The latter statement is inspired by the words of the farmer and writer, Wendell Berry – specifically, his essay “The Pleasures of Eating,” published in 1989, in which he famously wrote that “eating is an agricultural act.” In the following decades, the farm-to-table movement has championed and codified this understanding of our food systems through numerous certifications that aim to help us make more sustainable choices. While many of us have gotten into the habit of seeking out certain symbols and words on food products, we have been slower to adopt this approach to beverages – especially alcoholic ones. 

“There are few reasons that it’s taken longer for sustainability practice and culture to reach the spirits industry,” explains Shanna Farrell, author of A Good Drink: In Pursuit of Sustainable Spirits. “The first is that you (often) can’t visit farms that grow the crops that become spirits.” 

While this is not the case for wine – an industry bolstered by enotourism [travel for the purpose of exploring wine regions], with visitors being encouraged to see the grapes up-close – many kinds of alcohol are subject to a strange separation from consumers. These products are, in fact, deeply rooted in a sense of place that is so much more complex than tidy rows of vineyards, hops, or grains convey at first glance. For this reason, the little labels on bottles of booze can go a long way in facilitating choices that are healthier for us and the planet – if we take the time to read and understand them. 

Some broad-reaching sustainability certifications are by now familiar – most notably the United States Department of Agriculture Organic seal, which was developed following the Organic Foods Production Act of 1990 (on the heels of Berry’s famous essay). Other, newer terms are somewhat intuitive, such as “Fish-Friendly” or the more specific “Salmon-Safe,” while still others, like “Carbon Neutral” or “B Corp,” require further study. In deciding which terminology to trust, it’s important to consider how and by whom these certifications are regulated. Ecolabels can be verified by governing bodies at the international, federal, or state level, as well as by independent organizations. 

The first step to sipping more sustainably is simply to acknowledge our drinks as agricultural products. From there, we can begin to consider how the cultivation, transformation, and transportation of their ingredients impacts our land, water, and air, as well as all of the life forms inhabiting these ecosystems.  

The wine industry is leading the way when it comes to creating a new correlation between alcohol and aquatic creatures with a more positive connotation than the phrase “to drink like a fish.” Ram’s Gate Winery in Sonoma, California is one of more than 2,000 farms that have joined the Fish-Friendly Farming Environmental Certification Program, which is regulated by a non-profit organization, the California Land Stewardship Institute. Caine Thompson, the winery’s head of sustainability, explains that in order to become certified, “The farmer must show that they are implementing practices that both restore fish and wildlife habitats and improve water quality.” 

Outside the Golden State, the Salmon-Safe Certification is another great way to verify that farmers are working in harmony with their local waterways. At Soter Vineyards in Oregon’s Willamette Valley, Salmon-Safe Certified is just one of the many ecolabels that the farm has earned over the years, along with Organic, Biodynamic, B Corporation, and LIVE (Low Input Viticulture and Enology). Soter Vineyards is also Bee-Friendly – according to accreditation by the non-profit Pollinator Partnership – highlighting their holistic approach to caring for creatures that live underwater and up in the air. 

Soter Vineyards’ viticulturist, Emily Rozga, explains that one of the shared key practices across these various certifications is “habitat maintenance.” This includes leaving some vegetation along the wetlands undisturbed to help regulate water temperatures and planting wildflower meadows for native pollinators, especially milkweed for migrating Monarch butterflies.  

Some certifications are narrowly focused on certain species, while others aim to be all-encompassing. In 2023, Anytime Spritz launched Farmhouse Gin and Farmhouse Vodka as the world’s first and only Regenerative Organic Certified spirits. Taylor Lanzet, co-founder of the “farm-to-can” cocktail company, explains that they don’t prioritize any one species over another. One of their partners in Hudson, New York, Breathe Deep Farm, started enacting regenerative organic practices in their fields of wheat and other grains, and is now “home to 122 rare and uncommon plant species, 83 bird species, and 40 butterfly and dragonfly species.” 

Winged creatures of all sizes play an important role in a balanced, biodiverse ecosystem and, for some crops, can be crucial for cultivation. Perhaps the most striking example of this is seen in the production of tequila. The popular Mexican spirit is made from the agave plant, which depends on bats for pollination. You may notice the term “Bat-Friendly” on some sustainable tequila brands, but you should also keep an eye out for the letters “ARA,” which stand for Agave Responsable Ambiental (Environmentally Responsible Agave). 

Mijenta is one of the few brands to gain this certification from the Tequila Regulatory Council and the Government of the State of Jalisco, Mexico. Elise Som, co-founder and director of sustainability at Mijenta, explains that they chose to pursue ARA certification to demonstrate that their agave is “grown on land that did not suffer deforestation.” Mijenta’s other certifications, including B Corporation by B Lab and Carbon Neutral by ClimatePartner attest to their “focus on community support and forest protection, as well as development of clean energy solutions.” 

Some sustainability labels in the beverage industry concentrate their attention on the maintenance of crop fields as healthy habitats, while others highlight the preservation of wild landscapes. Marla Hoban, co-founder of the Portland, Oregon-based non-alcoholic beer company Roaming Nobles explains that their brand name pays “homage to the noble animals that roam our state and all its beautiful natural spaces.” This connection is celebrated on their beer cans by the appearance of a tree symbol announcing their partnership with the Forest Park Conservancy, which cares for one of the United State’s largest urban parks – a vital habitat for hundreds of species, ranging from black bears to banana slugs, hoary bats, bobcats, and mountain beavers.

Your personal bar cart may seem far removed from forests and farmlands, but they are inextricably linked. It’s time we take an ecosystems approach to how we drink. Before you pour, carve out an extra few minutes to assess the labels at your local wine shop, call up your preferred brewer, or get friendly with your bartender. By mindfully choosing our beverages based on sustainability certifications, we can have a positive impact that extends well beyond happy hour. 

The post What Do Fish, Butterflies, and Bats Have to Do With Booze? 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.

Kieffer founded Shifting Tides in February 2023 to teach people about intertidal ecosystems—the unique space where the ocean meets the land, which transforms hour by hour as the tide flows in and out—and how they impact our day-to-day lives, especially when it comes to what we eat.

