According to the American Immigration Council, women slightly outnumber men at over 23 million female immigrants in the U.S. But while immigrants move by choice, refugees have been forced to flee their homes due to violence, war, hunger and climate change. Some need items as basic as shoes. At MAKE, these women are offered not just support, but a launching pad to their new lives in the US. 

MAKE Projects, which stands for Merging Agriculture Kitchens and Employment, is a spin-off of the International Rescue Committee, a refugee resettlement agency, and provides the women three months of paid worker training through a community garden, kitchen and 16-table café.

“While not all refugee and immigrant women have a strong connection to farm, everyone has a strong connection to foods that evoke memories, nostalgia or just an important sense of cultural identity,” says Anchi Mei, MAKE’s executive director and founder.

Mei launched the nonprofit in 2017 to address the lack of workforce development opportunities for refugee women with English language and cultural barriers, who can find themselves isolated and trapped in poverty. 

“Over time, we have come to understand that access to employment is more than financial. It is personal, emotional, social and benefits not just the immediate family but the whole community.” 

Mei’s program for women and youth, which has built partnerships with local colleges, community organizations, employers and customers, is a necessary bridge.  

Weekly English coaching provided by volunteers helps smooth the path for the newcomers. But it all begins with the universal language of food, in all its worldly flavors. The first two weeks are spent on the farm.

MAKE Farm, a roughly quarter acre plot, uses low-till practices to improve soil health and nutrient density in crops, along with intercropping – growing two or more crops close together – and integrated pest management. Fish and kelp meal are the main fertilizers. Throughout the grounds, pollinator plants and bird habitats promote cross-pollination and a more complex ecosystem.

The resulting bounty travels to the kitchen side, but it loops back to the farm in leftovers to nourish new plantings. “We promote living soils with a robust composting system using our restaurant food waste and regular applications of compost teas,” Mei says.

Farm Program Manager Robbie Wilcox chooses a diverse planting mix. A winter CSA mix contained Taiwanese chrysanthemum greens alongside more familiar customer favorites: spinach, radishes, beets and sweet potato. The produce goes into several dishes at the cafe, like the MAKE Market Salad and Wellness Soup Bowl, tailored by chef Renee Fox around whatever is fresh and abundant that week. 

As the women plant, prune and prep vegetable boxes for subscribers, they ease into the many skills needed to enter the workforce. And when they begin the next phase of the program by working at MAKE’s cafe in North Park, they continue to hone their culinary and hospitality skills serving up such fare as Afghan chicken, cardamom crepes and toasted milk bread; recipe ideas the women share from their own experiences. Several graduates have gone on to work in food service at local hospitals.

“We are a better San Diego with more different voices, flavors and faces at the table.”

Not all choose to work with food, however. Gulnara, who is originally from Kazakhstan, found a job in finance and operations at a local nonprofit. Others work in local hospitals and schools, like Nejat, a recent graduate from Ethiopia.

The farm to table training is a unique way to enter the American workforce, Mei says. Students learn essential job readiness skills and expectations as they transition from the farm to a more intensive work experience in MAKE’s restaurant. And with participants who have hailed from over 30 countries since the program began, it’s a cultural dialogue that enriches the entire San Diego community.

Last year, she says, “was epic.” Thanks to a large workforce development grant, they expanded their facilities and scaled up the adult trainee program, allowing them to work with many more refugee and immigrant women of all different English speaking levels, and educational and professional backgrounds from their home countries.

This year, they are preparing to move to a more permanent address, as they work through the permitting for a new MAKE cafe in San Diego’s Normal Heights neighborhood, not far from their current location. It’s expected to open before the end of the year. In addition to the existing farm in Mission Valley, the new cafe will add its own 2,000 square foot garden on-site. 

Mei says they won’t be deterred by the roiling political climate, as another round of the Trump administration again takes aim at immigrants. After all, they survived the first go-round, and forged their way during COVID, the toughest of times.

“We will continue to be nimble, resourceful and resilient, much like our participants,” she says. Fortunately, MAKE has a strong community of local supporters that believe in their mission. 

“We are a better San Diego with more different voices, flavors and faces at the table.”

The post Spotlight On an Urban Farm Helping Refugees and Immigrants Build Community appeared first on Modern Farmer.

A Black woman and Le Cordon Bleu grad who cooked in prestigious restaurants, Woodward watched as peers in the industry obtained funding because they had a network to tap into. Individual investors dismissed her as not being ambitious or confident enough. She had no recent revenue figures to provide to a bank.

Woodward believes her color was a barrier to procuring capital. “I think we just have a perception of what leadership looks like, or who can lead or build. That’s a trope or image. If you don’t match that image…,” she trails off.

Then she successfully applied for financing from Black Farmer Fund (BFF), a nonprofit community investment fund that supports the Black agricultural community in the Northeast to close the racial wealth gap and build connections. 

Thanks primarily to BFF, “we were able to create a brand and get our infrastructure set up and inventory and everything we needed,” says Woodward.

Filling a void

Since the 1920s, the percentage of Black farmers in the United States has declined precipitously from 14 percent to two percent. The history of racism throughout the agricultural industry is well-documented. Though the ruling of Pigford vs Glickman awarded nearly $2 billion to Black farmers, it’s still difficult for beginning Black farmers to get a foothold in the industry.

BFF is one of a handful of organizations formed since 2020 to support BIPOC farmers and food businesses unable to obtain capital and other critical aid through conventional options, like a farm credit bureau or bank. Another is Potlikker Capital, a social justice charitable fund supporting mainly rural BIPOC farmers across the country.

Both are impact investing funds, which invest capital to generate returns and positive social or environmental impact. Like other investment funds, they raise capital through donations and the sale of notes. 

BFF seeks to deploy $40 million over 75 investments within 10 years. So far it has raised 68 percent towards that and invested in 16 farms and businesses including a distillery, a herbal education and medicine concern, and a brand of a West African sparkling beverage. Some are members of BFF’s $1.1 million pilot fund, which was used to test, build, and inform the organization’s process for centering the needs of farmers and investing in a more reparative structure of capital.

Potlikker aims to work with 300 businesses, including distributors, processors, and producers. lt also partners with farmers who are not of color, but who are in relationship to the community, and underwrites two agriculture entities: Jubilee Justice and Food System 6.

The funds employ a holistic approach using integrated capital, technical assistance, and networking, recognizing that growth support requires more than just money, particularly in BIPOC communities. Technical assistance can range from helping a farmer set up Quick Books to introductions to a soil remediation expert or a State Department of Agriculture contact. Chosen farmers and businesses must follow climate-smart practices and give back to their communities. 

In this non-extractive, restorative model, integrated capital can be zero or low interest loans, grants and recoverable grants, equity, or near equity. Decision making is community-led by BIPOC members of food and agricultural spaces, including farmers or those who work at nonprofits, in food systems, education, and business, including some of whom have received support from the organizations. 

Strands of support

Support takes many forms. For one, BFF and Potlikker establish culturally appropriate relationships and do not charge a fee for their services.

BFF also offers community engagement and networking through community work days and skill shares on topics like how to be loan ready. Funding comes from rapid response or community garden pools or as a portfolio business, a large scale investment. 

Sometimes, when trusted with people’s emotions or mental health challenges, “just being able to be there and help folks navigate through challenging transitions,” is what’s required, says BFF co-founder Olivia Watkins. 

Edenesque became a portfolio business of BFF last year. While most investees receive between a quarter and half a million dollars, the company received $1.25 million in a grant and a loan. With the funding, Edenesque relaunched in October 2024. Its nut and oat milks are sold in over 200 stores in the Northeast, including Whole Foods; that number will double by April. Now that she’s virtually rebuilt her company from scratch, Woodward plans to use BFF’s technical assistance offerings, like learning to use social media for brand promotion. 

Since 2021, Potlikker has provided resources to 57 farmers in 24 states. By May, co-founder Mark Watson expects that number to grow to 65. 

