As inflation and the scale-back of pandemic-era boosts to SNAP and other government food programs threaten access to healthy food, school lunches matter more than ever. 

Modern Farmer talked to school staff in Texas and Alabama about why food–and the funding for food–is so important for communities and students. Here are four reasons why you should care about school food: 

Food is a learning tool

Children spend most of their day and year at school. It’s also where many children consume most of their daily nutrition. Whether it’s a lunch from home or a lunch from the cafeteria, school is where students learn about why the food they eat is so important. 

Teaching students about nutrition is linked to better long-term health outcomes and better performance in the classroom, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

Health class is required in American schools in 46 states and is often the first place children are exposed to information about how what they eat affects their long-term health. The school lunchroom is just one place where health education can leap from the textbook to the real world. 

The number of schools providing nutrition education fell from 84.6 percent to 74.1 percent from 2000 to 2014. Not providing nutrition education is linked to lower academic performance at school.  

“We want to give these kids good food because it’s important to fuel their day. They can’t focus in the classroom if they’re hungry or if they’ve been working hard in football practice and not eating,” says Lisa Quinn, director of nutrition at Deshler High School. 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends schools include nutrition education throughout the school day from school gardens and farm-to-school lunches in addition to in-classroom learning. 

Food is a community resilience tool for students and for farmers

Putting local food on school lunch plates is good for farmers and for students. 

A school’s big purchases can support the local economy, turning money that previously had been funneled to producers far away, into fuel for the nearby community. That gives schools an opportunity to vote with their dollar, spending money where they want to see the economy grow. In that way, schools can use their budgets to support the public good. 

Programs  the National Farm to School Network can connect local agriculture to school classrooms, giving students an opportunity to learn about agriculture in their communities and giving farmers local business opportunities. 

Including locallysourced food (and education about where it came from) can also make students more likely to eat their greens, according to research from Saint Louis University. 

Food insecurity is a national threat

The ability to obtain healthy food is getting harder and harder for American families. In 2024, 47.4 million Americans, including 13.8 million children, live in food-insecure households, according to data from the USDA’s Household Food Security report published in September. The data shows an increase of 3.2 million people compared to 2022 and a 13.5 million increase since 2021. 

Researchers with the Food Research & Action Center (FRAC) cited inflation and the rollback of COVID-19 pandemic relief programs that had provided temporary boosts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) as factors that contributed to the increase in food insecurity. 

Shoring up these programs, FRAC believes, will help to quell the threat food insecurity poses. 

“We have the tools needed to end hunger. It’s time to wield them and finally make hunger in America a thing of the past,” says Crystal FitzSimons, interim president of FRAC.

The now-expired bonus funding for SNAP gave schools the resources to provide free meals to students at no charge. This gap in funding highlights the important role schools play in providing essential nutrition to American children. 

“SNAP is our nation’s first line of defense against hunger, but the benefit levels are too low. The 2021 adjustment to the Thrifty Food Plan, which is used to determine SNAP benefits, was an important step in increasing benefit levels, providing more resources to participants to purchase the food they need. Yet, despite an increase in food insecurity nationwide, rather than invest more in SNAP, several lawmakers seek to cut nearly $30 billion in SNAP benefits over 10 years,” said officials with the Food Research & Action Center in a press release on the 2024 report. 

How you can take action for better school food

Support efforts such as the Healthy School Meals for All initiative and the Good Food Purchasing Program 

If you want to learn more about organized efforts to make school food healthier and more accessible to all families, visit the Healthy School Meals for All, Good Food Purchasing Program and CDC Healthy Schools websites. 

The Good Food Purchasing Program has an action planning toolkit you can use to gauge how you can make an impact on your local food system and how to take action. 

To really dig into the organizations taking this issue seriously, check out the list of 1,400 organizations that signed this July 2024 letter asking Congress to protect SNAP. Find which organizations are in your area and get involved with their efforts. 

Contact your local representative

Call your local lawmaker and ask them to support efforts to improve nutrition education and connect local agriculture with the school lunchroom. 

Support local agriculture through SNAP

Instead of buying food at the grocery store, consider visiting a local farmer’s market. If you receive SNAP benefits, you may be able to double your food-buying power through the Double Up Food Bucks program. The program matches every SNAP dollar spent at farmer’s markets, doubling your purchasing power at the local farmer’s market. 

Spending SNAP benefits with farmer’s markets tells government funders that Americans want more access to locallygrown food. 

The post Here’s Why School Lunches Matter 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.

Americans crave salmon; the salmon industry is valued at over $14 billion, and even in less-than-ideal economic scenarios, families are willing to fork over the approximate $13 to $23 per pound for this pricey but versatile fish. With consumption rates of salmon rising, the industry is growing volatile as it becomes clear that both wild-caught and farmed salmon cause environmental and economic issues. 

Salmon have been historically overfished, and they are now endangered in many of the rivers they used to flood during their annual migration. NOAA Fisheries determined in 2018 that five Pacific salmon stocks are now “overfished” and one stock is “subject to overfishing,” including Chinook and coho salmon. 

