Climate | Civil Eats

Tim Walz’s Bipartisan Approach to Agriculture and Conservation

Georgina Gustin, InsideClimate News — Mon, 19 Aug 2024 09:00:27 +0000

Soon after Vice President Kamala Harris selected Tim Walz as her running mate this week, pictures of the Minnesota governor began to spread across social media—of Walz holding a piglet, of Walz on thrill rides at the state fair, of Walz and his rescue dog.

All of it coalesces into an image of a guy with rural roots and deep ties to agriculture.

Since Harris’ announcement, climate advocates have applauded her pick, pointing to Walz’s solid climate bona fides. Farm groups across the political spectrum, including those that work to shrink agriculture’s carbon footprint, have, too.

During his six terms in Congress, Walz was a member of the House Committee on Agriculture, where he was instrumental in ensuring that soil conservation measures made it into the 2018 farm bill. At the time, the farm bill—the massive piece of legislation that guides the country’s nutrition and farm policy—failed to acknowledge agriculture’s role in contributing to climate change, and barely hinted at its potential role in slowing it.

“Many bills he’s co-sponsored or led are about creating a future for rural communities where we can keep more farmers on the land, where we can allow farmers who are stewarding the land to succeed and make money.”

Walz, who spent his early years working on his family’s farm in rural Nebraska, found a political work-around of sorts. That year he introduced the Strengthening Our Investment in Land (SOIL) Stewardship Act, which boosted existing farm conservation programs and incentivized farms to adopt certain practices that improve soil health, ultimately making soils better able to sequester carbon.

“Even as short a time ago as 2018, the word ‘climate’ does not appear in the farm bill,” said Ferd Hoefner, who was policy director at the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition at the time. “He made soil health, through the SOIL Act, the acceptable thing one could talk about when one was trying to talk about climate mitigation through agriculture.”

Hoefner noted that the last time the term climate change appeared in a farm bill was in 1990, an indication of just how polarized and partisan the issue has become in farm policy debates since then. After that, it “was verboten to even mention the word,” he added.

The provisions of the SOIL Stewardship Act were ultimately included in that year’s farm bill. Farm policy observers also point to one of Walz’s biggest farm-related accomplishments, which was introducing bills in 2014 and 2018 that help small-scale, veteran and beginning farmers access credit and funds for land, equipment and crop insurance. Provisions of these bills made it into the final versions of those years’ farm bills.

The Land Stewardship Project, based in Minnesota, has long pushed against the trend of increasing consolidation in agriculture, which has seen the rise of ever-larger farms, mostly run by large corporate entities. This week the council applauded Walz’s record of working against this ongoing shift.

“What we’ve seen through his time in Congress and his time in the governor’s office is that issues around the future of agriculture and rural communities aren’t partisan—they cut across political lines,” said Sean Carroll, policy director at Land Stewardship Action, the organization’s political arm. “Many bills he’s co-sponsored or led are about creating a future for rural communities where we can keep more farmers on the land, where we can allow farmers who are stewarding the land to succeed and make money.”

Consolidation, Carroll noted, has exacerbated a system of farming that has become a major source of greenhouse gas emissions. Large livestock facilities generate more liquid manure, which emits methane, a short-lived but potent greenhouse gas. The crops grown to feed those livestock, mostly corn and soybeans, are especially fertilizer intensive. Agricultural land use, including fertilizer use, is the largest source of nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas even more potent than methane. (While carbon dioxide is the most abundant greenhouse gas, methane is 80 times more powerful at trapping heat in the atmosphere, and nitrous oxide is 265 times more powerful.)

“The consolidation is what’s causing the climate problems from agriculture,” Carroll said.

Walz has had to balance the economic interests of his farm-heavy state with the climate and environmental issues caused by the agriculture industry, which generates about $26 billion for the state annually. Much of that money comes from emissions-intensive forms of agriculture, including concentrated animal feeding operations that, in Minnesota, primarily raise hogs, or row crop farms that grow corn for ethanol. Minnesota is home to 19 ethanol refineries.

“Gov. Walz is the perfect choice to serve as Vice President Harris’ running mate,” said Geoff Cooper, CEO of the Renewable Fuels Association. “He brings Midwestern pragmatism and sensibilities to the ticket and would ensure rural America’s ‘flyover country’ has a strong voice in a potential Harris administration. Dating back to his days in Congress, Gov. Walz has always been a passionate and effective advocate for renewable fuels and agriculture. He has a deep understanding of the challenges and opportunities facing the ethanol industry.”

Ethanol is facing increased criticism from environmental groups that challenge the purported climate benefits of corn-based fuel. Some research says ethanol’s carbon footprint is greater than that of gasoline.

But in corn-producing states like Minnesota, questioning ethanol spells political death, and Walz has had to tread a bipartisan path. In 2020, Walz, along with three Midwestern Republican governors, appealed to the Trump administration to reject the oil industry’s attempts to exempt small refineries from being required to blend biofuels into their mixes. (One of those Republicans, Kristi Noem of South Dakota, said Walz was “no leader” and called him a “radical” on social media Tuesday.)

“On biofuels he’s indistinguishable from all the other Republicans and Democrats in Midwestern states,” Hoefner said, “which is bowing at the altar of almighty corn.”

This article originally appeared in Inside Climate News, and is reprinted with permission. It has been updated to correct the name of the Land Stewardship Project.

The post Tim Walz’s Bipartisan Approach to Agriculture and Conservation appeared first on Civil Eats.

A New Book Dives Deep Into the Climate and Health Impacts of Gas Stoves

Lisa Held — Wed, 14 Aug 2024 09:00:09 +0000

Each year, 100,000 Americans die from coal and car pollution. And each year, 20 percent of deaths worldwide are attributable to fossil fuel use. Rob Jackson, Stanford climate scientist and chair of the Global Carbon Project, keeps a long list of statistics like these—on the devastating health impacts of fossil fuels—ready to share.

“That’s 10 million senseless deaths [due to fossil fuels] when we have cleaner fuels available,” Jackson explained to Civil Eats as he prepped for the launch of his new book, Into the Clear Blue Sky: The Path to Restoring Our Atmosphere. “One reason I push the intersection between health and climate is because it reaches people who won’t otherwise pay attention to climate.”

That intersection hits home in about 40 percent of U.S. kitchens, where Americans still cook over flames powered by natural gas. The week of Jackson’s book launch, many of those cooks were probably drenched in sweat, too: July 22 was the hottest day ever recorded on Earth.

In the book, Jackson tells stories of measuring both the staggering greenhouse gas emissions gas stoves produce and the dangerous levels of air pollutants home cooks breathe in as they sauté and roast (even long after the burners are off).

Last year, some of those measurements, published in research studies, contributed to public awareness that quickly spiraled into what multiple media outlets branded “gas stove culture wars.” (Just last week, Senator JD Vance told his supporters Vice President Kamala Harris “wants to take away your gas stoves,” which is entirely false.) But Into the Clear Blue Sky is a solutions book written by a scientist, and Jackson approaches the phaseout of gas-powered home appliances with the same steady, measured urgency he applies to exploring decarbonizing steel and electrifying vehicles—two other important solutions in his book. Also, early on, he establishes a throughline: that the impacts of the climate crisis are unequally felt, and solutions need to be accessible and applicable to all.

Jackson spoke to Civil Eats about his groundbreaking research, the pushback against policies that could speed electrification, and how writing about climate solutions—gas stove phaseouts and otherwise—has left him angry and afraid, but also hopeful.

You set out to write about climate solutions, and you allotted two chapters to the food system—one on gas stoves, one on beef. Considering all the ways that climate change intersects with the food system, why those two?

For a couple of reasons. In the book, I highlight the opportunities for reducing methane concentrations in the atmosphere as probably our best short-term goal for climate action. And the two largest sources of methane in the world are food: primarily cows and rice paddies, and gas appliances in our homes and buildings.

We did the first studies looking at emissions from water heaters and have spent the last five years studying gas stoves—initially, purely for their greenhouse gas emissions, to see how much methane leaks into the air. We found that the leaks from gas stoves alone in the U.S. were responsible for pollution equivalent to half a million U.S. cars.

But as we were going into hundreds of homes measuring methane, we started measuring indoor air pollutants like NOx [nitrogen oxide] gasses, which triggers asthma, and benzene, which is carcinogenic. That opened a whole new field of study for me, because I realized every time I turned on a burner on a gas stove or started the oven, pollution levels shot up above health benchmarks, even when I had the ventilation hood on in my house.

You wrote that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) doesn’t include methane leakage from gas appliances in their greenhouse gas emissions estimates. Is that still true, or has your research changed things?

It’s still mostly true. They do now include some emissions from gas stoves, but they don’t include the full set of emissions, including leakage. I began measuring methane from appliances in homes and buildings because it was the least-studied part of the gas supply chain, and I wanted to fill a fill a research gap there. Our research has drawn a lot of attention to the issue of gas appliances in our homes.

The largest source of emissions indoors is the furnace, because it burns so much more gas. But the furnace and the water heater are required to vent directly outdoors through a chimney or a pipe. I focus a lot on gas stoves because there’s no vent. Or there’s a hood that most people don’t use—and that surveys show often isn’t effective.

The levels of air pollutants you’ve measured in people’s homes are unbelievably high. In the book, you talk about how the industry knew about the health concerns more than 100 years ago, to the extent that their own experts said gas shouldn’t be used in homes without requiring hoods that vented to the outside, which didn’t happen. How much of this evidence on indoor air pollutants and the health implications is just emerging now and how much is new?

It’s a fascinating question. For example, there’s 50 years of measurements on NOx pollution indoors. There were meta-analyses done in the 1990s showing that stoves increased indoor NOx levels and that the likelihood of asthma and wheezing and different health outcomes increased if you lived in a home with a gas stove. So, that knowledge was well known 30 years before I ever thought about measuring gas stoves.

I think our instruments are better now, and we have a finer-scale resolution. And until we did it, no one had measured benzene emissions indoors from gas stoves. So, we’re still learning about the full set of pollutants that are generated indoors.

And I think we’re learning more now about not just the emission rates but the concentrations that people actually breathe. That’s the tricky part, because what you need to know for predicting health outcomes is how high the levels are—not just in the kitchen but in the bedrooms down the hall where people spend their time and sleep.

That was the biggest surprise of our studies for me—the fact that concentrations of pollutants rose so quickly in bedrooms down the hall and stayed above health benchmarks for hours after the stove was off. When you think about cooking meal after meal, day after day, month after month and these concentrations just recurring all the time in our homes . . . sometimes I think we would never willingly stand over the tailpipe of a car breathing in the exhaust, but we willingly stand over a gas stove and breathe the same pollutants.

Have you done any of this research in restaurants?

We are doing that right now, literally. I have a part of my lab up in Pittsburgh doing measurements. We’ve done some in the Bay Area. We’re doing some in the Midwest, and we’re going to go to Washington, D.C. this summer and do some more.

Generally, [commercial] kitchens have industrial hoods, which are much better. However, they also have many more burners. And they have pilot lights, which are the most inefficient way that we burn. So, I worry about exposures where the concentration is building up at night after the restaurant closes and the hoods are off and these pilot lights are burning. I worry more about small kitchens . . . somewhere where maybe the ventilation is not so good.

We’re really trying to understand the risks in kitchens and, frankly, to do it more positively. We’re trying to work with chefs to promote the benefits of electrification. There’s an increasing number of chefs willing to speak out and say, “Yes, I can cook with electricity and there’s no reason not to switch now.”

In terms of electrification, you talk a lot in the book about how climate solutions need to be accessible to everyone. Switching to induction from gas can be really costly. How do you see the transition becoming possible for people at all income levels?

I do think the cost will come down over time. But I think of climate solutions [as having] two flavors: One is to use less of whatever it is that emits fossil fuels. The other is to decarbonize whatever infrastructure is left. And we can’t really cook less, so that’s not a realistic solution set for our homes.

So, I think we need to favor reach codes that require future construction to be all electric.

Governor [Kathy] Hochul and the Assembly and Senate in New York passed the country’s first state-level bill requiring new homes and buildings be all-electric by 2026. Those bills make sense to me, because every time we plumb a new house or new building with gas infrastructure or fossil fuel infrastructure, we lock in greenhouse gases for decades to come.