Ozell White, a Mississippi cattle and watermelon farmer, participated in Jubilee Justice’s rice growing project. He served as Chair of Potlikker’s Board and received a $12,000 grant for fencing and a mechanical weeder after meeting Watson on a cross-country RV trip to visit farmers. Better equipped to control weeds and practice sustainable farming, White now doesn’t need pricey chemical inputs. 

With eight other farmers throughout Mississippi, White is also participating in one of Potlikker’s “communities of practice,” groups organized so farmers can share knowledge and trade business opportunities. They’re learning accounting, tax preparation, and business planning from Potlikker staff, its Board and Resource Council members, and experts contracted by Potlikker.

“The beauty of Potlikker,” says White, “is that they can start with the farmer, and walk with that farmer from where they are and stay with them until they get where they need to go.” 

Changing the landscape

These efforts to effect systemic change have gained greater significance with the recent dissolution of many DEI efforts across industries. 

Watson and Watkins believe that fundraising will continue apace because of the substantial interest in having strong local food systems and support from mission-aligned donors. “I think it’s just the context in which we’re all working is going to shift,” Watkins says.  

Organizations like Potlikker and BFF are needed to help the money flow fair, says Watson. “I don’t know how we’re going to handle it, but we’re going to keep doing what we’re doing,” he asserts, “serving communities that we feel like have not ever had real access or might be getting diminished access to resources.”

The post On the Ground with Organizations Uplifting BIPOC Farmers 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.

Each year, about one in six Americans falls ill to foodborne illnesses, and oversight agencies have routinely found that the U.S. food safety system — a shared responsibility of the FDA, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and several others — falls short.

In 2017, the Government Accountability Office called for a unified strategy to address food safety, as no less than eight different federal departments had a hand in fortifying the nation’s food. And in 2018, the GAO criticized the USDA for not doing enough to keep foodborne pathogens out of the nation’s meat supply.

In 2021, ProPublica found that the USDA knew of an ongoing salmonella outbreak but had allowed contaminated meat to continue to be sold.

Generally, the USDA inspects meat and poultry, and it sometimes has inspectors stationed inside large meat processing plants. The FDA inspects fruits, vegetables, dairy products and processed foods — about 80% of the food supply. It also inspects food overseas that will be imported to the U.S.

“Given the large number of food facilities and the agency’s limited resources, meeting the existing inspection mandates has been challenging for the agency,” the FDA told the GAO. However, the “FDA is excited for the work underway” at the agency to address food safety.

In October 2024, the FDA announced it was implementing a near agency-wide reorganization that it said would help it better oversee the nation’s food supply.

The reorganization was prompted, in part, by the FDA’s delayed response to a whistleblower complaint about infant formula produced at an Abbott Nutrition factory. Despite receiving the complaint, the agency took no action for 15 months, during which time several infants fell ill after consuming the contaminated formula.

In its announcement, the FDA said it was “focused on transforming the agency to be more efficient, nimble and ready for the future.”

COVID-19 inhibited inspections

The FDA is required to inspect about 75,000 food facilities in the U.S. each year, according to the GAO’s report, published Jan. 8. However, between 2018 and 2023, the latest year data is available, it failed to perform the number of inspections mandated by the 2011 Food Safety Modernization Act.

One reason the FDA fell behind was the COVID-19 pandemic. It affected the agency’s ability to conduct in-person inspections (as it did for other agencies, such as the Occupational Safety and Health Administration).

The year of the pandemic, the FDA only inspected 7% of facilities identified as “high-risk” for foodborne illnesses, according to the GAO. The number increased to about half the following years.

Still, the pandemic created a significant backlog, which the agency is still dealing with, the GAO said.

“While it is unclear when FDA will be able to clear the backlog of past due inspections created during the pandemic, FDA officials told us they are taking steps to address it,” the watchdog said in its report.

Inspection gaps, staffing challenges

Another challenge is the lack of experienced inspectors. As of 2024, the agency had 432 inspectors, which the GAO said was 90% its full capacity.

As of mid-2024, a quarter of FDA food inspectors were eligible for retirement, and more will be eligible by summer 2025. (The GAO report does not say how many retired.) The FDA is hiring new staff, but “the hiring rate has not outpaced losses,” the GAO reported.

When a foodborne illness outbreak does occur, FDA inspectors must focus their attention on the outbreak. But that adds to the backlog of regular inspections, the GAO said: Prioritizing outbreaks “directly affects” the agency’s ability to conduct inspections that might prevent outbreaks.

Adding to the workforce issue is that it takes about two years to train a new food inspector.

The FDA said it had stepped up efforts to recruit qualified inspectors, including offering student loan reimbursements.

“While these actions represent positive steps,” the GAO said, “FDA continues to face long-standing and significant workforce capacity challenges.”

The USDA has also struggled to hire and retain food safety inspectors. Even before the pandemic — when meat processing plants were known COVID-19 hotspots — agency employees reported feeling burned out with heavy workloads, Investigate Midwest reported in 2019.

For instance, due to low staffing, one USDA food inspector, at eight months pregnant, was working double shifts.

Too few overseas inspections

The FDA is required to perform about 19,000 food safety inspections overseas each year, as the U.S. imports many foods consumers want year-round, such as bananas. It also did not meet this threshold, averaging just 5% of the required figure between 2018 and 2023.

The FDA told the GAO that the required number of foreign inspections was unrealistic. As of mid-2024, just 20 employees were dedicated to foreign inspections.

In 2015, the GAO recommended the FDA determine a reasonable target for foreign inspections. Responding to this latest GAO report, the FDA said it would not do so.

“FDA officials told us in August 2024 — nearly 10 years after we made our recommendation — that they do not intend to take any further action to address it,” the GAO said. “We maintain that identifying an appropriate annual target for conducting foreign inspections and using it to assess FDA’s performance in safeguarding imported food is important.”

This article first appeared on Investigate Midwest and is republished here under a Creative Commons license. Investigate Midwest is an independent, nonprofit newsroom. Their mission is to serve the public interest by exposing dangerous and costly practices of influential agricultural corporations and institutions through in-depth and data-driven investigative journalism. Visit them online at www.investigatemidwest.org

The post As Foodborne Illnesses Sicken Tens of Millions Each Year, FDA Falls Behind on Mandated Inspections appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Because farming is so central to our nation’s identity—and its idea of itself—this future can feel fraught. In 2012, the USDA forecast that most (70 percent) family farms would transfer hands over the next 20 years. 

How will that transition to a new generation of farmers happen? Will family farms as we know and love them survive, and how do the ones that are thriving now do it? We looked at a range of agricultural models, and spoke to farmers who are in the middle of the process of transition to find out more. 

The current state of family farms

After peaking in 1935, when there were 6.8 million family farms, the small family farm is increasingly imperiled. Today, there are around 1.89 million US farms, down seven percent from 2.04 million in 2017. The acreage is going down, too: There are about 879 million acres being farmed, down slightly from the 900 million acres growing crops or feeding animals in 2017. 

That’s the familiar bad news, a perennial, gloomy backbeat to most stories on farming in America today. But there are bright spots. 

There are fewer farmers and less farmland, but due to consolidation, there has been an increase in income for the remaining farmers. Gross cash farm income (GCFI) is calculated by tallying a farm’s earnings before expenses, and it includes both income from sales and payments from government farm programs. 

Adjusted for inflation, in 2024, the GCFI is forecast to be $577.1 billion, up from $422.7 billion in 2004. Family farms still account for the vast majority (97 percent) of all farming operations, and small family farms (with less than $350,000 in GCFI) make up 88 percent of all domestic farms. 

A dairy farm invests in new technology 

Wright’s Dairy Farm & Bakery has been producing fresh milk directly to the public since 1914. But the business today, which employs dozens of local bakers, dairy plant and farm workers, would be almost unrecognizable to its customers a century ago. 

Cathryn Kennedy, food operations manager at the North Smithfield, R.I. farm, says she had zero plans to join the family farm—and didn’t face pressure or expectation from her family. That meant that when she joined in 2015, she was able to see the farm with fresh eyes. 