Kieffer leads visitors on tours of the Oregon coast, where she harvests and then prepares a meal with wild seaweed and shellfish right on the beach. I had previously obtained a state license for the right to harvest with her-/rather than merely watch—so, after she demonstrated the proper technique, I was handed a small knife and we worked side by side to carefully remove mussels and gooseneck barnacles from a massive triangular rock slick with saltwater. Enthusiasm radiated from Kieffer as she offered advice and information, but it was frilly neon green seaweed that caused her to truly light up. 

“In Oregon, the seaweed harvest season is from March to June 15th, with a limit of a one-gallon bag of seaweed per day and only three bags per year,” says Kieffer . “The regulations are such that you need to use a knife or scissors to remove seaweeds, and it is actually illegal to pull the holdfast, or root-like anchor, from the rock. This allows them to regrow year after year. It does regenerate quickly, but we should never be harvesting all of what a given area has and should be leaving plenty intact for wild species to utilize.”

Seaweed is a key component of what Kieffer considers to be “climate cuisine,” which includes foraged and farmed foods that positively impact our climate. A primary example is the wild bull kelp pickles that she makes and serves to those who join her with Shifting Tides, which have a pleasantly vinegary, spicy flavor and firm crunch. Participants also have a chance to try the dulse seaweed that she farms and pan fries in olive oil for a delightfully crispy, salty snack. During my tour, I sampled the dulse before and after Kieffer cooked it, and I liked it in its raw form, too—mildly briny in taste and slightly chewy; reminiscent of the sea, but not so different from terrestrial leafy greens. Given the versatility of this specific seaweed, she uses it in and on all kinds of foods, including homemade pasta, vegan Caesar salad dressing, and everything bagel seasoning. 

Seaweed is the primary focus of Kieffer’s work as an educator, forager, and farmer. When she is not leading Shifting Tides tours, Kieffer works as part of a small team at Oregon Seaweed, a local seaweed farm where she has been helping to grow a variety called Pacific Dulse since 2021. Much of their seaweed is sold fresh (about $15 per pound) or dried to nearby restaurants and home cooks, but it is also available for worldwide shipping. As plant-based and environmentally conscious food trends become more widespread, Oregon Seaweed is well poised to address the growing global market demand for seaweed, which was valued at more than $17 billion in 2023 and is expected to double in the next decade. 

“One of the things I love about both of my jobs is that there are not two days in a week that look the same,” says Kieffer. “With Oregon Seaweed, some days I’m outside on the farm all day, cleaning tanks, drying and packaging seaweeds; others, I’m at restaurants teaching chefs how to cook dulse, or at markets talking to customers about it; others, I’m on the computer all day answering emails or dealing with online sales. For Shifting Tides, it’s the same—there’s so much time outside at low tide teaching people and cooking with folks.” 

Kieffer’s schedule ebbs and flows depending on both the tides and the tourism season. In good weather, she may have tours scheduled 10 days in a row and a workshop every weekend. Each of her roles has its own particular responsibilities, but there are clear throughlines between them. 

“Being that seaweed is a less popular food in our culture, a lot of my work with seaweed is teaching people how and why to use it,” says Kieffer. “The topic of eating seaweed is a segway into so many other amazing conservation efforts around food. 

“Regenerative aquaculture is giving back to the environment, rather than just taking from or having a neutral effect on it, and requires no or very minimal inputs to grow food,” explains Kieffer. “Seaweeds, for instance, require sunlight and natural nutrients; no freshwater, herbicides, or pesticides. They are removing carbon dioxide from the water through the process of photosynthesis as well as excess nutrients like nitrogen, which can have positive effects on the local ecosystem.”

The dulse that Kieffer farms at Oregon Seaweed, for example, has the capacity to sequester one pound of carbon for every four pounds of seaweed grown. Out in the wild, Kieffer harvests about 10 different varieties of seaweed, including: nori, kombu, wakame, sugar kelp, pepper dulse, and sea spaghetti. Several of these will be well known to sushi lovers, but few people would know where to buy the seaweed on its own, let alone what it looks like in its natural form. 

Given her sense of perfect ease while navigating the hidden nooks and crannies of Cannon Beach, I was surprised to learn that it was not Kieffer’s native habitat. She was born in New York City and came to Oregon as a teenager. Soon after, she began working for an environmental education company in the intertidal ecosystems. She immediately fell in love.

“I grew up in a family of chefs, restaurant owners, cookbook editors, and overall food lovers, so I was born with a deep connection to food whether I realized it or not,” says Kieffer. “As soon as I moved to the beach, I got away from food service and began working alongside our oceans. I learned so much about food systems and ultimately what goes into getting food from the ocean to our plates.” 

On my visit to Cannon Beach, Kieffer pointed out starfish smaller than my thumbnail suctioned to shells latched to the rocks around tide pools. She told me about sculpin (a type of narrow fish with a wide mouth) that live among sea lettuce and camouflage themselves to match their green hue.

Since founding Shifting Tides over a year ago, Kieffer has explored the ecosystems of the Pacific Northwest with people of all ages from all over the country. “At the beginning, it was mostly people from Oregon. Now, by partnering with some hotels on the coast as well as destination management organizations, like Travel Oregon and Oregon Coast Visitors Association, I have been teaching many people who aren’t from the area at all—college students from Wyoming, executive groups from Tennessee, couples from Texas.” 

While visitors may not have access to the same exact wild seafoods when they return home, they come away with an understanding of regenerative food systems that is applicable anywhere. 

“There are so many people working hard to bring food from the sea to our table in a way that is sustainable and helps coastal communities,” says Kieffer. “Telling stories of the people, practices, science, and conservation along our coast over a meal of foraged and farmed seaweeds is truly a dream.”

Kieffer’s dream is the reality that we need. As I watched her sautee seaweed on a portable seafoam green grill just yards from where we had harvested it, I felt a kind of hope that is rarer than a blue-sky day in Oregon. There is no single, simple fix for our food system, but Shifting Tides shows the valuable work already being done and invites us to join in.

