But it doesn’t have to be this way; farmers know how to feed us. It’s backward government policies that are standing in their way. We need Congress to reevaluate the subsidies provided to big ag, and prioritize farmers growing and raising nutritious food for our nation.

Our taxpayer dollars are propping up some of the largest industrial agriculture operations in the country, allowing the big to get bigger. At the same time, small and mid-sized farms are being driven out of existence. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) oversubsidizes the production of corn and soybeans, which are used for livestock feed, ethanol, and to create sugars, starches, and oils that end up in highly processed foods. The highly concentrated nature of our food and farm system, facilitated by the government’s prioritization of these commodity crops, has made it increasingly difficult for our farmers to supply us with nutritious food crops like fruits, vegetables, legumes, and whole grains. 

The most recently available farm subsidy data shows that the majority of government subsidies go toward commodity crop production, while just four percent go toward fruit and vegetable production, which the USDA ironically deems “specialty crops.” New York fruit grower Chip Kent said he has only ever received $500 in subsidies; meanwhile, a handful of the largest and wealthiest operations are raking in 80 percent of the billions of available dollars. 

“We could use a little help. Who’s gonna grow our food? You really want to buy it all from overseas?” Kent said in a recent CNBC story. 

And that is becoming a reality; according to the USDA, our fruit and vegetable supply is increasingly made up of imports. In 2021, we imported 60 percent of our fresh fruit and 38 percent of our vegetables. In 2019, we imported $15.7 billion worth of produce from Mexico and by 2023, that number increased to $21 billion. 

Our government’s misplaced prioritization of growing and exporting low-value crops, which primarily benefits the corporations dominating our food system, is reflected in America’s public health. As government subsidies support the production of sugars, starches, and oils, prices on those products remain relatively low. Over time, those foods become the most readily accessible and available, and  fresh produce is priced higher and is less accessible. Most of the American population is not consuming enough fruits and vegetables, according to the U.S. Dietary Guidelines, which determined that 80 percent of people eat too little fruit and 90 percent do not eat enough vegetables. A 2021 study found that Americans are increasingly consuming ultra-processed food (like frozen pizza, soda, and fast food), with over half of our population’s caloric intake coming from ultra-processed foods.

We are on track to have a trade deficit for five of the last seven years, our public health is at risk, and our fruit and vegetable farmers are struggling to stay afloat. The ability to reverse these harmful trends is in the hands of our government. To begin to undo this damage, the next farm bill must better support those farmers who are providing nutritious food for our people. 

It’s worth noting that the soybean industry, which receives substantially more government support, has an industry value estimated at 20 percent lower than that of fruits and vegetables. Farm Action’s research determined that by shifting less than 0.5 percent of current farm acreage to fruit and vegetable production, we could balance the 2023 agriculture trade deficit of $32 billion due to the higher value of food crops. 

We must stop outsourcing what we can grow ourselves; a different way is possible, and a healthy, sustainable food system is attainable. With the next farm bill still up in the air, Farm Action will continue advocating for Congress to shift resources and infrastructure to the production of food for our communities — to the benefit of America’s food security, public health, and farmers. 

Angela Huffman is a co-founder and president of Farm Action. She has over a decade of experience in food and agriculture policy reform and market development.

The post Opinion: The US Doesn’t Grow Enough Food – But We Could appeared first on Modern Farmer.

The Farm Bill, passed once every five years, is the most important piece of federal legislation affecting American agriculture and food access. Originally designed to keep food prices fair for both supply and demand sides, ensure an adequate supply of food, and protect and sustain natural resources, this bill now plays a wildly outsized role in shaping our food system. Lobbyists and advocates influence it from all angles. 

But the Farm Bill is not the be-all and end-all of our food system. It’s easy to think that all changes to our system must start with the Farm Bill, or that the Farm Bill is the only way to have wide influence. It can be easy to overlook opportunities available for progress on the state level, where the smaller-scale forces at work are just as complex, and the stakes just as significant. This year, there will also be scores of state-level bills debated this year from Rhode Island to Texas – bills that will greatly affect farmers, fishers, food entrepreneurs, food access, and food justice all across America.  

One of the best ways to impact the food system for the better is to invest in food policy councils (FPCs) at the community, state, and regional level. 

Be it public, private, or non-profit work, there are frequently intrasector opportunities for collaboration and information sharing within trade groups, or professional associations, which can benefit everyone, without waiting for omnibus legislation like the Farm Bill. These networks hold regular meetings and events that offer opportunities for relationship-building, coalition development, and generate conversation that can lead to new thinking in the field. Yet few opportunities exist to engage in this important work across sectors, especially on the state level. 

In an age where organizations increasingly need to prove their impact, the benefits provided by networks are incredibly valuable.

FPCs bring together diverse stakeholders from different sectors–like food entrepreneurs, farmers, food justice workers, food access workers, and concerned consumers– to identify common ground and collaborate, to help solve problems holistically. 

These food system stakeholders share the goal of a more just and resilient food system. Their participation in these networks is based on their belief that investing time and energy in it will help achieve that goal.   

FPCs are a kind of ‘backbone network,’’ so named because they provide a central structure critical for efficient operation. While in the technology sector, these networks are recognized as critical to system efficacy and efficiency (and adequately funded in response); in the world of food systems change they are largely ignored (and lack adequate funding). The fact is, FPCs need to be cultivated intentionally and invested in more widely for substantive, measurable food system change to take place. 

There are numerous obstacles when building this type of cross-sector network. One of the biggest is that most leaders, no matter what sector they are in, are fully focused on the success of their individual agencies, departments, and organizations. How can they justify prioritizing the time and effort to be part of a network? To be effective, FPCs require members to devote the time to work together in good faith, sometimes with competitors, whether for market share, grant funding, or legislative attention. The emphasis on collaboration often results in compromise that can feel off-brand. On top of that, the cost of not participating can feel fuzzy and far-off to leaders who are laser focused on maintaining their immediate stability while trying to find time to plan strategically for the next year or three. 

The fact is, those leaders can’t afford not to work within FPCs.

The fact is, those leaders can’t afford not to work within FPCs. Even the best organizational leaders in the nonprofit sector have a limited ability to focus on systemic change. Without the structure and support network of an FPC, individual progress may be haphazard, and lack the structure and shared purpose that can produce efficient, intentional, and visionary systems change. 

Over 20 years ago, Margaret Wheatley, in her book Turning to One Another, saw the potential for significant change in the actions of a few individuals: ““[T]he world only changes when a few individuals step forward. It doesn’t change from leaders or top-level programs or big ambitious plans. It changes when we, everyday people gathering in small groups, notice what we care about and take those first steps to change the situation.” 

