“It’s a premium product,” says executive chef and partner Daniel Garwood. “The cow has gone through its whole life. There’s a lot of natural marbling. It has an interesting flavor and texture.”

Since opening the restaurant in October of 2024, Garwood, who hails from Australia and spent time cooking in Sweden, has served ribeye, strip loin, tenderloin, brisket, and even mince pie, all from dairy cow beef.

In the U.S., dairy cows are almost exclusively raised for dairy production. The exception is male calves, sold to the beef industry and raised for veal or beef. Once a dairy cow’s milk productivity declines, the cows are slaughtered with their meat, which is often considered of a lower quality and makes its way into dog and cat food and fast food burgers. In other parts of the world, though, such as in Sweden, where Garwood worked, meat from dairy herds is prized. 

Now, a growing number of U.S. restaurants, including ACRU, Blue Hill at Stone Barns, and Gwen Restaurant in Los Angeles, have been exploring whether dairy cow meat will appeal to consumers interested in sustainability.  

“Meat from grass fed dairy cows is considered to have a lower carbon footprint than meat from traditional beef herds in part because its footprint is spread across the years of protein rich, delicious milk the animals produce in their lifetime,”  says Dan Barber of Blue Hill at Stone Barns.

There’s an idea that beef from a dairy herd is a more sustainable option, because you are getting more food for the resources used. Instead of simply just getting milk or beef from the land, water, feed, put into the cow you’re getting both. 

Sustainability was a big draw for The Oberon Group, which owns restaurants and food markets in the Catskills and New York City. They introduced dairy beef in 2017, and while customers supported the sustainability efforts, there were concerns around texture.

“The customer pushback on the toughness was significant,” says Henry Rich, managing partner.

As dairy cows are older when they are slaughtered compared to beef cattle, which usually are culled at six to seven months for veal, or two years for beef, the meat is generally considered tougher.

“They generally don’t have a lot of intramuscular fat or marbling that gives beef the flavoring that is associated with it. And all of those things usually reduce consumer acceptance. I would guess restaurants are using some pretty unique cooking methods in order to overcome that,” says Tara Felix, an associate professor in the Department of Animal Science at the University of Pennsylvania.

The Oberon Group is focused on sustainable, environmental restaurants with a goal of carbon-neutrality and zero-waste. As he explains it, they started serving dairy beef in a meat-centric restaurant, Metta, because, at the time, they believed that because the carbon emissions of the cow were already caused by dairy, using the cows for meat would have a lower carbon footprint that cows that were just used for meat. The calculation soon felt a bit off to Rich.

“The claim that they had lower overall carbon footprints is because you’re ignoring the first however many years of life because they’d be here anywhere. That accounting started to feel a little fuzzy for me,” Rich says.

There is research that seems to agree that dairy beef has a lower carbon footprint than conventional beef. An analysis from Our World in Data, found that per 100 grams of protein beef from a beef herd had 49.89 grams of greenhouse gasses, whereas beef from a dairy herd was 16.87 grams.

“The challenge is that sustainability means something different to everyone. Is it reduced methane emissions? Is it reduced feed inputs? Is it reduced time on feed?” says Felix who added that it’s a question a number of people are currently researching in regards to the offspring from dairy farms which do already often make their way into beef herd programs.

Between the customer response and the lack of clarity over sustainability, The Oberon Group ended up phasing out the dairy beef program after about two years.

However, the company started and stopped its dairy beef program before the coronavirus pandemic upended life as we knew it. Chefs life Garwood and Barber that have started their dairy beef programs within the last year or so have done so at a time when there is perhaps more awareness of the interconnectedness of food systems, and climate-related disasters such as the wildfires in Maui or more recently in L.A., have pushed more people to think about the impacts of global warming. Garwood and Barber have so far received vastly different responses to their program. 

“The response has been overwhelmingly positive. Grass-fed beef and meat from dairy cows has the reputation of being tough, but some of our guests have told us it’s the best steak they’ve ever had,” says Chef Dan Barber of Blue Hill at Stone Barns.

Blue Hill started using dairy beef in 2023, but Barber credits the cows on his family’s dairy in the Berkshires for making him want to experiment with dairy beef.

“Blue Hill Farm, my family’s dairy farm in the Berkshires, had an older dairy cow ready for culling at least once or twice a year. I bet it was my proximity to these exceptional ladies—spending years, in some cases seven or eight or more years, getting to know them well—that made their inevitable fate of becoming dog food feel disrespectful,” says Barber.

Barber and Garwood haven’t yet faced any significant negative customer response. At Blue Hill at Stone Barns, dairy cows forage on grass and hay before being slaughtered.

“The meat from grass-fed dairy cows has this incredible, idiosyncratic flavor,” says Barber. “But more than that, the idea is to showcase how delicious this often-overlooked meat can be and create a market for it.”

U.S. dairy farmers typically get only about 60 cents per pound for meat from retired dairy cows as dog food and fast food hamburgers. If they could get closer to $6 a pound or more for their animals, Barber says it could help boost revenue for dairy farmers.

Felix agrees that it could be economically appealing for dairy farmers but believes that its success would depend on the size of the dairy farm and whether or not the restaurant could take all of the animals the dairy produces.

“There are 86 million head of cattle in the United States, and each year we kill 26 to 28 million. If we’re talking about even eight or 10 restaurants using two to three cows a week, this is a very, very small market,” Felix says. “Not to discount it, because it would be great if a farmer could develop a relationship like that, but it’s probably never going to be our primary marketplace.”

That isn’t a deterrent for Garwood. Initially, he had trouble sourcing the dairy beef. “We had to buy the entire cow,” says Garwood, who is sourcing from Ends Meat in Brooklyn, which gets dairy cows from farms in upstate New York, adding that he’s had other restaurants express interest in getting primal cuts but not being able to handle the entire cow.

“We really want to pursue it,” Garwood says. “We’ll focus on whole dairy cow dinners in the coming months.”

The post Why Are Restaurants Selling Beef From Dairy Cows? appeared first on Modern Farmer.

In 2024, Environmental Defence Canada published Left Holding the Bag: A Survey of Plastic Packaging in Canada’s Grocery Stores. They found that over 70 percent of products in the produce and baby food aisle are encased in plastic. It’s not much better in the US. In 2019 Greenpeace USA assessed 20 grocery retailers with a significant national or regional presence. None of the retailers, according to Greenpeace, appeared to have comprehensive plans on how to reduce plastic use.

And while it’s true that consumers increasingly report that using less plastic matters to them, statistics paint a different picture. In 2020, over 242 million Americans used bagged or packaged salads–a figure expected to have risen to 251.47 million in 2024. Salad bags are generally categorized as “plastic film” and they jam recycling machinery. They end up in the landfill where they decompose releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

Alongside the environmental concerns, there are potential health issues. Growing research suggests that chemicals used in the manufacture of plastic contribute to a multitude of health issues. Consumer Reports tested nearly 100 foods ranging from dairy products to canned goods.They found that phthalates, a chemical used to make plastic flexible, were in almost all of them. Studies suggest that regular exposure to phthalates can affect reproductive health and that older adults with phthalates in their bodies were more likely to suffer heart disease.  

But, there’s hope. In April 2024, the European Parliament voted to approve new rules aimed at reducing plastic packaging. Starting in 2030, bans will be in place for packaging of unprocessed fresh fruits and vegetables. Consumers will be encouraged to bring their containers to restaurants and cafés, which will also aim to offer 10 percent of products in reusable packaging. Since 2022,  Canada has banned the use of single use plastic bags at supermarket checkouts. And, in the US more than a hundred municipalities and cities have banned polystyrene ( styrofoam) used in food containers, including Los Angeles and New York. Illinois has gone even further. Legislation came into effect in 2024, permitting restaurants and retailers to fill or refill consumer-owned containers with ready-made or bulk food. Still, plastic packaging persists. 

Currently, out of over 300,000 grocery stores in the U.S., which range from expansive supermarkets to small specialty shops, only 1,300 zero-waste stores offer a plastic-free shopping experience.We spoke with a few shops around the country to see how they ditched the plastic. 

Maison: pay for food, not packaging

After visiting France and shopping plastic-free, Larasita Vitoux was inspired to open Maison Jar Refillery and Grocery Store in Brooklyn.

“In Europe, there are so many refilleries and stores with bulk aisles,” Vitoux says.   

Maison Jar sells bread, vegetables and dried goods all free of plastic covering. According to the store’s year-end impact report for 2023, they are making a dent in plastic use. For example: in 2023 Maison Jar sold 39,075 fluid ounces of kombucha–the equivalent of 2,443 16 oz plastic bottles. 