I don’t suggest that we need to go into every home and rip people’s stoves off the walls. We need an orderly transition, and the place to do that is when our stoves reach the end of their lifetime, to switch them out. Since I am fortunate and relatively wealthy, I chose to replace my gas stove with an induction stove before the end of its lifetime because I could. But the hundreds of homeowners we sample in Bakersfield and lower-income neighborhoods, they don’t have that option, and even if they can afford it, they rent. So, I worry the most about people in lower-income communities.

There’s also been a lot of pushback. Are you optimistic about these electrification laws moving forward?

The industry is powerful. The reach codes that Berkeley passed have been overturned. There were 100 cities and counties in California that had passed similar reach codes, and most of those are now moot. States like New York have taken a different approach, and I’m optimistic that states that want to act will find a way to incentivize the transition to electric appliances. But there have now been a couple of dozen states that have passed preemption laws to make such codes illegal. Though there’s tremendous pushback, I think induction stoves will win eventually, because they’re a better product. They’re more efficient. A child can’t burn their hand. But [with climate], winning slowly is the same as losing, as Bill McKibben likes to say.

On that note, my editor suggested I ask you about what gives you hope, and I felt myself having an emotional reaction. Like, “I don’t care about hope! I care about what’s possible. Brass tacks. What can be done—or not—to move the needle?” But you use the word hope a lot in the book, so I thought I should ask: Why?

I would say that hope and optimism are muscles that we need to exercise. My first homework assignment in any class is for students to go home and research things in the environment that are better today than they were 50 years ago. That list is long. It’s lifespan and childhood mortality. It’s water and air quality. It’s a decline in global poverty, despite the injustices that remain. Then there’s a long list of targeted regulations that have saved us money and made us healthier.

The phaseout of leaded gasoline has literally made us smarter and made lead levels in our kids’ blood drop 95 percent. There’s the Montreal Protocol that saved billions of cases of skin cancers and cataracts. And there’s my favorite example—the Clean Air Act—that saves 100,000 American lives a year, a bipartisan bill at a 30-fold return on investment.

So, I think by acknowledging past successes we make future successes in climate more likely, because we can see a path to a better future. And I guess I believe strongly that it’s very easy in my world to sink only into the latest statistics of drought and disasters—but it doesn’t seem to motivate people.

So, it’s a sort of hope grounded in facts and history.

Yes, but the undercurrent is there, which is, you know, I’m afraid and angry, because we’ve wasted decades. We’ve sprinted right to 1.5°C—something that people thought was unfathomable 20 years ago—and we seem to be sprinting towards 2°C. So yes, I’m hopeful, but I’m also angry and afraid for all of us.

Given the urgency, do you think that this upcoming election could partially determine whether catastrophic outcomes are locked in?

I’m an environmental scientist, and at this point in my life, there’s only one party that seems to take climate and the environment seriously. It wasn’t always that way. My biggest regret is how politicized and polarized the environment has become. Republican administrations created the EPA and signed the Montreal Protocol. Even Margaret Thatcher, she once said something like, “We have treated the atmosphere like a dust bin.” She of course backtracked later in her career, but she was a chemist and scientist, and she understood.

I regret the fact that we are in a place where a Republican who mentions climate gets defeated in a primary by someone farther to the right. I don’t want to pick parties, but I’m deeply concerned about this election. We can’t afford another administration undoing climate rules. It isn’t just for the climate. It’s killing millions of people around the world and hundreds of thousands of Americans. Let’s be frank about it.

$2 Billion for Farmer Discrimination. On July 31, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack announced that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) had successfully distributed more than $2 billion to 43,000 farmers who had experienced discrimination while attempting to secure USDA loans.

The announcement marked a historic moment in a long saga. Farmers have alleged discrimination in the agency’s loan programs for decades, and multiple lawsuits have been filed over the years by women, Indigenous, and Black farmers who said they were treated differently when applying for loans, driving many out of business.

In 2020, lawmakers set aside $4 billion specifically to compensate Black farmers for race-based discrimination, but the program was thrown out in the wake of lawsuits, many of which were filed by Republican officials who alleged discrimination against white farmers. So when Democrats passed the Inflation Reduction Act, they authorized a new, race-neutral fund that would compensate any farmer who alleged discrimination based on race, ethnicity, gender, and other factors.

During a press call announcing the news, Vilsack said the agency received 58,000 applications and ultimately approved 43,000. While the agency could not compensate farmers for losses or pain endured, he said, “I think it represents USDA acknowledging and responding to reported discrimination.”

Vilsack could not provide statistics on how many of the individuals who received funding were Black farmers, but said that analysis may become available in the future. He also pointed out that the states with the most farmers awarded funding were Mississippi and Alabama.

In addition to the payments, he said the agency has been working to root out and prevent future discrimination and break down barriers to access within its loan programs with, for example, “new processes that reduce the need for human discretion in loan decision-making.”

Many Democrats in Congress and advocacy organizations released statements applauding the USDA’s progress on the issue. “Today marks an important milestone for USDA and for our collective efforts to hold the Department accountable in addressing a history of acts of discrimination against perpetually marginalized agricultural producers and their communities,” said Michelle Hughes, Co-Executive Director of the National Young Farmers Coalition, in a press release. The coalition was one of the cooperating organizations, along with others like the Federation of Southern Cooperatives, that helped the USDA get the word out to farmers about the application process.

Dangerous Drift. According to a report published last week by the Midwestern Prairie Rivers Network (PRN), herbicides sprayed primarily on row crops in Illinois are drifting far from targeted fields, damaging trees and other plant life. Researchers at PRN monitored symptoms of pesticide drift—such as curled leaves—and collected tissue samples from plants over six years. They found symptoms of drift during 677 out of 679 total visits to nearly 300 sites. Of 127 tissue samples taken from trees and other plants, 90 percent contained herbicide residues. Herbicides detected included 2,4-D, atrazine, dicamba, glyphosate, and seven others.

Many of the sites where researchers documented incidents of drift were more than 500 feet from the likely source of exposure, suggesting the chemicals are drifting significant distances. “Our monitoring and tissue sampling program indicates that current legal safeguards/protections and regulatory efforts are inadequate at protecting people and the environment from herbicide drift,” the researchers wrote.

At a press conference for the release of the report, co-author Kim Erndt-Pitcher said the results pointed to the fact that herbicides are playing a significant role in the decline of tree health across the state, and residents and farmers expressed concerns about potential risks to animals and their families’ health.

Patsy Hopper, an organic farmer and landowner south of Urbana, Illinois, said her land long produced a bounty of fruits and vegetables. At one point in time, she remembered harvesting 50 gallons of cherries in a season. “In the past few years, we’ve hardly had a harvest because of pesticide drift. The trees are dying,” she said. “This year, we had enough cherries for one pie.”

Farm-State Veep. On August 6, Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris chose Tim Walz as her running mate, catapulting agriculture and other food issues into the 2024 presidential election in a new way.

As a member of the House of Representatives, Walz served on the Agriculture Committee. There, he played a role in three farm bill cycles, sponsoring various proposals focused on expanding on-farm conservation efforts and supporting beginning farmers and ranchers.

As Governor of Minnesota, Walz has advocated for biofuels, a key priority of commodity ag groups, and local advocates for small farms say he fought consolidation to keep more farmers on the land. He also championed and ultimately signed into law a universal school meals program in the state.

The post A New Book Dives Deep Into the Climate and Health Impacts of Gas Stoves appeared first on Civil Eats.

17 Food and Ag Approaches to Tackling the Climate Crisis

The Civil Eats Editors — Mon, 05 Aug 2024 09:00:57 +0000

Although the food system generates one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions, it has largely been excluded from the climate agendas of most governments. Only last year did the food system become a major topic of international debate, during the 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference.

But as Civil Eats’ reporting has shown, the food and agriculture system is full of examples of how farmers, ranchers, fishers, chefs, restaurants, grocery stores, and consumers are addressing climate change, with strategies that sequester carbon, slash emissions, save water, reduce plastics, and open new markets.

Farmers, for example, are experimenting with the wild seed relatives of domestic crops that may be able to withstand extreme weather. Researchers have also discovered that kelp growing alongside mussels and oysters can act like a sponge, soaking up excess nutrients while increasing critical oxygen levels in surrounding waters. And lawmakers and the U.S. Department of Agriculture are crafting policies that support local food systems and regenerative agriculture.

Here are some of the most important and promising climate solutions stories we published this year.

As Saltwater Encroaches on Farms, Solutions Emerge From the Marshes
In the Mid-Atlantic, sea level rise due to climate change is already changing what farmers can grow.

These State Lawmakers Are Collaborating on Policies that Support Regenerative Agriculture
Progressive state legislators often find themselves in a David-and-Goliath battle against the conventional ag industry. One organization is equipping them with resources to support producers using regenerative practices instead.

Investment Is Flowing to US Grass-fed Beef Again. Will It Scale Up?
Rupert Murdoch’s Montana ranch is at the center of an effort to get grass-fed beef into mainstream grocery stores; others are using investments to build new markets entirely.

At Climate Dinners Hosted by Chefs Sam Kass and Andrew Zimmern, The Meal Is The Message
To create awareness and inspire action, their carefully curated meals feature coffee, chocolate, and other foods that will become costlier and more difficult to produce due to climate change.

Micro Solar Leases: A New Income Stream for Black Farmers in the South?
EnerWealth Solutions wants to bring the benefits of renewable energy to Black farmers and landowners in the Carolinas.

Can Taller Cover Crops Help Clean the Water in Farm Country?
In Minnesota, a local water quality program might serve as a model for incentivizing the next steps in regenerative farming.

Regenerative Beef Gets a Boost from California Universities
The U.C. system is using its purchasing power to buy grass-fed meat from local ranchers for its 10 universities and five medical centers.

Fungi Are Helping Farmers Unlock the Secrets of Soil Carbon
By tapping into underground fungal networks, farmers are learning how to build lush, spongy soil that supports healthy plants and stores carbon underground.

Florida Banned Farmworker Heat Protections. A Groundbreaking Partnership Offers a Solution.
The Fair Food Program offers the strongest, legally binding protocols to keep people safe when politicians fall short.

Vineyards Are Laying the Groundwork for a Regenerative Farm Future
A new study finding that regenerative practices build more soil carbon in vineyards points to a path for the industry to create broader models for agriculture.

Seeds From Wild Crop Relatives Could Help Agriculture Weather Climate Change
The hardy wild cousins of domesticated crops can teach us how to adapt to a hotter, more unpredictable future.

New School Meal Standards Could Put More Local Food on Students’ Lunch Trays
USDA’s nutrition standards aim to support farmers by increasing the number of schools getting fresh fruits, vegetables, and meats from nearby farms.

Changing How We Farm Might Protect Wild Mammals—and Fight Climate Change
Nearly a quarter of U.S. mammal species are on the endangered species list. Researchers say farming with biodiversity in mind may help stave off further decline.

Climate Solutions for the Future of Coffee
Farmers, researchers, and coffee devotees are refocusing on agroforestry and developing hardier varieties and high-tech beanless brews to save our morning cup of Joe.

Can Seaweed Save American Shellfish?
Seaweed farms on both coasts are beginning to take hold, tapping into decades of painstaking science, and could help shellfish thrive in waters affected by climate change and pollution.

Zero-Waste Grocery Stores in Growth Mode as Consumers Seek to Ditch Plastic
Food packaging is a significant contributor to the plastic pollution crisis. These stores offer shoppers an alternative.

Rescuing Kelp Through Science
Breakthrough genetic research at a Massachusetts lab could save the world’s vanishing kelp forests—and support American kelp farming, too.

The post 17 Food and Ag Approaches to Tackling the Climate Crisis appeared first on Civil Eats.

The Hard Work of Bringing Kelp to Market

Alexandra Talty, Pulitzer Center Ocean Reporting Fellow — Wed, 31 Jul 2024 09:00:37 +0000

It was nearly sunset on a breezy May afternoon when Scott Lord and his wife Sheena pulled into Port Clyde, Maine, on the Eva Marie. The hull sat low in the water, weighed down by 2,500 pounds of sugar kelp. The Lords had been out on the water since 5 a.m.