FPCs create the space for these individuals to band together to create and implement the solutions required for significant food system change to occur. 

Enter the ‘food systems leader. Skillful network leaders practicing in the food system space focus on advancing the entire system, with all of its moving, interconnected parts. They honor each individual’s and organization’s challenges and goals, while cultivating their ability to consistently see and value ‘the big picture’ at the same time. They facilitate connection, conversation, and relationship-building. They craft invitations and create spaces where organizational leaders can take a breath, share challenges and opportunities without judgment, listen to new ideas, and gain the vision they need to do their jobs better. This is the demanding work of participatory democracy, focused on the food system.  

FPCs create the space for these individuals to band together to create and implement the solutions required for significant food system change to occur. 

In an age where organizations increasingly need to prove their impact, the benefits provided by networks are incredibly valuable. Philanthropic decision makers and funders who care about any aspect of the food system – food access and nutrition security, food business and economic development, or the intersections of food, climate, and environment – should invest in backbone food networks and encourage all of their food-focused grantees to join them. This is a path to achieving significant food system change in the next several years, regardless of what happens with the Farm Bill.

Nessa Richman is the executive director of the Rhode Island Food Policy Council and an adjunct professor at the University of Rhode Island College of the Environment and Life Sciences.

The post Opinion: A More Resilient Food System Starts at the Community Level appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Many labels that guarantee humane treatment of farm animals (e.g., “humanely raised”), do anything but and are largely meaningless. Only recently did the USDA announce that it might regulate some of these labels after a push from advocates (we aren’t holding our breath). If this is the case of animal welfare labeling, consumers are right to be concerned that it is likely true of “green” labeling as well, particularly for the dairy industry, which is one of the most environmentally intensive industries on Earth. 

Farm Forward recently published a major investigative report detailing systematic animal suffering and consumer fraud at Alexandre Family Farm—a leading large-scale organic dairy company with “well over 9,000 head of cattle,” according to co-owner Blake Alexandre—whose products are covered in certification labels. The details of this investigation and the facts about large-scale dairy production should call into question the idea that the industry can be compatible with a more sustainable and humane food system. 

Farm Forward’s investigation and deceptive labeling

One of the key findings of Farm Forward’s investigation into Alexandre was this: Certifications such as Regenerative Organic Certified and Certified Humane were, sadly, insufficient to stop widespread abuse of cows and apparent environmental violations of land and water. This means that the primary function of labels—to give consumers assurances that a given product meets their values—frequently fails. In other words, humane labels aren’t there to help the consumer find better products. They’re tools for the meat and dairy industry to market their products. It’s unlikely, for example, that when a consumer sees one of these labels on Alexandre milk products in a Whole Foods Market, they imagine a field of dead cows being used as compost, or decaying cow corpses dangling into waterways, likely violating state water quality laws. Yet that’s exactly what Farm Forward’s investigation found. 

And then there’s the halo effect. Other companies that use Alexandre as a supplier, whether for ice cream, cheese, or even toddler formula, have used marketing based off of Alexandre’s humanewashing and greenwashing, and reaped the benefits. For a long time, Alexandre—and companies that have Alexandre as a supplier—have touted the Regenerative Organic Certified (ROC) label, a certification with genuinely high standards for cow treatment. However, Farm Forward learned from its investigation that only a relatively small number of Alexandre cows (fewer than 300 of the more than 5,000 to 9,000 cows raised by Alexandre, or roughly three to six percent) actually qualify under the label. Yet, companies bathe in the good image of Alexandre all the same, touting Alexandre’s ROC certification whether or not the actual milk used in their products came from ROC cows (as of writing, Alexandre’s ROC certification was suspended after a February 2024 audit, pending conclusion of the investigation).

The Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) Green Guides require that marketers “ensure that all reasonable interpretations of their claims are truthful, not misleading, and supported by a reasonable basis” and that environmental marketing claims “not overstate, directly or by implication, an environmental attribute or benefit.” The FTC itself states that “…sometimes what companies think their green claims mean and what consumers really understand are two different things.” A consumer buying milk adorned with labels such as ROC and “Certified Humane” ought to have confidence that those products were actually made from properly treated cows by a company following environmental guidelines and ordinances, and free from the systematic abuse documented in the investigation. 

Large-scale dairy is incompatible with net zero

In order to understand deceptive labeling, however, we have to go back to the beginning: Why do massive dairy companies feel a need to plaster their products with misleading labels that may violate FTC guidelines? There’s a simple answer: They know the reputation of industrial dairy is faltering and are desperate to remedy the problem with claims that their industry can both expand and save us from climate disaster. And if the recent industrial dairy ad campaigns are any indication, it would seem that they are quite desperate. 

On an ultra-small scale, a sincere commitment to regenerative agriculture is compatible with reducing many of the harms of industrial animal agriculture, including harms to the climate. However, Alexandre and so many other companies that want to rehabilitate dairy farms are not small-scale; they may have thousands of animals under their care. And recent research into the ability of large-scale “regenerative” cow operations to offset as much greenhouse gas emissions as they produce is quite clear: It won’t work. The authors conclude that soil-based carbon sequestration “has a limited role to mitigate climate warming caused by the ruminant sector.” According to the study, offsetting the methane associated with global ruminant farming annually—a massive 135 gigatons—with soil-based sequestration is biophysically impossible. 

And yet, for decades, the broader dairy industry has been pushing smaller farmers out of business, the very farm operations that can represent a legitimate attempt at a regenerative system. 

Playing dairy roulette 

Farm Forward’s investigation didn’t just reveal that one particular company eschewed these standards, but also that the entire dairy system is flawed. Several certifications failed to see animal abuse happening right under their noses. USDA Organic requires that producers that treat an organic cow with antibiotics must remove that cow from the organic program. In doing so, the USDA inadvertently creates a financial disincentive for producers to treat suffering cows with the proper care, since non-organic milk and meat is sold at a far lower price point (see the report’s appendix); and many companies have benefited from the halo effect of Alexandre’s deceptions. What makes this all especially sad is that there are labels—Regenerative Organic Certified and Animal Welfare Approved among them—that genuinely have high standards relative to many other labeling schemes on the market. They can represent a small piece of the path toward a more sustainable and humane food system. But in the context of dairy production, the findings of the investigation have led Farm Forward to think that guaranteeing proper care of thousands of dairy cows just isn’t possible, given the unique challenges of dairy at scale and given the bad incentives. 