Something Vitoux believes could propel plastic free bulk shopping into the mainstream market is the introduction of Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) legislation. An EPR shifts the responsibility for managing materials at the end of life away from consumers and onto producers who are required to provide funding and/or services that assist in managing products after the use phase. To accomplish this, as Vitoux points out, there can be an embedded cost associated with the packaged goods that gets passed on to the consumer. 

Because bulk buying eliminates packaging, bulk items would not incur this carry over expense. 

“It would make bulk much more competitive,” Vitoux says. As of January 2025 legislation to establish EPR’s in New York State, where Maison Jar is,  had been introduced.  

Re_grocery: direct from the farm 

After living in San Francisco and enjoying bulk plastic-free shopping at the city’s iconic Rainbow Grocer, Joseph Macrino returned to Los Angeles in 2016. “ There weren’t any options in L.A. like that,” he says. So, he created his own. re_grocery’s first location opened in April 2020.

From the start, the store was popular; five years later re_grocery has expanded to a chain of three stores. One in Studio City, another in East L.A. and one in Venice. Carrying everything from cooking oils, quinoa, and organic vegetables, they work to keep  prices as competitive as conventional grocers.

“A lot of it has to do with the bulk nature of products we are purchasing,” Macrino explains. “For example, we purchase quinoa in 25lb bags. We get it directly from the farm after some processing and re-packing. It’s not going to another co-packer, where it is getting broken down into smaller packages. By avoiding that other middleman – the co-packer,  we are able to price bulk packages cheaper.” 

Customers at re_grocery weigh their containers when they arrive and receive a laser chip that is attached to the receptacle.When their goods are weighed at the check out the laser tag is scanned and the container weight is subtracted. The customer does not pay any extra for the container.

Roots Zero Waste Market: on demand ordering

The argument for wrapping a cucumber or head of cabbage in plastic is to maintain shelf life and freshness longer. At Roots, Rainey applies a “just-in-time ordering policy.” By ordering more frequently – often three times a week and only what she needs – food remains fresh. Roots sell eggs, milk, meat, and organic produce alongside bulk items such as olive oil, spices and rice. “We evaluate what’s moving on the floor seasonally and adjust to how people’s buying patterns are fluctuating at the time,” she says.

“We are an environmental company disguised as a retailer,” she says.  

Roots operates on a closed-loop business model that fits with Rainey’s environment consciousness, who is adamant that recycling does not work.

“There is no such thing as recycling,” she says. Not only do rules for what can be recycled vary by state: a plastic strawberry container, for instance, may be repurposed, but cling wrap may not be so lucky. Items such as toothpaste containers, chip bags, or juice boxes are formed with multiple layers of materials making them hard to break down and recycle.  

“We never send anything to the landfill,” Rainey says. If, for example, an apple gets bruised in produce, it’s taken to the deli where it is pressed into juice, with the  pulp repurposed for muffins and its core composted. 

 “We are an environmental company disguised as a retailer,” she says.  

The post On the Ground with Grocery Stores Ditching Plastic appeared first on Modern Farmer.

The situation was worse than she realized: Prairie dogs are among the most maligned and persecuted animal species in the Western U.S. So maligned, in fact, that a 2020 survey in northern Montana found that well over half the area’s landowners believed prairie dogs should not live on public land.

To make matters even grimmer, this particular prairie dog had fleas. And those fleas could have been carrying the bacteria that causes plague — the Black Death. “It’s not great,” commented researcher Jesse Boulerice as he adjusted his gentle grip around her midsection.

The rodent responded by biting into Boulerice’s leather glove, hanging on with her two front teeth while researchers swiped a black streak of Clairol’s Nice’n Easy hair dye down her back.

Prairie dogs are among the most maligned and persecuted animal species in the Western U.S.

Though black-tailed prairie dogs have a long-standing reputation as pests, their ingenious tunnel systems and industrious prairie pruning make them one of the West’s primary ecosystem engineers. Some researchers call them the “chicken nuggets of the prairie”; if a prairie species eats meat, it almost certainly eats prairie dogs. Without prairie dogs, black-footed ferrets would never survive outside zoos and breeding facilities, and we would have far fewer mountain plovers, burrowing owls, swift foxes, and ferruginous hawks.

Before 1800, an estimated 5 billion prairie dogs lived from Canada to Mexico, covering the West with underground apartment complexes that shifted over the centuries like sand dunes. The Lakota, Dakota and other Indigenous peoples of the prairie shaped and depended on the ecosystems prairie dogs created. Some relied on prairie dogs for nourishment during thin times, or used them as a ceremonial food.

But European settlers were remarkably effective at shooting and poisoning prairie dogs and plowing up their burrows. Today, the five prairie dog species occupy just 2% of their historic range, and some occupy even less. 

Prairie dogs still survive in many of their historic territories: Black-tailed prairie dogs, known for their especially large, dense colonies, persist in isolated pockets of the prairie east of the Rocky Mountains from Canada to Mexico. White-tailed prairie dogs live in parts of Montana, Wyoming, Utah and Colorado. Gunnison’s prairie dogs eke out an existence in southern Colorado, and Utah prairie dogs live in, well, Utah. Mexican prairie dogs still hang on in small slices of northern Mexico. But many of these populations are too small to serve their ecosystems as they once did.

Within this familiar story of colonization and species decline, however, are more hopeful stories of creativity and adaptation: Researchers are using pedometer-like devices to map prairie dogs’ underground tunnels, remote-controlled badgers to understand prairie dog alarm calls and Kitchen-Aid mixers to craft solutions to deadly disease. After decades of restoration work by tribal wildlife managers, prairie dogs, black-footed ferrets, swift foxes and bison are once again roaming the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation in north-central Montana, one of the few places in the world where all four species coexist. Some private landowners, meanwhile, are finding ways to tolerate the rodents. Together, these researchers, managers and landowners are striving to conserve the West’s remaining prairie dogs and the prairie that depends on them.

ONCE THE COLLARED prairie dog was returned to her Tru Catch wire cage to await release, Boulerice reached into the next trap in line.

Boulerice is part of a team from the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute that is collaring and tracking prairie dogs at American Prairie — formerly the American Prairie Reserve — in central Montana. Each collar measures the animal’s acceleration and angle; by triangulating with locations picked up by sensors posted on poles throughout the colony, researchers can determine where and how far the prairie dogs travel both above and below ground. The Clairol dye patterns provide one more way to tell who’s who in a colony of look-alikes.

Though other researchers have studied prairie dogs’ aboveground lives, no one really knows what they do underground. Satellite imagery can be used to track Arctic terns over Alaska or grizzly bears deep in the wilderness, but it can’t penetrate the Earth. Decades ago, researchers laboriously excavated a white-tailed prairie dog burrow in southern Montana, revealing features like “sleeping quarters,” hibernacula, and a “maternity area” — but such work is invasive and yields little data on the animals’ movements.

At American Prairie in September, the Smithsonian team was joined by researchers from Swansea University in Wales who had developed the tracking collars Boulerice used. The collars were originally designed to study penguins underwater, an environment similarly resistant to conventional satellite tracking.

Prairie dogs aren’t the only occupants of prairie dog burrows. The mazes of tunnels and rooms also provide shelter for black-footed ferrets, swift foxes and untold numbers of insects. Burrowing owls shimmy their puffball bodies into the tunnels, where they raise their chicks on the plentiful bugs. Prairie rattlesnakes, tiger salamanders, horned lizards and badgers use them, too. And as climate extremes become more common aboveground, these burrows may become even more important.

“By creating tunnels, they’re also creating a thermal refuge,” said Hila Shamon, the director of the Smithsonian’s Great Plains Science Program and principal investigator of the colony-mapping project. “The prairie can be so hot in the summer or brutally, brutally cold in the winter. You don’t have any shade or place to hide from the cold … and conditions in the tunnel systems are consistent.”

Prairie dogs spend much of the day and all night in their burrows, living in family coteries composed of one male, three or four females and the year’s young. Their tunnel systems, which can extend across an area larger than  a football field, are like bustling apartment complexes where every family has its separate unit. Residents periodically pop out of doors to grab food, gossip about the neighbors and scan for danger.

“In the prairie,” Shamon said, “there’s a whole world that’s happening beneath the ground that we can’t see. But it exists, and it’s very deep, and it’s important.”