“Anything you do on a boat is a long day,” says Scott. Especially if you’re a kelp farmer, trying to make the most of a short, 12-week season. That day, they’d been out to their 4-acre farm and back twice, harvesting a total of 6,300 pounds. The wind had whipped the rubbery, golden-brown kelp fronds across Sheena’s face as she hand-cut the seaweed from the lines raised up from the water onto the deck.

Scott Lord pictured in Port Clyde, Maine. (Photo credit: Alexandra Talty)

She and Scott had worked quickly to stuff the kelp ribbons into giant bags. Now those bags were ready to be offloaded into a waiting truck and driven 100 miles southwest to their processor, Atlantic Sea Farms (ASF), near Portland, where many of the state’s kelp companies are based. Maine is the heart of America’s farmed seaweed industry, supplying half its harvest—well over a million pounds—last season.

Largely developed in Asia, seaweed farming is a new venture on American shores. One type in particular, kelp—a large brown algae with many species, including sugar kelp— has been hailed as an ecologically beneficial, nutritious superfood that can be farmed on both U.S. coasts—and could help fight climate change. These remarkable characteristics have helped the seaweed industry attract roughly $380 million in investments since 2018, from government, venture capital, and nonprofits.

Read all the stories in our series:

The Promise and Possible Pitfalls of American Kelp Farming An overview of our four-part in-depth series examining the growth of the U.S. seaweed industry. With little regulatory oversight and skyrocketing funding, how will this industry evolve?
Can Seaweed Save American Shellfish? Seaweed farms on both coasts are beginning to take hold, tapping into decades of painstaking science—and could help shellfish thrive in waters affected by climate change and pollution.
Rescuing Kelp Forests Through Science Breakthrough genetic research at a Massachusetts lab could save the world’s vanishing kelp forests—and support American kelp farming, too.
The Hard Work of Bringing Kelp to Market As seaweed farms develop on both coasts and begin to contribute to America’s blue economy, much depends on infrastructure.

However, that’s a drop in the bucket compared to the global $9.9 billion market. And, according to farmers and kelp companies, the U.S. investment doesn’t yet address a range of logistical issues that challenge—some might even say threaten—the success of seaweed production.

A Highly Perishable Food

Scott Lord became a seaweed farmer five years ago to potentially help his other harvests—oysters and lobsters—adapt to rising ocean acidification in Maine; kelp has a remarkable ability to lower the water’s pH. What he calls “kelping” also gives him an additional income stream.

But for small farmers like himself, he says, kelp farming “wouldn’t be possible for us if we didn’t have a good business to deal with.” Atlantic Sea Farms, the largest seaweed aquaculture business in the country, has solved several challenges that seaweed farmers face in Maine and other states.

Transportation is one. For Lord, trucking kelp to Portland would be cost- and time-prohibitive. Obtaining the reliably productive, inexpensive kelp seed for the farm is another. But as part of the ASF co-op, he is one of 40 farmers that the company provides with kelp seed string—nylon or cotton strings inoculated with kelp spores—at the beginning of the season, in early winter. Farmers grow these out in the water, strung between buoys, until the fronds reach maturity in springtime. Then they sell the harvest to ASF, which picks up the kelp on the dock.

The second problem: Compared to other ocean harvests like oysters, lobster, or fish, kelp is infinitely more complicated to get onto store shelves. After reaching maturity, it must be harvested within three months, before the water becomes too warm and the seaweed begins to degrade. Harvested kelp is also incredibly perishable. Immediately after leaving the water, it begins to ferment, so must be chilled and processed to extend its shelf life—through freezing, fermenting, pickling, or drying—within a few days. And that requires space and expensive, specialized equipment that can resist the corrosive effects of salt water.

Frozen sugar kelp at Atlantic Sea Farms. (Photo credit: Greta Rybus)

To date, leading American kelp companies–including ASF and Ocean’s Balance, also in Maine—have poured millions into equipment like industrial freezers and dehydrators. Coastal Enterprises, a nonprofit and lender in Maine, says that most of their loans to the kelp industry are for working capital operations and equipment. Other states with less-developed but emerging kelp businesses—like Alaska, Connecticut, and New York—need processing help even more urgently.

According to a recent paper by Connecticut Sea Grant, a national network of university programs dedicated to marine resources, kelp’s “use as a food product in Connecticut and in other parts of the U.S. is limited, because there is a need for post-harvest and marketing infrastructure.”

Maine: Building a Vertically Integrated Business

Docked at Port Clyde, Sheena Lord stays on the boat, securing the gigantic seaweed bags to a winch while Scott operates a forklift that hauls the 1,000-pound bags off the boat and onto dry land. The bags are then weighed and loaded into ASF’s 18-wheeler.

“This is the moment that they become inventory. Every bag has an individual tag that says the Julian date, weight, farm, kelp type, and farmer,” says Liz McDonald, seaweed supply director at ASF. Driving her 18-wheeler across New England to reach partner farmers, McDonald lives out of Airbnbs for the majority of harvest season and is a familiar sight at small docks and quaint harbors across the coast.

Once the Lords’ bags are all on board, McDonald drives nearly three hours to ASF’s building in Biddeford, Maine, tucked off I-95 next to defunct railway track. At the loading dock, workers immediately haul the bags of seaweed from the truck, moving rapidly and efficiently. During kelp harvest season, the scene is a little like the Olympic Village during the Games: Everyone’s been training for this singular stretch of time.

The Biddeford facility includes a fermentation room, closed to outsiders, as it contains proprietary machines; storage freezers; a packing room; a cultivation room for breeding kelp; a kitchen for recipe development; and offices upstairs for the marketing and communications teams.

Workers unload sugar kelp from Bangs Island Mussels at the Portland Fish Exchange in Maine. (Photo credit: Greta Rybus)

“It’s not Instagram beauty like, ‘Look at this beautiful kelp harvest,’” says Briana Warner, CEO of ASF. But she’s visibly proud of the space, beaming as she gives me a tour of the newly built $2 million processing center. At every turn, the air is filled with the briny, spicy smell of the company’s signature Sea-Chi, a seaweed-based kimchi made with fresh kelp.

Atlantic Sea Farms CEO Briana Warner. (Photo credit: Greta Rybus)

A former diplomat specializing in economic development, Warner knows that her company’s success is built on nitty-gritty details. “The reality is: Machines break. Every machine downstairs we had to create from scratch, because it doesn’t even exist in Asia . . . because they’re eating dried kelp,” she explains. “Every safety protocol, we’ve had to come up with.”

Early on in Warner’s tenure as CEO, the company almost went under due to processing issues. In February 2020, a deal ASF had reached to supply Maine-grown kelp to Sweetgreen, in a collaboration with celebrity chef David Chang, evaporated as the pandemic shut down the chain’s business. Back then, ASF had limited storage space and needed somewhere to store 240,000 pounds of kelp pouring in from its farms when the deal fell through. Warner tapped into her network of Maine businesses, and Bristol Seafood, a fish wholesaler based out of Portland, came to the rescue.

“They froze almost every bag of kelp,” says Warner, getting teary. Bristol gave her a bill for $3,000—far less than the true cost of their services—at the end of the season.

The event was clarifying for Warner. She plunged into fundraising for an ASF processing center and worked on consumer marketing. Now, the company has four products in every Whole Foods in the country, foods in national supermarket chains like Sprouts and Albertsons, and 20 ingredient partners like Thorne and Navitas.

For the 2023–2024 season, they harvested a record-breaking amount of kelp: 1.3 million pounds. “You can’t have this incredibly positive impact on the environment, on the food chain, on our partner farmers . . . unless you run a really good business,” Warner says.

ASF’s dedication to infrastructure also pays off for the consumer. When a shopper buys one of the company’s burgers, they can look up where the kelp grew, who harvested it, and when. This is a markedly different situation than with seafood writ large, where one-third of grocery store labels have been found to be wrong.

Traceability is the cornerstone of a larger shift toward the blue economy, a movement among coastal and ocean nations that equally supports workers’ rights, environmental concerns, and sustainability goals. It is a huge selling point for the millions invested in American-grown kelp.

For seaweed growers outside Maine, the logistics still have a long way to go.

Alaska: Dealing With Distance

After Maine, the next biggest kelp-producing state is Alaska. It’s also the most productive state on the West Coast, harvesting 871,000 pounds in the 2022–2023 season. With more than 33,000 miles of shoreline and 41,000 people directly employed in seafood industries in 2022, according to the state’s Department of Labor, as well as access to marine science institutions like the University of Alaska, many here expected seaweed farming to boom when it was first legalized in 2016.

Kodiak Island in the summer. Alaska’s thousands of miles of coastline could help the state develop a booming seaweed-farming industry.

Federal officials also bet on Alaska’s rapid transition to seaweed farming. In 2022, the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration (EDA) announced $49 million to jump-start the state’s seaweed and shellfish industry, with a quarter of those funds earmarked for Alaska Native communities.

But for farmers and companies, the kelp boom hasn’t quite happened yet. In 2016, one of the first seaweed companies to open after legalization here went on a hiring spree and immediately started putting buoys into the water. According to former employees, they were expecting to hit 1 million pounds of harvested kelp in a few years. Instead, they’ve significantly reduced operations since then, although they do maintain a farm in Alaska. As for the EDA’s 2022 funding, it is still being allocated, and to an industry that’s just beginning to take shape.

Alaska’s mammoth size presents the biggest hurdle: At 663,268 square miles, it’s much larger than any other state and even most countries. Kelp-producing regions can be thousands of miles away from one another. Many of these coastal communities aren’t connected by road, and the only way to haul kelp from farm to processor is by boat. Even after kelp is made into a final product, it still has to be shipped to Seattle, 2,000 miles south.

“We’ve looked at chartering an Alaska Airlines plane,” says Lia Heifetz, laughing. Heifetz is the co-founder of Barnacle Foods, a vertically integrated kelp company known for its Bullwhip Kelp Hot Sauce. She isn’t kidding; in its early days, her company explored flying thousands of pounds of fresh kelp from Kodiak to its headquarters and processing facility in Juneau, a distance of 500 miles. Heifetz admits that the plan wasn’t cost effective—and came with quite a carbon footprint—so they dropped the idea.

Now in its eighth year of business, Barnacle Foods works only with farms within a 70-mile radius. The company still ships everything by boat, relying on commercial fishing vessels, thanks to relationships with fishers that Heifetz has built over the years. To process their kelp, Barnacle has slowly constructed a 3,000-square-foot production floor and additional warehouse. While Heifetz wouldn’t disclose how much they’ve invested in the facility, she points out that one machine, a “capper” for jars, cost $40,000. Other equipment includes container freezers, container refrigerators, and two forklifts.

“Some level of primary processing or stabilization needs to happen at any port [where] there’s a kelp farm,” she says, adding that a single processing company—and there are only a few others in the state—is unlikely to be able to serve thousands of miles of coastline.

“Most of the profit is coming from having farms double as grant-funded research.”

Farmers and kelp companies say that a cohesive strategy at the state level, particularly around what types of kelp products to initially focus on—food, fertilizer, or bioplastics, for example—could help farmers and kelp companies build infrastructure more efficiently.

As the $49 million in federal EDA funds are being dispersed through the Southeast Conference’s Alaska Mariculture Center, up to $10 million will go toward infrastructure-related projects; other funds include the Native Regenerative fund, aimed at providing money for permitting, equipment, and lease fees for Native Alaskans; a Kelp Climate fund operated by GreenWave, a kelp nonprofit; and the Saltonstall-Kennedy Grant, which can help address processing issues.

An additional challenge for Alaska kelp processing is the cost of energy, which varies widely. Each coastal community is isolated, often operating on its own electrical grid and using a variety of energy sources. Juneau has hydropower, which means Barnacle Foods has relatively low electricity costs, according to Heifitz. In other parts of Alaska, diesel generators can be the only source of electricity, a high-cost option that could deter some types of processing, like freezing.

Because of these expensive bottlenecks, farms have to make money in creative ways. “Most of the profit is coming from having farms double as grant-funded research,” says Brianna Murphy. A former commercial fisher, Murphy and her co-founder, Kristin Smith, created Mothers of Millions in 2021 to do just that, funded by a $30,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Their mobile kelp hatchery, built on a repurposed fishing vessel, means they can navigate straight to farms with spore-laden kelp ready for propagating, instead of waiting for the kelp to come by cargo plane and then working frantically to revive it. Murphy and Smith are kind of a one-stop shop for seaweed farmers: They also offer on-water processing capabilities, shredding harvested kelp directly from the water.