The post The Bounty Between the Tides appeared first on Modern Farmer.

“I started from a young age, when I was about six years old,” says Ayvar de la Cruz, recalling her earliest experiences of harvesting salt from the area known in the vicinity as Las Salinas. “I began with my parents, then continued with my brothers, then with my children from when they were eight.”

The work of harvesting usually begins in February or March and carries on for three or four months, depending on the weather. The members of the Ayvar de la Cruz family are the only remaining residents of the region to continue harvesting salt in the traditional way, which is done completely by hand with the help of tools made only from local, natural materials, rather than relying on modern equipment. It begins by mixing a rustic concrete from sand and clay to form shallow square basins at the edge of the lagoon. Those lagoons are then filled with both freshwater and saltwater, before lime (in its mineral powder form) is added to the small pools to help separate out the salt from the water. A special rake called a tarecua facilitates this process. There, the mixture dries in the sun over the next five or so days and the salt is collected once the water has evaporated. 

“We start at six in the morning,” says Ayvar de la Cruz. “We start early because when it’s cool, you can move forward without getting so tired. At midday, the heat becomes very strong.” A break is taken from around 11:00 AM to 4:00 PM. When the sun is less intense, the work continues until all the light is gone, around eight in the evening. 

The days are long and the work is hard, but Ayvar de la Cruz focuses on the experience of being in this extraordinary environment. “You feel the fresh air and cool water of the mangroves. It is a feeling of freedom and tranquility.” 

At a distance of 90 years or so, she can still describe with impressive clarity the sensations of that first encounter with the salt flats—the feeling of being carried in her father’s arms and on the back of a donkey as they made the journey there and, later, to the closest town, Petatlán, to sell the salt, as well as its dazzling whiteness when arranged into a mound across mats made of palm fronds after harvesting. 

Over the last decade, all other salt producers in the area have modernized the process. One of the most significant changes has been the implementation of plastic sheets as the base for the drying areas, which makes production go more quickly.  

“Salt made using plastic can be sold for much cheaper and it hurts our local market,” says Ayvar de la Cruz’s son, Don Alejandro. “We don’t market our salt as artisanal, but everyone knows around here that we’re the only ones doing it the natural way.” 

Ayvar de la Cruz laments that the salt flats are now permeated with a “plastic smell” and her son notes that workers often leave their equipment in the lagoon out of season and, when hurricanes hit the coast, plastic pieces can end up elsewhere, endangering local wildlife. The surrounding mangroves are a key habitat for a diverse array of plants and animals, including shrimp, fish, crabs, pink herons, deer and coati (a kind of badger), as well as a type of tree known colloquially as salado (“salty”) because it survives in saltwater. 

In 2006, the Ayvar de la Cruz family was contacted by a new hospitality business called Playa Viva. Its owner, David Leventhal, was planning to construct a resort nearby founded on the principles of regenerative tourism, and he was interested in learning about the local ecosystems and community. Playa Viva hoped that collaborating with residents such as Ayvar de la Cruz could help create a space that would allow visitors to experience the beauty of this stretch of the Mexican coast, while also having a positive social and environmental impact that would linger longer than they would. 

In 2013, Playa Viva instituted the Regenerative Trust, with environmental and social goals that range from restoring ecosystems to raising endangered species for release and donating school supplies to children. Two percent of all earnings from guest reservations are channeled into these local programs.

One of the primary programs funded by the Regenerative Trust is as ReSiMar—short for “Regenerating from Sierra to Mar”—which refers to its area of focus, between the Sierra Madre Mountain Range and the Pacific Ocean. Through ReSiMar, Playa Viva aims to regenerate the entire ecosystem of this watershed. Sourcing ingredients from sustainable fisheries and other small businesses that depend on the watershed, like that of the Ayvar de la Cruz family, is part of this effort. 

Playa Viva committed to buying the salt for its restaurant exclusively from the Ayvar de la Cruz family and, when it started welcoming guests to Juluchuca a few years later, it also offered tours of Las Salinas together during the salt harvest season. This relationship with Playa Viva has been a vital source of support in the family’s efforts to carry on harvesting salt as their ancestors did and it has given them a chance to share their work with foreigners for the first time. 

ReSiMar also records vital information about the watershed to understand the scope of their impact and determine which aspects need the most attention. In 2023, the ReSiMar team tracked water quality, focusing on pollution in the form of plastic packaging and glass bottles. From there, they identified a need for improved ecological education and recycling programs, so they focused on bringing students to the watershed and establishing a town community center. “Water studies provide essential baseline data on the quality and quantity of water during both the rainy and dry seasons,” says Levanthal. “We then compare this data year after year to observe changes.”

With nearly a century of memories to draw on from living in this part of the Guerrero region along the Pacific coast, Ayvar de la Cruz also holds within her the history of this place. She knows the plants and animals that are at home in this unique tropical ecosystem, the natural rhythms of the seasons and how to work with them to harvest salt in a way that the local community has practiced for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. For this reason, it is all the more striking that, in 2024, for the first time in Ayvar de la Cruz’s long life, unusual weather patterns caused a rupture in the timeline of this historic tradition. 

“Every year, there is a rainy season and the lagoon fills. Then it empties and the salt flats are left dry, ready to be worked. It’s a natural cycle that always happens,” says Alejandro Ayvar, the youngest of Ayvar de la Cruz’s six sons. He and his brothers, along with their three sisters, have assisted their mother with the salt harvest on and off since their childhood. “This season, the lagoon did not empty adequately and the areas where salt is produced did not get dry enough.” 

The unseasonably late rains that caused the local estuary system to overflow and Las Salinas to flood during the normal harvest time is just one example of the consequences of the climate crisis as they are being experienced in this part of the world. 

“It’s not the same anymore,” Ayvar de la Cruz says of the local climate in recent years and how this affects the salt flats. “The temperature of the water has changed a lot and it takes more time to harvest the salt.”

As the climate changes and the younger generations of the Ayvar de la Cruz family find more financially stable prospects in other fields of work, the future of this tradition remains uncertain, but Ayvar de la Cruz’s legacy will not soon be forgotten. Her singular connection with this local environment and her commitment to this historic way of harvesting salt is commemorated in a mural on a building near Las Salinas, painted by a visiting artist about six years ago. 

