create greater vulnerability to drug use in these populations.” After studying the coal-mining regions of eastern Kentucky, which was “ripe for abuse,” Havens has recently documented the rise of opioid misuse on the western side of I-75, where agriculture predominates.

“Ten years ago, in western Kentucky, there was a lot more meth and eastern was opioids,” she said by phone. But now programs administered by the Center on Drug and Alcohol Research are focused on statewide opioid interventions. “It’s not just in Appalachia anymore,” Havens said.

Rural Community Resources

“Everybody knows somebody who has been affected by this epidemic,” said Michele Specht with the Ohio Farm Bureau. As an organization director, Specht works in four counties bordering the Appalachians, a region full of hay, dairy, sheep, and cattle production.

For Specht, opioid addiction has hit too close to home: Her office assistant’s son is an addict. “He had like 20 friends, and he is the only one remaining alive.” Even her own mother—an 82-year-old dairy farmer’s wife—received dozens of prescriptions over the years for various ailments and became addicted to opioids. And she’s not alone among the senior population. “I think people are finally recognizing that this is not just happening to drug addicts on the streets,” Specht said. “This is happening to everyone and it’s all ages.”

Specht was one of the first to recognize that the Ohio Farm Bureau as a membership organization needed to get involved. “We knew nothing about this topic,” she said, “But it’s a Farm Bureau issue because this is a community issue.”

Although drug overdose is far outside of its wheelhouse, the AFBF is a national organization with the resources and the reach to confront an industry-wide problem. And it strengthens that position with it partnership with the NFU, a farm policy and advocacy group with 200,000 members largely ranging from the Great Plains to the Corn Belt.

The partnership has been hailed as exceptional, since these two farming organizations are often at odds over policy issues such as free trade versus fair trade. But the opioid problem was outside of the political arena, and it spurred the organizations’ presidents to work together, first on the survey and then to create the Farm Town Strong campaign.

“Time and time again, farmers and ranchers have come together to help their families and their neighbors through challenging situations,” NFU president Roger Johnson said in a statement. “Farm and rural communities currently face major challenges in the fight against addiction, like access to services, treatment, and support.”

But so far, these organizations don’t appear to be pushing for any new farm or drug policies. Instead, their focus is on erasing the stigma of drug addiction and increasing information sharing. According to the AFBF/NFU survey results, 68 percent of rural residents believe that public education and information about resources would be effective in dealing with the problem of opioids.

In actuality, much more than education may be needed to stem the tide of addiction. For now, AFBF president Duvall and NFU president Johnson have focused more on publicizing national hotlines, treatment options, prevention resources, and drug disposal information.

In the eyes of Utah state director Parker, the USDA roundtables have helped to “elevate an open and honest communication.” They led attorney general Sean Reyes, previously focused on urban opioid issues, to create a rural opioid task force, which Parker now co-chairs, to target opioid addiction initiatives with civic leaders, health professionals, and law enforcement.

And he’s seen more county and regional roundtables bringing together county commissioners, faith groups, drug court judges, medical and mental health providers, business people, and farmers to learn about the scope of the problem and identify solutions in their own communities. Because it’s widely acknowledged that every rural community is unique, there’s a need for localized plans for prevention, treatment, and recovery.

One outgrowth of the attention on the opioid issue in Ohio is a youth drug prevention program called “I’ve Got Your Back.” Drawing on the Farm Bureau’s relationships with 4H and Future Farmers of America, the training program has the potential to reach 400,000 Ohio youth with this program. “We cannot solve this crisis. We cannot make people better who are already addicted. But we can prevent it,” Specht said.

Education and prevention are essential, but is talking about the problem enough?

Public health departments in states across the country have instituted public education programs on top of stricter Federal Drug Administration oversight and prescription drug monitoring programs for health care providers, but some advocates—and legal experts— say the pharmaceutical industry has used tactics out of the tobacco handbook and needs to be held accountable

Rural areas face critical gaps in services for addiction treatment and recovery services. In many counties, the only treatment option for people with an opioid addiction is jail. And even if people do receive treatment, they often return to the same communities where they lack the support and resource they need to keep themselves from relapsing.

This fact of rural life became apparent in the AFBF/NFU survey as well. Less than half of the rural adults who responded said they feel, “confident they could seek care that is effective, covered by insurance, convenient or affordable.” And nearly a quarter of the 46 million rural residents are on Medicaid with an additional one million uninsured falling into the “coverage gap.”