Alexandre’s failures are just one example of the dairy industry failing to live up to its promises. It tells us it can save the planet while treating cows humanely, while raking in unprecedented profits with its mega-dairies. How many more instances of animal abuse and climate devastation do we need to see before we stop believing that the industry that creates these harms also somehow holds the key to fixing them?

When a consumer buys milk from the grocery store—milk that they cannot guarantee came from an ultra small-scale operation with high standards of care—they are playing a game of dairy roulette. And in a world of such extreme levels of consumer deception, it becomes an easy choice to try oat milk. 

Farm Forward is a team of strategists, campaigners, and thought leaders guiding the movement to change the way our world eats and farms. Its mission is to change the way our world eats and farms end factory farming by changing farming, changing policy, and changing the stories we tell about animal agriculture. Learn more at https://www.farmforward.com/

The post Opinion: Farm Forward’s Investigation Into Alexandre Farms and the Greenwashing of Large-scale Dairy appeared first on Modern Farmer.

I’ve worked with birds in many different settings, which allowed me access to many different species. For the exotic birds, it ranged from rescued wild-caught African Greys who wanted nothing to do with me to aviaries full of friendly budgies and cockatiels clamoring for a little one-on-one affection. For domestic birds, such as poultry, I worked with total “mutt” chickens to Bourbon Red Turkeys to the coveted Ayam Cemani, a breed of chicken that is fully jet-black, inside and out. (No, I didn’t crack any open to check.) Aside from my own pet birds, I worked on a farm where I raised chickens, ducks, and turkeys, and I volunteered for years at an avian sanctuary primarily for exotic birds like parrots. Some of the exotics I’d worked with were abused, while some were treated like royalty. With the domestics, there was one sad consistency—nobody seemed willing to care about the birds as individuals, and some barely saw them as living creatures whatsoever.

Birds are some of our most underappreciated species. Despite America’s love for birding and bird feeding (it’s estimated that the US alone had over $3 million in sales of bird food and supplies through 2023), we often underestimate their importance both to humanity and to the natural world. In the wild, birds are often keystone species (animals that have a disproportionately large impact on their surrounding environments). By spreading seeds, controlling insect populations and providing prey for larger birds and mammals, birds contribute to their ecosystems. In addition, their sensitive nature means that decreases in bird populations can often be a warning sign for impending danger to other species.

Sometimes, it seems problems the agricultural industry faces could have been avoided by simply looking ahead. Bird flu is one such circumstance that has many gritting their teeth—especially the researchers who sounded the alarm in 2022, when the same strain of bird flu that devastated farmers in 2015 re-emerged. Now, in 2024, we’re still deep in the throes of a bird flu pandemic (so far, mostly contained to animals)—and we have no signs that infections will slow. From January 2022 to June 2024, the USDA found 96.5 million infected birds—and there’s more to come. With so many years of research, loss of animals and stress to the public, one might expect that we would be closer to solving the bird flu crisis, but we’re lagging on actionable answers.

A problem of our own making

Sadly, as it stands today, bird flu isn’t being handled humanely, which should be our bare minimum for epidemics like this. A common method is ventilation shutdown, which is exactly what it sounds like. The ventilation of an enclosure is shut off until the birds die “naturally.” Ventilation shutdown plus (VSD+) is a method where ventilation shutdown is combined with additional heat or gas in attempts to make the process more efficient; there’s no doubt that the birds subjected to this method still suffer excruciatingly. 

According to Ben Williamson, director of Compassion in World Farming, the leading methods of euthanasia for infected birds is “ventilation shutdown, which involves killing birds by an excruciating combination of asphyxiation and heatstroke, is inhumane, contrary to WOAH (World Organisation for Animal Health) standards and should be banned.”

According to the Animal Welfare Institute, about 77 percent of birds infected with bird flu, or 44.9 million birds, were killed via ventilation shutdown from February 2022 to March 2023. In these situations, the WOAH recommends the use of inert gasses, such as nitrogen or carbon dioxide, to be pumped into enclosures, which is a more humane method of slaughter. 

AWI’s analysis of USDA records indicates that operations with large flocks (at least 100,000 birds) were much more likely to employ VSD+ as a mass-killing method. Even with the widespread use of VSD+ in such situations, however, the USDA’s depopulation timeline was not met in a majority of cases. Of the 37 large flock depopulation events that involved VSD+ during a 16-month timespan between 2022 and 2023, nearly two-thirds took at least three days to complete. That’s far from a humane end for birds who were already potentially infected and suffering. In the most extreme cases, in which at least one million birds were involved, depopulation took more than two weeks. 

The USDA has requested that organizations only deploy VSD+ as a last-resort method of culling—and yet, in cases of such large populations of birds, humane options are rarely efficient, and so they are ignored. In addition, turning the ventilation off within a farm is essentially a free method of euthanasia, even if it’s slow and painful. More humane methods are associated with costs for which farms might not want to foot the bill. Chickens are already one of the least protected species when it comes to slaughter. They are exempt from the Humane Methods Of Slaughter Act, largely due to industry lobbying, and are instead given a provision in the 2005 Treatment of Live Poultry Before Slaughter notice by the USDA that they should be handled and slaughtered in a way that “is consistent with good commercial practices.” What this means, however, is not clearly defined. 

No easy way forward

Despite factory farms supplying the majority of the world’s poultry supply, growing concerns are also mounting over their inability to efficiently manage or stop the spread of disease. As of 2017, the most recent year for which data is available, there were 164,099 registered poultry farms in the US, and the majority of them are factory farms.  According to analysis by the Sentience Institute, 99.9 percent of America’s broiler chickens live on factory farms, only slightly higher than 99.8 percent of America’s turkeys. 

“Factory farms create the ideal conditions for the spread of the disease, as they give viruses a constant supply of genetically similar hosts in close proximity to each other—allowing infections to spread rapidly—and for highly harmful new strains to emerge,” says Williamson. “Most worrying of all, keeping large numbers of immune-suppressed birds in close proximity also increases the risk of viruses mutating, perhaps with the risk of evolving into new more pathogenic strains, which can then multiply and spread.” Not only are factory farms a breeding ground for diseases, but stress suppresses the immune system in poultry, and there’s data showing that poultry in factory farms are indeed stressed. Many environmental factors that we’d find unpleasant—heat, crowding, light, noise—all negatively impact chickens, too.  