There’s no shortage of interesting and valuable kelp-farming projects in Alaska, including the Native Conservancy’s kelp program, founded to support Indigenous people in starting their own farms. (Native Conservancy founder Dune Lankard was recently featured in the PBS docuseries Hope in the Water for his traditional Eyak kelp cakes.)

Over the next several years, as the EDA grants begin to bear fruit, Alaska could edge closer to realizing the farming potential of its thousands of miles of coastline.

New York: Starting from Scratch

For other coastal states trying break into this nascent blue economy, commercial processing often doesn’t exist. Most kelp companies are based in Maine or Alaska, so farmers elsewhere must rely on themselves to harvest, process, and create end products.

Sue Wicks lifts a line of sugar kelp. (Photo credit: Cam Burton)

One determined New York oyster grower came up with her own solution.

“This is my bay, a tiny piece of a world that is besieged on every side with climate change and pollution,” says Sue Wicks, the founder of Violet Cove Oysters. Each day, Wicks motors 20 minutes from her house to her 2-acre farm on the Great South Bay, using a Pickerell clamming boat that was designed specifically for this body of water.

“With this little spot, I feel an opportunity, a space to do something tangible,” she says, looking out at her acreage, oyster cages bobbing in the distance as she checks the growth on her kelp lines. She plucks off a furl of young sugar kelp and chews it, enjoying its briny sweetness.

Sue Wicks’ sugar kelp in its initial drying phase. (Photo courtesy of Sue Wicks)

A former Women’s National Basketball Association star, Wicks became an oyster entrepreneur after retiring from professional sports, inspired to work on the waters that her family has fished for more than 10 generations. Her ancestors could harvest shellfish by hand, but wild stocks have plummeted in Wicks’ lifetime, a consequence of warming waters and nitrogen pollution. After witnessing the decline of her families’ livelihood and pastimes—the traditions of clamming, oystering, fishing, and scalloping—she wanted to restore the waters that surrounded her house and hometown. In 2019, she began growing seaweed as part of a research project with Stony Brook University.

After receiving the state’s first commercial kelp farming lease for the 2023–2024 season, Wicks began construction on New York’s first processing center, a dehydrator. Supported by Lazy Point Farms, a New York-based nonprofit, the center cost around $50,000 to build, says Wicks, and is part of a public-private partnership with Suffolk County and the nearby town of Brookhaven. She’s already started using it for this season’s haul.

Wicks first dries her kelp near the water, on racks in the open air, where it shrinks to 20 percent of its original size. Then she moves the racks to a shipping container equipped with a heater exhaust fan and dehumidifier to finish drying completely. Everything is powered by solar, bringing the whole process as close as possible to net-zero emissions.

The shipping container can be converted into a mobile unit, she says, and it’s easily replicated. As for the dried seaweed, Wicks is experimenting with a hot sauce and a seasoning mix, in collaboration with Lazy Point Farms and available through the nonprofit’s website.

“We don’t have working waterfronts on Long Island anymore, and that makes it very difficult,” says Wicks. She hopes her processing center encourages other oyster growers to try kelp farming, since it gives them a way to create their own shelf-stable product, right after harvest. “The fisheries are part of our heritage. It is who we are. Our biggest success is getting other farmers in the water.”

This series was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center’s Ocean Reporting Network.

The post The Hard Work of Bringing Kelp to Market appeared first on Civil Eats.

‘Shelf Life’ Peeks Into the Nooks and Crannies of the Cheesemaker’s World

Nicole J. Caruth — Tue, 30 Jul 2024 09:00:39 +0000

“Milk is one of the simplest things in nature,” says Jim Stillwagon, an eccentric cheesemaker standing in his cluttered kitchen somewhere in the Pyrenees. “When a child vomits on your shoulder, those are the earliest vestiges of cheese.”

Stillwagon’s strange philosophical musings on curd set the tone for Shelf Life, a new documentary about the parallels between cheese aging and human aging. Produced by Robyn Metcalfe and directed by Ian Cheney (whose films include King Corn and The Search for General Tso), Shelf Life premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in June, where it won the award for Best Cinematography in a Documentary Feature.

Filmed in more than six countries over three years, Shelf Life takes us inside the work spaces of artisan cheesemakers and specialists to observe them at their craft: through the halls of underground cheese vaults in Vermont. Under the microscope with a cheese microbiologist in California. Behind the scenes of the World Cheese Awards in Wales. Into a children’s classroom in Japan for a cheese-making lesson. And to the cheese-laden dining-room table of an award-winning cheesemonger in Chicago (see “Five Questions for Alisha Norris Jones,” below).

Cheesemaker Jim Stillwagon in his kitchen somewhere in the Pyrenees. (Photo courtesy of Wicked Delicate Films)

Wonderfully diverse in scope, we even get to visit an archeologist’s dig site in Egypt to learn about cheese in the afterlife, observe a traditional hand-pulled cheese practice in Tbilisi, Georgia, and descend into the shadowy basement stacks of a cheese librarian in Switzerland. Metcalfe calls this remarkable cast of characters “the poets of the cheese business.”

Shelf Life captures the vast and complex universe of cheese, acknowledging its place in the food system without getting into its politics—even when there’s a lot to say: The global cheese market is estimated at around $187 billion, according to one report, but this monetary worth comes with a sizable carbon footprint. According to a joint study by the Environmental Working Group and the firm Clean Metrics, dairy-based cheese is the third-highest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, trailing behind beef and lamb.

Some have advocated for vegan cheese as a potential solution to environmental troubles. But dairy-based cheeses play an important role in local economies and culinary traditions worldwide, enriching people’s stories and ways of life—something Shelf Life celebrates.

Although film is a relatively new medium for Metcalfe, her connection to the food industry goes back to her grandfather, Roy Diem, who worked with entrepreneur Bob Wian to build the first Bob’s Big Boy. Metcalfe grew up spending time at the restaurant, famous for its double-decker hamburger. She went on to study historical food systems at Boston University, where she earned her Ph.D., and taught modern European food history at the University of Texas, Austin. At one time, she conserved rare breeds of livestock in Maine.

Metcalfe has authored several books on the food supply chain, including Food Routes: Growing Bananas in Iceland and Other Tales from the Logistics of Eating (featured in Civil Eats’ 2019 summer book guide). She also founded Food+City, a nonprofit storytelling platform that delves into how cities are fed, and the Food+City Challenge Prize, a pitch competition funding food-tech startups around the world.

We spoke with Metcalfe recently about why she made the documentary, the future of vegan cheese, and how aging builds character both in cheeses and humans.

What inspired you to make a documentary about cheese—and why now?

The first urge to pursue this subject came from an unanswered question I had as I finished a book called Humans in Our Food. My interest in food, oddly, is not so much about the food; it’s about the systems that bring the food to the table. Often, they feel industrial and disconnected from humans.

One of my curiosities was, what are the food stories we’re not hearing? Who’s missing and unseen? I sensed that it was the people building pallets, working in food service, driving trucks, packing, and all of that stuff. I wondered if what we imagine about them is true—for example, that they’d all rather be doing something else. Or that they’re working for very little money, are pretty much exploited, kind of a sad picture, and not very smart. Some people think, “Well, if you were really smart, you would not be doing that work.”

What I did [for the book] was travel all over the world and look at a really simple dish, like a slice of pizza in New York or a rice ball in Japan. Then, I went to see who brought those things together. In doing so, the answer I got was, these unseen people are aspirational. For many immigrants in particular, it’s the way they get in and up and move onward. Some of them, surprisingly, love their jobs. Not all of them, but the assumption was so much one way, and I discovered it’s much more nuanced. One group I was really curious about was affineurs, people who work in caves. [You] might be familiar with going through a winery and seeing people who age wine, but not many people know who’s in caves aging cheese.

The second thing is that, in becoming older, I was really put off by the conversations that people wanted to have with me even a decade ago, which were, “Oh, are you still doing X?” It was all about decline and being careful and not taking any risks and certainly not building up, but designing down. It was disturbing to me. This is not what anyone wants to hear. And how much of it is a self-fulfilling prophecy, after all?

So, I’m holding this thought about how cheese ages and I thought, “I wonder if we can learn something about aging a cheese, which gets better over time or transforms [and becomes] what it wants to be in terms of character. Might we push back on this human conversation of decline?” Those two things are why I chose this subject. It wasn’t because I was a cheese lover who wanted to make a film about cheese and found a way.

Did making ‘Shelf Life’ turn you into a cheese lover?

At one point, I got a cheese certificate at Boston University because that’s how you learn about things. But if someone said to me, “Robyn, what’s the difference between these two blues?” or asked me to tease out all the different flavor molecules, I would be absolutely helpless. [But cheese is] a wonderful lens to look at life.

A cheese expert feels the rind that develops during the aging process. (Photo courtesy of Wicked Delicate Films)

What were some challenges you faced when filming?

It was a challenge getting [the cheesemakers] to talk about aging. I mean, how many people do you know who like to talk about aging? People, especially younger generations, want to be relatable and supportive, and they’re curious about being older, but it’s an awkward conversation.

(Instead,) everyone wanted to share their cheese [process]. We would get responses like, “Thank you for contacting us. This is how we make our cheese.” But we weren’t actually that interested in the how but more the why. That was very hard, because people are over the moon about cheese and want to talk about it. So, we spent more time getting to know our characters before they felt they had told us their story about cheese and would speak to us about other things.

Did you learn anything new or surprising from the conversations about cheese and aging?

Absolutely. There were a lot of really fun little paradoxes. Initially, we talked to a cheese-making nun who was featured in a New Yorker article [but didn’t make it into the film]. She had a very interesting spiritual approach to what’s going on with cheese. I was really surprised to see how you could draw a metaphor about cheese as a body. Generations of microbes transform the cheese. They eat the cheese, then they die, and leave it for the next generation of microbes . . . changing the landscape of that cheese as it develops into its character.

Also, I appreciated cheesemaker Mary Quicke’s comments about multiple peaking. People talk a lot about how I’ve “passed my peak,” “I’m not in my prime,” or “Are these the sunset years of my life?” I was surprised by her clarity and understanding that you have a lot of peaks, and you’ll have more peaks. There’s not a limited supply of peaks; it’s just a limited imagination.

Were any of the people you interviewed for the film concerned about climate change?

Some people were attaching sustainability to their farming practices—for example, Jasper Hill, in Vermont. But some of the cheese companies and cheesemakers we spoke to are so small-scale that, in most cases, climate concerns never came up. Jasper Hill uses milk from, shall we say, a largish dairy and sort of sits on the edge of artisanal and scale. That’s the conundrum, isn’t it? If you want to have good food available at a low cost to as many people as possible, then you have to get bigger. In Shelf Life, you can see that Jasper Hill already has a robot flipping cheese.

A quality control group in the underground cellars at Jasper Hill Farm in Vermont. (Photo courtesy of Wicked Delicate Films)

As a historian, were there specific experiences or people you encountered while filming that stuck with you more than others—for instance, the notion that cheese, for Egyptians, was a food they envisioned in the afterlife?

I could relate to the archeologist in Egypt trying to read artifacts and divine a story from them. Historians often don’t have the actual pieces of things and are always groping and learning how to tell the story. I was surprised to hear about the Egyptians’ concept of cheese, because you don’t read much about that.

I was fascinated by the use of old historic buildings being used to age cheese, like old breweries, for example, and some of the bunkers in Europe. Or weird places like subway halls. These repurposed spaces bring up a terroir sort of conversation about the minerals, the humidity, the bacteria, and all of that. I’m not in the cheese business, but all these moves for new sanitation standards—removing the bacteria and original wooden shelves where cheese has aged—are disheartening, because often it’s that magic elixir of all those things that make cheese special.

**

Alisha Norris Jones. (Photo courtesy of Wicked Delicate Films)

Shelf Life offers a glimpse into the life of Alisha Norris Jones, an artist and professional cheesemonger based in Chicago. Jones is the creative mind behind @_immortalmilk, an “underground” cheese shop that pops up at different locations, offering curated cheese boards inspired by various aspects of culture, from art books and Instagram to Jones’ mood and travels.