Kennedy has led the charge into the wholesale market after noting a decline in retail store sales and an overall trend downward in milk consumption nationwide. In 2017, she helped launch Wright’s wholesale delivery department with three off-site sales locations. 

“Adding that sales channel and making it easier for people to buy our products helped increase milk sales amid declining consumption,” says Kennedy. “I’ve also built out a brand for scooped ice cream, which we were only selling pre-packed in our on-site retail store.”

In 2019, Kennedy had a seasonal ice cream trailer installed on the farm, then added an additional one at a separate location. The demand was so intense, Wright’s opened a year-round location in Providence, where they make and sell ice cream and other packaged dairy products. 

These innovations have required a serious capital outlay, including three different vehicles ($165,000), two ice cream trailers ($100,000), a digital platform to manage orders ($5,000 annually) and two full-time drivers ($100,000 annually). But since 2017, when it began putting changes into effect, Wright’s has generated $8.5 million in sales, with $200,000 per season coming from the seasonal ice cream trailers. 

A cattle ranch educates customers 

Eagle Rock Ranch was founded in 1868 by Louis Holst as a working cattle and hay operation. Now one of the few remaining cattle ranches in South Park, CO, the farm has stayed successful by getting creative and meeting customers where they are.

Erin Michalski, who runs Eagle Ranch Mercantile in Fairplay for her family farm and helps spearhead sales more broadly, says they’ve had to change their approach to finding and keeping customers amid a boom in the population of Denver and Colorado Springs, both of which are about a 90-minute drive from the ranch. 

“We need them to buy our beef, and they in turn need us to grow their food,” says Michalski, explaining that Eagle Ranch is leaning into the symbiotic relationship by offering ranch and eco-tours of the land to the public. 

“We want to educate people about the value of agriculture and increase awareness of how food is raised and grown,” she says. “We want people to see firsthand the care and attention that goes into raising our cattle and growing our hay, while also learning what it means to be stewards of the land.”

Eagle Ranch made a series of changes to its sales approach during COVID, when she realized that people want to know where their food comes from. 

“They also didn’t necessarily want to go to a store to make a purchase,” says Michalski. “We began selling our beef direct-to-consumer and at our store in Fairplay.”

Drawing the curtain back on its operations has allowed Eagle Ranch to thrive, despite dramatic increases in everything from the cost of feed for its cattle, to fuel for itstrucks and costs of input. Eagle Ranch has also diversified its revenue stream, by selling not just hay and beef but also an assortment of home and kitchen merchandise at itsMercantile store, and leasing private-water fishing rights on its land. 

Overall, these changes have increased the farm’s profits by 30 percent. 

A winery raises prices to reflect value

The Pedroncelli family has been growing and vinifying wine for almost 100 years in Sonoma’s Dry Creek Valley. When John Pedroncelli, Sr. founded Pedroncelli Winery in 1927, his primary goal was making exceptional wine, and that hasn’t changed. 

But the way that wine is sold and presented has transformed drastically through Prohibition, two world wars and the pandemic. When Julie Pedroncelli St. John took the helm as president in 2022, she knew it was time to make changes. 

“We wanted the value of our brand to be reflected in the price, and we also wanted to repackage our wines,” St. John explains. “Together, we knew this would signal our premium status to a different consumer, and we also knew the modest changes we made would not alienate our loyal customers.”

Prices went up on key national releases, from the high teens to the low to mid-twenties. 

The winery also invested in an upgrade to the tasting room and hospitality area, replanted a few key vineyards and gave the winemaking team new and better tools to play with. 

“The hospitality spaces had been built in 1986, and they hadn’t been updated since,” says St. John. “We invested about $1.5 million in improvements, and the bulk went to updating the space, but we also want to focus more on small lot wines, which meant upgrades in the cellar, including barrels. And we replanted five acres.”

Each acre costs about $50,000 to replant, and because it takes about four years for a new vineyard to bear fruit that can be vinified and bottled, it started small, with five acres. All told, there are 100 acres, and while the winery doesn’t want to replant its entire vineyard, it will chip away at small replantings as it goes. 

Sales of wine overall have been dismal in recent years, but Pedroncelli bucks the trend, with a sales boost of 25.5 percent year-over-year.

Farmers will always be foundational to the American story, and hopefully, our diets. But it’s clear that how that story gets told and sold may need to evolve with changing market needs. 

The post Why Are Family Farms in Trouble? appeared first on Modern Farmer.

The tips are especially helpful for folks hoping to make a go of farming on smaller plots of land. Given the challenges in an industry dominated by factory farms, such as slim profit margins and little control over pricing and markets, between 52 percent and 79 percent of small family farms are at high financial risk. More than half of small farmers also have to work a second job to make ends meet. 

“We only have 45 acres, which is a really small farm around here,” says Larson. “Conventional wisdom was [that] you could never make a living off that small amount of land, because the farmers around here are all commodity farmers.”

But, some small-scale farmers like Larson have been able to make their operations profitable with creative techniques such as monetizing their social media presence and carving out interesting, competitive niches.

One way Larson did this is by finding breeds with great marketing stories behind them, such as Dexter cattle. Brought back from near extinction by homesteaders who wanted a dual purpose for beef and dairy, this Irish heritage breed works well for Larson because of their smaller size and good beef quality when raised on grass without grain.

“You want to be able to tell a story to customers that they can buy into,” says Larson about his choice cattle breeds. “You need to have a marketing hat on as much as anything else.”

Eventually, says Larson, the farm began to make enough money for the family to take home a profit. Then, about seven years into the endeavor, Larson says he had another idea: monetizing Just A Few Acres’ social media to help support their small livestock farm.

“It’s enabled us to … gradually, taper down the numbers of animals that we raise,” says Larson. “And it’s allowed me to say, ‘well, if I’d like to retire before I die, I can do that now.’ It’s given us breathing room.”

Likewise, across the country, Rob Miller and Melanie Jones had to think way outside the box—and their own fence—in order to acquire enough land to farm in Woodstock, GA. As owners and operators of Trefoil Gardens, they adapted a “multi-locational” model that has grown into a neighborhood agricultural cooperative, and it relies on the partnership of their neighbors. 

Through a program called SPIN-Farming, which stands for small plot intensive and teaches aspiring farmers to take a systematic approach to backyard-scale growing, Miller says he was able to connect with a farmer who already had a template for a yard-sharing contract. He brought the contract over to his neighbor, and they broke ground on their first neighboring plot on July 4, 2016.

Now, with plots spread across the yards of six of their neighbors, and a few others a two-minute drive from their suburban home, they currently have 15,000 square feet under cultivation. Since then, Trefoil has been able to take its yard and neighborhood to new levels of productivity. The SPIN program has also helped thousands of other farmers use this multi-locational approach to farming on limited space.

But, Miller says it took him a long time to stop burning himself out with the hard work, and to get to a sustainable mindset.

“We’re a mission-driven company, and I know a lot of a lot of people in our space are and so, for us, it’s not so much about money, but at the same time, we’ve got to earn a living. This thing has to be financially sustainable,” says Miller. “It’s been a big transition to move from that solely mission-based focus… you can only do that for so long before you just burn yourself out.”

Given the yard-sized scale of the operation, they have had to really look at which crops have outsized value for profitability, and which are too time-consuming or fickle to rely on in such a limited space. Miller says Trefoil has recently pivoted toward perennial instead of annual crops because they are more manageable and save time.

“We’ve also really dialed in to floral and mushrooms, and then also herbal products, botanical products,” says Miller. “It’s a joke, but it’s not really, that we grow food so that we can get into our farmers markets, and then we grow flowers so that we can afford to grow the food that we bring to the farmers market.”

Trefoil has also had to look at non-traditional methods of selling, because growing on spec with such little land became not only impossible but also incredibly stressful. So, Trefoil took on a community-supported agriculture (CSA) food box subscription model with a short subscription period allowing them to pivot based on what was growing well.

Now, having been profitable for the last three years and selling 25 food boxes at the peak of this year, they’ve also found creative ways to cut costs as compared to a traditional agricultural plot of land. 