Aboveground, the effect of prairie dogs on the landscape is more obvious. “Prairie dogs create an entirely novel habitat type,” said Andy Boyce, a Smithsonian research ecologist. “They graze intensely. They increase the forbs and flowering plants, and they clip woody vegetation. They will eat and nibble on a new woody plant until it tips over and dies.”

“In the prairie, there’s a whole world that’s happening beneath the ground that we can’t see, but it exists, and it’s very deep, and it’s important.”

The landscape created by prairie dogs may look barren, but the reality is more nuanced. A healthy prairie isn’t an uninterrupted sea of grass; it’s  made up of grass and shrubs, wetlands and wildflowers and even large patches of bare dirt that allow prairie dogs — and other species — to spot approaching predators.

Bison like to wallow in the dirt exposed by prairie dogs, and graze on the nutritious grass and plants that resprout after a prairie dog pruning. Mountain plovers and thick-billed longspurs frequently nest on the grazed surface of prairie dog towns. (Both birds have declined along with prairie dogs; the mountain plover has been proposed for protection under the Endangered Species Act.)

Prairie dog colonies may also provide other species with a home-alarm system. “You have 1,000 little pairs of eyeballs constantly searching for predators all around you and then vocalizing loudly when they see them,” Boyce said. To test this hypothesis, Boyce’s Ph.D. student Andrew Dreelin attached a taxidermied badger to a remote-controlled car and drove it near long-billed curlew nests in Montana prairie dog colonies. He then measured how nesting curlews responded to the badger with and without a warning from the prairie dogs.

Results are pending, said Dreelin, but he’s certain that “we’ve only just started to scratch the surface on the multifaceted ways that prairie dogs could shape the lives of birds on the prairie.”

IN EARLY OCTOBER, about 500 miles south of American Prairie, Colten Salyer also donned thick leather gloves to protect himself from an angry mammal’s teeth. Then he opened a cat carrier filled with paper shavings and a member of a species once considered extinct.

The young black-footed ferret inside bared its long white canines. Bred at the National Black-Footed Ferret Conservation Center in northern Colorado, she was one of 20 about to be reintroduced to southcentral Wyoming’s Shirley Basin.

The black-footed ferret is North America’s only native ferret and one of only three ferret species in the world. And if there’s one thing black-footed ferrets need, it’s prairie dogs. They eat them almost exclusively, and they use their tunnels to live, hunt and reproduce, slipping in and out of burrows as they move like water across the landscape.

In 1980, black-footed ferrets were declared extinct, most likely extinguished by disease, development and endless prairie dog poisoning campaigns. But in 1981, a northern Wyoming ranch dog proudly presented his owners with his most recent treasure: a dead ferret. A local taxidermist confirmed that it was, in fact, a black-footed ferret, a member of a tiny remnant population.

The newly discovered ferrets lived in the wild until 1985, when biologists discovered that disease had killed all but 18. At that point, they scooped up the remaining ferrets and took them to captive breeding facilities. Only seven successfully reproduced, but those seven now have more than 11,000 descendants. In 2020, researchers used DNA from a wild-caught ferret with no surviving offspring to produce the first cloned ferret. Since then, they have created two more cloned individuals, and this past November, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced that one had given birth to healthy kits.

Captive-bred ferrets have now been released across the West. But to survive long-term, they need prairie dog colonies. And prairie dogs aren’t popular with their human neighbors.

Because they eat the same grass cows do. And they make holes.

“I was running to rope a yearling once, and I stood up in the saddle and was about to open my hand — and all of a sudden the horse’s front end disappeared,” said Salyer, a ranch manager in Shirley Basin who volunteered to help with the releases. His horse had sunk a hoof into a prairie dog hole, a misstep that sent Salyer tumbling to the ground.

Both Salyer and his horse were fine, and he shrugged after telling the story.But most ranchers have, or have heard, similar stories, many of which end with a valued horse breaking a leg. There’s no way to know how frequently horses injure themselves in burrows, but the stories spread as fast as a prairie fire.

What’s certain is that prairie dogs eat grass. Quite a bit of grass: A single prairie dog can devour up to 2 pounds of green grass and non-woody plants every week, according to Montana State University. For ranchers who use that vegetation to feed their cows, prairie dogs look like competition. Researchers, however, say the effects of prairie dogs on livestock forage are mixed. Black-tailed prairie dogs’ propensity to clip and mow, for instance, results in plants with higher fat and protein and lower fiber. “Across years, enhanced forage quality may help to offset reductions in forage quantity for agricultural producers,” a study published in 2019 by Rangeland Ecology and Management reported.

This uncertainty has led to some bureaucratic contradictions. The Wyoming Department of Agriculture labels prairie dogs as pest species and offers training in properly using pesticides to kill them; at the same time, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department lists the black-tailed prairie dog as a species of greatest conservation need.

Until the 1990s, said Randy Matchett, a Fish and Wildlife Service biologist in central Montana, prairie dogs were so despised in places like Phillips County, Montana, that the Bureau of Land Management produced maps of their colonies designed for sport shooters. Attitudes haven’t changed much: In 2020, 27 years after an initial survey of attitudes toward black-tailed prairie dogs and black-footed ferrets in Montana, researchers found that feelings about them had barely budged.

Matchett said that when he tells his Montana neighbors that only 2% of prairie dogs remain, a common attitude is: “What the hell’s the holdup getting rid of that last 2%?”

Chamois Andersen, a Defenders of Wildlife senior field representative, has spent decades working with landowners in prairie dog-rich places, and she’s persuaded some to allow researchers to survey their land for black-footed ferrets in exchange for funds for noxious weed removal. She speculates that younger generations of ranchers are more open to prairie dog conservation and to partnerships with public agencies and wildlife groups.

Matchett is less optimistic. Even the U.S. Forest Service and National Park Service, which together manage one of the largest black-footed ferret colonies in the world in South Dakota’s Conata Basin, poison some prairie dogs on federal land to prevent the population from moving onto private property.

Not all prairie dogs are equally reviled. White-tailed prairie dogs like those in Shirley Basin live at lower densities and tend to clip plants farther up the stems, making them less obvious to the casual observer. Landowners, as a result, are often more tolerant of them than their black-tailed cousins, said Andrew Gygli, a small-carnivore biologist for Wyoming Game and Fish.

Bob Heward, whose family started ranching in Shirley Basin more than a century ago, understands that a disliked species can also be useful.

He invites recreational shooters to target prairie dogs on his land, but he won’t use poison to kill the rodents because he knows they provide food for other species. Prairie dogs are a “nuisance,” he said, but they’re also as inevitable as the wind: “We’ve learned to live with them. They’ve been here longer than I have.”

Randy Matchett said that when he tells his Montana neighbors that only 2% of prairie dogs remain, a common attitude is: “What the hell’s the holdup getting rid of that last 2%?”

THE MALE SWIFT FOX at the end of the trap line was chunky, at least by swift fox standards: Though he weighed only about 5 pounds, his belly was round beneath his fluffy fur. His black eyes carefully followed Smithsonian researcher Hila Shamon as she loaded him into the backseat of her four-door pickup, covering the trap with a blanket as she prepared to transport him from this ranch north of Laramie, Wyoming, to a new home on the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation in Montana.

Unlike black-footed ferrets, swift foxes can survive without prairie dogs, but when prairie dogs are scarce they suffer from the loss of food, Shamon said, and are deprived of the shelter they find in prairie dog burrows. So they, too, declined as prairie dogs were exterminated and prairie habitat was converted into cropland. By the early 1900s, they had disappeared from Canada, Montana, North Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma.

But swift foxes still live in parts of the West — and in some places, their populations are being restored. For the last five years, Shamon and her team have trapped swift foxes in Wyoming and Colorado and trucked them to Fort Belknap. This rectangle of grassland, buttes and prairie breaks near the Canadian border is home to the Nakoda (Assiniboine) and A’aninin (Gros Ventre), both Great Plains peoples. Today, it is one of the only places in the world where prairie dogs, swift foxes, black-footed ferrets and bison co-exist.

Montana State Sen. Mike Fox (Gros Ventre), D, who served as Fort Belknap’s director of Fish and Wildlife from 1991 to 2001, oversaw early efforts to restore buffalo, swift foxes and black-footed ferrets to the reservation. The goal was to “create a steady, healthy population of native animals that were driven to extinction because of the different uses of the land,” he said. “Like when they started poisoning the prairie dogs off in the ’30s and ’40s and wiped out the ferrets that were native here, and the same with the swift fox. We want to make as complete an ecosystem as we can, along with the buffalo.”