In light of the environmental dangers of wild salmon, farmed salmon may sound like an ideal solution; propagating salmon to be eaten without being removed from the wild should both help populations and consumers, right? Sadly, farmed salmon is rarely ever environmentally neutral. In fact, the industry is incredibly destructive to wild marine life, even in well-managed operations. Organizations such as Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch have even noted that wild-caught salmon managed in a responsible way (the population is healthy, and the fishery has little or no impact on other marine life) is almost always a lesser environmental impact than farmed salmon.

In the US, all Atlantic salmon for sale are farmed fish, with no commercial fishing allowed for this species due to the dramatic drop in population size these salmon faced after previous overfishing. Unfortunately, farmed salmon are often a threat to wild salmon. But farmed salmon, kept in large nets in waterways, are prone to escaping—and when they escape, they’re more than ready to enjoy their limited lifespans and interbreed with their wild counterparts, negatively impacting the genetic composition and fitness of native salmon populations, and sometimes introducing diseases for which wild salmon aren’t prepared. Most farmed salmon in the US are produced in marine net pens intended to contain the salmon while utilizing natural waterflow; these systems inherently impact the environment. Even if no salmon were to escape, farmed salmon pollute the waters they inhabit with waste and chemicals used to combat disease and parasites. 

What’s a salmon lover to do? Today’s shoppers are looking for new sources of salmon that won’t leave them feeling guilty when they clear their plates.

One of the rising solutions to the salmon dilemma is plant-based alternatives. Oshi is an up-and-coming brand of plant-based salmon, primarily made from soy and mycelium (a fungus usually found in blue cheese or salami).

Oshi’s salmon isn’t indistinguishable from real salmon, but its texture is very close, and it maintains a mild salmony flavor that blends into traditional salmon dishes. More importantly, Oshi’s salmon provides an option without the guilt of farmed salmon’s environmental harm. “Commercial fishing is a leading cause of overfishing, which threatens the biodiversity of our oceans, while fish farming often leads to pollution and habitat destruction,” says Ofek Ron, a representative of Oshi. “For those concerned about environmental impact, choosing plant-based salmon helps support efforts to reduce overfishing and protect marine ecosystems.” Currently, Oshi’s products are only available in local retailers around Seattle and farmer’s markets, but it has plans to expand the brand to retailers nationwide. 

And, of course, there’s the most technologically advanced option for salmon lovers: lab-grown, cell-cultivated salmon. First, isolated cells are taken from juvenile Pacific salmon—a step that only needs to be completed once per species. Then, these cells are grown in large steel tanks resembling those found in breweries and fed proteins, fats, salts and minerals to help them grow. These authentic salmon cells are harvested and combined with several plant-based ingredients in order to lend them the flavor, texture and appearance of a traditional salmon filet. “While this method of making seafood may seem new, our technology would look familiar to anyone who’s visited a microbrewery,” says Justin Kolbeck, CEO of Wildtype, which produces cell-cultivated salmon. “We built our fishery in a former brewery that unfortunately didn’t make it through the pandemic. We repurposed and upgraded much of the equipment from the brewery including some mixing tanks, as well as the cooling and cleaning systems.” 

Kolbeck notes that while Wildtype isn’t yet a perfect replica of a wild-caught salmon filet, it is continually improving, and the current product is quite nutritious. “We designed our salmon to provide the same level of omega-3 fats as the most pristine wild salmon,” says Kolbeck. “We’ve learned that consumers are increasingly concerned about their exposure to toxins through the food they consume. We can offer a nutritious and delicious seafood option without the associated risk of exposure to high levels of these contaminants.” 

At the global level, fish consumption is projected to increase by 14.8 percent by 2030. It’s not clear how an already stretched-thin aquaculture industry will rise to meet these demands, particularly with more public pushback on environmental damage. However, in a world already struggling with global food insecurity, overfishing, and the uncertainty of climate change, continuing “the way things have always been” simply isn’t going to work. We shouldn’t expect either farmed or wild-caught salmon to go anywhere anytime soon. As the most widespread and economically friendly options, they will still be the first choice for most consumers. But we can expect to see new options make their way into consumer’s fridges and onto menus—and our oceans will certainly be better for it. 

The post Farmed, Wild, Lab Grown, or Plant-Based: Which Salmon is Best? appeared first on Modern Farmer.

That’s how a farmer who used to work for Perdue described his chicken house—a sight so upsetting that it led him to transition out of this kind of work, often referred to as “factory farming.” 

Factory farming is a colloquial term, one meant to evoke the mechanized and impersonal nature of the process—although the phrase itself is somewhat vague. How big of an operation are we talking about, and why is it a problem? To get at the heart of the issue, it helps to be more specific.

What the term is actually referring to can be more or less encapsulated in large-scale CAFOs, or concentrated animal feeding operations. 

Concentrated animal feeding operations

CAFOs are defined by the EPA as intensive feeding operations where many animals are confined and fed for at least 45 days per year (though it can be much more) and inevitably their manure and waste come in contact with ground and surface water. 