“We’re in an older neighborhood and so everybody’s on septic systems, so there’s no sewer,” says Miller. “The water is pretty inexpensive for our neighborhood, and that’s really important.”

For many things, though, Miller says they rely on their relationships and community. “I wake up every morning fully indebted to everyone around me, and it’s the most freeing thing in the world. And it just sounds counterintuitive, but it’s true,” he says.

While Larson has also been successful by building up his community, albeit online, he cautions against expecting the farm to be profitable from the start, and he encourages aspiring small farmers to have some kind of a safety net, be it savings or part-time work off the farm.

“You have to have some kind of financial security to start out, because … you don’t have any income from the farm on day one,” says Lason, explaining that he and his wife had some savings that they lived off in a “very modest way” for a few years.

“When we sold our first products at market, everything that came back, the money that came back in stayed on the farm side, and we used that to reinvest and gradually, bootstrap ourselves and grow the size of the farm,” says Larson. Despite land becoming increasingly expensive for aspiring small farmers, a little creativity can still make the business viable. 

The post The Financials of Profitable Small-Scale Farming appeared first on Modern Farmer.

“Farming in America in particular, but also commercially and globally, it’s based on exploitation and making as much money for as little as you can pay. And we have to turn that around in a big way,” says Sasha Shankar, one of the farm directors.

Our food system relies on the security of small farms, but these farms face many obstacles—including land access, access to business resources, and access to buyers. To counter those challenges, Dig Deep Farms has entered into a partnership with the Alameda County Community Food Bank (ACCFB) as a way to accomplish its goals. For the next two to three years, ACCFB will provide institutional support, such as assuming the lease agreements for the farm locations. This will allow Dig Deep Farms to focus on growing a sustainable business, one that will stand on its own in just a few years.

Shifting priorities

Many people think of food banks as a place simply to get a meal. But in the several decades that the Alameda County Community Food Bank has been in operation, the organization has moved beyond hunger relief to addressing poverty systemically. 

“ACCFB has a long history of not addressing hunger in a vacuum or addressing food insecurity in a transactional way, but really wanting to look at those root causes and think about how we can offer solutions to hunger at that root cause level,” says Allison Pratt, chief of strategy and partnerships for ACCFB. “We took a look at how much money we were spending each year on food…and we realized that where we placed those dollars actually does make a difference in the food system.” 

“One of the frames that we’re working with as a food bank is our desire to move from a kind of food charity model, or exclusively a food charity model, to a food justice model,” says Susie Wise, ACCFB director of strategy. “Our understanding of where our food comes from, who grows it, who has resources in order to become farmers—these are aspects of bringing a food justice lens to our work.” 

For them, this manifests in several different ways—for example, ACCFB team members went to Washington D.C. to lobby Congress for anti-hunger policies in the Farm Bill. Now, they are also investing in a farm that they see doing important work to strengthen the food system.

Dig Deep Farms was cofounded in 2010 as a social enterprise project by Martin Neideffer Hilary Bass. The farm’s mission has stretched beyond the act of growing food, to strengthening the community’s food system. For example, it has been a part of the local food as medicine initiative Recipe4Health, which integrates food into the treatment and prevention of chronic illness. One of Dig Deep Farms’ key ongoing priorities is paying employees a living wage and providing similar benefits to other jobs, to make farming a viable profession. 

“One of the reasons why folks are not entering the field, they’re hearing [there’s] no money to be made,” says Troy Horton, one of the farm directors. “They can’t make a living. It’s backbreaking work. And then if we go to those historically underserved, underrepresented folks, it’s even more grim. One of the things. Our primary focus was trying to create a real living wage for folks doing it.”

For the next few years, ACCFB will “incubate” Dig Deep Farms by assuming the lease agreements of Dig Deep Farms’ two farm sites, plus providing logistical, human resource, and financial support.

While a partnership between a farm and a food bank is not common, this partnership can become an example for others. 

“The incubator concept invites food banks to consider that question—what does it take to end hunger, in addition to continuing to grow food banks? What are the other pieces of our food system that are going to be vital if we’re actually going to achieve our mission?” says Pratt. “Supporting farmers and supporting equity in how our food is produced, creating economic activity through those channels, all helps to create a system where people have access to what they need.”

Horton points out that one of the big obstacles facing small farmers is the lack of support they get in comparison to large commodity crop farmers. Finding pathways to support, through partnerships, grants, and more, can strengthen small farms.

“That’s what we’re always preaching—us urban farmers or small farmers need to be subsidized, just like the big farmers,” says Horton.

The post The Farm and the Food Bank appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Helene and Milton, the two massive hurricanes that just swept into the country — killing hundreds of people, and leaving both devastation and rumblings of political upheaval in seven states — amounted to their own October surprise. Not that the storms led to some irredeemable gaffe or unveiled some salacious scandal. The surprise, really, may be that not even the hurricanes have pushed concerns about climate change more toward the center of the presidential campaign.

With early voting already underway and two weeks before Election Day, when voters will decide between Vice President Kamala Harris, who has called climate change an “existential threat,” and former President Donald Trump, who has called climate change a “hoax,” Grist’s editorial staff presents a climate-focused voter’s guide — a package of analyses and predictions about what the next four years may bring from the White House, depending on who wins.

The next administration will be decisive for the country’s progress on critical climate goals. By 2030, just a year after the next president would leave office, the U.S. has committed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50 to 52 percent below 2005 levels, and expects to supply up to 13 million electric vehicles annually. A little further down the line, though no less critical, the country’s climate goals include reaching 100 percent carbon-free electricity by 2035 and achieving a net-zero emissions economy by 2050.

As you gear up to vote, here are 15 ways that Harris’ and Trump’s climate- and environment-related policies could affect your life — along with some information to help inform your vote.

Your energy mix

Over the last year or so, utility companies across the country have woken up to a new reality: After two decades of flat growth, electricity demand is about to spike, due to the combined pressures of new data centers, cryptocurrency mining, a manufacturing boom, and the electrification of buildings and transportation.

While the next president will not directly decide how the states supply power to their new and varied customers, he or she will oversee the massive system of incentives, subsidies, and loans by which the federal government influences how much utilities meet electricity demand by burning fossil fuels — the crucial question for the climate.

Trump’s answer to that question can perhaps be summed up in the three-word catchphrase he’s deployed on the campaign trail: “Drill, baby, drill.” He is an avowed friend of the fossil fuel industry, from whom he reportedly demanded $1 billion in campaign funds at a fundraising dinner last spring, promising in exchange to gut environmental regulations.

Vice President Harris is not exactly running on a platform of decarbonization, either. In an effort to win swing votes in the shale-boom heartland of Pennsylvania, she has reversed course on her past opposition to fracking, and she has proudly touted the record levels of oil and gas production seen under the current administration. Despite the risk of nuclear waste, the Biden administration has also championed nuclear power as a carbon-free solution and sought to incentivize the construction of new reactors through subsidies and loans. Although Harris says her administration would not be a continuation of Biden’s, it’s reasonable to expect continuity with Biden’s overall approach of leaning more heavily on incentives for low-emissions energy than restrictions on fossil fuels to further a climate agenda.

Your home improvements

In 2022, the Biden administration handed the American people a great big carrot to incentivize them to decarbonize: the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA. It provides thousands of dollars in the form of rebates and tax credits for a consumer to get an EV and electrify their home with solar panels, a heat pump, and an induction stove. (Though the funding available for renters is slim, it is also out there.) In 2023, 3.4 million Americans got $8.4 billion in tax credits for home energy improvements thanks to the IRA.

If elected, Trump has pledged to rescind the remaining funding, which would require the support of Congress. By contrast, Harris has praised the law (which, as vice president, she famously cast the tie-breaking vote to pass) and would almost certainly veto any attempts by Congress to repeal it. As a presidential candidate, she has not said whether she would expand the law, though many expect she would focus on more efficient implementation.