“When a farm has hundreds of thousands of birds per shed (or tens of thousands of birds per shed in some cage-free systems), rapid disease spread is unavoidable. What’s more, on a policy level, the government and farms are not treating these outbreaks as something that can be mitigated within a farm—if disease is detected, the entire flock is killed,” says karol orzechowski, from Faunalytics, an organization that collects data and research to improve animal welfare. “In this framework, mitigating disease within a farm becomes a moot point.” While there is no cure for HPAI in chickens, there’s no efficient way to test large flocks, meaning uninfected birds are culled along with their infected shedmates. 

There’s no easy answer here. There are plenty of expedient ways to cull chickens without prolonged suffering—cervical dislocation by hand, throat slitting, individualized gassing—that produce much less suffering. But these methods take additional time and money, leading many corporations to opt for the easier method, regardless of  the torment the animals endure.

The Better Chicken Initiative, headed by Compassion in World Farming USA, is a program intended to improve the lives of chickens in factory farms, as well as breed healthier chickens that produce better-quality meat for consumers. Launched in 2014, the organization estimates that with corporate partnerships through the program, the conditions and lives for over 100 million chickens have been improved. Meanwhile, some farms are taking matters into their own hands, such as Kipster, a Dutch egg farm (that has just opened its first US location), prioritizing humane conditions and carbon-neutral farming. 

Whether or not we’re ready to accept it, there’s probably one answer that’s far more humane than any proposed alternatives to bird flu—restructuring not only how factory farms operate but how we treat farmed poultry. Until we have conditions for farmed birds that don’t actively promote the spread of illness, we’ll have to keep fighting. We may not see immediate solutions to the bird flu crisis, but strengthening our animal welfare practices now will help animals and consumers for generations to come.

The post Opinion: Bird Flu is a Problem. The Way We Deal With it is Cruel appeared first on Modern Farmer.

In the US, an estimated 77 million tons of food are wasted annually, even as one in eight American families struggles with hunger. Growing all that food that no one eats wastes financial and natural resources, while also contributing to climate change. Food is the number one item we throw into landfills, where it drives almost 60 percent of their methane emissions.

But there is an easy way to cut down a large portion of that food waste: Change the “best by” labeling system. According to new research by MITRE and Gallup, there are more than 50 different date label phrases in most grocery stores today—“sell by,” “use by,” “best if used by,” “enjoy by,” and so forth—leaving consumers confused about whether these terms refer to freshness, safety or other issues. As a result, one third of all consumers “often or always” throw away food that has passed its date label. The end result is that households and food businesses throw away perfectly wholesome food (6.5 million tons annually in the US, which is nearly 10 percent of all US food waste) and spend an average $1,500 a year per household on food that they then toss in the trash. 

The US has set a goal to halve its food waste by 2030. To accelerate progress, the Zero Food Waste Coalition (a group of nonprofits, major food businesses and communities) has come together to help advance two commonsense pieces of bipartisan legislation: the Food Date Labeling Act (FDLA) and the NO TIME TO Waste Act. Congress should pass both these acts in the upcoming Farm Bill.

The FDLA aims to establish a consistent, easy-to-understand food date labeling system, at no cost to the government. The FDLA would streamline food labeling into two simple categories: “Best If Used By” to communicate peak food quality and “Use By” to indicate the end of a product’s estimated shelf life. Most importantly, the act would launch an education campaign to help consumers understand the difference between these categories.

Simplified date labels are one of the most cost-effective strategies to reduce food waste across the supply chain—with the majority of the benefits going to consumers. The FDLA would also make more food available for donation by clarifying that food can still be donated after a quality date (which 20 states prohibit or restrict today). More than 23 industry leaders, such as Walmart and Unilever, have signed on in support of the FDLA.

In addition to the FDLA, the NO TIME TO Waste Act would establish an Office of Food Loss and Waste at the US Department of Agriculture. This office would spearhead a whole-of-government approach to reducing food waste, strengthen food waste research, create consumer awareness campaigns and support public-private partnerships and local food recovery efforts. 

These two pieces of legislation are a no-brainer for Congress to pass. Tackling food waste is good for consumers, businesses and the environment. Meeting our national goal of reducing food loss and waste by 50 percent would deliver a $73-billion annual net financial benefit (again, in large part to consumers), reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 75 million metric tons and create 51,000 jobs over 10 years. The 2024 Farm Bill is a golden opportunity to make meaningful progress in our fight against food waste, help families stretch their limited food dollars and transition to a more efficient and sustainable food system. 

Pete Pearson is senior director of food waste with World Wildlife Fund in Washington, D.C.

The Zero Food Waste Coalition aims to inform and influence policy at the local, state and federal levels and share policy updates and opportunities with partners and stakeholders around the country to bring consumers, businesses and government together to make food loss and waste history. The Coalition was launched by NRDC, WWF, ReFE, and FLPC in April 2023, formalizing a partnership that began in January 2020.

The post Opinion: Congress Should Standardize Food Labels in Farm Bill to Curb Food Waste appeared first on Modern Farmer.

There’s no doubt that industrial animal agriculture carries a laundry list of sins; greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity loss, deforestation, water pollution and labor rights abuses are just a few examples. But there’s also evidence that some regenerative grazing practices can enhance biodiversity, improve soil health and—possibly—sequester carbon. Not only that, but animal husbandry also has significant cultural value and eating animal products can have health benefits.

For some people, eschewing meat—or even all animal products—entirely is the only reasonable course of action. But for those who don’t want to go so far, “less” and “better” can seem like a pragmatic solution: There’s no need to cut out meat altogether; just cut down. Choose quality over quantity. Dig a little deeper, however, and things once again get very confusing. How much less is less? And how do we determine which meat is better?

Are chicken and pork the most climate-friendly options? Is it better for the planet to eat locally or organically? What’s the impact on my physical health of choosing one meat—or one meat alternative—over another? To be able to weigh up all these questions and accurately calculate which kind of meat and how much is “OK” for us to eat, the average consumer would need far more information, time and energy than anyone typically has at the grocery store. It can feel like we’re doomed to fail before we’ve even made a start.

Here’s the thing: There is no right answer when it comes to meat. And that’s OK. 

These questions and warring data points spurred us to make Less and Better?, our new podcast series from Farmerama Radio. Exasperated and concerned by the lack of nuance around this pressing issue, we wanted to try a different approach—one that attempts to illuminate the values and priorities that underlie even the most allegedly scientifically motivated positions.