There are small, medium and large CAFOs, with the largest of these embodying the truest definition of a “factory farm.” A large CAFO is at least 1,000 “animal units. ”An animal unit is roughly 1,000 lbs of live animal so to be classified as a large CAFO an operation would need to have at least:

Or combinations of all types of animals totaling 1,000 animal units. 

The largest of these CAFOs hold tens of thousands of animals in one place. 

Rationalized as a way to feed more people, large CAFOs are pervasive in our food system. But industrial animal agriculture comes with a lot of downsides.

What’s the problem?

The main problems with concentrated animal agriculture are its impacts on human health, its impact on the environment, and its threats to animal welfare. Many of these issues can be boiled down to the fact that these operations produce a lot of manure in one place. And those pollutants are released directly into the air and water. A single large CAFO can produce as much waste as a human city but without the same sewage treatment processes in place.

Human Health

For people who live near these CAFOs, pollution of the air and water pose serious health concerns. Respiratory issues such as asthma can be caused or made worse, and nitrate pollution in water can cause conditions such as blue baby syndrome. Although it can be difficult to prove causation, there have been many instances of serious issues believed to be caused by living close to CAFOs, such as cancer, miscarriages, and more. In the US, research has indicated that the impacts of agriculture on air quality lead to 17,900 deaths per year.

Additionally, these large-scale animal operations are often built in communities of color. For example, in California’s Central Valley, people of color are 1.29 times more likely to live within three  miles of a large dairy CAFO than white residents. With examples of this spanning the country, from California to North Carolina, this kind of pollution is a pattern of environmental injustice.

Farmer Health and Well-being  

Often, the farmers who enter into contracts with big meat companies such as  Tyson or Perdue find themselves taking on extensive debt to keep up with the equipment demands of the company. Due to the pay system that some of these companies use, farmers don’t make enough money to get out of debt. Instead, the company keeps the profits while the farmers shoulder the overhead costs. Ultimately, contract farming has caused many producers to lose their farms.

Environment 

Air and waterways can be seriously polluted by CAFOs. In Iowa, the state with the most hog waste in the country, the number of polluted waterways has increased dramatically in the last few decades. In North Carolina, flooding caused by Hurricane Matthew had caused substantial pollution when hog waste overflowed from their lagoons. The reason CAFOs are designated by the EPA is because the Clean Water Act specifically regulates waste and pollutants in our water and this concentration of animals and their waste is seen as a major source of potential pollution.

Animal Welfare 

In these operations, chickens, cows, and hogs are kept in conditions where they can hardly move or stand up. They are dirty and ill for most of their lives. Animal rights groups have long sounded the alarm on these conditions, but Ag-gag laws are in place in many states in an attempt to prevent these conditions from being documented.

Additional Issues

Living near a large CAFO can impact people in a lot of other ways,  too. There is an ever-present bad smell, flies, property values go down, mental health implications, and more. Even if you do not live next to a large CAFO, the issues with this type of animal production can include the spread of disease and strain on water supply.

No. Advocates would not equate large-scale CAFOs with farming at all. There are many farms—farms that practice animal agriculture—that operate in a way that protects the environment, practices responsible animal care, and does not harm the human communities close to them. These farmers are in a different category from industrial animal agriculture, which many farmers and advocates in this space would say is actually not agriculture at all, but more similar to manufacturing—hence the “factory” moniker. 

Still, this industry will often present itself as representative of the American farmer. As a result, critics are branded as “anti-agriculture” when in fact, the opposite is true. What many advocates call for is not the end of farming, but the end of a brand of food production that harms more than it helps.

The post Factory Farms Explained appeared first on Modern Farmer.

And there are distinct differences in how a President Kamala Harris would govern for the farmers, eaters, and workers in the United States than a President Donald Trump would. Just how different? We looked at their past actions and stated policy goals to learn more. 

The Landscape for Farmers Under Harris 

Vice President Harris’s track record on agriculture can be traced from her time as a California attorney general and US senator to her time as Biden’s second in command. 

As attorney general in California, she appealed a federal ruling that nixed California’s foie gras ban, and defended California’s law requiring humane, free-range facilities at egg farms. 

While Harris hasn’t formally outlined any agricultural policy plans for voters yet, Jonathan W. Coppess, former administrator of the USDA’s Farm Service Agency and current associate professor and director of the Gardner Agriculture Policy Program at University of Illinois, forecasts very little change from the current status quo for farmers and farming policy under Biden. 

“There are no indications that a Harris administration will deviate from the Biden administration on agriculture or trade,” says Coppess. “Also, it’s important to keep in mind that presidents only have so much power. The bulk of farm policy is controlled at the congressional level, so the president can only have a limited role in planning what will ultimately end up in a farm bill.”

According to many measures, farmers have been higher on the hog under Biden than Trump. Net farm income hit $165 billion between 2021 and 2023, compared with $94 billion between 2017 and 2019. 

The administration also provided $56 billion to American farmers in direct payments.