But while repealing the IRA might slow the steady pace of American households decarbonizing, it can’t stop what’s already in motion. “There are fundamental forces here at work,” said Gernot Wagner, a climate economist at Columbia Business School. “At the end of the day, there’s very little that Trump can do to stand in the way.”

For one, the feds provide guidance to states on how to distribute the money made available through the IRA. More climate-ambitious states are already layering on their own monetary incentives to decarbonize. So even if that IRA money disappeared, states could pick up the slack.

And two, even before the IRA passed, market forces were setting clean energy on a path to replace fossil fuels. The price of solar power dropped by 90 percent between 2010 and 2020. And like any technology, electric appliances will only get cheaper and better. It might take longer without further support from the federal government, but the American home of tomorrow is, inevitably, fully electric — no matter the next administration.

 

Matt Simon, Senior staff writer focusing on climate solutions

Your home insurance premiums

Whether they know it or not, many Americans are already confronting the costs of a warming world in their monthly bills: In recent years, home insurance premiums have risen in almost every state, as insurance companies face the fallout of larger and more damaging hurricanes, wildfires, and hailstorms. In some states, like Florida and California, many prominent companies have fled the market altogether. While some Democrats have proposed legislation that would create a federal backstop for these failing insurance markets — with the goal of ensuring that coverage remains available for most homeowners — these proposals have yet to make much headway in a divided Congress. For the moment, it’s state governments, rather than the president or any other national politicians, that have real jurisdiction over homeowner’s insurance prices.

Near the end of the presidential debate in September, when both candidates were asked about what they’d do to “fight climate change,” Harris began her response by referring to “anyone who lives in a state who has experienced these extreme weather occurrences, who now is either being denied home insurance or is being jacked up” as a way to counter Trump’s denials of climate change.

Traditional homeowner policies don’t include flood insurance, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency runs a flood insurance program that serves 5 million homeowners in the U.S., mostly along the East Coast. Homeowners in the most flood-prone areas are required to buy this policy, but uptake has been lagging in some particularly vulnerable inland communities — including those that were recently devastated by Hurricane Helene. Project 2025, which many experts believe will serve as the blueprint to a second Trump term (though his campaign disavows any connection to it), imagines FEMA winding down the program altogether, throwing flood coverage to the private market. This would likely make it cheaper to live in risky areas — but it would leave homeowners without financial support after floods, all but ensuring only the rich could rebuild.

 

Jake Bittle, Staff writer focusing on climate impacts and adaptation

Your transportation

The appetite for infrastructure spending is so bipartisan that the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, signed in 2021, has become more widely known as the bipartisan infrastructure law. But don’t be fooled. A wide gulf separates how Harris and Trump approach transportation, with potentially profound climate implications.

Harris hasn’t offered many specifics, but she has committed to advancing the rollout out of the Biden administration’s infrastructure agenda. That includes traditional efforts like building roads and bridges, mixed with Democratic priorities including union labor and an eye toward climate-resilience. The infrastructure law and the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act include billions in spending to promote the adoption of electric vehicles, produce them domestically, and add 500,000 charging stations by 2030. They also include greener transportation efforts aimed at, among other things, electrifying buses, enhancing passenger rail, and expanding mass transit. That said, Harris has not called for the eventual elimination of internal combustion vehicles despite such plans in 12 states.

Trump has also been sparse on details about transportation — his website doesn’t address the issue except to decry Chinese ownership. During his first term and 2020 campaign, he championed (though never produced) a $1 trillion infrastructure plan. It focused on building “gleaming” roads, highways, and bridges, and reducing the environmental review and government oversight of such projects. He has favored flipping the federal-first funding model to shift much of the cost onto states, municipalities, and the private sector. Ultimately, Trump seems to have little interest in a transition to low-carbon transportation — the 2024 official Republican platform calls for rolling back EV mandates — and he remains a vocal supporter of fossil fuel production.

 

Tik Root, Senior staff writer focusing on the clean energy transition

Your health

Rising global temperatures and worsening extreme weather are changing the distribution and prevalence of tick- and mosquito-borne diseases, fungal pathogens, and water-borne bacteria across the U.S. State and local health departments rely heavily on data and recommendations on these climate-fueled illnesses from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC — an agency whose director is appointed by the president and can be influenced by the White House.

In his first term, Trump tried to divorce many federal agencies’ research functions from their rulemaking capacities, and there are concerns that, if he wins again in November, Trump would continue that effort. Project 2025, a sweeping blueprint developed by right-wing conservative groups with the aim of influencing a second Trump term, proposes separating the CDC’s disease surveillance efforts from its policy recommendation work, meaning the agency would be able to track the effects of climate change on human health, like the spreading of infectious diseases, but it wouldn’t be able to tell states how to manage them or inform the public about how to stay safe from them.

Harris is expected to leave the CDC intact, but she hasn’t given many signals on how she’d approach climate and health initiatives. Her campaign website says she aims to protect public health, but provides no further clarification or policy position on that subject, or specifically climate change’s influence on it. Over the past four years, the Biden administration has made strides in protecting Americans from extreme heat, the leading cause of weather-related deaths in the U.S. It proposed new heat protections for indoor and outdoor workers, and it made more than $1 billion in grant funding available to nonprofits, tribes, cities, and states for cooling initiatives such as planting trees in urban areas, which reduce the risk of heat illness. It’s reasonable to expect that a future Harris administration would continue Biden’s work in this area. Harris cast the tie-breaking vote on the IRA, which includes emissions-cutting policies that will lead to less global warming in the long term, benefiting human health not just in the U.S. but worldwide.

But there’s more to be done. Biden established the Office of Climate Change and Health Equity in the first year of his term, but it still hasn’t been funded by Congress. Harris has not said whether she will push for more funding for that office.

Zoya Teirstein, Staff writer covering politics and the intersection between climate change and health

Your food prices

Inflation has cooled significantly since 2022, but high prices — especially high food prices — remain a concern for many Americans. Both candidates have promised to tackle the issue; Harris went so far as to propose a federal price-gouging ban to lower the cost of groceries. Such a ban could help smaller producers and suppliers, but economists fear it could also lead to further supply shortages and reduced product quality. Meanwhile, Trump has said he will tax imported goods to lower food prices, though analysts have pointed out that the tax would likely do the opposite. Trump-era tariff fights during the U.S.-China trade war led to farmers losing billions of dollars in exports, which the federal government had to make up for with subsidies.

Trump’s immigration agenda could also affect food prices. If reelected, the former president has said he will expel millions of undocumented immigrants, many of whom work for low pay on farms and in other parts of the food sector, playing a vital role in food harvesting and processing. Their mass deportation and the resulting labor shortage could drive up prices at the grocery store. Meanwhile, Harris promises to uphold and strengthen the H-2A visa system — the national program that enables agricultural producers to hire foreign-born workers for seasonal work.

In the short term, it must be emphasized that neither candidate’s economic plans will have much of an effect on the ways extreme weather and climate disasters are already driving up the cost of groceries. Severe droughts are one of the factors that have destabilized the global crop market in recent years, translating to higher U.S. grocery store prices. Warming has led to reduced agricultural productivity and diminished crop yields, while major disasters throttle the supply chain. Even a forecast of extreme weather can send food prices higher. These climate trends are likely to continue over the next four years, no matter who becomes president.

But the winner of the 2024 election can determine how badly climate change batters the food supply in the long run — primarily by controlling greenhouse gas emissions.

Ayurella Horn-Muller, Staff writer focusing on the impact of climate change on food and agriculture

Your drinking water

“I want absolutely immaculate, clean water,” Trump said in June during the first presidential debate this election season. But if a second Trump presidency is anything like the first, there is good reason to worry about the protection of public drinking water.

During his first term in office, the Trump administration repealed the Clean Water Rule, a critical part of the Clean Water Act that limited the amount of pollutants companies could discharge near streams, wetlands, and other sources of water used for public consumption. “It was ready to protect the drinking water of 117 million Americans and then, within a few months of being in office, Donald Trump and [former EPA administrator] Scott Pruitt threw it into the trash bin to appease their polluter allies,” former Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune said in a press release.