Her work has garnered acclaim, leading to multiple awards and social media praise. Recently, she took first place at the inaugural Cheesy Chopped Championship hosted by the Cheese Culture Coalition, an organization promoting equity and inclusion in the cheese industry. We caught up with Jones to learn how she got started, what makes a good pairing, and how economic status influences our relationship with cheese.

How did you find your way to the fine cheese business?

I’m originally from Boston and moved to Chicago about 16 years ago. I got my start in food and hospitality by working at Publican Quality Meats, serving and making coffee. I eventually became a pastry assistant.

I was a really bad pastry chef. I lasted about three months and left before I could get fired. But one of the things that caught my attention was working with the cheese case. I went to school for religion and anthropology and have always been interested in food and food justice. Cheese seemed like a really cool way to talk about justice, class, culture and also food, wrapped all up into one thing that’s a living and breathing product—because all cheese is still alive, for the most part, when it arrives on your plate.

From there, I fell in love with cheese, worked at a couple more restaurants, and then took a break from fine dining to work in the specialty department at Whole Foods. I ended up being there for about five years and realized I could go for my cheese certification and become more of a professional in this field. It kind of took off from there.

Tell us more about how cheese is a conduit to conversations about justice and class.

Almost every culture that can produce cheese, across the globe, does. It can be a sign of the elite and bourgeois—a person might only go to France for Brie or pay $300 for a tasting menu. On the flip side, cheese is what got us through industrialization. By preserving milk, a person could bring it to a factory and eat it over the course of a 12-hour shift.

It was also a way for people to survive through the ‘70s and ‘80s with government cheese. I think it’s fascinating that some folks to this day believe that cheese isn’t for them because it’s perceived as a white thing or a rich thing, when it really affects all levels of society. I can almost tell you where you grew up and what you’ve had access to through what your favorite cheeses are.

As far as justice, seeing the way that land rights can also factor into cheese makes me think about who we’re advocating for. Some cheesemakers have gotten into growing marijuana because they’re not getting dairy subsidies anymore or because their land is being encroached upon by large growers or multinational dairy companies.

As an artist with a background in anthropology, how do you approach curating cheese boards?

I think about the season, especially what’s available in produce and cheese. Then, I think about my mood. Say it’s early spring: A lot of beautiful Loire-style French goat cheese is coming out [then], so I’ll look towards France and get into French cheese culture, like French movies or French visual artists and pick up on whatever palettes and moods they’re using and incorporate that into the larger board.

How do you know when a cheese pairs well with something? What are you looking for?

I’m looking for a volume match. If I have a loud cheese, I want something that’ll either be just as loud on a palate, or through texture, to complement it. I’m also thinking about acidity—again, I want something that won’t overpower the cheese—and something interesting that you haven’t really seen before, without necessarily talking down to the person eating it. There’s been this trend of matching junk food with cheese, where I’m like, “This is cool, but we can be a little bit better about this. Let’s get some fruit in here. Let’s get out of the candy aisle.”

Cheese raises questions about climate and whether vegan cheese is better for the environment. Do climate concerns come up for you in your work?

In past years, no. But I am thinking about it now, especially after going to the American Cheese Society conference and hearing fellow industry folks say we need to talk about this. With droughts and hotter temperatures, there is a concern about the cows and what milk they will provide when they’re literally overheated. And do we have enough money to keep them in an air-conditioned barn, which is insane to think about.

There’s not one solution to the climate question. I think more folks should be eating better cheese; sometimes, that means eating vegan cheese. Some vegan cheese artisans are doing cool things informed by traditional cheese making, and there should be room for everybody at the table. But cashews and almonds take up a lot of water. [Vegan cheese won’t] solve anything unless we’re careful about climate altogether.

These conversations have been edited for length and clarity.

To find a screening of Shelf Life, or to host one, visit https://www.shelflifefilm.org/

The post ‘Shelf Life’ Peeks Into the Nooks and Crannies of the Cheesemaker’s World appeared first on Civil Eats.

Farmworkers Push Kroger’s Shareholders for Heat and Labor Protections

Grey Moran — Wed, 24 Jul 2024 09:00:47 +0000

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The post Farmworkers Push Kroger’s Shareholders for Heat and Labor Protections appeared first on Civil Eats.

Republican Plans for Ag Policy May Bring Big Changes to Farm Country

Lisa Held — Mon, 22 Jul 2024 09:00:43 +0000

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cuts to Conservation Programs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Changes to Commodity Programs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Crop Insurance Complications

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

An Opaque Future for Farmers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The post Republican Plans for Ag Policy May Bring Big Changes to Farm Country appeared first on Civil Eats.

Rescuing Kelp Through Science

Alexandra Talty, Pulitzer Center Ocean Reporting Fellow — Wed, 17 Jul 2024 09:00:48 +0000

Just off the shore in Casco Bay, Maine, marine scientist Scott Lindell descends into an underwater kelp forest, his ears filling with frigid water as he swims down to the seafloor. Lindell’s mission: to find sugar kelp, a golden-brown, frilly-edged seaweed—and, more specifically, sugar kelp in its reproductive phase. Peering through his mask in the swirling, murky water, Lindell can only see a few feet, so it’s not an easy task.

What he’s looking for: kelp blades streaked with sorus tissue, a dark band teeming with millions of spores. A wiry man in his 60s, Lindell has developed relationships with homeowners and researchers across hundreds of miles of New England’s coast so he can access the kelp integral to his work—and, potentially, to the future of seaweed farming in the United States.

After several dives, Lindell has filled his mesh collection bag with cuttings and swims to shore. He stores the prized tissue in a cooler to keep it damp and cool for the five-hour drive, and then sets off for his laboratory at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. Here, over the next 45 days, the spores will be carefully cultivated into seed for farmers and scientists to outplant in the ocean.

Scott Lindell checks a seaweed bioreactor in his lab at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. (Photo credit: Alexandra Talty)

Every year, every ounce of any kelp variety farmed commercially in the U.S.—now approaching millions of tons—begins with this process. Many growers see it as a bottleneck: Propagation from wild-harvested seaweed is costly, lengthy, and ties rural coastal communities to laboratories that are often hours, if not days, away. It also shortens the seaweed growing season, as sorus tissue can only be harvested for a few months of the year. And, most frustrating to farmers, relying on wild stocks for farmed kelp means that growers have very little control over the final product. What could look underwater like a yummy blade may turn out to be a varietal better suited to feeding snails than pleasing the human palate.

Read all the stories in our series:

The Promise and Possible Pitfalls of American Kelp Farming An overview of our four-part in-depth series examining the growth of the U.S. seaweed industry. With little regulatory oversight and skyrocketing funding, how will this industry evolve?
Can Seaweed Save American Shellfish? Seaweed farms on both coasts are beginning to take hold, tapping into decades of painstaking science—and could help shellfish thrive in waters affected by climate change and pollution.
Rescuing Kelp Forests Through Science Breakthrough genetic research at a Massachusetts lab could save the world’s vanishing kelp forests—and support American kelp farming, too.
The Hard Work of Bringing Kelp to Market As seaweed farms develop on both coasts and begin to contribute to America’s blue economy, much depends on infrastructure.

Lindell’s eponymous lab at Woods Hole may look humble, with low ceilings and cement floors, but it’s meticulously organized, with hundreds of seaweed varietals catalogued and floating in refrigerated containers. As ferry horns punctuate the rushing sound of seawater piped into scores of tanks, a team of scientists toils away at an ambitious project: revolutionizing kelp propagation. They have just mapped a single sugar kelp genome for the first time, and the results are about to be publicized through the Joint Genome Institute in Berkeley, California. Next, they plan to map a genome for the entire species. The project is supported by a $5.9 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy MARINER program, part of more than $66 million that the agency has invested in American seaweed production since 2018.

If successful, their work will put Americans at the front of seaweed science globally, making it possible for laboratories like theirs to select wild kelp with ideal traits and create new kelp “seeds” in two weeks. This breakthrough in selective breeding would be the biggest advance in mariculture in the past hundred years, akin to Punnett’s Square, which revolutionized plant breeding in the early 1900s.

A Keystone Species in Decline

The largest vegetative biome in the world, kelp supports the bottom of the marine food chain, nourishing species like snails and lobsters. Humpback whales play with floating kelp, while sea otters wrap themselves in its wide brown blades. Some kelp can stretch as tall as a 15-story building, with fronds that dance in the ocean’s currents, creating an underwater habitat for species as varied as otters, sharks, and octopus. These underwater forests cover a third of the world’s coastlines, providing a buffer for terrestrial species as well by protecting coastlines from the full impact of hurricanes and monsoons.

Different varieties of kelp have thrived in the world’s oceans for more than 100 million years, along the equator and up toward the poles. In 2023, scientists estimated that kelp forests suck up about a third of the world’s atmospheric carbon; kelp also supports fisheries and removes nitrogen pollution. Together, these benefits are valued at as much as $500 billion annually.

Now, this complex, ancient species is in jeopardy. Globally, kelp forests are receding at a rate of 1.8 percent a year, due in part to climate change and human impact. In 15 years, marine scientists say there may not be enough wild stock for farmers to rely on, especially in states like Maine, where kelp forests are rapidly declining. On the West Coast, kelp loss has been even more extreme, with 96 percent of forests from San Francisco to northern Oregon dying off over the past decade, according to The Nature Conservancy. Beginning in 2013, a series of cascading events wreaked havoc: First, a massive heat wave plunged the kelp into stressed conditions at the same time that purple sea urchins—which feed on kelp—lost their biggest predator, the sunflower sea star. Without sea stars to keep them in check, the urchins multiplied and, in a behavioral shift, left their customary nooks and crannies and began devouring the kelp forests.

Scientists believe Lindell’s work could help save the future of seaweed. By mapping sugar kelp, Lindell is creating a Rosetta Stone of kelp traits and corresponding DNA that can then be used by researchers globally to better understand, and protect, their wild kelp populations.

“We can’t go and remediate 350 kilometers of coastline, but we can certainly create oases along the way.”

For example, for a kelp forest stressed by increasingly warmer waters, conservationists could identify and plant strains of kelp that are more heat tolerant. Tristin Anoush McHugh, kelp project director at The Nature Conservancy, monitors California’s remaining forests regularly, and believes that Lindell’s advances in seaweed reproductive technology could bolster restoration efforts. Scientists could isolate kelp that survive mass die-off events, propagate them in the lab, and then plant them in the open ocean, creating kelp refuges. “We can’t go and remediate 350 kilometers of coastline, but we can certainly create oases along the way,” she says.

A Market Worth Millions

If kelp forests disappear, so would wild-harvested seed for farmed kelp. Investment in American-grown seaweed—roughly $380 million to date from the U.S. government, venture capital, and private investors—would have been for naught. Lindell’s work could benefit U.S. kelp farming by helping restore wild seaweeds—but also through reducing costs.

For decades, China has led the industry, valued at $643.4 million in 2022, a slice of the larger $5.6 billion global seaweed market. According to the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization, China produces 89 percent of the world’s farmed kelp; the U.S. produces less than .01 percent—what one hatchery specialist in Maine calls a “rounding error.”

“I don’t know any other agricultural or aquaculture industry where the cost of seed can be as much as 50 percent of the farmer’s revenue.”

Many kelp companies in the U.S. cite America’s small appetite for seaweed as an impediment, especially compared to Asia, where seaweed is consumed regularly and in many forms. But minimal demand is only one reason for the low market share. The high cost of farming is another.

American farmers can expect to pay about $1 a foot for string inoculated with kelp seed. The yield is an average of 4 pounds of mature kelp per foot, which nets about 50 cents a pound, according to Lindell. “I don’t know any other agricultural or aquaculture industry where the cost of seed can be as much as 50 percent of the farmer’s revenue,” he says with a scoff.

Compared to other seaweed-farming countries, America is an outlier. Korean seed string is sold for 5 cents a foot and yields 30 pounds per foot, according to Jang K. Kim, a professor in the department of marine science at Incheon National University in South Korea. In China, the seed string cost-to-yield ratio is similar, because the government subsidizes that industry, according to scientists there.

Selectively Bred Spores, on Demand

Once the sorus tissue arrives at Lindell’s laboratory in Woods Hole, the cuttings are scraped with a razor blade, dipped in iodine and isolated in sterile seawater. Every seaweed hatchery in the U.S.—there are about a dozen—practices a similar sanitization process, which is costly for small businesses; one technician estimates that she incurs between $3,000 and $5,000 in annual sanitation costs.