Just last week, Trump signed into law a comprehensive bipartisan opioids bill focused on strategies, including treatment centers and medication-assisted treatment while loosening Medicaid restrictions for patients with substance abuse issues. This comes on top of the $8.5 billion Congress appropriated for opioid-related programs this year. But questions remain about how much funding will reach the most far-flung areas of the country.

For its part, USDA Rural Development has targeted $10.7 million for innovative facilities, such as mobile treatment centers, transitional housing, and renovations for rural health clinics and recovery centers in 22 states. Meanwhile, local communities are struggling to equip emergency vehicles and first responders with the opioid overdose antidote naloxone and to implement Medication-assisted Treatment services, which use an approach to long-term recovery that is more available in cities.

It is too soon to know which, if any, of the current rural initiatives will help to reduce opioid misuse, addiction and overdose rates. And while the 2017 CDC figures are still preliminary, a recent analysis in The New York Times indicates the death rates from drug overdose are still climbing nationally. Data from Indiana, Kentucky, and Ohio, in particular, indicate significant increases. Mortality rates in western states, however, appear to be leveling off, with Utah dropping over 10 percent and Wyoming over 30 percent, for example.

“That’s just one data point,” cautioned Erica Matthews, substance abuse prevention program manager at the Wyoming Department of Health. “I would love to say that it’s because of all the wonderful work that me and my colleagues are doing.” But with the lag time between data collection and results, it could be years before anyone knows what strategy works best.

Destigmatizing Opioid Misuse

Many people have an understanding that addiction is a disease, including nearly half of rural Americans. And most believe that reducing the shame of drug addiction is an effective way to address the opioid crisis. But it appears that as a group, farmers don’t agree.

According to the AFBF/NFU survey, 67 percent of farmers believe that the best way to deal with drug addiction is actually to increase the stigma. Counter to the general population, this group is not on board with current understanding of addiction as a disease. “That was certainly an eye-opening figure,” NFU’s Jerome said by email, “and one we thought we must address through our campaign.”

Ohio farmer Roger Winemiller is unique. He has widely shared his story about losing two children to overdose and his fears for his youngest son who is in treatment for opioid addiction. But to date, few farmers have come forward to share their experiences. As part of the Farm Town Strong campaign, the NFU has been looking for other farmers to go public, but they are strongly resistant, Jerome said. “We know farmers who really are not willing to speak publicly about this,” he said. “They have anecdotes but they or their family doesn’t want them to speak about it.”

It appears that despite the recent spotlight on opioids, shame around drug addiction persists in farming communities. It’s a dilemma even Jerome, who grew up on a farm in Maryland, understands first hand. And he is reticent to talk directly about the impact of the drugs on his own life. “This crisis has been a scourge on my family and community for years, much like many other parts of the country,” he explained to Civil Eats in an email. Jerome catalogued the many family and friends he has lost to overdose or the ones he still worries about because of their addictions. But he said that none of them want their personal stories told.

“I think people like Roger Winemiller and his son are brave to be willing to carry that mantle and inspire others, but I also don’t fault the folks who don’t want to,” he wrote. “It’s a job for the rest of us to make talking about the problem a socially acceptable thing to do.”

This concerns Dan Krouse, who believes that destigmatizing addiction is a critical step, both in the home and workplace. He says that now that there’s an awareness of several employees dealing with addiction at Midwest Poultry Services, the conversations are no longer “hushed.”

“Everybody admits that it’s around, so it’s easier to talk about now,” says Krause. And while he’s not sure that rural America has reached full reckoning with the “horrible problem” of opioids, he knows there’s an even greater danger: “Just turning a blind eye to it and saying that it happens elsewhere.”

This story is part of a year-long series about the underreported agriculture stories in our rural communities.

The post Reckoning with Opioids in Farm Country appeared first on Civil Eats.

Update: On November 6, 2018, California voters approved Proposition 12 by a large margin, making the animal-cruelty prevention measure state law.

In 2008, when California voters passed the Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act, it sounded like a clear-cut proposition. The purpose of that ballot measure, known as Proposition 2, was “to prohibit the cruel confinement of farm animals in a manner that does not allow them to turn around freely, lie down, stand up, and fully extend their limbs.”

At the time, Prop 2’s sponsor, The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) and its supporters, the voting public—and even opponents, including the Association of California Egg Farmers—interpreted the initiative as an outright ban on battery cages for laying hens. Slated to go into effect on January 1, 2015, it also affected crate sizes for breeding pigs and veal calves. But nothing about Prop 2 turned out as expected.