While in office, Trump also secured a conservative majority on the Supreme Court, which last year tipped the court in favor of a decision to vastly limit the Environmental Protection Agency’s power to regulate pollution in certain wetlands, forcing the agency to weaken its own clean water rules.

A Harris administration would likely carry forward the work of several Biden EPA measures to safeguard the public’s drinking water from toxic heavy metals and other contaminants. For example, in April, the EPA passed the nation’s first-ever national drinking water standard to protect an estimated 100 million people from a category of synthetic chemicals known as PFAS, or “forever chemicals,” which have been linked to cancer, high blood pressure, and immune system deficiencies. Enforcing the new standard will require the agency to examine test results from thousands of water systems across the country and follow up to ensure their compliance — an effort that will take place during the next White House administration.

“As president,” Harris’ website says, “she will unite Americans to tackle the climate crisis as she builds on this historic work, advances environmental justice, protects public lands and public health, increases resilience to climate disasters, lowers household energy costs, creates millions of new jobs, and continues to hold polluters accountable to secure clean air and water for all.” Project 2025, the policy plan drawn up by former Trump staffers to guide a second Trump administration’s policies, indicates that a future Trump administration would eliminate safeguards like the PFAS rule that place limits on industrial emissions and discharges.

Just this month, the EPA issued a groundbreaking rule requiring water utilities to replace virtually every lead pipe in the country within 10 years. With funds from Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure law, the agency will also invest $2.6 billion for drinking water upgrades and lead pipe replacements. Harris has previously spoken out about the dangers of lead pipes, stating at a press conference in 2022 that lead exposure is “an issue that we as a nation should commit to ending.”

The success of these and other measures will rely on a well-staffed EPA enforcement division, which may end up being one of the most insidious stakes of this election for environmental policies. Budget cuts and staff departures during the first Trump administration gutted the EPA’s enforcement capacity — a problem that the agency has spent the past four years trying to mend. Project 2025 “would essentially eviscerate the EPA,” said Stan Meiburg, who served as acting deputy administrator for the EPA from 2014 to 2017.

 

Lylla Younes, Senior staff writer covering chemical pollution, regulation, and frontline communities

Your clean air

President Biden’s clean air policy has been characterized by a spate of new rules to curb toxic air pollution from a variety of facilities, including petroleum coke ovens, synthetic manufacturing facilities, and steel mills. While environmental advocates have decried some of these regulations as insufficiently protective, certain provisions — such as mandatory air monitoring — were hailed as milestones in the history of the agency’s air pollution policy. Former EPA staffer and air pollution expert Scott Throwe told Grist that a Harris- and Democratic-led EPA would continue to build on the work of the past four years by  enforcing these new rules, which will require federal oversight of state environmental agencies’ inspection protocols and monitoring data.

Project 2025 proposes a major reorganization of the EPA, which would include the reduction of full-time staff positions and the elimination of departments deemed “superfluous.” It also promotes the rollback of a range of air quality regulations, from ambient air standards for toxic pollutants to greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants.

What’s more, a growing body of research has found that poor air quality is often concentrated in communities of color, which are disproportionately close to fossil fuel infrastructure. Conservative state governments havepushedback against the Biden EPA’s efforts to address “environmental justice” through agency channels and in court — efforts that will likely enjoy more executive support under a second Trump administration.

Your public lands

Under the Antiquities Act of 1906, a national monument can be created by presidential decree. The act can be a useful tool to protect important landscapes from industries like oil, gas, and even green energy enterprises. Tribal nations have asked numerous presidents to use this executive power to protect tribal homelands that might fall within federal jurisdiction. During his first term, Trump argued that the act also gives the president the implicit power to dissolve a national monument.

In 2017, Trump drastically shrunk two Obama-era designations, Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante in Utah, in what amounted to the biggest slash of federal land protections in the history of the United States. At the time, Trump said that “bureaucrats in Washington” should not control what happens to land in Utah. While giving back local control was Trump’s stated rationale, tribes in the area, like the Diné, Ute, Hopi, and Zuni, had been working for years to protect the two iconic and culturally significant sites. Meanwhile, his decision opened up the land for oil and gas development. While not all tribal nations are opposed to oil and gas production, tribal environmental advocates are worried that a second Trump term will erode federal environmental regulations and commitments to progress in the fight against climate change.

Since 2021, the Biden administration has put more than 42 million acres of land into conservation by creating and expanding national monuments. This includes the Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni, a new monument spanning a million acres near the Grand Canyon — the kind of protection that tribal activists for years had worked to prevent industrial uranium mining. And just this month, Biden announced the creation of the Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary — a 4,500-square-mile national marine sanctuary to be “managed with tribal, Indigenous community involvement.”

But Harris might not continue that legacy. While she has remained silent about what she would do to protect lands, she has been vocal about continuing the U.S.’s oil and gas production as well as a push for more mining to help with the green transition — like copper from Oak Flat in Arizona and lithium from Thacker Pass in Nevada — both important places to tribal communities in the area. Tribes have been subjected to the adverse effects of the energy crisis before — namely dams that destroyed swaths of homelands and nuclear energy that increased cancer rates of Southwest tribal members — and without specific protections, it’s easy to see green energy as a changing of the guard instead of a game changer.

Taylar Dawn Stagner, Indigenous affairs reporting fellow

Your next climate disaster

Congress controls how much money the Federal Emergency Management Agency receives for relief efforts after catastrophic events like hurricanes Helene and Milton, but the president holds significant sway over who receives money and when. A second Trump administration would likely curtail some of the climate-focused resiliency projects FEMA has pursued in recent years, such as cutting back money for infrastructure that would be more resilient against hazards like sea level rises, fires, and earthquakes. Republican firebrands, like Representative Scott Perry from Pennsylvania, have decried these projects as wasteful and unnecessary.

Under the Stafford Act, which governs federal disaster response, the president has the power to disburse relief to specific parts of the country after any “major disaster” — hurricanes, big floods, fires. In September, Trump suggested that he might make disaster aid contingent on political support if he returns to office, promising to withhold wildfire support from California unless state officials give more irrigation water to Central Valley farmers. Harris has not given an explicit indication of how she would fund climate-resiliency or disaster-response programs, though she has boosted FEMA’s recovery efforts following Helene and Milton.

 

Jake Bittle, Staff writer focusing on climate impacts and adaptation

Your understanding of climate change

The United States has long been a leader in research essential to understanding — and responding to — a warming world. The government plays a key role in advancing climate science and providing timely meteorological data to the public. Neither Trump nor Harris address this in their platform, but history yields clues to what their presidency might mean for this vital work.

Trump has consistently dismissed climate change as a “hoax” and downplayed scientific consensus that it is anthropogenic, or driven by human activities. As president, he gutted funding for research, appointed climate skeptics and industry insiders, and eliminated  scientific advisory committees from several federal agencies. Thousands of government scientists quit in response. (In fact, still reeling from Trump’s attacks, new union contracts protect scientific integrity to combat such meddling.) His administration censored scientific data on government websites and tried to undermine the findings of the National Climate Assessment, the government’s scientific report on the risks and impacts of climate change. If reelected, Trump would almost certainly adopt a similar strategy, deprioritizing climate science and potentially even restructuring or eliminating federal agencies that advance it.

Harris has long supported climate action; she co-sponsored the Green New Deal as a senator and, as vice president, cast the deciding vote to pass the Inflation Reduction Act, which bolstered funding for agencies that oversee climate research. As part of its “whole of government” approach to the crisis, the Biden administration created the National Climate Task Force, with the EPA, NASA, and others to ensure science informs policy. Although Harris hasn’t said much about climate change as a candidate, climate organizations generally support her campaign and believe her administration will build on the progress made so far.

 

Sachi Kitajima Mulkey, Climate news reporting fellow

Your electric bill

A lot goes into calculating the energy rates you see on your monthly electric bill — construction and maintenance of power plants, fuel costs, and much more. It’s pretty tough to draw a direct line from the president to your bill, so if you’re worried about your energy costs, you’d do well to read up on your local public utility commission, municipal electric authority, or electric membership cooperative board.