The tribes worked with the Fish and Wildlife Service to reintroduce black-footed ferrets, and, with researchers at the Smithsonian, World Wildlife Fund and other organizations, to bring back the swift fox. The collaborators spent two years planning the swift fox capture and translocation, Shamon said, considering factors like habitat quality, community attitudes and the overall risk to a re-established population.

Swift foxes had already been reintroduced in parts of Alberta and Saskatchewan and on the Blackfeet and Fort Peck reservations. The reintroduction at Fort Belknap continued the tribes’ restoration efforts and added a possible point of connectivity for other populations.

Tribal members living on and near the Fort Belknap Reservation have largely supported the reintroduction of native prairie species, especially after prairie dog numbers were diminished by an outbreak of disease in the late ’90s, Fox said. Now that the population is recovering and has started to clear larger areas of grass, however, some tribal members who raise cattle have begun expressing frustration to the tribal council.

“Wildlife and cattle will graze prairie dog colonies because of the new growth coming back throughout the year,” said Fox. “It makes it look even worse because it’s attractive to wildlife and domestic cattle, and they do their part. When it starts looking like a moonscape is when we get people noticing the most.”

He tells people that the little grass-eating rodents are necessary, and notes that the “moonscapes” aren’t as widespread as they may seem. But like non-Native ranchers across the West, some tribal members equate abundant prairie dogs with fewer cows. Fox doesn’t believe the council will allow widespread prairie dog poisoning on tribal lands — especially since the reservation now hosts black-footed ferrets — but he does worry that opposition could intensify.

Bronc Speak Thunder (Assiniboine), director of the Fort Belknap Buffalo Program, has also heard people complain about prairie dogs, though he added that “people complain about a lot of stuff.”

The tribes aren’t actively restoring prairie dogs, he said; they’re simply refraining from poisoning and shooting them. He sees that prairie dogs benefit tribal land by creating more habitat for ground-nesting birds and serving as food for swift foxes, coyotes, hawks and eagles. They also encourage the growth of nutritious grass for bison. “Like life, it’s a big circle, and that’s where it fits,” he said. “They’re part of the ecosystem that exists, and if you take something out, it throws everything off.”

WHEN I MET Randy Matchett, the Fish and Wildlife Service biologist, he sported a cowboy hat and graying horseshoe mustache and carried a handful of Smurf-blue flea-control pellets, each slightly smaller than a marble. The pellets, which Matchett produced in his workshop at the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge headquarters in Lewistown, Montana, are his latest attempt to protect prairie dogs from a fatal disease.

The pellets contain Fipronil, an insecticide used in treatments likeFrontline to keep fleas and ticks away from household pets, and are flavored with peanut butter and molasses to increase their chances of ending up in prairie dog bellies. Matchett dyes them blue because research shows prairie dogs are attracted to the color, and because the dye stains their feces, making it easy to estimate how many animals have consumed the pellets. Once ingested, Matchett hopes, his “FipBits” will kill the fleas that land on and bite prairie dogs, including the fleas carrying the bacteria that causes plague.

Yes, that plague. The bacte-ria Yersinia pestis causes bubonic plague, which became known as the Black Death after it killed at least 25 million Europeans during the 14th century.

In 1900, the disease arrived in North America via San Francisco, carried by rats stowed away on ships. During the following decades, the development of antibiotics controlled the disease in humans, but plague continued to spread among rodent species, affecting black-footed ferrets, rabbits and squirrels. First detected in prairie dogs in 1936, it devastated populations already hit hard by the conversion of the prairie to agriculture — and it remains a major threat to prairie dogs.

“Once colonies have plague, they can disappear in two weeks,” said Shamon. “There will be thousands of acres chirping with thousands or tens of thousands of animals and in two weeks, you will go map it, and they’re gone.”

A plague vaccine does exist, and is used to protect highly endangered species like black-footed ferrets. But it’s simply not possible to jab every prairie dog in the West. Matchett, who as a Fish and Wildlife biologist is responsible for conserving endangered species, got involved in plague prevention in the early 1990s, initially dusting prairie dog colonies for fleas. In 2013, he began testing oral vaccines in Montana colonies, working in parallel with researchers in seven other states. The first-generation vaccines were red, peanut-butter flavored cubes with a biomarker that tinted prairie dog whiskers pink. Matchett and his colleagues in Colorado also developed vaccine pellets that they mass-produced using a Lithuanian carp bait-making machine. Matchett helped craft a pellet shooter that could be bolted to the front of a four-wheeler.

Prairie dogs are “part of the ecosystem that exists, and if you take something out, it throws everything off.”

With the new vaccines primed to launch, Matchett felt hopeful. The World Wildlife Fund, which helped fund some of the work, felt hopeful, too. But in 2018, after years of trials with thousands of prairie dogs, he and other researchers concluded that even when a colony was given oral vaccinations, the number of prairie dogs that survived a plague outbreak was too small to support a black-footed ferret population. 

So Matchett pivoted. If he couldn’t inoculate prairie dogs against plague, maybe he could kill the fleas that carried the bacteria. What if he could persuade prairie dogs to eat Fipronil?

He made a new set of pellets with the same bait machine, this time using his wife’s grandmother’s Kitchen-Aid mixer to blend various types of flour, vital wheat gluten, peanut butter, molasses and other food-grade ingredients with a soupçon of flea killer. Early results have been promising: While adult fleas aren’t affected until they bite a prairie dog that’s ingested a pellet, not every flea needs to be killed; studies have shown that in general, fleas don’t trigger plague outbreaks until they reach a critical mass. And flea larvae appear to die when they crawl into or consume treated prairie dog poop, suggesting that the pellets could tamp down flea reproduction as well as kill the adult insects.

FipBits aren’t the only way to reduce the toll plague takes on prairie dogs, but Matchett believes they’re the most likely to work. In his office, perched on stacks of files, are the remnants of another of his many assaults on the problem: dozens of vials of alcohol, each containing bits of prairie dog ears. In 2007 and 2008, Matchett and his colleagues collected the snippets from prairie dogs that had survived plague outbreaks, hoping genetic analysis would explain their fortitude. The material has yet to be analyzed owing to a “combination of lack of funding, interest, time and capability,” Matchett said, but he hopes new funding will allow him and his collaborators to return to the project.

Despite the setbacks, Matchett believes researchers can find a way to control plague in prairie dogs. Human intolerance, as he sees it, is a more stubborn problem. Places like Fort Belknap and the Conata Basin of South Dakota — where prairie dogs are, at least for now, allowed to flourish — remain few and far between.

DRIVE SOUTH from Fort Belknap down Highway 191, head east on a straight gravel road, and you’ll find one more place where prairie dogs are left in peace.

American Prairie began in 2001 as an effort to protect and restore Montana’s grasslands. The nonprofit now manages more than 527,000 acres of private land and federal and state leases. Its ultimate goal is to connect 3.2 million acres of prairie, providing habitat for an array of species from bison to mountain plovers to black-footed ferrets. To the casual observer, American Prairie’s lands may already look like intact prairie, though ecologists like Daniel Kinka can’t help noticing the nonnative crested wheatgrass and the hundreds of miles of fencing.

“This is kind of like the Field of Dreams model: If you build it, they will come,” said Kinka, American Prairie’s director of rewilding. “A better habitat houses more wildlife, and the wildlife that are here are perfectly capable of restoring themselves.”

American Prairie prohibits the poisoning and shooting of prairie dogs on its land, and it regularly hosts research projects such as the Smithsonian’s burrow mapping — which may help explain how plague spreads within colonies — and Matchett’s tests of plague-mitigation tools. Prairie dogs, said Kinka, are the “unsung heroes of a prairie ecosystem,” important to all the other species American Prairie is trying to foster. And as researchers have found, the woody plants that prairie dogs chew down to clear their line of sight tend to be replaced by nutritious grasses and wildflowers, suggesting that even cattle may benefit from their presence.

The possibility that prairie dogs could be good for cattle, or at least not as bad as generally believed, is met with skepticism by American Prairie’s neighbors, many of whom see the nonprofit as a threat to ranching. Signs posted along highways in Phillips County, Montana, read “Save the American Cowboy. Stop American Prairie Reserve.” For now, Kinka isn’t trying to convince anyone to like or even appreciate prairie dogs, aiming instead for tolerance.

The black-tailed prairie dog complex studied by the Smithsonian team at American Prairie is a noisy place, filled with the barks and trills of hundreds of creatures. As I stood beside researcher Jesse Boulerice, listening, it was easy to imagine that the rodents were doing just fine. But they’re not. Will they ever be allowed to exist in numbers like this throughout their historic range?