The Landscape for Farmers Under Trump

Farmers and ranchers in the US appear poised to back Trump for president, according to a poll commissioned by Agri-Pulse and a survey conducted by Reuters. While both of those studies were conducted before Harris entered the race, they are unlikely to change, says Ferd Hoefner, founding policy director at the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition and consultant on farm, food, and environmental policy.

“You’ve got this strange dichotomy where he polls well in the farming community, but yet they all live in mortal fear of a trade war,” says Hoefner. “When Trump was in office (farmers) lost billions because of the trade war he started with China, but he essentially paid them off because he knew it was politically expedient to do so. They think he’ll do the same thing again, but I don’t think that’s logical.”

Trump, indeed, shelled out $32 billion to farmers in 2020, and, over his entire presidency, he spent at least $61 billion on bailouts to compensate ag companies for the cost of the trade war he started. 

If Trump is elected, he has proposed another round of punishing tariffs: a baseline of 10 percent on all imported goods and a 60-percent tariff on all Chinese imports. This would constitute the highest and broadest tariffs imposed in the US since World War II, and it would result, Goldman Sachs projects, in a rise in inflation of 1.1 percentage points and a reduction in GDP growth by a half point, not to mention five additional Fed rate hikes. 

“Agriculture is very export dependent,” says Hoefner. “Farmers should think long and hard about which candidate they decide to support and what the implications of each candidate’s past and stated plans might mean for them.”

The Landscape for Eaters Under Harris 

Food prices have spiked 25 percent between 2019 and 2023, and price inflation at restaurants has been even higher. There are more than 44 million Americans currently facing hunger. One in five children doesn’t have enough to eat or access to healthy food, making food assistance programs a hot political topic that inspires now-familiar partisan rhetoric.

“Harris hasn’t forecast that much on what she would do as president, but her past actions indicate that she may be more active on consumer issues than Biden,” says Hoefner. 

During her entire political tenure, Harris has advocated for improving food security and nutrition for all Americans, but especially low-income families and children. During COVID, she introduced two pieces of legislation that aimed to help eaters and producers.

She co-sponsored the Food Donation Improvement Act as California senator. The act was designed to encourage food donations by nixing liabilities for people willing to contribute. Harris also boosted the state’s Farm to School program, helping both farmers and children, and increased food assistance programs across the board. 

The Closing the Meal Gap Act of 2020 expanded the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits for all who needed it. The FEMA Empowering Essential Deliveries (FEED) Act granted the feds the power to team up with small restaurants and non-profits on meals for people in need. 

The Landscape for Eaters Under Trump

If Trump’s promised tariffs go into effect, there will likely be retaliatory tariffs imposed on American goods, including food, which could cause a cavalcade of effects. 

His immigration policy could also cause a variety of challenges that would trickle down to workers, says Coppess. 

“It’s a giant unknown if what he’s saying will actually be pushed through, but a significant portion of the agricultural labor force is immigrant labor,” says Coppess. 

Labor costs currently comprise about 15 percent of a farmer’s costs, and that number is on the rise, according to the USDA. Almost half of the labor force on farms is undocumented. If many of those workers are deported, without a ready and willing supply of hands, the price of food will likely continue to surge. 

Under his previous administration, Trump sought to cut SNAP benefits by $180 billion, or close to 30 percent. There was also a $50-million proposed cut that would have limited student access to free or lower-cost meals at schools. 

Project 2025, a 900+ page manifesto-cum-wish list for Trump’s next term drafted by a coalition of more than 100 conservative organizations—from which Trump has distanced himself, despite his deep ties to many of its creators—includes a plan to divide the farm bill.

The notoriously unwieldy farm bill typically pairs policies backed by red-leaning rural farming communities (i.e., farm subsidies) and blue-leaning cities (food aid programs such as SNAP), and allows both parties to negotiate a piece of the action. Project 2025 would bifurcate the bill and slash spending on farm-friendly programs such as Agriculture Risk Coverage, Price Loss Coverage and crop insurance, while also targeting SNAP and school meals. 

The Landscape for Workers Under Harris 

Trump may have farmers’ votes, but farm workers seem to be backing Harris. United Farm Workers officially endorsed Harris shortly after news broke that Biden was stepping down. They applauded the Biden-Harris administration for championing unionization efforts for farm workers, helping undocumented workers secure COVID vaccines, and increasing legal protections in the industry. 

“Since the very beginning of her career in California—the nation’s largest agricultural producer—Kamala Harris has proven herself a loyal friend of all working people,” said United Farm Workers president Teresa Romero in a statement. 

Hoefner argues that in addition to promoting fairer competition and lower food costs and aiming to correct previous wrongs committed against farmers of color, the mood changed at the USDA. 

“I am regularly in touch with a variety of people at the USDA, and I can say that, under Biden, there was a huge morale boost,” says Hoefner. “People felt once again that they were able to address climate change and workers’ issues. They felt like the work they were doing is worthwhile.”

The Landscape for Workers Under Trump 

Under Trump’s guidance, the USDA delivered more direct aid to farmers than any prior administration. During the COVID pandemic, almost half of farmers’ incomes were coming from the feds. But these payments mainly helped larger conglomerates, not smaller farmers. 