There is value, too, in simply having a conversation about salt, considering its place of origin and the people who harvested it. For as challenging as it can be to create systems that preserve our ancient food practices, it is easy to at least preserve the memory of them. 

“Thank you for coming to make me happy,” Ayvar de la Cruz says at the end of the interview. “To remember is to live again.” 

All interviews have been translated from Spanish into English with the assistance of Ximena Rodriguez, Juan Carlos “Johnny” Solis and David Leventhal.

The post Meet the 97-Year-Old Salt-Harvesting Matriarch appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Food policy experts Sarah Hackney and Jamie Fanous have advice for those who feel overwhelmed or unsure about how to make a difference. Hackney is the coalition director at the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) in Washington, D.C., where she works with grassroots organizations to advocate for federal policy reform to advance the sustainability of agriculture, food systems, natural resources and rural communities. Fanous is the policy director at one of these organizations, a California-based nonprofit called Community Alliance with Family Farmers (CAFF). Together, Hackney and Fanous offer guidance on simple steps that we can all take to create positive change around us, in ways both big and small.

Join CSA programs and support food cooperatives 

Besides doing the research to elect officials who advocate on behalf of these priorities, the best thing we can do to support farmers year-round is to be just as conscientious about how we vote with our dollars. “Sign up for a CSA, go to the farmers market or co-op, purchase your produce from farmers directly. Go the extra mile to do that,” says Fanous. “If you’re going to a big box store, the produce is probably not from a small-scale farmer or a local farmer, so it’s really not supporting local economies. Joining a CSA program is a great way to build a relationship with your farmer and know where your food is coming from.”

Educate yourself and amplify your actions

For those looking to engage more deeply in food policy advocacy, Hackney and Fanous recommend tuning into social media platforms and newsletters from a mixture of national agricultural organizations, such as NSAC, and local ones, such as CAFF. 

“NSAC is one of the best places to get into the nerdy details of food and agriculture policy,” says Hackney. “We have a very active blog and a weekly e-newsletter where we highlight big food and ag policy news from D.C., along with free analysis you won’t find anywhere else.”

When it comes to understanding issues closer to home, Hackney says, “There are over 150 member organizations within NSAC, most of whom are state or regionally focused, and all of whom work in relationship with farmers and eaters in their communities. Almost all of them have active websites and social media accounts and some specifically have farmer- and consumer-led volunteer teams that help review and develop policy ideas both at the local and national level.” She recommends checking out the membership lists of a coalition such as NSAC or one of its peers, such as the HEAL Food Alliance, to see if there’s an active member organization in your state or region. 

Call Congress

Once you start following political and agricultural news, you may come across the occasional public request for citizens like yourself to contact local representatives in Congress to advocate for or against certain bills. 

“We share calls to action at key junctures in the policy process when there are opportunities for folks to make their voices heard directly with lawmakers,” says Hackney. “It’s absolutely possible for individual calls, emails and messages to make a difference: Lawmakers track and monitor who’s reaching out to them on issues that matter locally. When it comes to shifting food and farm policy toward more sustainable, equitable outcomes in our communities, we need those voices. We’re up against entrenched, well-resourced corporate interests and lobbying firms, and one of our best tools to push back is our willingness to speak up as voters, eaters and community leaders.”

“If organizations like CAFF or others ask—make the phone call. It makes a big difference,” says Fanous. “We very rarely ask people to make calls to their members, but when we do, it’s serious and we need that support. If you can’t make the call, repost the request on social media to give it more life.” 

Vote every chance you get

Besides the four-year presidential election cycle, there are congressional elections every two years, as well as annual state and local elections. Register with Vote.org to receive notifications about upcoming elections so that you never miss a chance to vote. 

“The coming 2024 election cycle may shape the fate and contents of the still-to-be-reauthorized farm bill,” says Hackney. The so-called “farm bill” should be passed by Congress every five years and pertains to much more than just farming. This package of legislation defines our food system, determining what we eat by how we use land, water and other natural resources. 

“Congress didn’t reauthorize the 2018 Farm Bill on time last year, instead opting to extend the old bill,” explains Hackney. “If Congress doesn’t complete the reauthorization process on the bill before the fall, that could shift farm bill passage timing into 2025, which means potentially new and different lawmakers sitting on the committees that draft the bill and new lawmakers in leadership positions to drive the process. While the farm bill is intended to represent the needs and issues of farmers and communities and families nationwide, the representatives and senators who sit on the House and Senate agriculture committees, who themselves only represent a slice of the country’s landscape and electorate, get to do the lion’s share of shaping that bill.”

If you’re not sure whether to vote yes or no for a particular bill, Hackney has advice: “If there’s a bill that focuses on an issue you care about, you can look up its authors and cosponsors—these are the lawmakers willing to go on the record with their support for a bill.” Keep an eye out for the names of politicians who are familiar to you and try to determine if their values align with yours, then use their judgment to guide your own. 

“For example, at NSAC, we’ve been organizing for several years around the Agriculture Resilience Act. It’s a bill that would address climate change by reshaping much of the US Department of Agriculture’s programming toward climate change action,” says Hackney. “It would increase resources and support for practices on farms that build diversity of crops and livestock, integrate perennial crops, keep the soil covered and integrate livestock into the landscape—all highly effective climate and agriculture solutions that can reduce emissions and build resiliency. Lawmakers who’ve endorsed this bill are essentially telling us: I support tackling the climate crisis by finding solutions through sustainable agriculture and food systems. You can find a bill’s cosponsors by using free, publicly available websites like congress.gov or govtrack.us.”

Diversify your approach 

“If we could fix our food and farm system by simply voting with our forks or making one quick call to Congress or growing our own food, we’d be there already,” says Hackney. “The truth is it takes action on multiple fronts—especially if we want to get to the root causes of the problems in our food and farm system. That means both doing what we can with our individual food choices—within our means and our communities—to support food and farm businesses operating on values of sustainability and equity and choosing to engage politically to improve food and farm policy.”