What the president can do, though, is appoint people to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC — the board of up to five individuals who regulate the transmission of utilities across the entire country. As the U.S. continues to shift away from fossil fuels, a fundamental problem stands in the way: The country’s aging and fragmented grid lacks the capacity to move all of the electricity being generated from renewable sources. In May, FERC, which currently has a Democratic majority, approved a rule to try to solve that issue; it voted to require that regional utilities identify opportunities for upgrading the capacities of existing transmission infrastructure and that regional grid operators forecast their transmission needs 20 years into the future. These steps will be essential for utility companies to take advantage of the subsidies offered in the IRA and bipartisan infrastructure law.

The rule is facing legal challenges, which like much else in U.S. courts, appear to be political. So even if Harris wins November’s election, and maintains a commission that prioritizes the transition away from fossil fuels, the oil and gas industry and the politicians who support it will not acquiesce easily. If Trump wins, he’d have the chance to appoint a new FERC chair from among the current commissioners and to appoint a new commissioner in 2026, when the current chair’s term ends. (Or possibly sooner.) Although FERC’s actions tend to be more insulated from changes in the White House because commissioners serve five-year terms, a commission led by new Trump appointees would most likely deprioritize initiatives that would upgrade the grid to support clean energy adoption. Trump’s appointees supported fossil fuel interests on several fronts during his previous term, for instance by counteracting state subsidies to favor coal and gas plants.

Izzy Ross, Regional reporter, Great Lakes

Your trash

Some 33 billion pounds of plastic waste enter the marine environment globally every year, and the problem is expected to worsen as the fossil fuel and petrochemical industries ramp up plastic production.

Perhaps the most important step the next president could take to curb plastic pollution is to push Congress to ratify and implement the United Nations’ global plastics treaty, which is scheduled to be finalized by the end of this year. The Biden administration recently announced its support for a version of the treaty that limits plastic production, and, though Harris hasn’t made any public comment about it, experts expect that her administration would support it as well. Meanwhile, a former Trump White House official told Politico this April that Trump — who famously withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Agreement in his first term — would take a “hard-nosed look” at any outcome of the plastics negotiations and be “skeptical that the agreement reached was the best agreement that could have been reached.”

The Biden administration has also taken some positive steps to address plastic pollution domestically, including a ban on the federal procurement of single-use plastics. Experts expect that progress to continue under a Harris administration. In 2011, as California’s attorney general, Harris sued plastic bottle companies over misleading claims that their products were recyclable. As a U.S. senator, she co-sponsored a Democratic bill to phase out unnecessary single-use plastic products.

Trump, meanwhile, does not have a strong track record on plastic. Although he signed a 2019 law to remove and prevent ocean litter, he has taken personal credit for the construction of new plastic manufacturing facilities and derided the idea of banning single-use plastic straws. And Trump’s “drill, baby, drill” agenda could increase the extraction of fossil fuels used to make plastics.

Your votes

After decades of failed attempts to tackle the climate crisis, Congress finally passed major legislation two years ago with the Inflation Reduction Act. Not a single Republican voted for it.

Elections aren’t just important for getting the legislative power needed to enact climate policies — they’re also important for implementing them. The IRA and the bipartisan infrastructure law, another key climate-related law, are entering crucial phases for their implementation, particularly the doling out of billions of dollars for clean energy, environmental justice, and climate resiliency. Trump, having vowed to rescind unspent IRA funds if elected, seems poised to hamper the law’s rollout, slowing efforts to get the country using more clean energy.

But it’s a mistake to imagine that only federal elections matter when it comes to climate change. Eliminating greenhouse gases from energy, buildings, transportation, and food systems requires legislation at every level. In Arizona and Montana, for example, voters this year will elect utility commissioners, the powerful, yet largely ignored officials who play a crucial role in whether — and how quickly — the country moves away from fossil fuels. State legislators can also open the door to efforts to get 100 percent clean electricity, as happened in Michigan and Minnesota after the 2022 election. Even in a state like Washington with Democratic Governor Jay Inslee, who once campaigned for the White House on a climate change platform, votes matter — climate action is literally on the ballot in November, when voters could choose to kill the state’s landmark price on carbon pollution.

Depending on what happens with the presidential and congressional races, state and local action might be the best hope for furthering climate policy anyway.

Your global outlook

During his first term, Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement, a global commitment to reduce the burning of fossil fuels in an effort to curb the worst impacts of climate change. “I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris,” he said from the Rose Garden of the White House in 2017. Trump didn’t entirely abandon global climate discussions; his administration continued to attend global climate conferences, where it endorsed events on fossil fuels.

The Biden administration rejoined the Paris Agreement and pledged billions of dollars to combat climate change both domestically and abroad, but a second Trump administration would likely undo this progress. Trump says that he would pull out of the Paris Agreement again, and reportedly would also consider withdrawing the U.S. from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, a 1992 treaty that’s the basis for modern global climate talks. Harris is expected, at least, to continue Biden’s policies. Speaking from COP28 in Dubai last year, an annual United Nations climate gathering, she celebrated America’s progress in tackling the climate crisis and petitioned for much more to be done. “In order to keep our critical 1.5 degree-Celsius goal within reach,” she said, “we must have the ambition to meet this moment, to accelerate our ongoing work, increase our investments, and lead with courage and conviction.”

But both the Trump and Biden administrations achieved record oil and gas production during their time in office, and Harris opposes a ban on fracking. In order to make a dent in the climate crisis, whoever becomes president would have to reject that status quo and put serious money behind global promises to mitigate climate change. Otherwise, climate change-related losses will just continue to mount — already, they are expected to cost $580 billion globally by 2030.

The post The Climate Stakes of the Harris-Trump Election appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Food maps can show the locations of all the food banks in a region to more specific food assets such as fruit-bearing bushes and trees found along your street.

In the village of Lumby, in B.C.’s North Okanagan Valley, the non-profit Land to Table worked with the local government to create a food asset map to determine if or how village-owned agricultural land could be turned into a community food asset. “Based on mapping out what the community has, we could see what is missing,” says Liz Blakely, the group’s executive director.

Increasingly used by nonprofits and city planners, food maps paint a hard-to-ignore visual depiction of an area’s access to food.

Connecting dots and people: Vancouver Food Asset Map

“A food asset map gives us more information about what’s going on or available in neighborhoods,” says Ian Marcuse, coordinator of Vancouver Neighbourhood Food Networks (VNFN), a non-profit organization promoting food security throughout the city and the group responsible for current updates to the Vancouver Food Asset Map (FAM). 

The FAM depicts nearly 1,000 assets, ranging from urban farms, community orchards, and gardens to food assistance programs, school breakfast programs, and grocery stores.

“When we reach out to assets, it also builds relations,” says Marcuse. These interactions not only help maintain the accuracy of the map but also open the door for new resources, such as Indigenous food programs that make food systems more inclusive. 

Elvira Chan is the partner engagement coordinator for the Vancouver Divisions of Family Practice, a non-profit organization whose goal is to support physician members and advocate they receive the necessary tools to look after patients. Chan recently contacted the VNFN about food maps. “Doctors,” says Chan, “don’t always know what is out there and available to them.” A map, as part of a larger resource package doctors can disseminate to patients who are looking for healthy eating options or who have expressed food security concerns, is a useful tool, she says.

Food Stash, a not-for-profit Vancouver-based food recovery program, also finds the map a valuable resource tool.

“We get emails, phone calls and people onsite every day looking for food. We keep a running list [based on the asset map] of programs we know have space or are a low-cost option while people are put on a waitlist,” says Anna Gray, communications coordinator.

Available for anyone to access through the VNFN’s website, since the FAM became available to the public in 2017, it has accumulated more than 400,000 views. 

Feeding America: Map the Meal Gap

Map the Meal Gap was created in 2011 by Feeding America, the largest charity dedicated to ending hunger in the United States. This map provides an in-depth, visual representation of food insecurity across America showing a county-by-county breakdown of food access highlighting barriers to nutritious food and how much funding and meals are needed to close the gap between those who have enough to eat and those who don’t.