Illustration credit: Nhatt Nichols

When the sorus tissue is clean, Lindell’s scientists dry it overnight and then immerse it again in sterile seawater, prompting the tissue to release its spores. These develop into gametophytes—tiny, feathery clumps, male and female—that are selected for desired traits and then bred to create zygotes (fertilized eggs) that develop into kelp seed (or, technically, juvenile sporophytes). Using gametophytes for seed instead of wild-harvested sorus tissue would greatly decrease the costs, since using gametophytes requires no sanitizing and they can be bred for multiple seasons.

“[Gametophytes] allow us to do what animal breeders and plants have been doing for millennia now—make a single-pair cross that we can then ascertain some value to,” explains Lindell. “We can measure—how long is that blade? How sweet is it? Does it resist high temperature?”

Every harvest season for the past five years, his lab has measured these crosses for 30 to 50 traits, creating a tremendous amount of information for breeding commercially attractive future generations—and for potentially restoring wild kelp one day. The lab publishes all of its breeding information on Sugar Kelp Base, an open-source website for global seaweed researchers.

In Asia, selective breeding is common in mariculture, and is why yields can be four to six times larger than on American farms. But in recent years, Asia’s yields have flatlined, possibly due to a lack of genetic diversity after 50 generations of breeding the same genetic lines of kelp.

Instead, Lindell’s genomic selection approach allows his team to conserve genetic diversity while still selecting for specific traits. They’ve also worked closely with Cornell University and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, borrowing crossbreeding techniques from terrestrial agriculture. “In the last five years, we’ve been able to make achievements that took the Asian countries 30 or 40 years to accomplish,” says Lindell.

What is the No. 1 thing they’re breeding for? “Yield. And No. 2 is yield. And No. 3 is probably yield,” says Lindell, laughing. “Every farmer’s business plan and projections are based on yield. Every 10 percent improvement in yield produces probably a 5 percent improvement in their bottom line.”

Increasing yield is part of the focus of the MARINER grant. Currently, the average U.S. farm yield is about 4 pounds per foot. So far, Lindell’s team has been able to triple that yield on average, with hopes of isolating a strain that can produce 25 pounds per foot, approaching the yields of China and South Korea. Lindell is also looking at kelp traits like a strong umami flavor, or thicker blades that make them easier to use as wraps for food, or an ability to resist predation by other marine organisms.

“Every farmer’s business plan and projections are based on yield. Every 10 percent improvement in yield produces probably a 5 percent improvement in their bottom line.”

Creating gametophytes, says Lindell, allows seaweed farmers to become “the orchestrator of your own symphony when it comes to the seaweed planting season. You could start it as early or as late as you choose.” Growers would be able to time their own planting, instead of waiting for wild kelp to mature and produce sorus tissue—and they would have a longer growing season and therefore a larger yield.

Gametophytes also mean less nursery time. Currently, beginning with wild-harvested sorus tissue requires around 50 days to produce kelp “strings”—strings of kelp seeds grown out in a nursery until ready to deploy on a farm. With gametophytes, that time is cut to around 30 days. Additionally, farmers can choose varietals based on their traits, similar to the way apple growers select for flavor, color, juiciness, or other qualities.

The Near Future of Seaweed Farming

Perched at the top of New England and patched with miles of working waterfronts, Maine is the heart of America’s farmed kelp industry. Over the 2022-2023 season, the state pulled in nearly 1 million pounds of kelp—nearly half of America’s farmed output. With its deep, cold waters and naturally occurring kelp beds, the state is home to the country’s first commercial kelp farm and boasts world-class scientists at the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences, in addition to a marine workforce. For kelp farming, it is a near-perfect location.

Except for the warming waters. The Gulf of Maine is warming 99 percent faster than the rest of the ocean, with devastating repercussions for all marine life, from kelp to finfish to lobster. “It’s harder and harder to find reproductive kelp in September to have ready by, say, Halloween,” says Thew Suskiewicz, a seaweed scientist at Maine’s Atlantic Sea Farms, the largest seaweed aquaculture operation in the country. The company provides seed to partner farmers to outplant. For the 2023-2024 season, Atlantic Sea Farms pulled in a record-breaking 1.3 million pounds of kelp for its line of foods.

Suskiewicz operates the farm’s hatchery after a career of studying algae, including at the seaweed food company Monterey Bay Seaweeds. “I’ve been looking at how kelp assemblages have changed in the Gulf of Maine in the last 30 years—and we’ve seen profound changes. Most of the species here have some life stage that is very dependent on the kelp,” he says, noting lobster as an important example. Lobstering is a nearly $400 million annual industry in Maine alone, according to NOAA. Wild kelp’s decline, he predicts, “is going to have a lot of cascading effects.”

Many of Maine’s lobstermen and commercial fishers are already experiencing huge shifts in the marine populations they harvest. That has led some to get into the farmed seaweed industry to diversify their incomes and businesses in the face of warming waters. Establishing gametophyte cultures would make kelp seed string cheaper, offer more predictability, and make kelp farming less dependent on wild kelp beds. Suskiewicz is working closely with Lindell’s lab, and next season will begin raising gametophyte-spawned kelp in Maine’s waters.

“Next year will be the first year we put them out, and we’ll just measure performance—including, how much did they grow? How do they taste? What is their blade length?” says Suskiewicz.

Suskiewicz believes that the American seaweed industry is at an inflection point, and that selective breeding is arriving at the perfect time. Five years ago, Atlantic Sea Farms seaweed salads were available only in specialty food stores. Now, they’re found across the country, thanks in part to the company’s intensive marketing efforts to introduce the average American to kelp.

Now that seaweed is a bit more familiar, Suskiewicz believes that if the cost of kelp seed drops through widespread adoption of gametophytes, the industry will be able to scale up and finally compete with Asia. “People can purchase their kelp from the U.S., from known monitored waters, by farmers in their community, rather than stuff that primarily comes over from China through [South] Korea—dried, dyed, and then shipped over,” he says.

As for Lindell, he sees enormous potential not just for sugar kelp, the species his lab is mapping. His team’s work could help regenerate other kelp species, too, including giant kelp in California and bull kelp in Alaska. And the kelp-farming industry could be the driver. More funding goes into farming kelp than preserving it in the wild, but the science applies equally: “All the learnings of the industry around resilience, growth, health, and disease resistance is going to carry over to conservation.”

This story was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center’s Ocean Reporting Network.

The post Rescuing Kelp Through Science appeared first on Civil Eats.

Can New York City Treat Its Food Scraps As More Than Trash?

Doug Bierend — Mon, 15 Jul 2024 09:00:33 +0000

On an unseasonably sunny day in March, at a community garden in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Bushwick, Dan Gross and Shaq Benn moved piles of wood chips and hosed down shoulder-high windrows of compost. Tucked underneath elevated train tracks, Know Waste Lands is the home base of the compost-hauling nonprofit BK Rot.

Its quarter-acre lot houses custom-built tool sheds and water pumps, solar panels for charging phones and e-bikes, and a motorized sifter designed by Gross. As the pair worked, a steady trickle of locals stopped at the entrance to drop off kitchen scraps—not trash, but the makings of “black gold.” Thanks to careful management, even on this balmy day the steaming heaps of rotting vegetables didn’t give off an offensive odor. “I actually like the smell,” Gross said during a break from work.

BK Rot is part of a diverse ecology of community compost organizations throughout New York City. For decades, with crucial support via the city’s NYC Compost Project, community composters have taken a small but significant part of the roughly 4,000 tons of organic waste generated by New Yorkers every day and converted it into a valuable resource.

Food scraps and landscaping debris, rather than going “out of sight” to landfills, where they emit significant greenhouse gases, are transformed into material that sustains local gardens, fortifies the city’s heat-mitigating tree population, and remediates contaminated soils. Meanwhile, local residents are educated and empowered to manage their own waste, less pollution goes into transporting and processing food scraps, and community bonds are deepened.

Community composting is a cherished part of many neighborhoods throughout New York. But its future is unclear. In November of last year, under Mayor Eric Adams and his sanitation department’s new commissioner, Jessica Tisch, the NYC Compost Project was cut entirely from the city budget. So was a contract with the nonprofit GrowNYC, which operated dozens of food-scrap drop-off locations throughout the city, processing millions of pounds of scraps each year.

The cuts decimated community compost operations, costing dozens of jobs, closing down numerous processing locations, and curtailing educational programming. All to save around $7 million, a mere 0.006 percent of the city’s budget, or “less than a rounding error,” Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine said at a recent rally in front of New York City Hall.

After an immense pressure campaign by activists, members of the city council, and other elected representatives, funding was restored at the end of June. With the vote, the budget for community compost was placed under the New York City council instead of the city’s sanitation department.

“I’m hoping that this will be less up for negotiation each budget season,” says Anna Sacks, legislative chair for the Manhattan Solid Waste Advisory Board and co-founder of NYC’s SaveOurCompost coalition. “There’s so much more that we could do, and it ends up by necessity concentrating our efforts onto preserving what’s in existence, versus imagining a more expansive alternative future.”

Saved From the Trash

The NYC Department of Sanitation began supporting community composting in the early 1990s. It launched the NYC Compost Project, establishing and supporting compost operations at four of the city’s botanical gardens, along with satellite facilities at various parks and community gardens. The project also supported the beloved, now discontinued Master Composter program, to which many community composters in New York trace their roots.

As community composting evolved, the city also advanced its own curbside collection programs, which rely on contractors for transport and off-site processing. The city generates its own compost at a massive, recently expanded facility in Staten Island, though community composters note that the inconsistent separation of waste going in results in lower quality compost. In 2016, the city’s anaerobic biogas digester in Newtown Creek began accepting food scraps. Developed in partnership with the National Grid energy company, the giant “digester eggs” receive a mixture of organic waste streams, including sewage.

Rather than creating compost, though, the process produces methane that is burned for energy (and profit), along with an organic sludge that is landfilled. Besides not building soil, critics point out, the system entrenches reliance on fossil fuel infrastructure. Often, the methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, is simply flared into the atmosphere.

Biogas and centralized organic waste collection are the other side of the community compost coin. They represent what Guy Schaffer, author of Composting Utopia: Experimental Infrastructures for Organics Recycling in New York City, calls “neoliberal waste management.”

“There’s this pattern that happens in a lot of places, where people try to fix waste problems by creating new markets for waste,” said Schaffer, who is also a board member of BK Rot. In his analysis, such market “solutions” tend to perpetuate social inequities. “We can see the setting of a price on waste so that people have to pay for it, but that often creates a situation where waste winds up getting recuperated by the most marginalized people.”

BK Rot is a somewhat unique example among the city’s community composters. Although it is largely funded by grants, including as part of a crop of new additions to the restored NYC Compost Project, it operates like a business: In exchange for a fee, the nonprofit collects organic scraps from residences and small businesses, hiring local Black and brown youth who haul the material away by cargo bike to be windrowed. The resulting compost can be bought directly onsite, or at local food co-ops, where it is sold in smartly branded pouches resembling bags of designer coffee.

“We can create a system that can actually create green jobs for young people, that can serve as a fossil-fuel-free waste alternative—and even reframe what waste is.”

The upshot of BK Rot’s work is that, along with creating a valuable resource and reducing landfill—they claim to have diverted 1.5 million pounds of organic waste to date—it provides work opportunities within a community where gentrification has made such opportunities increasingly scarce. Meanwhile, fewer food scraps fill trash bags on the street corner to attract rats, or fill up trucks and landfills that typically operate near marginalized neighborhoods.

“Bushwick is such a fascinating focal point for thinking about waste inequity and intersectional inequities as they relate to environmental justice,” Nora Tjossem, co-director of BK Rot, said. “[BK Rot] really is an answer to say, ‘Well, what if we can dream up a different system? What if we can address all of these problems at once, or at least a great number of them?’ . . . We can create a system that can actually create green jobs for young people, that can serve as a fossil-fuel-free waste alternative—and even reframe what waste is.”

Grab a Pitchfork

Each instance of community compost takes a slightly different approach, responding to local conditions and needs. They are what Schaffer calls experimental infrastructures, alternatives to the status quo established in its midst. To address the income inequities of the neighborhood where it operates, BK Rot takes a labor-centric view, making its priority one of engaging and employing local youth. Other composters may rely more on volunteer labor and try to leverage the value of the material itself, using markets to foster different relationships between communities and waste.