The post How to Be a Food Policy Advocate in Your Community  appeared first on Modern Farmer.

These ingredients are endlessly diverse, including spent grains from beer production, ripe fruit that is too small for supermarket standards and cacao pulp from the process of making chocolate bars, but they share a similar origin story. In the past, these ingredients were lost somewhere in our food supply chain; now, pathways are being created to ensure they reach consumers. 

While other cited trends tend to center on a specific single ingredient or nutrient, the “upcycled” trend is unique in that it shifts the focus from personal to planetary health and longevity. “For the first time, the majority of the world is able to witness the real effects of climate change around them and they are looking for ways to help,” says Caroline Cotto, co-founder and chief operating officer at Renewal Mill, a California-based company that produces baking mixes with upcycled ingredients. “As more consumers look for sustainable foods in the marketplace, upcycled foods rise to meet that demand.”

“It’s this growing awareness that the take-make-waste systems that we’ve all participated in for the last 70 years are making people hungry and making the environment unlivable,” says Anna Hammond, founder and chief executive officer at Matriark Foods, a New York-based company that produces pasta sauces and vegetable broth with upcycled ingredients. “Solving for wasted food is one of the easiest things that almost everyone can participate in to mitigate climate change.” 

According to research from ReFED, a national nonprofit dedicated to ending food waste, 38 percent of food in the US was wasted in 2022. That’s 235 million tons of meals that went uneaten, despite the fact that one in eight Americans is food insecure. And it’s not just the food that goes to waste; that year, uneaten food accounted for 6.1 percent of greenhouse gas emissions and 22 percent of all freshwater use in the US.

[RELATED: The Staggering Scale of Food Waste, Explained]

“Food waste happens literally at every part of our global food supply chain,” says Cotto. “It happens when we leave unharvested food on fields due to cosmetic imperfections; it happens when we improperly store food during transport; it happens through byproduct production at food manufacturers; it happens when grocery stores overorder and throw out food they can’t sell or when restaurants make too much and can’t serve it all; and, in fact, the majority of the wastage still happens in our own homes.” 

Avoiding food waste in our kitchens is a crucial first step toward reducing our carbon emissions, water usage and overall impact on the environment.

“There are lots of things we can do to reduce food waste,” says Cotto. “Don’t over purchase. Make a list before you head to the grocery store. Eat leftovers or find ways to repurpose them into delicious new meals. If you’re headed out of town but still have stuff left in your fridge, find ways to gift to your neighbors and freeze everything you can for when you’re back. Compost whatever you cannot eat.” 

In addition to carefully and consciously eating all of the food that we buy, opting to purchase upcycled foods allows us to amplify our individual efforts by supporting climate-friendly producers that have an even greater environmental footprint. This is especially important for institutions, such as schools, hospitals and corporate offices, where the effect is even more powerful. 

In two reports on food waste in the United States published in December 2023, the Environmental Protection Agency highlighted upcycled foods as a key tool for addressing the climate crisis. 

Hammond came to this conclusion on her own several years prior, leading her to found Matriak Foods. There are “three questions that we always ask ourselves in everything we do,” says Hammond. “Does this mitigate food going to landfills and the negative environmental impacts of that? Is this good for small- and mid-scale farmers? Does this create greater access to healthy food for more people?” 

These questions are embodied in each of Matriark’s products, including its classic tomato basil pasta sauce. “We work with a roaster of tomatoes who [because of the way his machines work] was throwing out anywhere from 1.5 to 3 million pounds of tomatoes a year,” says Hammond. “We’ve developed a food-safe, compliant way to capture those perfectly ripe tomatoes and puree them into the base of our sauces.” Each carton of this sauce—which is packaged in Forest Stewardship Council-certified materials—diverts 0.4 pounds of food from a landfill and saves 50 gallons of water. 

Renewal Mill also partners with other food producers—in its case, the makers of plant-based milks, such as soy milk and oat milk. It collects the leftover pulp from this process, then dehydrates and mills it to be transformed into shelf-stable gluten-free flour. It sells this flour on its own and in vegan baking mixes for brownies, cakes and cookies. Since its founding in 2018, Renewal Mill has diverted more than 700,000 pounds of food waste and avoided more than one million pounds of carbon emissions. 

Both Matriark Foods and Renewal Mill belong to the Upcycled Food Association (UFA). “This organization’s first directive was to create a formal definition of upcycled food,” says Cotto, who serves as a board member at UFA. “The definition decided upon was: Upcycled foods use ingredients that otherwise would not have gone to human consumption, are procured and produced using verifiable supply chains and have a positive impact on the environment.” 

This definition serves as the foundation for the Upcycled Certified program, which has since certified nearly 500 products that span the spectrum from sweet to savory. In December 2023, an independent, third-party food verification company, Where Food Comes From, Inc., acquired the Upcycled Certified program, enhancing its perceived credibility and broadening its reach. 

“You can shop for upcycled food across almost every aisle of the grocery store and for every meal,” says Cotto. “Look for the Upcycled Certified logo on packaging to help identify which products are reducing food waste.” 

Renewal Mill and Matriark Foods products can be bought online in individual packages or wholesale via their websites, where they also provide information on finding products in stores, including certain Whole Foods locations. To find more upcycled products and ingredients, shoppers can check out the UFA website’s list, which includes food and beverages, home and personal care products, and pet food options. 

Cotto points out that you can upcycle at home, too. “If you make your own beer or plant-based milks at home, don’t throw away the pulp. It can be repurposed into bread. Use fruit and vegetable pulp left over from juicing in muffins. Use the rinds of cheese to make rich and flavorful soup bases. The possibilities are endless!”

The post This is the Year to Eat More Upcycled Foods appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Joyce and Travis Miller had long lived among hickories in the woods of Clarke County, Virginia and had retired from their careers before ever tasting hickory syrup. Twelve years since then, they’ve founded their own operation, Falling Bark Farm, and are two of just a few hickory syrup producers in the world today. 