Groundbreaking in 2011, the map is updated annually with data transcribed from government census reports and sources such as the USDA. But why a map when a written report would provide similar information? “We wanted a visual,” says Emily Engelhard, vice president of food security and well-being research and insights. “We wanted to have a tool that anyone could click onto in their state and county and play around with to see how food insecurity looked different in their community compared to another.” Food insecurity, as Engelhard notes, is found in every state and every county of the US. In 2023, for example, 13.5 percent of all US households experienced some level of food insecurity.

To gauge the effectiveness of the map, every year, Feeding America sends out a survey to food banks in its network. Seventy-five percent of food banks that respond report using the MMG “often” or “always” to allocate resources effectively. 

From Oregon Food Bank’s five main locations, food is distributed to communities across Oregon and Southwest Washington State. In 2023, there were 1.9 million visits to food assistance sites within the network—a 14-per cent increase over 2022.

 “The map,” says Morgan D. Dewey, media and engagement manager, “also helps highlight that food insecurity disproportionately impacts particular communities—such as Black, Indigenous, and Communities of Color; immigrants and refugees; single moms and caregivers; and trans and gender-expansive individuals—regardless of geography.” 

By addressing these disparities, the map becomes an essential tool in ensuring everyone has access to resources.

Ohio maps that tell an artful story

Alan Wight is the community and school forest garden liaison at the University of Cincinnati. In his spare time, he works with organizations such as Eat Local Central Ohio River Valley (CORV) to help community organizations create food maps.

Food maps to Wight are a form of art. Inspired by Situationist International, a mid-20th-century movement that used the concept of mapping to change the way people think about the spaces around them, Wight hopes the food maps he facilitates create an artful expression and a new way for a community or groups to appreciate the local food system around them.

Creating a map is a year-long process that begins by talking to community stakeholders about what they’d like represented on the map. “Sometimes, it can be as simple as the convenience stores and grocery stores or as detailed as where the fruit and nut trees are growing,” says Wight.

Small groups are formed to walk through neighborhoods documenting these assets.

The first map Wight helped a community create was of Camp Washington, a Cincinnati neighborhood. Depicting convenience stores, restaurants, community and school gardens, meat-processing and packaging facilities, the map is an artful display of logos that guides the user through a labyrinth of food assets.

Downloadable from the Eat Local CORV website, Wight says that the maps are often made into posters and displayed at community centers and other neighborhood gathering spots. But, as far as he is concerned, how they are disseminated is secondary. It’s the community engagement in designing the map that to him is the biggest benefit.

“It’s the process,” he says. “What comes out of the discussions lives much longer than the map.”

The post On the Ground Exploring a Community’s Food Assets with Maps appeared first on Modern Farmer.

In reality, Austin Bicycle Meals (ABM) is some combination of both.

The group rides around Texas’ big, quirky capital with coolers of water and food in clamshell to-go containers, all for the city’s unhoused community. Some cyclists carry backpacks of hygiene products. All the riders have been alerted to which of the many coolers holds the popsicles, one of their most requested food items.

For co-founders Kelly Wourms and Claire Harbutt, the volunteer-based program is a way to give back to the community they call home, a place where a soaring cost of living and rapid gentrification is increasingly pricing many of its residents out of survival essentials. Climate-monitoring reports indicate that Austin’s residents are dealing with more and longer “hot spells”—or consecutive days of temperatures over 102.5 degrees Fahrenheit. 

This makes staying fed and hydrated an even bigger challenge for the city’s most vulnerable population. So, every Wednesday and Saturday, rain or shine, heat or cold snap, ABM rides, handing out hundreds of meals a month.

It’s a Saturday afternoon, which means ABM is headed out on a five-mile ride around the city. They start on South Congress Avenue, near the South Congress Hotel, and make their way into the heart of downtown. They loop around the Texas Capitol, head to the Austin Central Library, and finish up around Republic Square near the US Courthouse. On Wednesdays, their route is much longer, close to 14 miles. They usually head out to the East Side and work along Airport Boulevard on those days. 

Being on two wheels rather than four allows them greater freedom of movement and access to those who rely on them most. While a car would be faster and have more storage space, bikes eliminate fuel expenses and emissions. They also allow ABM to serve people along Austin’s many trails near rivers and through parks, places that cars can’t access. 

Bikes also allow for more visibility; people see the “Austin Bike Meals” vests and friendly faces, and they can relax knowing they’re being approached by allies. 

Wourms, 31, moved to Austin from Los Angeles in 2021. While living in L.A., he was part of a volunteer group called Bicycle Meals, which followed a similar model and delivered meals around Koreatown. When Wourms moved to Austin, he wanted to find a way to carry on the tradition. 

“I was friends with a few cyclists in town, I knew there was a pretty sizable unhoused population, and local laws regarding the unhoused population were pretty hostile,” says Wourms. “So, I thought this could be a good program to help mitigate that.”

Withh Harbutt’s help, Wourms launched Bicycle Meals’ Austin branch out of his own pocket. The duo went on their first meal delivery ride together on Valentine’s Day of 2022. From then on, they would make 50 sack lunches to hand out every weekend—turkey sandwiches, chips, fruit, dessert, and a bottle of water. 

Delivering prepared meals instantly made more sense to Wourms and Harbutt than creating boxes of ingredients the way food banks might. They wanted to deliver food that recipients without access to refrigeration or cooking supplies could eat immediately, wherever they were. 

“I’ve worked with so many food banks where we’d be packing up groceries for people and I’d see volunteers packing boxes with three heads of lettuce, a bag of white bread, and some cookies,” Wourms recalls. “It pissed me off. I always said if I ever ran a food program, I would give out food that I would be excited to receive, and not just crap. Because that’s almost like getting less than nothing.”

After roughly five months of weekly lunch preparation, Wourms and Harbutt recognized early signs of burnout. 

“We were trying to start out, so, most of the time, it was just us, and occasionally some friends we could round up,” says Harbutt. “We were still making all the lunches, Kelly was paying for them, and then we’d also distribute them and it would take forever because no one would come out to help.”

Wourms and Harbutt knew they needed to pivot some of the workload to keep the program sustainable over the long term. So, they made some changes.

Rather than buying and making meals, they partnered with Austin Food Not Bombs and started distributing hot meals from the long-established organization. ABM also partnered with Our Shared Kitchen, a non-profit dedicated to preparing nutritionally balanced meals for Austinites facing homelessness. Our Shared Kitchen also formulates meals that are edible for a wide range of people. “A lot of people we serve don’t have teeth,” says Wourms. “Or they can’t do spicy foods, or sweet foods, or salty foods. It’s tough to create a recipe that can be universally enjoyed.”

While ABM riders will sometimes run into folks with severe food allergies or restrictions, most of the time the food is a huge hit. 

“Ninety-nine percent of people are just happy to receive help and feel compassion,” says Harbutt. “[We just] say we have free food, and ask them if they’d like any. You’ll see these people visibly relax when they realize we aren’t there to harass them, or yell at them for being on a bench we want to sit on. We aren’t there to do harm; we’re there to give them something they might want.”

Today, ABM hands out roughly 500 meals a month. The group is well on its way to hitting its goal of 5,000 meals in 2024, and it already has its sights set on distributing 9,000 meals in 2025. Of course, these numbers wouldn’t be possible without the large volunteer network ABM has amassed. Eight to 12 volunteers show up to most rides, but, sometimes, there are as many as 20, far more than are needed to distribute the food. But that accessibility for volunteers is a key part of the program’s model: It reframes riders’ relationships with their unhoused neighbors.

“I came to a realization one day that, if I’m going to make a difference anywhere, it has to be locally and within the community immediately around me,” says Wourms. “We’ve had volunteers show up and feel so conditioned by how we view unhoused folks in this country, and they’ll do a full one-eighty. Their whole perspective will change. It’s really beautiful.”

The post Spotlight On the Cyclists Feeding Their Community appeared first on Modern Farmer.