About two-thirds of the aid went to the largest 10 percent of recipients. (The average payment for the top tenth was $164,813, versus the average payment of $2,469.49 for the bottom half.)

Under Trump’s guidance, the USDA also put the Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration under the control of the Agricultural Marketing Service, which critics said weakened oversight.

“What little is left of commodity and farm support will completely disappear under a second Trump administration,” Hoefner predicts. “And while it hasn’t gotten much better under Biden, it could potentially get much worse.”

Potential Wild Cards 

“Who they pick for the secretary of agriculture will tell us a lot,” says Coppess. “With Trump, it was one of the last cabinet positions he filled. And we don’t know who he’ll pick this time. Strong contenders are Texas Agricultural Commissioner Sid Miller, who is right of Attila the Hun and would be the MAGA pick, or Kip Tom, an Indiana farmer who served as US ambassador to the U.N. under his previous administration, and would be more of the center pick.”

Kentucky GOP Rep. Thomas Massie, a vocal critic of benefits programs, has also thrown his hat in the ring, adds Coppess. 

On the Harris side, Coppess floats two potentials: Karen Ross, secretary of the California Department of Food and Agriculture, and Xochitl Torres Small, the current US deputy secretary of agriculture. 

“I think they’d both do a good job, and [they] have expertise that would balance business and farm interest,” says Coppess. “Karen works in California now, but she’s a Nebraska farm girl, so she has Midwest cred, and Xochitl and Tom [Vilsack, US secretary of agriculture under Biden] are both seen as balancing farm and business interests.”

Even with all of the evidence and policy projections in the world, there are plenty of wild cards, no matter who wins.

The post What a Trump or Harris Presidency Will Mean for Farmers and Eaters appeared first on Modern Farmer.

In previous coverage, we’ve told you about PFAS—per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances that don’t readily break down and can accumulate in humans, causing serious health problems.

We’ve also told you about how the EPA recently passed its first-ever regulations on a handful of PFAS in drinking water, and how these rules leave a lot to be desired.

And then we told you about some of the ways you can reduce your own personal exposure to these chemicals while you wait for the slow wheels of government to turn. And if you read that article, you know that making shrewd decisions while you shop can help reduce the amount of PFAS with which you come into contact. 

“I think the best thing that people can do is be educated consumers,” says Kyla Bennett, science policy director for Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).

Many items in the retail sphere won’t have information about PFAS use because it’s not required. To make matters more complicated, a PFAS-free label doesn’t necessarily give you all the information you need. Potential PFAS-free greenwashing may or may not be intentional, but regardless, that label might need closer inspection. We consulted some experts to help you understand how to find PFAS-free items in the marketplace.

Start with a trustworthy list

Verifying if something is PFAS-free can be tough, so don’t reinvent the wheel if you don’t have to. Here is a trustworthy list of brands and products that you can buy knowing they are PFAS-free, as well as a comprehensive buying guide.

This list from PFAS Central is a good source for outdoor gear, apparel, kitchenware and more. Food & Water Watch recently released a thorough buying guide to help you side-step PFAS in everything from paint to menstrual products to furniture.

Know the laws where you live

More than a dozen states have passed some kind of legislation restricting the use of PFAS in consumer products such as foods, packaging, apparel and carpeting. We do not yet have the ability to test for all of the thousands of PFAS, so one way to screen for PFAS is by testing for the total amount of fluorine in a product. This test can serve as a good indicator of whether there is PFAS in a product, although it’s not yet clear exactly what level of PFAS is present from directly adding PFAS versus unintentional PFAS contamination.

“It’s an imperfect method, but it’s one of the better methods that are out there, especially when you couple it with more in-depth testing,” says Mike Schade, director of the Mind the Store Program for Toxic-Free Future. 

Washington State has been a leader on this front, and Schade points to the state’s Safer Products for Washington Act, which gives the state regulatory authority to ban chemicals that are hazardous.

“Raise your voice for policy change,” says Schade. “We know that the federal government is slow at making change around chemicals like PFAS. There’s been a lot more progress at the state level.”

You can use this bill tracker from Safer States to find out what states have either introduced or enacted legislation to ban PFAS in different product categories. 

Ask the right questions

When you have the time and opportunity to ask a company about its products, asking the right questions is key. Inquiring whether something is PFAS-free might not cut it.

Here are three key questions you can ask:

Does this product use nonstick or waterproof properties?

PFAS specifically are used for their waterproof and nonstick qualities, so those are good flags.

“Every time I’m going to buy something, like if I’m buying a kitchen appliance, I call and I say is there nonstick on there? Because if it is, I’m not going to buy it,” says Bennett.

Does this product use fluorinated chemistry?

This is a good catch-all question, because while we do not yet have the ability to test for all PFAS, if there is fluorinated chemistry in a product, this is a reliable indicator that there will be PFAS in the product.

Sometimes, companies will call out a certain PFAS by name. The specificity is helpful, but at the same time, it’s important to understand what this means. Just because the product doesn’t contain one specific PFAS doesn’t mean that it doesn’t contain another that is just as dangerous.