This later-in-life endeavor was a natural next chapter for the Millers, who had always been interested in feeding themselves from the land through gardening, hunting and foraging. Travis had worked in the grocery business for 30 years, as well as in a reclaimed lumber facility, so it wasn’t a huge leap to making food from trees. 

In 2011, having just entered retirement but looking for a way to keep busy and keep earning some kind of income, Travis and Joyce asked themselves: “What could we take to the farmers market?” 

They had heard from a neighbor about hickory syrup and, given their proximity to many hickory trees, decided to give it a go. The Millers ordered 48 empty glass bottles and began researching the syrup-making process, which has roots in Native American culinary and medicinal practices. (Hickory bark is extraordinarily high in magnesium and has been historically used as a health supplement.)  

“When we started out, we would go into the woods ourselves to harvest bark,” says Travis. Unlike with maple syrup, where a hole is drilled into a maple tree to extract its sap, hickory syrup is made with the bark of a shagbark hickory tree that is collected after it has fallen to the ground. No harm is done to the tree. 

To make the syrup, the Millers scrub the harvested bark clean, then toast it on an open flame grill to enhance the flavor. Next, they simmer the bark in water on their home kitchen stovetop to make a hickory extract. This is combined with turbinado sugar and, as with the making of maple syrup, a hydrometer is used to test the syrup’s density and determine its sweetness. 

No additives, thickeners or dyes of any kind are added. Falling Bark Farm does, however, offer some naturally flavored hickory syrups, including a syrup infused with whole vanilla beans, another aged in bourbon barrels borrowed from a nearby distillery and a “Woodland Spice” variety made with cinnamon, cardamom, clove and allspice that is especially popular around the winter holidays. 

“We’re bottling one at a time and everything’s done by hand,” says Travis, explaining that he and Joyce continue to do everything themselves, even as the business has grown to approximately 3,000 gallons of syrup a year. “It’s a little crazy at times, but we’re holding it together.” 

While the Millers still sell their hickory syrup in person at about a half dozen events annually, after their first year as vendors at local farmers markets, they’ve focused primarily on sales through their website and local businesses. 

“The type of product we have is not like a loaf of bread where you consume it during the week or a bottle of wine that might be shared and finished in a single sitting. After four or five weeks at a farmers market, you’ve reached the regular attendees and then the consumer needs time to use the product,” explains Travis. “We got into doing selective private labeling for significant historical locations, like Monticello and Mount Vernon. That’s been a big bonus for us because it also taps into tourism, not just local consumers.” 

Demand for Falling Bark Farm’s hickory syrup has grown to the point that the Millers are no longer harvesting their own bark from just around their land. “Some of our bark comes from the timber industry, where the log has been harvested and, at that point, there isn’t any value to the bark,” says Travis. “We’re taking a waste product and turning it into something that people enjoy.” 

In this way, the Millers are a midway point in a sustainable system that honors all that the hickory bark has to offer. After they have made syrup, they pass along the bark to a local barbecue business that uses it to prepare the smoked foods on their menu. 

Falling Bark Farm’s hickory syrup itself has found its way onto the menus of many restaurants throughout Virginia and surrounding states, becoming a star ingredient in a broad range of dishes and drinks. With its golden-brown color and thick, slow-pour consistency, hickory syrup is similar in appearance to maple syrup and can also be used as a sweetener in foods and beverages, but it has an aroma and flavor all its own that is slightly smoky and earthy with a hint of molasses. 

The Millers have been surprised by the diversity of dishes and drinks that customers and clients have prepared with their hickory syrup—everything from savory meals of grilled salmon and roasted lamb shanks to side dishes of baked apples and cast iron skillet grits with ramps to craft cocktails and beers—and by the community that has flourished along with their business. 

“One of the best things about making the syrup has been all of the people that we’ve met,” says Joyce. “We’ve been overwhelmed with kindness.” 

The post Meet the Virginia Retirees Making Sweet and Smoky Syrup from Fallen Bark appeared first on Modern Farmer.

The motivation behind the astonishing array of fruits and vegetables at Norwich Meadows Farm has always been, first and foremost, flavor.

“We grew up eating very flavorful produce,” says Kurdieh of himself and his wife Haifa, who were both raised in the Middle East. Kurdieh was born in Los Angeles, but spent his early years living in several different countries abroad, including Jordan, where he met Haifa while attending high school. After relocating to the United States, they wanted to share the tastes of their childhood with their new community. “An aspect of our culture is hospitality, so we want people to be able to enjoy what we enjoy.” 

What began in 1998 with a few types of Middle Eastern vegetables grown in their backyard garden has since expanded into what Kurdieh refers to as “an international endeavor that is way bigger than our culinary heritage” and builds on the cultural identities of all 40 or so members of their farm team, as well as partnerships with farmers around the world. As their farm community gains new members, new seeds from their native countries, such as Korea and Italy, are added to the vast collection now cultivated at Norwich Meadows Farm.  

These partnerships include years-long collaborations with two seed companies: Tokita Seed Company in Japan and Row 7 Seed Company in New York, both of which were established in 2018 and guided by the same goal: to grow the most flavorful food possible. With Tokita, Kurdieh became a participant of the Oishii Nippon Project, which seeks to preserve heirloom seeds cultivated for hundreds of years in Japan by sharing these seeds with growers everywhere. With Row 7, Kurdieh joined a team that includes chef Dan Barber of the Michelin-starred Manhattan restaurant Blue Hill and plant breeder Dr. Michael Mazourek of Cornell University to develop dazzling new crops. 

Nowhere else beyond the borders of Norwich Meadows Farm will you find a field of negi (an allium similar to scallions that has grown in Japan for centuries) one season and a field of koginut (a squash developed in the US and first made available for sale just five years ago) in another. 

For Kurdieh, this balance between tradition and innovation—and the crop diversity that has flourished along the way—is both a business decision and a personal preference.

Norwich Meadows Farm relies on a variety of revenue streams that cater to buyers big and small, but its most significant source of income depends on its presence at farmers markets around New York and New Jersey. Among these is the Union Square Market in New York City, where home cooks and some of the world’s most famous chefs shop side by side. 