“These interventions are not idealistic escapes from reality,” Schaffer writes in Composting Utopia. “They remake the systems they inhabit. Community composters aren’t trying to figure out if community compost will or won’t work as a solution to New York City’s waste problems, they’re building worlds in which community compost does work, and inviting people to stop by and grab a pitchfork.”

Despite the struggles for funding, community composters remain supportive of the city’s various efforts to divert organic waste. In April 2023, Mayor Adams unveiled an initiative called PlaNYC: Getting Sustainability Done. Among its promises were an expansion of tree canopies, curbside rain gardens, and green jobs, along with a reduction in emissions. All these aims are helped by community compost, which makes the recent struggles over funding and access to land particularly vexing to community composters, who see their efforts as complementary, while noting that the city has ample funds for projects like a quarter-billion-dollar police training facility.

The Struggle Continues

The city’s restoration of the NYC Compost Project in June means that community compost can continue developing, though the form that will take is undetermined. A number of small operations will receive restored funding. “GrowNYC is no longer operating the food-scrap drop-off sites in the green market,” Sacks said. “As a result, there was money that we could reallocate to other groups. Something we as a coalition have wanted to see for a long time is not just the established community composting groups being funded by the city, but new ones that are doing great work also being funded.”

“Community composters aren’t trying to figure out if community compost will or won’t work as a solution to New York City’s waste problems, they’re building worlds in which community compost does work, and inviting people to stop by and grab a pitchfork.”

But the cuts have had lasting consequences. The nonprofit Big Reuse lost access to its Brooklyn Salt Lot site in January as result of rezoning. Since 2011, it had operated a state-of-the-art composting facility underneath the 59th Street Bridge in Queens, composting over 3 million pounds of Parks Department leaves and wood chips. Just last year, it generated 700 cubic yards of compost that went to 154 different parks, schools, community gardens, and various greening projects. The cuts to the Community Compost Project also forced Big Reuse to reduce its staff, and coincided with the loss of access to its Queensbridge site. The city’s Parks Department claimed it needed the site for a parking lot, despite owning an empty lot next door.

All of this underscores the crucial role of land, and of a positive relationship with the city, in enabling community composting. The Queensbridge site closed despite immense public outcry, expressed through representatives, petitions, letters, and public testimony at various hearings, press conferences and rallies. “It’s literally paving paradise to put up a parking lot,” said Eric Goldstein, a lawyer with the National Resources Defense Council who works to protect community composting. Other community composting operations have been disrupted at least in part, including the Lower East Side Ecology Center, Earth Matter, and all four botanical gardens.

Still, many of the city’s leaders do see the value of community compost. Twenty-nine out of 51 city council members, and four of the five borough presidents, signed letters to the mayor and New York Department of Sanitation supporting this summer’s restoration of funding to community composters. More than 49,000 New Yorkers also signed a petition demanding the same, in an effort organized by the SaveOurCompost coalition.

In parallel with the city’s expanding curbside program, community composters will again have the means to develop experimental infrastructures, while also filling the gaps within the city’s waste operations. With proper support, the diverse network of community compost operations can offer a meaningful alternative and complement to centralized, carbon-intensive systems, which in New York currently capture only about 5 percent of organics in the waste stream. The hope among community composters is that the value of what they do is now clear to the city and the public alike, and that New Yorkers will treat food scraps not as trash but an opportunity to improve life in the city.

“I hope that all this drama results in a broader public understanding of what composting is and what is required as a land-based movement,” said Gil Lopez, an activist for community compost and a member of the Queen Solid Waste Advisory Board Board. “Invisibilization of waste is what I believe the mayor and [the department of sanitation] want to make happen. This allows [and] demands the public not think about it once it leaves their home. Community composting humanizes ‘waste’ and transforms it into a local resource and tool for raising ecological literacy, civic engagement, physical activity, and local responsibility for reducing our own impact in environmental injustice.”

This article was updated to include details about New York City’s Staten Island compost facility, and to reflect that Dan Gross designed the sifter used by BK Rot.

The post Can New York City Treat Its Food Scraps As More Than Trash? appeared first on Civil Eats.

Are Companies Using Carbon Markets to Sell More Pesticides?

Lisa Held — Tue, 09 Jul 2024 09:00:54 +0000

Last summer, two men shouted friendly greetings from golf carts as they zipped around a field-turned-parking lot, fetching farmers at pick-up trucks and dropping them in front of a barn. It was the annual field day at The Mill, a popular Mid-Atlantic retailer of agricultural products including seeds, fertilizer, and pesticides.

First, the farmers embarked on a wagon tour. One stop showed off a soybean yield trial. At another, a scientist presented research on a new class of nitrogen-fixing inputs. During a demo of a drone spraying a pesticide over rows of corn, the operators laughed as a gentle breeze blew the mist toward the onlookers. “Don’t worry, it’s just water!” they yelled.

Read all the stories in our series:

Overview: Chemical Capture: The Power and Impact of the Pesticide Industry
How the agrichemical industry is shaping public information about the toxicity of pesticides, how they’re being used, and the policies that impact the health of all Americans.
Inside Bayer’s State-by-State Efforts to Stop Pesticide Lawsuits
As the agrichemical giant lays groundwork to fend off Roundup litigation, its use of a playbook for building influence in farm state legislatures has the potential to benefit pesticide companies nationwide.
Are Companies Using Carbon Markets to Sell More Pesticides?
Many programs meant to help farmers address climate change are now owned by companies that sell chemicals, which could boost practices that depend on pesticides rather than those that reduce their use.

Back at the barn, companies that sell their products at The Mill had set up folding tables to talk to farmers and hand out swag. Land O’Lakes, the company known to most Americans only as a longtime purveyor of butter wrapped in bright yellow packaging, had two adjoining tables showcasing two of its more specialized businesses: pesticides and carbon markets.

At those tables, farmers could grab an Advanced Acre Rx hat from WinField United, Land O’Lakes’ seed and chemical company, and a water bottle emblazoned with the logo for Truterra, its carbon market platform, in one fell swoop.

The display exemplified how, as Land O’Lakes’ annual report laid out earlier that year, the agricultural giant is marketing enrollment in a climate-smart farming initiative alongside its biggest profit driver: pesticides and seeds.

In this screenshot from Land O’Lakes’ 2022 Annual Report, the company describes how its “teams at Truterra and WinField United worked together to blaze a trail for farmers to improve their soil health and potentially become eligible for future market opportunities.”

Land O’Lakes’ Truterra is unique in some ways, but it also fits the mold of what agricultural carbon markets have come to look like across the country over the last few years.

Carbon markets were first created decades ago as a means for companies to offset their greenhouse gas emissions by paying to reduce emissions somewhere else. Think: planting trees that hold carbon in South America to balance emissions from a factory in South Carolina.

While the highest-profile carbon markets are run by public entities like the state of California, many of the agricultural markets that have made more recent progress are run by powerful companies that are in the business of selling pesticides and fertilizers.

And over the last several years, policymakers, environmental and farm groups, and private companies began hyping the idea that specific markets could be created to pay farmers for adopting practices that could reduce emissions and hold carbon in soil. Flashy startups including Nori and Indigo Ag jumped into the game, Democrats included the idea in their 2020 plan to address the climate crisis, and a bitterly divided Congress passed the Growing Climate Solutions Act on a bipartisan basis in an effort to jump-start the markets.

As a result, a new era of paying farmers for carbon-holding practices became the talk of many farm conferences and climate panels, where the same points came up over and over. Spreading regenerative practices that build soil carbon across more cropland would produce so many other benefits, advocates said. Farmers would be able to hold water and nutrients in the soil, reduce pollution, and increase biodiversity. And over time, not only would they access a new source of revenue, regenerative practices would allow farmers to cut costs as they decreased the use of chemicals—including pesticides and fertilizer—producing yet another environmental win. In 2021, for example, The New York Times put that narrative in print by featuring a carbon-market farmer who had stopped tilling, diversified his crops, and planted cover crops, eventually building his soil health enough to completely eliminate the use of synthetic fertilizer.

However, while the highest-profile carbon markets are run by public entities like the state of California or New England’s Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), many of the agricultural markets that have made more recent progress are run by powerful companies—including Bayer, Corteva Agriscience, and Land O’Lakes—that are in the business of selling those same pesticides and fertilizers.

In addition, even the independent platforms are now working closely with the same companies. Indigo launched a partnership with Corteva in 2021. (Last month, journalists at Bloomberg reported that the company and other startups that set out to disrupt bigger, traditional agriculture companies have struggled to connect with farmers on their own.) Meanwhile, close to half of the credits Nori has paid out to date have gone to Bayer’s enrolled farmers. Seventy-five percent of the credits Nori currently has available for buyers are linked to Bayer’s platform.

“Partnering with Bayer allowed Nori to scale and accelerate the impact we’re able to make, compared to what we could have accomplished by enrolling individual farmers one by one,” Radhika Moolgavkar, Nori’s VP of supply and methodology, said in an email. “We believe that to foster large-scale adoption of these practices, programs like Bayer Carbon are required to help with the monetary hurdles to transitioning to regenerative practices.”

However, others are concerned about the influence pesticide companies are exerting within the growing landscape of paying farmers for carbon, especially as taxpayer money floods in to boost their efforts and farmer field data becomes more and more valuable.

“From their perspective, these are future clients, or they may be existing clients,” said Ben Lilliston, the director of rural strategies and climate change at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. “They’re getting a tremendous amount of data from the farmer-participants. It puts them in a very strong position to help farmers manage whatever they’re dealing with on their farm, beyond climate-related stuff. It’s kind of a win-win: Get a farmer in the program, get the information, and get to sell them seeds or pest control.”

“It’s kind of a win-win: Get a farmer in the program, get the information, and get to sell them seeds or pest control.”

Bayer, for example, has linked its carbon program to other data platforms that drive product sales. And while many practices shown to hold the most carbon—like agroforestry and organic systems—can reduce or eliminate the need for pesticides over time, companies in the business of selling the chemicals are unlikely to recommend them, environmental groups say.

In fact, the two practices that dominate current markets—no-till and cover crops—require herbicides to succeed in the way they’re practiced on most commodity farms. Farmers use herbicides to kill weeds that they could otherwise till under and to kill cover crops before planting a cash crop. And most soil scientists agree that the jury is still out on whether those practices can hold carbon at a depth and for long enough to create meaningful climate outcomes.

New (Carbon) Markets for Products

When Land O’Lakes launched Truterra in 2016, the company set it up to leverage the power of its network of 60 agricultural retailers, which altogether have about 1,000 locations across the country, said Tom Ryan, Truterra’s former president, in an interview last year.

“Farmers place a great deal of trust in their seed dealers,” said Ryan. Those seed dealers, when they recommend products made by companies like Land O’Lakes WinField United, are uniquely suited to also convince farmers to sign on to programs that will pay them to adopt practices with environmental benefits, such as planting cover crops. And recommending the right products at the same time helps the farmers succeed at implementing those practices, he said.

The way Bayer engaged with the stores that sell its inputs was also what caught the attention of Jason Davidson, a food and agriculture campaigner at the environmental advocacy organization Friends of the Earth.

Davidson’s interest was piqued by a 2018 column published in a trade publication. In the article, journalist Paul Schrimpf wrote about a buzzy topic retailers were discussing at multiple industry events. Schrimpf explained that Monsanto (now owned by Bayer) had started including a data product called Climate FieldView in its rebate bundles, meaning retailers would have to also sell a certain number of FieldView subscriptions alongside seeds and pesticides to get company rebates they had long relied on. Many farmers, he wrote, still didn’t want to pay for the program, and he predicted retailers might consider eating the cost and enrolling them so they wouldn’t lose the rebate.

“That got us thinking, ‘Why, in this decade, are pesticide companies all of a sudden super interested in data?’” said Davidson, who later co-authored a report on the topic that was released last year. “I think it’s pretty safe to argue that Bayer and other pesticide manufacturers were interested in data because they saw it as a way to potentially increase sales.”