Boulerice surveyed the surface of the colony, which was covered with dried plant nubs and bare mounds of dirt, and said he wasn’t sure.

Then he released a collared prairie dog who wagged her chubby butt in the air as she scurried into a nearby hole. She promptly popped back up, chirping out a message we’ll never understand. Perhaps she was warning her colony-mates to watch out for those marshmallows and carrots; they hide a nasty trap.

Or maybe she was scolding us — telling us exactly what she thought of our species before she disappeared into her burrow, leaving us to decide the future of hers.

This story is part of High Country News’ Conservation Beyond Boundaries project, which is supported by the BAND Foundation.

This article first appeared on High Country News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license. We welcome reader letters. Email High Country News at editor@hcn.org or submit a letter to the editor. See our letters to the editor policy.

The post Why the West Needs Prairie Dogs appeared first on Modern Farmer.

That trail of tiny footprints, indiscernible to the naked eye, is remarkably effective at protecting the tree from pathogens and pests. That makes ants, in the eyes of Ida Cecilie Jensen, a legion of unlikely warriors — one humans should consider enlisting in the fight to grow food in a warming world. “Ants are a Swiss Army knife,” said Jensen, a biologist who studies the symbiotic relationship between ants and agriculture at Aarhus University in Denmark. “Kind of like a multitool for farmers.”

With an estimated 20 quadrillion ants on Earth at any given time, the bugs are found just about everywhere on the planet. They are also among the species that humans, which they outnumber at least 2.5 million to one, have most in common with. Ants have extraordinary collective intelligence, their colonies weaving robust community networks and dividing labor. The social insects even wage war with one another and build complex agricultural systems.

Ants also have “so many of the same problems and challenges that we have,” Jensen said. “Luckily for us, they already found a lot of great solutions.”

One such challenge is how to grow food while confronting climate-wrought consequences — such as an influx of spreading plant pathogens caused by warming.

Plant diseases cost the global economy hundreds of billions of dollars every year, with between 20 to 40 percent of global crop production lost to crop diseases and pests. Climate change is ramping up outbreak risks by morphing how pathogens evolve, facilitating the emergence of new strains, and making crops more susceptible to infection. Most farmers and growers increasingly rely on chemical pesticides to combat these emerging issues, but the widespread use of such substances has created problems of its own. Synthetic pesticides can be harmful to humans and animals, and lose their efficacy as pathogens build up resistance to them. The production and use of synthetic pesticides also contribute to climate change, as some are derived from planet-warming fossil fuels.

Instead of chemicals, an army of ants may march right in. Though most people view the small insects as little more than a nuisance, colonies of them are being deployed in orchards across a handful of countries to stave off the spread of crippling infestation and disease.

In a body of recently published and forthcoming research, Jensen examined the antimicrobial effects of wood ants, a European field ant known for building dome-shaped nests in fields and open woodlands, and weaver ants, which live in ball-shaped nests within tropical tree canopies across Asia, Africa, and Australia. Her team looked at how the microbes influenced apple brown rot and apple scab in two orchards in Denmark — one commercial and one experimental — and found that wood ants effectively reduce apple scab, which can cause serious yield losses, by an average of 61 percent. The scientists also found that the number of disease-free apples more than doubled compared to when ants weren’t wielded as an alternative biological pesticide. For another experiment in Senegal, they collected weaver ants from mango orchards to investigate the bacterial communities associated with ants, discovering that they also leave microbial footprints that may inhibit fungal diseases such as mango anthracnose, which can lead to extensive yield losses.

Past studies have found that for crops from cocoa to citrus, ants could replace insecticides in a multitude of climates and locations, reducing incidences of pear scab in pear trees, coffee leaf rust in coffee shrubs, and leaf fungal attacks in oak seedlings. Weaver ant nests used as an alternative pesticide in mango, cashew, and citrus trees have all been shown to lower pest damage and produce yields on par with several chemical pesticide treatments. For more than a millennia, the species was embraced as a natural insecticide in countries like China but never quite made its way into the agricultural mainstream in North America or Europe. The method would eventually be replaced by the dawn of synthetic solutions. Still, despite that legacy, exactly how ants take on disease has remained a scientific mystery.

The answer, Jensen said, lies in how ants function. All species of the arthropod possess a body that is essentially hostile for bacteria because they produce formic acid, which they use to constantly disinfect themselves. Ants are also perpetually hungry little things that will feast on the spores of plant pathogens, among other things, and their secretion of formic acid and highly territorial nature tends to deter a medley of other insects that could be transmitting diseases or making lunch of some farmers’ crops. Ultimately, their greatest trick is what Jensen’s newest research reveals: Ants also inherently have antimicrobial bacteria and fungi on their bodies and feet, which can reduce plant diseases in afflicted crops, with these microorganisms deposited as the critters walk. When the bugs are cultivated in fruit orchards, they march all over trees, their feet coating the plants in microbial organisms that can curb emerging pathogens.

Understanding why they have this effect makes it easier to promote and implement native species of ants as biological agents in fields and farms, which Jensen advocates for. She’s not only researching how to do this as a doctoral candidate, but also founded AgroAnt in 2022, a company that leases colonies to cull plant pathogens and pests to farmers in Denmark — much like beekeepers lease hives. Her research team is now looking into boosting populations of existing ant colonies already living in orchards, rather than introducing new ones. Building rope bridges between trees to help ants better get around, and increasing the number of sugary extracts left in strategic locations to feed them, can create ant population booms, which Jensen sees as a simple and inexpensive way for farmers to ward off costly bouts of crop disease.

Others are not convinced this would be any more useful or cost-effective than existing biopesticides like canola oil and baking soda, or pest management chemicals derived from natural sources.

Kerik Cox, who researches plant pathology at Cornell University, said that many of the microbes derived from the ants in the study have already been studied, and optimized for formulation and efficacy in agricultural systems. “Many are highly effective and there are numerous commercial products available for farmers to use,” said Cox, adding that he doesn’t see “anything in this study that would be better than the existing biopesticide tools, which are registered by the [U.S. Environmental Protection Agency].”

Jensen acknowledges there is always a risk when introducing any species — ants new to an area could push out other beneficial species, for example, or attract aphids, those small green plant-damaging insects that ants share a symbiotic relationship with. Still, she is adamant that as long as the species is native to the area and agricultural system they’re being introduced to and then properly managed, the possible benefits outweigh the pitfalls.

On a practical note, the money-saving argument of ants pitted against synthetic products also carries a big draw; particularly given that conventional pesticides, in addition to their organic, chemical-free counterparts, have become more expensive in recent years across Europe and the U.S. Those product prices tend to climb when extreme weather shocks disrupt production, a likelihood as climate change makes disasters more frequent and severe.

Conversely, Jensen said farmers can simply leave sugar-water solutions, cat food, or chicken bones, among any number of kitchen scraps, in fruit orchards where beneficial, pathogen-combating ants are typically already present — such as weaver ants in mango orchards. If the species already dwell there, this could increase their numbers and efficiency. The technique, however, should be approached with caution depending on location, to minimize the risk of attracting potentially harmful members of the ant family.

“I don’t believe in one solution that could fit everything, but I definitely think that ants and other biological control agents are going to be a huge part of the [climate] puzzle in the future,” she said.

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/food-and-agriculture/a-secret-weapon-in-agricultures-climate-fight-ants/.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org

The post A Secret Weapon in Agriculture’s Climate Fight: Ants appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Mary Oxendine grew up in Robeson County, NC, among the Lumbee people. As a child of multigenerational farmers, she grew up picking peas and butterbeans, working with her grandmother making sausages, and plucking chickens. 

As an adult, she worked her way up in the local government’s food security program.  But when her father passed, she found herself reconnecting with farmers in the fields.   

“I was looking for what made me feel grounded and what made me feel like I belonged. And, I just started growing things. I got a community plot at Hawk’s Nest Healing Gardens… and really felt like I was reconnecting with myself and with the land and with my ancestors,” says Oxendine. “For me, it’s really about having a deep relationship with the plants and with the rest of nature, caring for them like you would actual family—gently picking up their branches. There’s a deep relationship and reciprocity, because I care for them and then they care for me.” 

Oxendine says this interconnectedness colors her every choice and step and that it is inherently an Indigenous mindset. 

“If we spray an insecticide, yes, maybe it kills that one insect, but it also could potentially impact other pollinators that will decrease my yield,” says Oxendine. “It’s impacting birds and the ecosystem and affecting the water and drinkability of water for humans, but also the water toxins that are impacting fish and other wildlife in the water. To me, the best way to impact climate is before you do something, think deeply and ask what are the real impacts of that act.”