“People can get almost everything at our stand,” says Kurdieh. “And every week there’s something new. Having all that variety makes us stand out.”

“Variety” applies to both the extensive range of produce available—everything from berries and beans to ginger and greens—and the numerous kinds of any given crop, all of which are grown organically. Depending on the season, customers might encounter 80 varieties of tomatoes, 40 kinds of peppers, 25 types of beans or a dozen different kinds of potatoes.  

Kurdieh explains that this approach to farming is also a risk mitigator. With so many different crops growing, the failure of one does not result in the failure of the farm as a whole. This is especially important as Norwich Meadows Farm experiences increasingly erratic weather patterns linked to the climate crisis. 

“Overall temperatures are up, but the swings are much more pronounced and that has killed crops for us,” he says, citing an unusual period of freezing temperatures during a recent winter that destroyed half their garlic crop.   

The advantages of biodiversity justify the enormous challenge of keeping track of more than a thousand unique crops at a time—particularly while Norwich Meadows Farm is currently understaffed due to a labor shortage affecting the entire agricultural sector—but it is the excitement of exploration and experimentation in the fields that underpins the business, which has come to be considered a trend leader in the food industry. 

“Working with chefs and breeders and other people is very, very rewarding, especially when you can help make new fruit and vegetable varieties that are more healthy and more tasty,” says Kurideh. “It makes the demanding nature of this business a lot more palatable and fun.” 

The work of farming has never been easy, so finding the fun in it is essential. For the Kurdiehs, the pursuit of flavor is what makes it all worth it, and for those who have the fortune of tasting what grows at Norwich Meadows Farm—whether it is the first season or the thousandth season for a particular plant variety—the delight of biting into a perfect piece of produce at its peak is timeless.

The post Meet the Flavor-Focused Farmers Cultivating More Than a Thousand Crops appeared first on Modern Farmer.

While Indigenous communities have gathered ramps for countless generations, the last two decades have seen a marked increase in people from all backgrounds seeking them out on forest floors, farmers market stands and restaurant menus. The widespread fascination with ramps reflects a growing general interest in local, seasonal ingredients that could positively impact our national food system; however, without a deeper awareness of sustainable foraging practices and the consequences of the climate crisis, it could do more harm than good. 

Dr. Michelle Baumflek, a research biologist with the United States Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service, has been working with the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians since 2016 while also collaborating on a long-term study of ramps pioneered by ecologist Dr. Joan Walker. Research from these collaborations indicates that the ramp populations in the southern Appalachian region have declined by about two percent in the past 20 years. That percentage may seem small, but the fallout could be felt in a big way in the region’s forests and beyond. 

“Ramps play an important role in forest nutrient cycling,” Baumflek explains. “They take up nutrients in early spring as they grow, and when the leaves die back, they return some nutrients to the ecosystem. Ramps will flower after the leaves are done for the season—usually in June or July—and, at that time, they provide food for their pollinators, which include several species of bees.” 

The recent decline in ramps is due to a variety of factors that may include both overharvesting and climate change. “Ramps are often found in rich cove habitat, which are relatively moist areas that have fertile organic soils,” says Baumflek. “Climate change may impact rich cove habitats in several ways, including shrinking cove habitats and increasing invasive species, which may affect ramps.” 

While addressing the climate crisis requires large-scale change at the institutional level, the issue of overharvesting is something that can be resolved by educating individuals to be conscious consumers of ramps. 

Unlike other popular foraged foods, such as mushrooms and even other types of onions, which may be ready to harvest in as little as two weeks, ramps take around seven years to reach maturity. Frequent foragers may see that the plants cannot keep pace with the dramatic rise in demand for ramps, but home cooks and restaurant chefs may not have this awareness. 

Michael Farrell works with a small team of foragers that harvests ramps from 10,000 acres of forested land in New York and Vermont that he oversees as CEO of The Forest Farmers, an agroforestry business geared toward conserving mature forests while generating sustainable income for farmers. For a while, these ramps were sold at farmers markets in New York City, but, by 2020, Farrell grew concerned about depleting the ramps on this land. It was around this time that he began working with Ethan Frisch, co-founder of the spice company Burlap & Barrel, and forager Omar Thelwell. 

“There are two different types of ramps here,” says Thelwell. “They’re all beautiful and fragrant and have green leaves, but the stems differentiate them—one is white and one is purple.” 

Thelwell travels from his home in Jamaica each year to harvest ramps, apples and other crops in the US. As with most wild edible plants, ramps must be harvested by hand. “You bend down and with a knife or scissors, you cut the leaves. The bulb stays in the ground so that it grows back the next year,” says Thelwell. It is a simple process, but not common practice. 

“Almost all the ramps that are sold in the marketplace come with the bulbs,” says Farrell. Imagine, for a moment, the last time you saw ramps—whether at a market or on Instagram—and you are likely to envision the full plant, from the fringe of roots at the base of the pale bulb all the way up the thin stem to the pointed tip of its leaf. 

Ramps, as a member of the Allium family, are a perennial plant, meaning that their bulbs can produce new life each year, so long as they have the right growing conditions. Harvest just the leaves and the bulb will regrow the following spring, but take the whole bulb and you will not find any ramps on that patch of land again. 

Although harvesting only the leaves is the most sustainable choice, people expect to buy the plant wholly intact, and without the bulbs, harvested leaves wilt quickly, which is less appealing to customers.

Farrell and Frisch worked together to address these problems by developing a unique method for harvesting and drying the ramps leaves, creating the first dried ramps product available for commercial retail. 

“You get all the flavor and all the nutrition from the ramp greens,” says Farrell. “And we get to keep the forest full of ramps for decades to come.”

It is critical that all ramps enthusiasts adopt this longview mentality, along with an understanding that these wild onions may exist in the public eye for just a few weeks each year, but they must be allowed to exist in the forest all the other days of the year, too. For Baumflek, this also means recognizing the ecological and cultural importance of ramps and, when foraging, acting from a place of “respect and reciprocity—understanding that people are in relationship with ramps and with the forests in which they grow, and that we need to take care of each other.” 

The post For Ramps, A Sustainable Future Depends On Leaving The Bulb Behind appeared first on Modern Farmer.