For many people, the answer is simple: Just go vegan, or at least vegetarian. Studies show that diets without animal products have one-fourth the climate impact of meat-filled diets—from using less water and land and producing fewer carbon emissions. Rather than wrestling with the “best” meat to eat, many choose to forgo it altogether. 

But not everyone can do that. Meat holds cultural significance for many, and it can have nutritional benefits. There’s also a difference between heavily processed meat products and unprocessed meat, both in their effects on the body and the climate. So, for folks unable or unwilling to give up meat entirely, eating better-quality meat, and less of it, is the best approach. But even then, there are questions. The “right” answers to questions of how much less or what is better depend not only on a dizzying array of complex data but fundamentally hinge on which outcomes you believe are worth pursuing. Some argue that intensive factory farms produce fewer greenhouse gas emissions, in general, than extensive, pasture-fed systems. Others disagree strongly with this, but say, for the sake of argument, we accept this as true. At first, it seems simple: “Better” meat is factory-farmed meat. Now we just need to figure out how much “less” we should eat.

But what if we think the most important issues are biodiversity loss and ecosystem health? Or water pollution? Or workers’ rights? Or animal welfare? We address each of these issues in our series, and each of them points to a potentially different answer. On that last point, for example, animal welfare scientist Professor Françoise Wemelsfelder argues that recognizing farm animals as sentient beings “probably means that large industrial farming systems are not morally feasible.”

Wrestling with these concepts and questions is a valuable and valid exercise; it’s commendable to make decisions about your consumption and purchases that reflect your morals and values. But, like comparing apples with oranges, trying to find the perfect answer is an impossible task. It could even have negative mental health outcomes. Research in the field of consumer behavior has shown that we can experience negative emotions when trying to make choices that force us to make “emotionally laden trade-offs.” And, higher levels of eco-anxiety are reported among folks with more environmental awareness. 

What “less” and “better” means for you also depends on what interests, values and biases underlie your particular vision of what the world could, and should, look like. Efforts to boil less and better down to simplistic questions of CO2 emissions per livestock unit or the relative technical merits of soil carbon sequestration versus cellular agriculture ignore political questions. Questions such as who benefits? Who holds the power? Who has access to “better” meat? And what kind of future are we building?

Ultimately, we don’t think it’s possible to provide a simple, silver-bullet answer to the question of what constitutes “less” and “better” meat. But we also think that’s kind of the whole point. When it comes to less and better meat, we think the real question we need to ask is better for whom and for what?

Listen to the podcast series Less and Better? by Farmerama Radio here. 

The post Opinion: There’s No Right Way to Eat Meat appeared first on Modern Farmer.

The researcher and passionate urban gardener in me couldn’t resist digging in deeper and working to illuminate a fuller “truth” around this recent result. Spoiler alert: Avoid carbon tunnel vision, as focusing on a single emissions metric misses the many other benefits that can get us out of the crisis we’re in. 

Back up a step: What is urban agriculture? Urban ag is any kind of food production space within a city, inclusive of commercial farms that grow and sell directly to consumers, non-profit farms that serve a broader mission, community gardens, school gardens and even vacant lots turned into thriving personal gardens or homesteads. 

Better yet, why do some researchers, farmers and activists prefer the term “urban agroecology?” From 2017 to 2019, my research team helped to define and elevate “urban agroecology” in the US as a better way of acknowledging the multifunctional benefits of urban green spaces. These farms and gardens are not “just” growing food, they are also building community, performing environmental services (think stormwater mitigation and reducing urban heat island effect), providing habitat for biodiversity and educating urban residents. It’s often one of the only ways kids and adults alike can interact with nature, see where their food comes from and witness the magic of a seed sprouting. Urban growing spaces are also often led by women and BIPOC farmers (more than 60 percent in my investigation of the East Bay in California’s Bay Area), serving as important grounds for empowerment, culturally relevant food production and healing of racialized patterns of agricultural work. 

So, I had alarm bells going off when reading about this new study. The research from the University of Michigan-led study seems to show that fruit and vegetables grown in urban ag have a carbon footprint six times larger than that of “conventionally grown” food (meaning, on rural farmland). 

The choice to compare greenhouse gas intensity of soil-based urban agriculture systems with conventional farming systems brings up an inherently unfair comparison. When looking at conventional, large-scale farming systems, which are largely monocultures designed to maximize yield per acre via application of fossil-fuel based fertilizers, pesticides and other chemicals, we already have a large body of evidence that these are carbon-intensive production systems with a host of other detrimental environmental impacts (land, air and water pollution, soil degradation and erosion, habitat and biodiversity loss across billions of acres of “conventional farmland” globally). 

However, when you divide a large number (i.e., carbon emissions) by another large number (yield per acre), you get a small number of carbon emissions associated with each serving of lettuce, for example. When looking at urban community and school farms and gardens, we often see highly diversified plots that are more sparsely planted, with some weedy edges. They’re not exactly “yield-maximizing” practices on display. So, when you divide a relatively small number of carbon emissions, which the researchers in the study attributed to things such as garden infrastructure (raised beds, paved paths, tool sheds and others)—so, indirect emissions—and divide it by another very small number (yield per acre), you end up with a relatively larger number than your conventional allegory “lettuce serving.” The math here doesn’t point the finger towards the system that really needs changing in carbon and climate terms. 

This study disregards the far more pressing issue of the sheer quantity of emissions that come from conventional farming. Additionally, the conversations only circled back towards the end to include or acknowledge the many climate “benefits” of having spaces where city dwellers can connect with their food system and with nature in the city. These less quantifiable benefits are primary, not secondary; they are essential to bring into collective societal focus, rather than obscure behind a conclusion that sets up a feeling of confusion or uncertainty about whether urban ag is or is not a “climate solution.” Urban farms, especially when well managed and resourced with consistent staffing and city support, are critical pieces of the climate solutions puzzle. 

It brings me back to this unsettled feeling that the study is asking the wrong research question, if the conclusions and headlines point us towards some course of action around “fixing” urban farms so they can have a lower carbon footprint, while saying nothing about the carbon-intensive conventional farming system that urgently needs to change to address the overlapping climate and public health crisis. To quote one of the leaders of my urban ag research project, Dr. Timothy Bowles, a professor of Agroecology at U.C. Berkeley: 

“This is an issue with metrics… in this case, using efficiency as the metric (i.e., amount of food produced per unit of GHG emission). Efficiency metrics can be problematic for a number of reasons, and a number of studies have demonstrated more ‘efficient’ food production from conventional systems compared to various alternatives from a strictly GHG standpoint, largely due to higher yields, even if total emissions are high. In general, we need multifunctional perspectives for a more holistic systems comparison.” 