Bayer’s own documents seem to back that argument up. In its 2022 annual report, Bayer said Climate FieldView “enables us to use novel modeling to make custom product recommendations that are precisely tailored to each individual field. With these insights we can maximize the value of our seed and chemistry portfolio, help farmers expand participation in the carbon markets and food, feed, fiber, and fuel value chains, and lead Bayer toward digitally enabled business models and new opportunities for growth.”

In another presentation that year, the company reported that corn seed customers who used FieldView planted Bayer corn seeds at a higher seeding rate compared to the national average and those who opted for the premium FieldView Plus version generated 5 percent higher sales.

Today, farmers who want to enroll in Bayer’s carbon market have to first enroll in Climate FieldView. In an email, a Bayer spokesperson said its platform collects data that’s needed to calculate carbon sequestration and register carbon credits. “As with all Climate FieldView digital ag platform initiatives, the grower always owns their own data and controls who they choose to share that data with,” he said.

In addition to being the place where farmers input data that will allow them to get paid for carbon, the program recommends planting protocols and offers product discounts. In 2020, Reuters reported that Bayer offered farmers the option to get paid for their carbon in credits for more Bayer products. When asked if the company still offered that option, the spokesperson said Bayer pays growers in cash, “never in product credits.”

The spokesperson did not specifically answer whether farmers enrolled in its carbon program purchased more Bayer products but said, “While Bayer has a broad selection of industry-leading crop protection, seed and seed treatment products, growers are not required to purchase crop protection, seed, or seed treatment products to participate.”

Last year, the company outlined in a press release how it planned to “capitalize on opportunities presented by the shift to regenerative agriculture.” Carbon farming and digital platforms were on a list of market opportunities expected to generate more than $100 billion. “Importantly, by the middle of the next decade, Bayer envisions shaping regenerative agriculture on more than 400 million acres, built on the foundation of its leading agriculture input solutions,” it wrote.

A screenshot of an email sent to Bayer ForGround participants titled “Tips for Herbicide & Fungicide Applications” and with the sub-headline of “top tips and trends in reduced tillage, cover crops and carbon.”

That’s the rub, many environmental advocates and sustainable agriculture experts say: A market truly dedicated to helping farmers move the needle on climate would be grounded in helping farmers reduce fossil fuel-derived inputs over time, thereby reducing resource use, minimizing other environmental impacts, and saving them money.

“There’s a clear conflict of interest if you’re manufacturing a product and then making agronomic recommendations. We are really concerned about the idea that the companies that are manufacturing seeds and pesticides that are used together to make certain products—like neonicotinoid seed coatings—ubiquitous in industrial agriculture, that they are going to be collecting farm data and then using that data to make specific recommendations on how to farm,” Davidson said. “Even though the companies tout precision agriculture and data broadly as a way to reduce inputs, it’s really hard to imagine a world in which manufacturers of a product are going to tell their customers to buy and use less of their products.”

In response to a question about whether the platforms are used to sell farmers WinField United inputs, a Land O’Lakes spokesperson said that Truterra prohibits the use of farmer data for sales and marketing targeting. “Truterra’s programs focus on making practice changes that are best for the farmer and that means agronomically, economically, and environmentally,” they said.

Paying Only for Practices That Rely on Pesticides

Despite years of buzz about agricultural carbon markets, it’s hard to find farmers willing to talk about the experience of actually enrolling and participating.

“Part of it is just that your average farmer is not going to scream it from the rooftop,” said Aaron Shier, the government relations director at the National Farmers Union (NFU), and some of the markets likely come with confidentiality clauses. Still, Shier said that overall, not many NFU farmers are participating. The Iowa Farmers Union told Civil Eats the same. Both organizations, and other farmers we spoke to, said the main reason is the payments are still too low and unpredictable.

“It’s not worth my time,” said Josh Manske, who manages commodity grain fields in Iowa and Southern Minnesota. “Everybody’s getting a huge cut, and we’re left with the pennies.” And while Shier said he hadn’t heard any complaints around farmer data being used to lock in input purchasing or exert control over farmers, he said that “data privacy is very important to our members.”

The heavy lift involved in entering data was a big piece of conversations researchers at Hamilton College in upstate New York had with 17 row crop farmers—some conventional farmers participating in the markets and some certified organic farmers who weren’t eligible—in 2021.

In a paper published last fall, they shared major themes from those conversations, one of which centered on the farmers’ concerns around which practices are rewarded.

While the organic farmers were more worried that carbon markets would only support a small group of practices with climate benefits, both groups “raised concerns that carbon markets would inadequately support a full range of beneficial soil management practices,” the researchers wrote. “Some of these concerns focused on concerns that markets would incentivize activities that required heavy chemical inputs, which a farmer would have to purchase from a chemical company.”

Currently, Bayer, Corteva, and Truterra’s markets all pay farmers primarily to adopt no-till systems and to plant cover crops.

And there is a long history of companies using those specific practices to market pesticides linked to serious health risks. For example, as far back as the 1970s, Chevron Chemical promoted paraquat—an herbicide the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention calls “highly poisonous” that is now linked to Parkinson’s disease risk and banned in dozens of countries—as a tool to convert to no-till farming. Farmers still use paraquat as an alternative to tilling for weed control in the U.S., and Syngenta’s website lists the chemical’s use in no-till systems as a key benefit.

For cover crops, standard practice is to kill the plants with a glyphosate-based herbicide before planting a cash crop like corn or soy. For example, on Corteva’s website, the company recommends its herbicide products that mix glyphosate with 2,4-D and lists “Don’t cut herbicide rates” as one key to cover crop success. While the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) maintains that glyphosate is unlikely to cause cancer in humans, the International Agency for Research on Cancer classifies it as a “probable carcinogen,” based especially on its potential link to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

CropLife America, the pesticide industry’s trade association, has dubbed no-till and cover crops “pesticide-enabled” farming practices. “Pesticides allow for sustainable conservation practices, such as no-till and cover crops, to successfully exist,” it says on its website.

Organic farmers who have long planted cover crops without chemical pesticides and some of whom practice no-till farming with a roller-crimper would disagree. But their practices, which have been shown to push carbon deeper into the soil, where it tends to stay put for longer, are typically not represented in these markets, which are designed to reward individual improvements to the standard row crop system.

CropLife America, the pesticide industry’s trade association, has dubbed no-till and cover crops “pesticide-enabled” farming practices.

And while cover crops and no-till practices both deliver multiple proven environmental benefits such as reducing soil erosion and nutrient runoff and holding water on farms, many soil scientists say their ability to meaningfully fix carbon in soil over time is not yet well-established due to questions around depth, permanence, and saturation.

Truterra is going beyond those two practices, and one of the new programs Tom Ryan, Truterra’s former president, was most excited to talk about last year was adding nitrogen management to the practices the platform would pay for. (Bayer also added nitrogen management to its program this year.)

In addition to harming health, rural economies, and wildlife due to water pollution, excess nitrogen applied to farm fields also creates emissions of nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas that has 300 times more global warming impacts than carbon dioxide. As a result, unlike the as-yet-unknown climate potential of cover crops and no-till, reducing nitrogen fertilizer application has clear potential to significantly cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Still, Truterra’s nitrogen management program allows farmers to either reduce fertilizer or add a “stabilizer,” another product that helps prevent nitrogen leaching. Given the choice of which to recommend, it’s hard to imagine a retailer telling a farmer to buy less fertilizer, because doing so could reduce their yields (although stabilizers can help reduce the amount of fertilizer needed). Land O’Lakes’ spokesperson did not share specific data on which path farmers are choosing, saying some “use one or the other or both to best meet the specific needs of their fields.” The spokesperson added that farmers can choose any stabilizer, not just one made by WinField United, to qualify.

Land O’Lakes is specifically marketing enrollment in Truterra in conjunction with WinField United’s Advanced Acre Rx, a product that involves using a farmer’s data to recommend specific seeds, nutrients, herbicides, insecticides, and fungicides and includes “season-long support from your local ag input retailer.” When a farmer is setting out to implement climate-smart practices, Ryan said, “We have to help them build that plan, which includes products.” Advanced Acre Rx is a prescription system that is sold as a way to target inputs for greater efficiency. Bayer also pointed to its resources that help farmers optimize and target inputs.

Impacting the Bigger Picture

Outside of the carbon markets run by pesticide companies, there are other platforms working to reward a wider swath of practices that provide climate benefits while also reducing crop inputs. Nori has one organic farmer enrolled in its market, for example, while Carbon Harvest is setting up a market to pay small farms to implement agroforestry projects.

But the Hamilton College researchers said the farmers in their study expressed concerns that chemical companies “could be involved in setting national government standards for carbon markets, which would then skew all carbon markets toward a specific style of farming and ignore other beneficial practices for carbon sequestration.”

One set of standards is already in the works, and the process is happening partially as a result of lobbying by pesticide companies and the wider agricultural industry.

Representative Abigail Spanberger (D-Virginia) first introduced the Growing Climate Solutions Act to initiate U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) oversight of carbon markets in 2020. It became a top priority for the industry, and in April 2022, CropLife America’s president and CEO Chris Novak praised the reintroduction of the act.

“The Growing Climate Solutions Act offers meaningful progress toward enabling farmer and landowner participation in voluntary carbon markets,” he said in a statement. “Regenerative farming practices such as no-till farming, conservation tillage, and the use of cover crops are made possible through the use of pesticides.” Bayer, Corteva, and Land O’Lakes all supported the bill, which Congress ultimately passed as part of a spending package at the end of 2022.

Now, the USDA is working to fulfill the requirements of the law. In October, it published a broad assessment of agriculture and carbon markets, followed by a February report explaining the next steps, including that it will evaluate the current carbon market protocols, determine which technical assistance providers are qualified to be listed by the agency, and create resources for farmers to navigate the landscape. At the end of May, the agency solicited public comment on those next steps as part of a larger Biden administration announcement around its policies and principles on voluntary carbon markets (which go beyond but include agriculture).

In an interview, Robert Bonnie, the Under Secretary for Farm Production and Conservation at the USDA, said the process for getting companies to share their specific protocols is still being worked out and public comments will help shape it. “Yes, we’re going to need information, we’re going to need to understand what’s behind them,” he said. “The critical part of all of this is that the public, consumers, investors, everybody has confidence that there’s going to be real gains to the climate as we undertake these practices and that the value in the marketplace is real.”

As to the various criticisms around companies that manufacture inputs running carbon markets, Bonnie said private sector investment is crucial to achieving climate progress on farms. “It’s really, really beneficial to have companies out there that are looking for ways to develop technologies and innovations that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions and maintain agricultural productivity. That’s a good thing. We want that,” he said. “I think it puts a very high priority on making sure that the work we do around protocols is transparent and that we do this in a way that maintains public confidence.”

Bonnie said that the agency’s work on carbon markets fits into the larger picture at the USDA, where the agency is using many different tools to support climate-smart practices. “We’re trying to create value for farmers, ranchers, and forest owners that undertake climate-smart practices,” he said.

The crown jewel of that picture is Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack’s $3 billion Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities Program. When the agency solicited input on how to structure that program, CropLife America submitted a letter once again emphasizing the connection between climate-smart farming and pesticides.

“Reduced or no-till soil management and the use of cover crops are two critically important . . . practices that are enabled by pesticide tools,” it read. “There have been significant climate and soil quality benefits from these . . . practices (enabled by pesticide tools) to date, but there is great opportunity for increasing the scale and impact of these practices.”

One company already working to realize that opportunity is Truterra, which the USDA awarded $90 million in Climate-Smart Commodities funds. In September 2022, when Vilsack attended a Truterra kick-off event, it was held at the WinField United Innovation Center. In its agreement with the USDA, Truterra emphasized the impact its connection to the company would have, noting that it is “the largest U.S. distributor of crop inputs” and that its crop input services reach roughly half of harvested cropland acres in the country.

In response to the question of whether, at the core, one goal of carbon markets should be to reduce farm inputs including fossil fuel-derived pesticides and fertilizers, Bonnie said in some cases it may make sense but that in others, beneficial new products could be a better answer.

“We want to keep our eye on the prize here, and it may be that there that there are systems where reducing inputs or changing the mix of inputs or using inputs that enhance efficiency . . . allow us to reduce greenhouse gas emissions while maintaining productivity. In many places, that’s part of the mix. But we’re not here trying to limit inputs per se, we’re trying to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”

The post Are Companies Using Carbon Markets to Sell More Pesticides? appeared first on Civil Eats.

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