In the aftermath, the measure faced a slate of protests from commercial egg producers, including J.S. West & Co., which challenged its vague language in court. In the absence of specifics—including the term “cage-free”—the California egg industry created its own standard known as the “enriched colony housing systems.” Larger cages nearly doubled the square feet of space per bird, living up to the letter of Prop 2, but not delivering on the cage-free promise supported by a two-thirds majority of the voters.

Ten years later, HSUS is looking to right these wrongs with Proposition 12, a new anti-confinement measure. Up for the vote on November 6, the prop not only defines the minimum space requirements for hens, sows, and veal calves, but also bans the sale of eggs and meat products from confined animals that don’t meet the minimum standard. By 2022, it will outlaw cages for all laying hens to be replaced with either cage-free or outdoor housing systems.

Josh Balk, HSUS vice president, calls Prop 12 an important update. “A law passed during the Bush Administration should be updated to where we are in society now,” he says. “Consumers, major food companies, and other states are clear that there is a bright line in the sand where there is lack of acceptance of extreme confinement for animals.”

Prop 12 also strengthens enforcement. Prop 2 left it up to local officials to investigate complaints when farmers didn’t update their facilities, and there were no prosecutions. Under Prop 12, that responsibility will rest with the California’s Department of Food and Agriculture and Department of Public Health. In addition to any misdemeanor charge, violations will also be punishable as “unfair competition” under the California Business and Professions Code.

“There is no city, state, or country that has a law as strong as what Prop 12 will be,” says Balk, who sees near-unanimous support and expects it to pass by a landslide.

But as with any animal welfare measure, the situation is far more complicated than that. Along with the egg and hog industry groups expected to oppose any agricultural legislation governing the lives of animals, the staunchest opposition to Prop 12 is coming from other animal protection organizations.

The Humane Farming Association (HFA) and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) are opposed on the grounds that they believe the measure sets an extremely low bar for animal welfare while misleading voters that Prop 12 will lead to more humane living conditions.

“We must not ingrain cruelty by passing a regressive law that will keep hens in abhorrent conditions,” Tracy Reiman, executive vice president of PETA Los Angeles, wrote in an October editorial in the Sacramento Bee.

And while Prop 12 includes pigs and veal calves, the controversy centers on laying hens and egg production both inside and outside of California.

The National Cage-Free Movement

In the past 10 years, the egg market has shifted dramatically toward cage-free production. With consumers more concerned than ever about how their food is produced, more than 200 American food businesses have pledged to switch to a cage-free egg supply by 2025. The move is also backed by science with studies showing that Salmonella is more prevalent in caged facilities than on cage-free farms.

Many credit California’s Prop 2 with kicking off the national cage-free trend. “Prop 2 really helped to set the stage to get animals out of cages,” says Rachel Dreskin, the U.S. executive director of Compassion in World Farming (CIWF), which supports Prop 12. She notes the significance of Prop 12’s inclusion of liquid eggs, which she says make up one-third of the egg market. When changes like these are mandated in the fifth-largest economy in the world, she sees great potential for nation-wide impact.

And there are also consequences for consumers. Before Prop 2 went into effect, the egg industry predicted economic catastrophe. Initially, the average price for a dozen eggs shot up by an average of 22 percent, according to a Purdue University study. But by 2016, egg prices settled down to a 9 percent per dozen increase over pre-Prop 2 prices. The Association of California Egg Farmers is warning that Prop 12 will likewise bring “supply disruptions, price spikes, and a shortage of eggs for sale.”

Farmers also faced increased costs for the new housing and competition from out-of-state producers after Prop 2 passed. So, the state legislature quickly stepped in to approve an “egg sales law,” AB 1437, which banned the sale of imported eggs that did not comply with Prop 2. It survived lawsuits from Missouri and five other states that were found to have no legal standing in California.

Meanwhile, 12 other states have passed farm animal confinement bans through similar ballot measures. A 2016 Massachusetts law—which, like California’s Prop 12, bans the sale of products from illegally confined animals—is mired in lawsuits from other states citing a violation of interstate commerce rules. Prop 12 is expected to incur its own legal challenges from state attorneys general—and from Congress, if the King Amendment, which bars states from blocking the import of any product that meets federal standards, survives in the final version of the 2018 Farm Bill.

The major tipping point in 2018 is that while industry groups, including the National Pork Producers and Association of California Egg Farmers, oppose Prop 12, many commercial egg producers support it. Since Prop 2 passed, many farmers recognized the consumer demand for cage-free eggs and began investing in new housing systems to meet that demand, including J.S. West & Co., one of the companies that originally opposed Prop 2 and sued the state in 2010.