To be sure, we need conventional farming systems right now that create efficiency and economies of scale to grow and distribute large volumes of food to feed a growing population. There is no switching to diversified farming and regenerative agriculture overnight, just like there is no transition to purely solar and wind power for our electricity system without proper planning for this change. I’m not saying we can feed the entire city from the products of urban farms (although there have been researchers before me who modeled that this is theoretically possible, within a 50-mile radius, of a US midwestern city). What we need is for the conventional food system to change dramatically: to reduce reliance on fossil-fuel-based inputs, be more adaptive to climate extremes, adopt climate-friendly practices such as cover cropping and compost application, and in doing all this become a better source of healthy food. 

I’m also all for improving urban farms, increasing recycling of materials and waste streams in cities and resourcing them to be viable sites of food production, as the study authors point out as action items. I just find the impetus for doing so to be limited if we’re primarily talking about reducing the carbon footprint of these sites. Urban farms are capable of teaching the principles of photosynthesis, soil health and carbon sequestration even if they are not sequestering carbon in large quantities. And this knowledge is powerful. 

Where do we go from here as researchers, as eaters and producers of food? The food system of today is in crisis. It has prioritized cost and yield over all else. The result? It doesn’t work for farmers, it does not produce nutritious, healthy food for people and it is a disaster environmentally. However, the future of food can be diversified, abundant and rooted in soil health practices, fostering social equity and farmer well-being. I see that shift happening already on farms both urban and rural, big and small. It takes education, both farmer to farmer and farmer to consumer, as well as policy change to support the shifts already in motion. By reconnecting with food, with ecology, with living soil, we connect to climate solutions and help to reverse the damages of climate change.

Laney Siegner is founder and Co-director of Climate Farm School, with a Ph.D. from U.C. Berkeley Energy and Resources Group. 

The post Opinion: To Make a Real Impact on Climate Change, We Must Move Beyond the Carbon Footprint appeared first on Modern Farmer.

The farm bill is a critical bipartisan package of legislation that renews every five years, and it expired on September 30, 2023. To avert a government shutdown, the Senate passed an extension bill to keep the essential programs running through the end of September 2024. This tightrope omnibus bill funds the SNAP program, farmer subsidies and USDA loan programs and grants. Eaters and farmers alike depend on this bill to get food on the table.

As a farmer’s daughter and farm advocate, I know that the farm bill has one of the greatest impacts on what you eat, how that food was grown and the ability of beginning farmers to find land in the first place. Many of my friends are farmers and I’ve seen them struggle against countless barriers, especially when it comes to accessing or purchasing land. In a recent National Young Farmers Coalition survey, 59 percent of young farmers named finding affordable land to buy as “very or extremely challenging.” 

I’ve come to understand that despite where a farmer lives or what they grow, the lack of affordable land to farm is the number one reason farmers are leaving agriculture, the top challenge for current farmers and the primary barrier preventing aspiring farmers from getting started. The next farm bill can fix this.

Oregon agriculture is a part of my identity. I grow small-scale herbs, seeds and nursery starts in my backyard garden and work in the nonprofit agriculture world. My Land Advocacy Fellowship with the National Young Farmer Coalition empowered me to share my experience of growing up on the family farm with my senators and representatives offices on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. 

In June 2023, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced the awardees of the $300-million Increasing Land, Capital, and Market Access Program, which included 50 community-based projects for underserved farmers, ranchers and forest landowners. Three projects were funded here in Oregon, led by the Black Oregon Land Trust, Indian Land Tenure Foundation program and Community Development Corporation of Oregon. This program resulted in federal dollars going out the door, directly benefiting community-led land access solutions. It was also a one-time funding opportunity that I believe should be made permanent. 

Following the creation of that one-time program, the bipartisan Increasing Land Access, Securities, and Opportunities Act (LASO) was introduced in both the House and the Senate. The LASO Act would expand on the promise of the Increasing Land, Capital, and Market Access Program. If enacted, this bill would authorize $100 million in annual funding for community-led land access solutions through the next farm bill. This would be a significant victory for young farmers, ranchers and everyone who has been fighting to win federal funding to address issues of equitable land access.

Flying to Washington, D.C with farmer Michelle Week of Good Rain Farm really impacted me. Hearing her experience of feeding more than 150 families in her Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) subscription yet still unable to afford to purchase farmland as an Indigenous woman in the Portland Metro area is alarming. 

Across the country, farmland is being lost to development at a rate of more than 2,000 acres per day. Over the next 20 years, nearly half of US farmland is expected to change hands. Additionally, Black farmers across the United States have lost 90 percent of their historic farmland due to systemic racism and discriminatory lending. Today, according to the most recently available statistics, 95 percent of farmers are white in the United States and 96 percent of land owners are white. For these reasons and more, I advocate for federal reparations in the form of land access through the LASO bill.

We all eat and, in order to eat, we all need farmers. I hope you’ll consider getting in contact with your members of Congress today and urge them to support farmers by asking them to include the Increasing Land Access, Security, and Opportunities Act (H.R.3955, S.2340) in the next farm bill. With the current farm bill temporarily extended, it’s a pivotal moment to uplift critical policy changes like the LASO Act and invest in the health and well-being of our communities, our food system and the future we all deserve.

Carly Boyer (she/they) is a fourth-generation land manager, stewarding 140 acres in Polk County, OR. She works for Oregon Climate and Agriculture Network, an agricultural non-profit focused on Soil health. She is a board member for Rogue Farm Corps, a beginning farmer program and a Land Advocacy Fellow with the National Young Farmers Coalition advocating for the One Million Acres for the Future Farm Bill campaign in Washington, D.C.

The post Opinion: Farmers Are Dropping Out Because They Can’t Access Land. Here’s How the Next Farm Bill Could Stop the Bleeding. appeared first on Modern Farmer.

French farmers, for instance, managed to persuade their nation’s leaders to ban food imports treated with the insecticide thiacloprid, dedicate €150 million (US$163 million) annually to support livestock producers and provide European-wide definitions for what constitutes lab-grown meat. German farmers also saw movement in their favor from their lawmakers on fuel subsidies. When protests reached Brussels—where the European Parliament was in session—European Union policy makers announced plans to cushion the blow from Ukraine grain imports and address bureaucratic red tape. 

Thus far, the protests offer some takeaways for American food and farm activists. 