“[Companies] say oh, we have no PFOA,” says Bennett. “That means they have no PFOA, but they could have 11,999 other PFAS in them. So, they really have to ask the right questions like ‘Is there any fluorinated chemistry at all in your product?’ And that kind of covers the whole thing.”

What alternatives to PFAS do you use?

“PFAS-free is good, but it’s not enough,” says Schade. “And if I’m a consumer, what I would do is I would ask companies ‘How are you ensuring the alternative that you’re now using is safer? What are you doing to evaluate the safety of alternatives?’ Getting into the nuances of 100 parts per million versus 50 parts per million, I think that’s too challenging of an area for most consumers to navigate, quite honestly. But I think asking questions about how are you vetting the safety of alternatives, I think that is a more productive and useful question to ask, because most companies are not thinking about it.”

Beware suspect alternatives

In manufacturing, it’s possible to substitute one well-known PFAS for an alternative that is simply another, less common PFAS. Known as “regrettable substitutions,” these swaps can be just as harmful to your health.

But you also want to be sure that PFAS aren’t being changed out for another type of chemical that is just as bad. Schade recommends looking for certifications or policies that are specific about what types of alternatives are allowed. 

“Most laws that are out there and most company policies that restrict PFAS don’t do a good enough job ensuring that companies are utilizing truly safer alternatives,” says Schade. 

Schade points to GreenScreen Certified as an example of a third-party standard that not only restricts PFAS but also restricts other chemicals of concern—not all third-party standards will cast this wide of a net.

Want more choices? Schade also recommends EPA Safer Choice and Cradle to Cradle.

Start conversations with retailers

Businesses and retailers can be huge forces for change, says Schade. “Another thing that consumers can do is reach out to the retailer’s businesses that you support, that you shop at and ask them whether or not they’re taking action on PFAS.”

Campaigning has compelled major retailers including Whole Foods, REI and Dick’s Sporting Goods to take some action on PFAS. According to Schade, it really does have the potential to start a conversation within the company.

Visit Retailerreportcard.com to learn which companies are leading and which are lagging when it comes to addressing PFAS. You can even use this site to contact the companies at the back of the pack and ask them to prioritize safer chemicals.

Kyla Bennett is the science policy director at PEER, and she wants to answer your questions about PFAS. Submit your question to contact@modfarmer.com

The post PFAS: Behind the Label appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Last month, the EPA passed its first-ever legally enforceable drinking water standards on a handful of PFAS—a group of chemicals used to make non-stick coatings and products that resist heat, oil, water and more. Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances are toxic chemicals and are often referred to as “forever chemicals” because of their tendency to not break down.

The regulations state that all public water systems have three years to complete testing for these chemicals and must implement solutions to reduce PFAS in five years. Under the new laws, the public must be informed of the level of PFAS measured in their drinking water.

In a lot of ways, the EPA decision is a ground-breaking move. PFAS have been used commercially since the 1940s, and it has long been known that these chemicals are toxic to people. Big chemical companies, such as  3M, have known about the harmful qualities of these toxic chemicals for decades but intentionally hid the evidence. 

The scary thing about PFAS is they are simultaneously very close to home and unsafe. They’re used in everyday household products such as raingear, nonstick pans and mascara and the EPA admits that “exposure to PFAS has been linked to deadly cancers, impacts to the liver and heart, and immune and developmental damage to infants and children.”

Despite the known risks, there’s a reason it has taken so long to get even one rule passed at the federal level to regulate these chemicals in drinking water. Extensive lobbying efforts by chemical companies have helped keep restraints off these substances. You can read our coverage of this lobbying here.

So what does this mean for you? 

Here are five essential takeaways for you to know about the new drinking water regulations, along with expert insights from Kyla Bennett, science policy director for Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). 

These laws apply to only six PFAS

Of the at least 12,000 existing PFAS, the EPA issued regulations for only six of them. This new regulation dips a toe into the water of regulating them. It sets maximum contaminant levels (MCLs) in drinking water for two of the oldest and most pervasive PFAS, called PFOA and PFOS, of four parts per trillion. The EPA has said that there is no safe level of exposure for PFOA and PFOS. 

“It’s a good first step. I think it’s too little too late given that it’s only for six PFAS and there are 12,000 to 14,000 of them,” says Bennett.“It alleviates the stress a little bit, but not a whole lot…Nobody should relax.”

Food & Water Watch recently released a thorough buying guide to help you side-step PFAS in everything from paint to menstrual products to furniture.

This is only for public drinking water systems

Public water systems have to complete initial water monitoring within three years, and if the levels are too high, take steps to reduce them within five years. For example, this could mean shutting down a contaminated water source or installing a filtration system. Data about public drinking water systems is available online. Private wells, common in rural or farm areas, won’t automatically be tested for PFAS. 

“[This regulation] does not apply to private wells,” says Bennett. “And I know a lot of farmers do have private wells. However, there is money available for private well owners if they are contaminated, to get a filter put in or to get it fixed. So, that’s good news for private well owners.”