Historic violent storms, destructive floods, rising sea levels and melting polar ice caps dominate our lives and headlines. But, are we past the point of no return, or can we still have a positive impact on the planet and life on it?

Climate scientists and US leaders believe so, although the window is narrow.

But how can we change course, and who has the answers? Oxendine believes Native farmers deserve a word.

Native environmental views can fight climate change 

Despite measures taken since, human activity and the El Nino phenomenon continued to accelerate global warming to the point of experiencing the hottest years on record in 2023 and 2024. One wonders, with cutting-edge scientific advances, national and international mitigations, and an increasingly common understanding of climate change, why does the problem persist so tenaciously?

Beth Roach is a member of the Nottoway Indians of Virginia. She is also the co-founder and owner of Alliance of Native Seedkeepers, Bertie County Seeds retail shop, and Quitsna Conniot ancestral gardens with Justin “Fix” Račhakwáhstha Cain, who is Tuscarora (Skaroreh Katenuaka).

They both have extensive lived experience as land stewards, as well as deep multi-generational connections to agriculture and forestry stewardship.

“We study our local environment intensely [all day, every day] and notice both subtle and dramatic changes,” says Roach. “From these observations, we adapt our practices. We anticipate changes in our growing zones and educate others. We advocate for climate adaptation planning through Indigenous frameworks.”

They were able to ascertain early that the hardiness zone where they live was shifting due to climate change, and are already taking preventative steps to nurture seeds and plants that would be endangered. As important as modern-day scientific methods and data are, they also have a unique take on understanding our woodlands ecosystem by learning from the past.

“We utilize traditional place names and translate them in order to understand how our ancestors saw the water and land,” says Roach. “Additionally, we use these translations to assess changes in our ecosystem and climate.” 

Roach and her colleagues believe that Native people know the story of the land, and have the connections through lived experience, oral histories passed down, blood memory and documented history to understand where it has been, what their ancestors observed, and what it needs to thrive into the future.

And the land responds in kind to mindful stewardship. For example, simple but measured clearing of invasive plants, such as cultural burning, yields surprising results when Earth is allowed to finally breathe. Native plants spring up once again from the freed soil. Loving fertilized with the ash of its stewards, the forest is cleansed of excessive pests and invasives safely for established growth to flourish.

However, industrial carbon dioxide, PFAS, chlorines, bromides, CFCs and plastics harm air quality and increase temperatures, accumulate in rain and waterways or deplete protective ozone layers and cause contamination long after their release. Not only is the story of the land unknown, unwanted, and dishonored by apathetic corporate self-serving, it is actively quashed by intimidation, violence and legislative manipulation. And the land responds to this as well.

A climate-conscious approach must first honor the land, its people, and its story.

Creating programs for and with Native people 

One of the programs created to put Native voices first in the discussion of climate change is First Nations Development Institute’s Stewarding Native Lands program. It has offices in Nevada and New Mexico, and serves tribes as well as Native nonprofits across the nation and it has five program areas. The stewardship program overlaps with food sovereignty and cultural programs because they are so intertwined culturally.

The stewardship program has four initiatives, and one that specifically addresses climate. Mary Adelzadeh, senior program officer with the institute, has much to say regarding increasing the capacity of Native land stewardship models. She also stresses operating from a mindset and position of strength—as overcomers—not victims.

“Because when you think about this climate challenge, it is rooted in the fact that Native people and their knowledge was contained onto reservation systems, and in order to really have a transformative change in climate, we really need to invest in the adaptive capacity of these Native communities, to be able to scale it out.”  

The Stewarding Native Lands program works toward supporting co-management and co-stewardship of federal lands. These are sovereign-to-sovereign agreements, where tribes could enter into these arrangements with federal entities such as the Bureau of Land Management, the Forest Service, and National Park Service.

Their focus is land access, establishing and bolstering the workforce, and the nuts and bolts of what it would take to scale Native land stewardship. The traditional Western conservation frameworks weren’t designed for and are not really accessible to tribes. Her approach is that new conservation, finance, opportunities that are directly accessible to tribes should be decided upon.

Along the lines of investment, Amir Kirkwood, CEO of Justice Climate Fund, spoke about their works with programs empowering such endeavors. One is the Clean Communities Investment Accelerator (CCIA) program, part of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF) program.

“That program was really designed to have community lenders—could be banks, CDFIs, could be other funds—that did not have existing climate or greenhouse gas reduction programs in place, to basically fund their ability to build a program at their individual organization for the benefit of the communities,” he says.

The fund was awarded $940 million on August 16. The idea is that by working with those banks at the community level, they can help them to not only deploy capital in greenhouse gas reductions but raise outside capital to compliment federal funding, and utilize that as wrap-around funding for initiatives with additional community benefits—such as job creation, supporting local businesses, or contributing to better health outcomes in those communities. 

“So, that’s where community banks have always been a valuable asset locally, is that they have that comprehensive focus on the communities. And so, this is exciting because it’s able to add to what they already do, with some of the work around climate finance as well,” says Kirkwood. 

Reclaiming land

Some independent projects are already having groundbreaking impact in their communities as well as restorative climate implications. One such initiative is Makoce Ikikcupi, a Reparative Justice project on Dakota land in Minisota Makoce (Minnesota). Ahán Heȟáka Sápa (Luke Black Elk, Thitȟuŋwaŋ Lakota) works with the program as a farm director. It’s a Dakota-run organization out of Minnesota, and the name actually means “Land Reclamation.”

Currently, they have purchased three separate pieces of land situated throughout Minnesota, and Ahán Heȟáka Sápa is the farm director for their second village site, Hohwoju Otunwe (Village of Vibrant Growth). It is located near Mountain Lake, Minnesota, which is a small town in southern Minnesota. There are a couple of different groups, or what’s modernly called tribes. But they all fall under what they call the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ, which means the Seven Councils Fires. 

“One of the things that Indigenous people really lack is access to land. My tribe has control of two million acres on the books, but really we only have about a million acres accessible to our people. And even then, we have been taught by the capitalist education system that we should be sort of fearful in going outside and picking natural plants or you know, even so much as growing your own food,” says Ahán Heȟáka Sápa.

They consider themselves to be free Oceti people, and aren’t funded by any tribal organization or tribal entity, to avoid a precedent of Native people buying land back with their own money. 

“We don’t want to set a precedent for our children to have to find their own funding and use their own money to do this, because it’s really still ours, this land that we’re around. All of Minnesota was once Dakota territory and we really feel strongly about coming back to this area,” says Ahán Heȟáka Sápa.

Chana J. White is a mother, grandmother, farmer, and Master Beekeeper. She works with Whitaker Small Farm Group and Eastern North Carolina Farmer Collaborative, and also owns and operates Native Brand Honey. One challenge faced even in Indigenous circles is disenfranchisement from cultural and foodways; however, White speaks of the benefits of access to oral histories and elder wisdom, which she can pass on to next generations of agriculturalists and climate keepers.

“Thankfully, we have some old heads still around that let us know and have taught us when to plant root crops, above the ground crops, when to seed, and when to pull weeds. We even watch certain animals because they know when rain is coming. I believe it’s important to listen and pay attention,” she says.

Can we imagine a society that honors the Earth instead of exploiting it?

This will only happen as Native voices are sought for solutionary committees and legislative decisions in every locale, compensated for their contributions, and renewed to their ancestral homelands for restorative land stewardship and ownership.

Beth Roach can see it also. “Ensuring Native engagement and leadership of our water, land, and seeds ensures protection of each for many more generations to come. Inspired by the traditional wisdom of seven-generational thinking, we envision a future where our children and theirs can thrive in harmony with the Earth, cradling their culture and justice in equal measure,” she says.

The post How Native Farmers Pair Ancestral Knowledge with Climate Expertise appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Like why we primarily eat chicken eggs, for instance, but never see turkey benedict on the menu? Or why North Americans eschew mutton, and it’s taboo to eat swans?

In this collection, we’ve gathered 10 of our most popular, delicious foodies stories. Dig in, and enjoy.

The post 10 Fascinating Food Stories to Share Over Dinner appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Rather than gifting a tangible object this year—and wrapping it, shipping it, hoping it’s something someone wants to store in their home indefinitely—opt to adopt from a farm. 

Farmers around the world have launched adoption programs for everything from cacao trees to grape vines to dairy sheep. By adopting a piece of a farm, you can offer someone a way to connect with the land and our food system in a unique and meaningful way. You also help farmers continue their vital (and often financially challenging) work. 