Specifically, not only can public disruption trigger real change, but there is room to push back against the disastrous free trade policies that have wreaked havoc on farm economies on both sides of the Atlantic. Reducing tariffs and weakening price support policies to align with World Trade Organization (WTO) policy prescriptions, as well as those found in other free trade deals, such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), has made food producers increasingly subject to price volatility. Such regional and international free trade policies took policy-making power away from national governments, transfering that power to unelected bureaucrats who thought food should be treated like any other commodity. 

US farmers and their allies should pay attention, think how to make protest part of our ongoing Farm Bill debate and take some power back when it comes to making policy.

In Europe, the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP)—similar to the Farm Bill in the United States—governs most facets of the continent’s agricultural system, including financial assistance, environmental policy and the regulation of exports and imports. Beginning in 1962 with France, Germany, Luxembourg, Belgium, Italy and the Netherlands, the arrangement has grown along with the European Union to cover all of the organization’s 27 member states.

CAP policies began to change in the 1990s to promote “efficiency.” Several policies were eliminated, including export subsidies, production quotas in dairy and price supports that were coupled to farmer income. While US President Ronald Reagan railed against “government cheese” to point out the assumed wasteful nature of US agricultural policy in the 1980s, in Europe, “wine lakes” and “butter mountains” were made into campaign slogans to cut public assistance for farmers. 

And cuts took place: From 1980 to 2021, the total EU budget dedicated to agriculture went to below 25 percent from more than 60 percent. 

The drop in production is coupled with declining rates of farmers themselves. In France, there were 389,000 farmers in 2020—almost 800,000 fewer than in 1980. Poland has lost 13% of its producers since 2010. Overall, throughout Europe from 2005 to 2020, the continent has seen 37 percent of its farms go out of business. During that same time, production has grown, as only farms of more than 200 hectares (approximately 400 acres) have increased in number. 

Matters are much the same in the US. According to the recently released 2022 Census of Agriculture, the largest four percent of US farms (2,000 or more acres) control 61 percent of all farmland. In 1987, that figure was 15 percent. Similarly, in 2015, 51 percent of the value of US farm production came from farms with at least $1 million in sales, compared to 31 percent in 1991. From 1997 to 2022, more than 340,000 farms, or 15 percent of operations, went out of business.

In Europe, the ever-dwindling financial support for farmers is made contingent on meeting various environmental and labor standards. Put simply, for assistance, farmers must do more to receive less. Aiding, not curtailing ongoing consolidation, 20 percent of Europe’s farmers—particularly large-scale operators in terms of land and production—receive 80 percent of all payments. 

Adding insult to injury, EU authorities allowed the import of cheap Ukrainian grain to assist that country in its ongoing war with Russia. This, as supply chain disruptions from that conflict drove up the prices that European farmers pay for inputs such as gas and fertilizer. EU policymakers also are negotiating a contentious free trade deal with the South American regional trade bloc, Mercosul, which would invite agricultural export giants Argentina and Brazil to potentially undercut European producers. 

US farmers suffer in a similar policy environment as their European counterparts. The 1996 Farm Bill made periodic, ad hoc direct payments the primary way the US government provided financial assistance for producers. Gone, but years later reintroduced in a significantly weakened form, were non-recourse loans that assured farmers a decent income if market prices dipped below a certain threshold. With such loans, decent incomes can be guaranteed without forcing farmers to increase production potentially in environmentally harmful ways as governments purchase products off the market to stock reserves. 

To take on the harmful cuts that free trade policy promotion made a reality in the farm policy, US farmers and their allies could find inspiration from what is taking place in Europe, perhaps going to DC to make their voices heard. 

In fact, US farmers in the past did so. When free trade was in its infancy back in 1979, thousands of farmers drove their tractors to DC to demand policy changes to address rising foreclosures and increases in input costs. These actions inspired the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) to bring activists together in DC last year but mainly to make climate policy part of the Farm Bill. 

Now, with the Farm Bill debate continuing at least through September of this year, pricing policy reforms could take center stage. Some farm groups, such as the National Family Farm Coalition (NFFC) with its dozens of member organizations, have made pricing policy reform central to their Farm Bill platform. In demanding parity pricing, policy instruments such as non-recourse loans could be improved to assure farmers decent prices and dissuade them from increasing production to make ends meet. Addressing concentration is also part of the NFFC’s demands, with particular attention to an increased role for the government to finance land access programs and enforce antitrust laws.

Do such proposals challenge free trade? Yes, they do. And as European farmers have shown, protest can yield results. By adding some popular mobilization into the mix of our ongoing Farm Bill debate, maybe with the occasional rotten egg or manure load, farmers and their allies could push our lawmakers to make real changes for the benefit of our food and farm system. Let’s not just stand by as the people who grow our food endure yet more financial hardship.

Anthony Pahnke is the vice-president of the Family Farm Defenders and an associate professor of international relations at San Francisco State University; anthonypahnke@sfsu.edu. 

The post Opinion: European Farmers Are Standing Up to Free Trade—Will US Farmers? appeared first on Modern Farmer.

There were times during this voyage that it seemed humanity was driving down an alley toward a brick wall, fast. Catastrophe loomed everywhere I looked: in the dust bowls on the once-fertile plains of central Turkey, in the vanishing lakes of Mexico City, in the fetid cesspools outside the factory farms of North Carolina, in the disease-ravaged olive trees of Puglia, in the rapid wiping away of diverse food webs in every biome. The demographers’ scenario, where we’ll have to produce 50 percent more food by midcentury to feed a population of ten billion or face famine, sometimes seemed like the only possible outcome.

For the time being, our cunning plan seems to be to wait until the last second and hope an airbag will deploy to cushion us from the final impact. In modern times, there’s a long tradition of techno-optimists or cornucopians–science writer Charles C. Mann calls them “wizards”–telling us that technology will come to our rescue. In the 1930s, Winston Churchill predicted in the pages of a Canadian magazine that future famines would be averted by raising edible bacteria in underground cellars using artificial radiation. Others saw yeast factories and transcontinental algae pipelines nourishing the domed metropolises of the 21st century. 

According to the techno-optimists, hacking photosynthesis by genetically modifying rubisco, the enzyme found in all plants that turn sunlight and carbon dioxide into starches, proteins, and other nutrients will allow us to radically increase rice yields in Asia. Growing perennial grasses, rather than annuals like wheat, will permit us to mow the cereals we eat rather than cutting them down whole, thus keeping root systems intact and putting an end to soil degradation. Using robots to milk cows and drones for the precision irrigation of crops will save labor costs and conserve water. And growing meat in the lab, from cultured stem cells in bioreactors will eliminate the need for raising livestock, and all the environmental havoc that goes with it.