Installing a filter at your kitchen sink can help reduce your exposure if there is PFAS in your water. Bennett recommends looking on The National Sanitation Foundation website for filters that will reliably reduce total PFAS in your water.

The burden is on municipal drinking water systems, not directly on polluters

The drinking water regulation puts the burden of fixing high contaminant loads on public drinking water systems and municipalities, not the polluters themselves. This also means that, under this law, there is no direct lever for polluting companies to change their practices.

However, this regulation could start a domino effect—municipalities that don’t want to be on the hook for installing very costly filtration systems might begin putting more pressure on polluting companies in their jurisdictions.

“States are going to want to help the municipalities within their states, and they are going to then start putting in PFAS limits in the effluent, which will help reduce the amount of PFAS going into the public drinking water,” says Bennett.

Is there PFAS pollution in your area? Consult the Environmental Working Group’s interactive map.

The EPA should regulate PFAS as a class, not individually

There are at least 12,000 known PFAS, and we can only currently test for about 70 of them. Bennett says that the EPA should define PFAS broadly, and then regulate them as a class, instead of doing more of this “whack-a-mole regulation,” where they only deal with a handful at a time. And then, she says, we should ban all non-essential uses, such as cosmetics.

It’s important to regulate PFAS broadly, says Bennett, because addressing only a handful of PFAS does nothing to protect people from what are called “regrettable substitutions”—where companies using PFAS just swap restricted ones for other PFAS that remain unregulated (remember, there are hundreds of these chemicals out there). 

While the federal government moves slowly, individual states have made more moves restricting PFAS. You can use this bill tracker to find out what states have either introduced or enacted legislation to ban PFAS in different product categories.

You still need to protect yourself from PFAS

The EPA’s working assumption right now is that 20 percent of your PFOA and PFOS exposure comes from drinking water. Even if all “forever chemicals” were eliminated from your water, it’s still critical to eliminate other sources of exposure. While PFAS is a large, systemic problem, and solving it should not be on the individual’s shoulders, taking action now can help protect you while we wait for legislation to hopefully catch up. 

“It shouldn’t be this way,” says Bennett. “But right now, because the states and the federal government are acting so slowly, we have to take it upon ourselves to reduce our risk as best we can. So, education can go a long way in getting people to realize what they should and should not be buying, what they should and should not be using, what they should and should not be eating…It sucks that the government isn’t taking care of us. But people assume that if something’s legal, it’s safe. And that’s simply not true.”

Kyla Bennett is the science policy director at PEER, and she wants to answer your questions about PFAS. Submit your question to contact@modfarmer.com

The post The EPA Just Passed the First-Ever Federal Regulations for ‘Forever Chemicals’ in Drinking Water. Here are the Top Five Things You Need to Know. appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Eikleberry was shocked at how difficult it was for her to source local ingredients. She lives in Wooster, a productive agricultural area that hosts Ohio State University’s Agricultural Research and Development Center. Yet, even surrounded by farmland, they were “chasing a turkey all around Ohio,” Eikleberry recalls. Eventually, the family succeeded in finding their local fare. They enjoyed it so much that they wanted others in the area to have the same opportunity to cook with local food but without the hardship of tracking it all down. 

Soon after, they got word of another conversation happening in Wooster. Betsy Anderson, who worked for OSU’s Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center—along with her family—had been dreaming of some kind of cafe combined with a market for local food. They had approached county commissioners with their idea, but it hadn’t progressed beyond that.

The two groups joined forces, meeting once a week, building support, attracting others interested in helping. By January 2009, they had formed a board and incorporated as a member-owned cooperative that June, striking a deal with the Wayne County commissioners to take over a run-down building and transform it into a one-stop farm shop. 

In May, 2010, the new store hosted a celebratory grand opening. Over a cheerful green-striped awning and generously windowed storefront, the hand-made sign welcomed shoppers into Local Roots Market & Cafe—the nation’s first year-round, everyday farm store selling local food on consignment. Vendors would set their own prices; when items sold, they’d get a percentage of the sale price returned to them in two-week payouts. It was a new store—as it turned out—that would launch a movement.

Funding the farm stop

The local food movement has always struggled with the conflicting values of paying farmers fairly without making food an elite commodity. In addition, it can be hard for customers to source food year-round, depending on where they live, and modern grocery stores have conditioned many people to expect fresh strawberries in January or pumpkins in June. Farmers markets are great, but many run only certain days of the week or months of the year. Enter farm stops. 

Farm stops are a hybrid of these models. With brick-and-mortar locations, they are open year-round for customers, and they allow multiple farmers to sell their goods at the same time. Most farm stops work on consignment, where farmers set the prices for their goods, and the farm stop takes a cut of the profit—generally about 30 percent. All farm stores also rely on wholesale purchases to fill out inventory with items that producers are unwilling to sell on consignment. 

But farm stops, like any other venture in the food and agriculture space, can struggle with tight profit margins. Some stops are experimenting with pricing to ensure profits can stabilize. Food access is a primary concern at FARMacy Community Farmstop in Rock Hill, SC, where founder Jonathan Nazeer is trying something new. 