J.S West is not alone among large-scale operations that have experienced a change of heart. Central Valley Eggs, the largest cage-free egg producer in California, and which is building new facilities near Bakersfield that will house more than 3 million chickens, also supports the effort. General manager Jeff Peterson has been vocal in his support of Prop 12. “You’d have to have your head in the sand to build new cage confinement systems at a time when consumers and food retailers have expressed their preferences for cage-free production,” he said in a statement.

HSUS’s Balk sees this producer buy-in as critical to the animal welfare movement, since just 17 percent of laying hens nationally are cage-free. In addition to mandating new space requirements for hens—Prop 12 requires 144 square inches per hen until December 31, 2021 year, and then bans the use of any cages—the measure would set a new national standard for cages and crates for other farm animals, a standard that would mark an increase over the average space available to these animals.

Prop 12 requires that sows confined to gestation crates during pregnancy have 24 square feet of space, roughly an area of half a ping-pong table; male calves raised for the veal industry are afforded 43 square feet, or the size of a full-size ping-pong table.

Animal Welfare Groups Against Prop 12

A handful of animal welfare groups have mounted opposition to defeat Prop 12, summarized in the website Stop the Rotten Egg Initiative. The HFA asserts that California was already supposed to be cage-free as of 2015, and Prop 12 will legalize battery cages for six more years. “It repeals Prop 2,” HFA president Bradley Miller told Civil Eats. “This is a backwards step on what Californians already voted.”

HFA also alleges that HSUS is capitulating to the egg industry by including in Prop 12 the United Egg Producer’s preexisting space guidelines of one square foot per hen (144 square inches). Instead of improving the living conditions for laying hens, HFA, along with PETA and Friends of Animals, charge that Prop 12 will only pave the way for more factory farming with stocking densities that don’t come anywhere near HFA’s call for a minimum of 216 square inches per bird. “Central Valley Eggs is factory farming,” Miller says. “One square foot is cruel, any way you slice it.”

As for pigs and calves, Miller dismisses any real change to come from Prop 12; he notes that gestation crates are rare and veal crates are nonexistent in California’s small hog and miniscule veal industries. At the same time, Miller and other Prop 12 opponents question why the measure exempts the state’s giant dairy industry.

The state’s most sweeping anti-confinement law excludes the largest number of animals—aside from chickens—in California agriculture. As the nation’s number-one milk producer, California’s 1,300 dairies house 1.7 million cows along with their offspring. These calves are often housed in calf hutches, which these groups claim are extreme confinement conditions that violate the spirit of Prop 2.

A recent investigation by Direct Action Everywhere (DxE) called out this loophole in Prop 12. It suggests that the power of the state’s $6 billion milk industry has kept these dairy calves from the same protections that Prop 12 provides only to the few calves sold as veal.

When reached for comment, the California Milk Advisory Board representative referred Civil Eats to Emily Yeiser Stepp at the National Milk Producers Federation. Stepp was unaware as to whether dairy calves have ever been considered for inclusion in Prop 12. But she said that the industry’s science-based standards for dairy calves are similar to what Prop 12 requires for veal calves, and allows them to “easily stand up, lie down, express natural behaviors and to move around without the risk of injury.”

HSUS’s Balk defends Prop 12 as an important next step to significantly reduce the suffering of farm animals. Other animal welfare proponents acknowledge that one piece of legislation will not solve all the wrongs of factory farming. And they admit that even for the animals directly affected by Prop 12, it promises no utopia.

“It’s certainly better than the status quo of keeping animals confined in cages,” Balk says. And in the world of farm animal welfare, incremental improvements are monumental achievements.

Dreskin of CIWF agrees that Prop 12 is better than doing nothing. “We’re at a point in time when we have to do better,” she told Civil Eats. “It makes pragmatic and incremental change that will have measurable and meaningful impact on the animals in California and outside of its borders as well.”

It’s a long view of animal welfare reform that many animal welfare activists support, despite the measure’s limitations. DxE co-founder and investigator Wayne Hsiung actively supports Prop 12, unlike other leaders of this animal rights group.

“The government has been asleep at the wheel,” says Hsiung, who sees Prop 12 as a small step to put corporate control of animal agriculture in check. As a working lawyer, he’s under no illusions that it will curtail factory farming, but he adds, “This is the best we felt we can do, and I am in support of pushing the peanut forward.”

The post A Decade Later, Another ‘Cage-Free’ Measure is on the California Ballot appeared first on Civil Eats.