“The nomenclature changes with the marketing decisions of industry actors,” says Benjamin Aldes Wurgaft, author of Meat Planet: Artificial Flesh and the Future of Food, who notes that these actors—including food startups and environmental nonprofits—choose their words carefully in the hopes of winning consumer acceptance. (Wurgaft prefers “cultured meat” due to its relatively neutral proximity to the technology that defines it.)

In 2013, Dutch scientist Mark Post presented the first cultured meat product, a hamburger made possible by the financial support of American entrepreneur Sergey Brin. A decade later, cultured meat (by any name) still is not for sale on supermarket shelves. 

It is also still pending approval by the United States Department of Agriculture, despite some confusion in the media over the matter. In November of 2022, Upside Foods, a cultured meat producer based in Berkeley, California, received what is known as a “No Questions Letter” from the United States Food and Drug Administration. Wurgaft explains that this has since been “treated as regulatory approval in the media, when in fact it means that the FDA simply doesn’t have any questions to ask about the process.”  

With or without government approval, leaders in the field continue to doubt the scalability of cultured meat. The result, Wurgaft says, is a “bizarre situation in which we have plants in the Bay Area shutting down while others are opening saying they will have a product very soon.” 

Nevertheless, a State of the Industry Report published in February by the US-based nonprofit organization The Good Food Institute reported that the cellular agriculture industry now comprises 156 companies working in 26 countries and is expected to continue growing, thanks to the investment of $896 million in 2022. 

The industry, however, will not continue its growth in Italy, which, as of March 27, 2023, has taken action to become the first country to formally ban cultured meat products within its national borders. In a press release about the ban, the Italian government claims it is acting in the interest of “preserving the agricultural and culinary heritage” of Italy.  

In the weeks since the announcement of the ban, its opponents—both in Italy and around the world—have vocalized their support for cultured meat on the grounds that it offers meat without slaughter and the reduction of pollution associated with industrial animal agriculture. While inspirational, the promises of the cultured meat industry remain aspirational. They also tend to omit the fact that this form of food production is not entirely harmless. Cultured meat makes no claims of being wholly vegan, but its proponents rarely advertise the details of its creation, which requires blood from a cow fetus in addition to cells from a live animal. Research by Frontiers also demonstrates that, while the production of cultured meat may produce less methane than conventional animal agriculture, it could produce more carbon dioxide in the long term. 

Despite ongoing obstacles, the original goals associated with cellular agriculture continue to spur startups to experiment with every kind of meat, from steaks to chicken nuggets to sashimi-style seafood, with the intention of replacing meat eaten both in the home and while dining out. “In terms of impact, numbers and scale, the ideal would be to undercut the forms of cheap meat seen at places such as McDonald’s so that we can work against the incredible environmental and animal cruelty footprints of the meat industry worldwide,” says Wurgaft.  

When it comes to making the most sustainable and ethical decision, Wurgaft points out that vegetarian sources of protein, such as chickpeas, will always be the better option in comparison to all types of meat products; however, this fact is rebuffed as “naive” when brought up in the discourse around cultured meat. “There’s this story about what is realistic to expect from the global population.” 

The “realistic” expectation is that the worldwide consumption of meat will continue to increase in line with a globalized version of the meat-centric Western Diet. It is precisely because of this global dietary trend—which manifested in the opening of a McDonald’s in Rome in 1986—that Carlo Petrini founded the Slow Food Movement. As with the ban on cultured meat, the movement embodies the Italian tendency to favor tradition over innovation. 

Farmers Alessandra Rellini and Stefano Pinna sit squarely at the center of this discourse in more ways than one. Rellini and Pinna are Italian immigrants, born and raised in Northern Italy, who relocated to Vermont, where they co-own Agricola Farm. They raise a variety of livestock, including close to 200  pigs, which they butcher at a facility near the farm to produce Italian-style cured meats. 

“It’s a love-hate relationship with my traditions,” says Rellini. “In one sense, I love the way that Italy preserves certain traditions—it’s what makes me feel alive and connected to other generations of Italians. At the same time, innovation and evolving is part of our human nature.” 

“I don’t think our culture will disappear,” adds Pinna. “But I can see that my generation and younger generations are getting too far from food production.” 

Rellini and Pinna have many practices in place to ensure the health of both the pigs and their farmland, including minimizing the use of commodity crops such as corn and soybean as feed in favor of fresh pasture when possible and following a rotational grazing plan that involves moving the pigs every two weeks and seeding cover crops on fields after grazing. 

Among Agricola Farm’s selection of cured meats is lonzino, a product similar to the more popular prosciutto. With a recorded history of production on the Italian peninsula dating back to the eleventh century BC and a Protected Designation of Origin label that limits production to a certain area within Italy and requires the meat be aged for a minimum of 400 days, prosciutto is precisely the kind of product the Italian government is seeking to protect. Rellini and Pinna uphold similar traditional practices on American soil in the making of all their products, including the lonzino, which is aged for four months. Add to this the 12 to 16 months of the pig’s life before slaughter—more than twice as long as the life of most commercially raised pigs—and the result is two years of skill, hard work and care put into a single product. A portion of cultured meat, by comparison, can be grown in as little as two weeks. 

Faster, however, is not necessarily better, especially if it encourages an even greater increase in global meat consumption. Rellini points out that Italian cured meats, which are deeply flavorful because of the long curing process, are “a great way to consume meat because you don’t have a whole steak—you have a few slices and it’s satisfying.” 

While Rellini and Pinna state that they would not eat cultured meat, Rellini says, “I see a problem with banning it. Sometimes, as Italians, we are too quick to block change.” 

With the world’s population expected to surpass 9 billion people by 2050, there is no doubt that our global food system will need to change to adapt. The question of whether the most ethical and sustainable solutions can be found in the past, by carrying on historic farming traditions like Rellini and Pinna, or in the future, by inventing new means of food production, will be determined as much by consumers as by countries—and it all comes down to culture.

The post Italy’s Ban on Cultured Meat Raises Questions About Innovation Versus Tradition appeared first on Modern Farmer.