Bee hives

With Bees & Co’s Adopt a Beehive program, you can make every day a little sweeter for someone special in your life, while also benefiting the winged and walking members of the Bees & Co farms in London and Lincolnshire, England. It is a carbon neutral honey farm, thanks to itscommitment to using renewable energy and recyclable packaging. Bees & Co is also a recipient of the Green Tourism Gold Award for the workshops and experiences that it hosts, including classes on beekeeping, mead making, and planting for pollinators. But you don’t need to purchase plane tickets to share its raw honey or support its work to increase populations of native bees; instead, you can simply adopt one of its working honeybee hives. This gift includes an adoption certificate, updates on the hive, and jars of their honey with personalized labels.

Cacao trees and equipment

The Nyack family has grown cocoa since 1944 at Belmont Estate, a 100-percent Grenadian-owned business producing single-source tree-to-bar chocolates from its organic farm on the Caribbean island. Belmont Estate began offering folks the chance to Adopt a Cocoa Tree in 2022, but the program has expanded and gained deeper meaning this year. On July 1, 2024, Hurricane Beryl struck Grenada, devastating the land at Belmont Estate and leaving the community in crisis. Through the Adopt a Cocoa Tree program, you can help plant and maintain 20 cocoa trees for a full year. Alternatively, you can Adopt a Field, thereby supporting the replanting of the farm’s other crops, which include nutmeg, pimento, and bananas. Belmont Estate is also seeking contributions to reconstruct greenhouses and farm buildings, as well as purchase new equipment for essential agricultural activities. In return, participants receive regular updates on the progress of the farm they are helping to restore. 

Coffee trees

The founders of Colombia coffee tree created its Adopt a coffee tree program as an invitation to coffee drinkers worldwide to better understand the process of cultivating these beloved beans (which are actually fruit). If you have a friend who can’t start the day without a cup of joe, this gift is for them. The trees’ adoptive “parents” receive seasonal updates, explaining the processes from flowering to harvesting through to the arrival of packaged coffee at their front door. As part of the company’s commitment to more transparent and ethical coffee production practices, the farm in Antioquia, Colombia is Fairtrade and Rainforest Alliance Certified. 

Dairy sheep 

La Porta dei Parchi is an agritourism business located in Abruzzo, Italy, where farmers Nunzio Marcelli and Manuela Cozzi raise sheep, produce organic cheese, and run a hotel. Their Adopt a Sheep program is the perfect pick for the person in your life who is at their happiest in front of a cheese board. Participants receive a large gift box containing an adoption certificate, two award-winning sheep milk cheeses, a pair of woolen socks, assorted food products from the farm (such as pasta and honey), a tote bag, and a voucher for a discount on a future stay at the farm to meet the flock and sample more wheels of pecorino. 

Grape vines

Old World Winery produces natural wines in California’s Russian River Valley according to regenerative, organic, and biodynamic agricultural practices. This family-owned business has been growing rare varietals, such as Abouriou, on this land for over a century. If you’re seeking something special for a wine-loving loved one, sign them up for the Adopt-A-Vine program. Participants receive a bottle of the vine’s first vintage and can arrange a visit to the vineyards, where they will find their name hung on a tag among the leaves. 

Olive trees

Through the Adopt an olive tree program at Palazzo di Varignana in Emilia-Romagna, you can adopt one of three olive cultivars that are indigenous to the region: Nostrana di Brisighella, Correggiolo, and Ghiacciola. The rarity of finding and tasting these particular olives makes this the perfect option for any true olive oil aficionado. Upon adoption, a customized name plate is attached to the tree and participants receive updates about its growth, along with a three-liter container of Palazzo di Varignana’s award-winning extra virgin olive oil. The estate also has a restaurant and hotel overlooking its olives groves and welcomes anyone who wants to visit their adopted tree in person. 

The post This Holiday Season, Choose a Gift that Supports a Farmer appeared first on Modern Farmer.

But just like in other areas of our food supply, there are people working to improve water conditions and ensure sustainable aquaculture practices are in place for generations to come. This collection of stories from our archives highlight just a few of these efforts. From fighting ocean plastics with fungi to bringing sub-sea foraging to the dining room, these people are working to make our waters a better place. And many of them are bucking longstanding traditions, like the women who have found their place in Maine’s lobstering communities, or the folks making oysters accessible to everyone.

The oceans, lakes, and rivers around us may be vast and strong. But these stories, and others in our archives, show that we can be strong as well, when we work together.

The post Dive Deep: The Future of Aquaculture appeared first on Modern Farmer.

However, if you want to start growing more of your own food, many kitchen staples such as corn, beans and potatoes can be grown at home. 

Here are ten calorie-dense crops you can grow at home to turn your hobby garden into a more sustaining one. Data was collected from the United States Food and Drug Administration (USDA) and nutritionix.com and is based on the recommendation for a 2,000-calorie diet. Here, I list calories, carbohydrates and protein. Fats were excluded from the guide as most vegetables don’t produce much if any fat. 

Corn 

Corn is an American classic. Cultivated by native Americans, corn is present in so many hearty meals and has a variety of uses. You can eat corn right off the cob, pop it up in some oil over a fire or cook it and grind it into cornmeal to be used to make breads, tortillas and other tasty corn treats such as tamales. 

The possibilities are endless for corn: From the fuel in our vehicles to the fuel in our bellies, it’s one of most widely cultivated and consumed crops in the world. 

Corn’s time to maturity can get tricky based on the variety you’re growing and how much you want it to dry. A good rule of thumb is about 120 days, so plant your corn about two to three weeks after your last frost to ensure there’s enough time to harvest. 

Corn contains about 100 calories, 22 grams of carbs and 3.5 grams of protein per 100-gram serving. 

Beans 

Beans are one of the first crops kids learn about in school. If you didn’t get to have the bean germination experiment at school, I’m sorry if this reference is lost on you. 

Beans germinate very quickly and are extremely easy to grow in your home garden. They thrive in the ground as well as in raised bed and container gardens. 

Most beans will reach maturity between 45 and 60 days. Beans are a quick crop, easy to grow, and they can help make your soil more nitrogen-rich for whatever you’re planting next in your garden.

Red beans contain about 135 calories, 24 grams of carbs and 9 grams of protein per 100-gram serving. 

Winter Squash 

Winter squash deserves a place on this list due to its growing habit and role as a great companion plant for beans and corn. It’s also delicious roasted and eaten as a side dish with your fall dinner or cooked into a soup for a warm winter meal. 

Winter squash can take between 60 and 110 days to reach maturity. It is ready to harvest once the rinds are full of color and firm enough that your thumbnail won’t make an indention in the rind. 

As for nutrients, winter squash contains about 45 calories, 11 grams of carbs and one gram of protein per 100-gram serving. 

Potatoes 

I said beans were easy, but potatoes might be even easier. Just bury the potato and then water it. Soon, leaves will grow up from the soil, capturing the light needed to make more potatoes. 

Potatoes take between 60 and 130 days to reach maturity, depending on the variety you’re planting. If you’re planting potatoes right now, keep an eye out for that last frost date for your region. You want to harvest your potatoes before the last frost, so keep a watch on the weather before you plant your tubers. 

Potatoes contain about 80 calories, 17 carbs and two grams of protein per 100 grams. 

Beets 

Beets aren’t just the favorite vegetable of Dwight Schrute, their high nutritional content makes them a superfood. Beets are a spring crop with a quick harvest time of 55 to 70 days to maturity. Unlike potatoes, beets are a root vegetable that you don’t want to leave in the ground, as over-mature beets can become tough or woody (aka not the most delicious). 

Aside from being nutritious, beets also provide essential macronutrients. Beets contain about 50 calories, five grams of carbs and two grams of protein per 100-gram serving. 

Lentils 

Lentils are great for making hearty soups or replacing meat in popular American dishes such as sloppy joe sandwiches. They’re one of my favorite vegetables thanks to their versatility and delicious flavor and texture. 

Lentils are a summer crop and should be planted around late April to early May or whenever temperatures are consistently above 40 degrees Fahrenheit. Most varieties take about 100 days to reach maturity. 

Lentils contain about 115 calories, 20 grams of carbs and nine grams of protein per 100-gram serving. 

Chickpeas 

Whether you prefer to call them chickpeas or garbanzo beans, they do belong to the legume family. They’re delicious as a meat replacement and a staple in Asian cuisine as the star of Chana Masala (one of my favorite Indian dishes) and the star of everyone’s favorite dip: hummus. 

Chickpeas take around 100 days to reach maturity, so follow the same guidelines for growing lentils. 