A closer look, though, shows that most of these techno fixes have serious downsides. Perennial wheat, marketed as Kernza, doesn’t have enough gluten to make bread or pasta; robot-milking systems don’t allow for pasture feeding, requiring cows to remain in barns year-round for the system to be profitable. Venture capitalists have poured $3 billion into the lab-grown meat industry, yet the resulting products have to be bulked up with plant protein, and are still far from palatable. As for Churchill’s plan to raise bacteria in caves, it’s back in the form of journalist George Monbiot’s plan for curing “agricultural sprawl” and feeding the billions: calories will once again be plucked out of the air, as Scandinavian labs use electricity and “precision fermentation” to transform bacteria into gray protein pancakes.

My response to the techno-optimists and wizards who tell us that we should all subsist on a diet of bacteria, yeast, cultured meat, or algae is: you go first. And by that I don’t mean take the first bite. (As an adventurous eater. I’ll try anything once.) I mean, show me that you can survive and thrive on that diet for five, ten, or 20 years. Then I might consider joining you.

I’ve noticed something about “scientifically improved” foods. To put it bluntly: nobody wants to eat that shit. The first approved transgenic vegetable, the slow-ripening rot-resistant Flavr Savr tomato, engineered with genes from a bacterial parasite, was a commercial flop, losing millions for the company that developed it. Golden rice, engineered to contain higher levels of beta-carotene, and the Arctic Apple, designed not to brown when cut, have also failed to attract farmers and consumers. 

It turns out that what people do want to eat when they’re given any kind of choice, and are able to afford it, is non-GM food. The market for organic food, which has more than doubled in a decade, accounted for $58 billion in sales in 2021 in the United States alone.

If we’re really serious about forestalling famine, we need to stop feeding so much grain to livestock, and save the wheat, corn, and rice we grow for human consumption. Edible insects are already being used to feed poultry and farmed fish, but they could also be included in the feed of cattle and pigs. The black soldier fly is an efficient, fast growing converter of organic waste into protein for animal feed. I interviewed Kieran Olivaraes Whitaker, the founder of the British company Entocycle, who has succeeded in raising millions of flies in a tiny rented space in the center of London. The entirely automated operation used the waste from breweries to feed the bugs; the black soldier flies can be used to boost the protein content in feed for cattle, poultry, pigs, and farmed fish. This approach makes a lot more sense to me than hoping humans will suddenly acquire a taste for bug-burgers. 

But raising insects for feed is a patch, not a solution. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has made it clear that for the time being, food producers pump out enough calories to feed everybody on Earth. It’s equally clear that the billions of inhabitants of the “Global South” aren’t the problem. It’s the people in the world’s rich nations, as well as the growing middle classes in Asia, Latin America, and Africa, who consume diets high in processed foods and grain-fed meat and dairy that keep us hurtling toward that brick wall. 

In the final months of writing this book, I was lucky enough to spend a few weeks surrounded by wheat fields. I was staying in the foothills of the Jura Mountains, in the canton of Vaud, a part of Switzerland that prides itself on sustainable organic agriculture. Many of the farms were centuries old. The entire landscape seemed devoted to turning the richness of the soil into fantastically delicious foods. I witnessed the age-old transhumance, in which Simmental, Jersey, and Charolais cows were transported to summer pastures in alpine meadows more than 4,000 feet in altitude, where they fed on wild flowers and lush grass to produce the exquisite Gruyère, Tomme, and Vacherin cheeses sold in village fromageries. 

I’d arrived in mid-May, just as the reddish-orange poppies were blooming. On daily bike rides, I got to see the spring wheat planted in fields all around me mature from a lustrous green to a sharkskin amber. I recalled the criticism leveled against wheat: that it’s one of humanity’s most egregious examples of a monocrop. But in the Vaud, the fields were relatively small, a few dozen acres at most, and people were careful to plant fruit and nut-bearing trees alongside the edges. A local initiative had dotted jachères, richly diverse plots of native grasses and wildflowers that encouraged birds to nest and insects to gather pollen, in random spots among the wheat fields. 

Being in Switzerland was a reminder that agriculture need not be the problem. Done properly, it was the solution to our diversity and sustainability crisis. There was a world of other great practices out there, sometimes referred to as regenerative farming, biointensive agriculture, agroforestry, or permaculture, like the mixed mountain farming champion Sepp Holzer, an Austrian advocate of farming on marginal land.

Even if we aren’t in a position to grow our own food, there are straightforward ways we can all become responsible eaters. The  poet and essayist Wendell Berry laid out seven principles in his influential 1989 essay “The Pleasures of Eating.” Prepare your own food; learn where the food you buy comes from; deal directly, whenever possible, with local farmers, gardeners and orchardists. In self-defense, teach yourself about the economy and technology of food production and how industry adds to and alters food. Learn what is involved in the best farming, as well as in the life histories of food species. First and foremost, participate in food production, even if that means nothing more than growing herbs or tomatoes on a kitchen windowsill.

In Switzerland, I remembered the wheat fields I’ve known on the Canadian Prairies and the Great Plains, which can cover 30,000 acres, so vast that walking from one edge to the other can take three hours. Planted with dwarf hybrid varieties, sprayed with pesticides, and shocked dead with glyphosate for easier harvesting by combines, this was the kind of landscapes the critics of industrial agriculture decry: one devoid of diversity, dead except for the one plant species that happens to be valued by modern humans: wheat. It was a stark contrast to the Swiss countryside, where agriculture was practiced in a way that kept the soil healthy, and the land and air alive with animal, plant, and insect life.

If humans are defined as the species that adapts to new environments, we’ve fulfilled our destiny to the extent that we now find ourselves adapted to impoverished environments entirely of our own making. The monocultures of wheat, rice, corn, and soybeans that feed us depend for their success on the elimination of biodiversity. But diversity is what confers resiliency, and by simplifying natural habitats to serve the needs of industrial agriculture, we’ve left ourselves open to pandemics, supply-chain-disrupting wars, droughts, floods, and new crop and livestock diseases. Our determination to feed everyone on the planet cheaply has already resulted in malnourishment for the masses. If we don’t change our ways, it could soon lead to hunger for all.

Taras Grescoe is a Montreal-based journalist and author. He is the author of Straphanger, Bottomfeeder, and The Devil’s Picnic. He writes about the history of food on lostsupper.blog. 

The post Opinion: To Find the Future of Food, We Need to Look to the Past appeared first on Modern Farmer.