Chickpeas contain about 160 calories, 27 grams of carbs and nine grams of protein per 100-gram serving. 

Jerusalem Artichokes 

Jerusalem artichokes are one of my favorite misunderstood vegetables. I feel like people often put artichokes in a category with things such as olives or water chestnuts, which tend to attract the “love it or hate it” type of attention typical of uncommon vegetables in the United States. 

Jerusalem artichokes contain about 77 calories, 18 grams of carbs and two grams of protein per 100-gram serving. 

Sweet potatoes 

Unlike potatoes, sweet potatoes aren’t members of the nightshade family. They’re actually a member of the morning glory family, making the sweet potato more closely related to your grandmother’s favorite flowers than the humble russet potatoes she’s baking up for dinner. 

Instead of using a seed potato to grow sweet potatoes, you have to buy sweet potato slips, which are tiny sweet potato plants that have some small roots, which will turn into sweet potatoes. 

Sweet potatoes have a longer time to maturity of about 100 days, so keep the first frost in mind when planting your tubers. 

Sweet potatoes contain 86 calories, 20 carbs and two grams of protein per 100 grams. 

Mushrooms 

Mushrooms are one of my favorite things about nature. Neither plants or animals, mushrooms are fungi, and their growth conditions make them a perfect crop to grow for calorie and nutrient density. 

Many mushrooms can be grown indoors, allowing you to grow mushrooms year-round. Some of the mushroom grow kits give you everything you need to start growing your own lion’s mane or oyster mushrooms at home, with an expected harvest time of about 30 to 40 days. 

Mushrooms aren’t the greatest when it comes to calorie-density, but they do pack in the protein. Mushrooms contain about 25 calories, four grams of carbs, 3.6 grams of protein and 0.5 grams of fat per 100-gram serving.

The Three Sisters garden 

One smart way to grow beans, squash and corn is to plant a three sisters garden. By planting these three crops together, they benefit each other and create a self-sustaining, relatively low-maintenance way to grow all three crops. 

The corn won’t be competing with the squash or beans due to its fast, straight-up growing habit. Beans will use the corn stalks for support so they can grow tall without the need for a trellis. Squash’s vining habit and large leaves will protect the soil below the corn and beans to ensure weeds can’t thrive and the soil stays moist and protected from the summer sun. 

Check out this guide from the Farmer’s Almanac to learn how to maximize your three sisters garden. 

Looking forward

Whether growing food is your hobby or your livelihood, knowing how to grow more nutritious and macronutrient-dense crops can help us better appreciate the food we eat every day. 

While it’s too late to plant a three sisters garden in Tennessee, I’m going to start planning now for how to maximize my garden to make it more sustainable and nourishing for me and my family. 

The post Growing a Survival Garden: Ten Calorie-Dense Crops You Can Grow at Home appeared first on Modern Farmer.

“When you walk through our kitchens, it’s very clear to see that we contribute to food waste. And we were very concerned about particularly the greenhouse gases that are created when food goes to landfills,” says vice president of food education and wellness Terri Brownlee. “We knew that there were lots of things we could do.”

In California, BAMCO now must be compliant with SB 1383 regulations, and its program positioned it ahead of the curve.

Passed in 2016, SB 1383 is California legislation that reduces emissions by diverting organic waste from landfills. It included a component that requires food recovery from food generators of a certain size—restaurants that seat more than 250, grocery stores, hospitals, schools, and more.

These entities donate surplus food as a way to reduce food waste and also feed the hungry. Regulations went into effect in 2022.

Wasted food and other organic matter is responsible for about a third of methane produced by landfills, so food recovery has the potential to greatly reduce emissions. And in a country where hunger rates are unacceptably high—over one-fifth of California’s population was food insecure in 2020—wasted food could be better used elsewhere.

But legislation like this is also one of a kind. While the Good Samaritan Act provides federal liability protection for surplus food donations, California is the first to mandate it. This means that California’s program is a statewide experiment that will likely inform if and how other parts of the country choose to address food waste.

Cutting down on institutional food waste is not a small task—but Brownlee says it’s doable.

“Don’t be scared of it,” says Brownlee. “It might feel overwhelming to begin with. But if you just take it and break it down and create some systems, it becomes very manageable.”

Food recovery in practice

On any given week, the Alameda County Community Food Bank (ACCFB) in California has about 490 scheduled food pick-ups from entities that produce surplus food—grocery stores, food distributors and more. These pick-ups are accomplished by approximately 70 of ACCFB’s agency partners. Under the logistical guidance of ACCFB, the food that gets picked up every week gets redistributed to food pantries, soup kitchens and other entities that can directly service community members who need it.

Many of the donors from which ACCFB’s partners collect food are edible food generators compliant with SB 1383. “Edible food generators” such as grocery stores are important to target in pursuit of food waste solutions because consumer-facing businesses are responsible for about 20 percent of food waste in the US.

So far, California is making progress on its food recovery goal of sending 20 percent of edible surplus food to people who need it by 2025. In 2022, about 405,782,341 pounds of food was recovered. That translates to approximately 338 million meals.

Organizations such as ACCFB, which have been in food recovery work for years, are finding themselves as subject matter experts in this field that is now relevant to a lot more organizations.

This legislation has resulted in an uptick in donations from existing partners and brought new donors to the table, says Xochi Hernandez, sustainability program manager for ACCFB.

“We were kind of able to leverage this legislation and say, ‘hey, help us help you be in compliance.’”

In order to safeguard against existing food recovery organizations being bombarded with food donations beyond their capacity, SB1383 stipulates that food recovery organizations are not required to accept food that they can’t handle.

Food Share is a food recovery organization in Ventura County. Chief operations officer Brian Fisher says there’s a need for additional education for food producers about what can actually be donated.

“Food donations have increased but so has the amount of unusable food, which, unfortunately, ends up in the trash,” wrote Fisher to Modern Farmer in an email. “We have discovered there is a need to educate donors on what food recovery organizations can accept and what should be thrown away.”

Food Share has been handling what the legislation calls “tier one” foods for years—these are shelf-stable items and produce. But education will also be important as the roll-out begins of tier 2 food recovery. These are foods that are more distinctly perishable. Tier 2 includes prepared foods such as sandwiches and pre-packed meals, and Fisher says the coordination between nonprofits and the county governments will be paramount to finesse this process safely.

“Dealing with prepared foods and produce, it’s a totally different way that food is stored and dealt with, having two totally different health requirements and code requirements,” says Fisher.

Reducing surplus food

Replate is a food recovery organization with chapters all over the country. One of the biggest bonuses that COO Katie Marchini observed from the legislation is the education component—SB 1383 requires counties to educate those in their jurisdictions about the requirements they must meet. A common misconception that she encounters in her work is that food donation is illegal. It’s great that now businesses will know that it’s not only legal, it’s required.

But leaving education up to counties to administer also means there is slight variation throughout the state, says Marchini. Additionally, SB 1383 was an unfunded mandate. She’s observed that counties haven’t had enough resources to fully implement the education aspect. This leaves nonprofits to up the slack.

“I think the education component has been heavily on the shoulders of nonprofits,” says Marchini.

Currently, there is an amendment to SB 1383 in the California Senate that would require CalRecycle, the state’s waste management branch, to provide technical assistance to jurisdictions that request it. That technical assistance could include education programming.

By reducing the amount of organic waste that ends up in landfills, this legislation is a great way to approach a positive impact on climate change, says Marchini, but it’s not the answer to food insecurity.

“I think everyone who works in this system understands that food recovery is not the solution for food insecurity,” she says. “The fact that food recovery and food insecurity keep getting paired up together kind of complicates these matters.”

But Marchini expects that SB 1383 will have a ripple effect, inspiring future interventions and legislation in other places. She sees it already—some of the organizations with which Replate works have locations in both California and other states, so SB1383 has prompted them to start programs elsewhere as well, for the sake of uniformity.

The legislation backs into what she perceives as the real aim, which is to reduce the amount of surplus that occurs in the first place. It’s much easier to reroute excess away from the landfill if there’s less excess in the first place.

“I think requiring food donation makes a lot of sense, but I think it only makes sense if it’s also paired with source reduction,” says Marchini.

Dana Gunders, president and CEO of ReFED agrees, saying she wishes California had incentivized source reduction more upfront.

It’s too early to know the long-term effects of SB 1383, but Gunders says she thinks we may see a trend of more cities or states creating food recovery legislation in the future, as California pilots it out.

“I think a lot of eyes are on California,” she says.

The post California’s Food Recovery Program is the First of its Kind in the US appeared first on Modern Farmer.