He estimates that 70 percent of his customers are higher-income shoppers from surrounding neighborhoods who drive out of their way to support his store because they are, as he understands it, “motivated by the mission of bringing good food into what they know has been a community marginalized for decades.” The support has been critical. Not yet able to accept SNAP benefits, FARMacy prices were out of reach for many living in the immediate vicinity of the store.

To reach this community, FARMacy adopted a pay-what-you-will system. Select products are labeled with their “real-value” price—what farmers expect to get from those sales—but customers can pay whatever they choose. There’s a balancing act that relies on customers who can pay more than the posted value choosing to do so. The data collection is on-going, but Nazeer is happy with the response he’s seen so far—a 37-percent increase in shoppers from the immediate community. Grant money subsidizing the program from the USDA’s Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program is set to run out in June 2025, but Nazeer recognizes that “pay-what-you-will” was never a sustainable solution to the root challenges of food sovereignty, which is his primary concern.

“If communities are not working towards producing their own food, then they have to rely on other communities to do that. I think each community has to be independent when it relates to food,” he says, reflecting on the difficulty he’s had convincing South Carolina farmers to sell on consignment in his community. Working with several South Carolina-based partners, Nazeer has launched Crop Hill to establish an urban agricultural district.

Some founders of farm stops have relied on personal finances to acquire initial building space. Most others, as with Local Roots, have been given deals on municipally owned buildings. Keller Market House paid $1 for the title of a county-owned land bank building in Lancaster, Ohio. A gas station, owned and renovated by the town of Jonesborough, is leased, according to its executive director Lori Powell, “at a very low rate” to Boone Street Market in Tennessee. 

Fellowship of the farm stops

Over the first three unseasonably warm days of March, 2024—15 years after the founding of Local Roots—a first-of-its-kind conference was held at the University of Michigan’s Matthaei Botanical Gardens. 

Kathy Sample and Bill Brinkerhoff—co-founders of Argus Farm Stop in Ann Arbor, Michigan—wanted to take stock of what they recognize as a movement, one that they’ve helped to accelerate. 

They tasked Argus manager Casey Miller with finding and inviting everyone associated with year-round consignment farm stores in the country, from those in operation to those in the inkling or development stages. The result was the 2024 Farm Stop Conference, which gathered 130 attendees from across the country, including representatives from all levels of government, several NGOs and half of the 14 recognized farm stops. 

Brinkerhoff recounted to the gathering the couple’s discovery of Local Roots in 2013. They were dropping off their son, Ben, at the College of Wooster when they happened upon the store and were enthralled. 

In November 2013, they began a detailed feasibility study to determine if and where a Local Roots-style store might work in Ann Arbor. Later that winter, they arranged a behind-the-scenes Local Roots visit to shadow employees and learn the nitty-gritty of the business. They were hosted by general manager Jessica Eikleberry. 

In March 2014, Sample and Brinkerhoff signed a lease for a former gas station situated along heavy commuter routes—car, bicycle and walking—on the edge of downtown Ann Arbor. The business opened later that summer as a low-profit, limited-liability social enterprise, including a small coffee shop that helps fund operations. They opened a second shop across town in 2017 and expanded that into an adjacent building in 2022. 

Last year, sales at these stores topped $6.5 million, two-thirds of that from sales of grocery items and the rest from cafe sales. Argus’ top 12 earners in 2023 saw more than $100,000 in sales and included seven farms selling vegetables, fruit, meat and dairy, along with two bakeries and a prepared-food vendor. But even smaller or limited season operators fared well: 75 vendors—half of them farmers—made more than $10,000 in sales. In its first decade, Argus has paid out more than $20 million to its vendors.

Brinkerhoff is passionate about the mission and the need for these kinds of stores. At the conference, he projects an image of a partitioned dollar bill from the USDA’s Economic Research Service showing that for every dollar consumers spend in a grocery store, a bit less than 15 cents went to the farmers producing the raw ingredients.

Tom Zilke, owner of Zilke Vegetable Farm, has been selling produce from his 25-acre farm through Argus since they opened. He describes selling through Argus as “very easy. The big benefit is they’re doing the selling. We come straight from the farm, drop it off and walk away.”

With Argus’ 70-percent consignment rate, Zilke will get 70 cents on the dollar when his products sell, without time and labor costs of manning his on-farm farm stand or a farmers market tent. 

Katie Barr has thought a lot about farm stops. She literally wrote the book on How to Start a Farm Stop as part of her Master’s thesis for the University of Michigan’s School for Environment and Sustainability. As she discovered, the establishment of a farm stop can result in profound and sometimes unanticipated benefits for farms and food systems. Interviewing more than 40 farmers who sell through farm stops, Barr documented numerous stories of farmers paying off debt and investing in critical infrastructure—including additional acreage, greenhouses and root cellars—and expanding or investing in entirely new production systems. One farmer shifted their operation to winter production in order to take advantage of their farm stop’s need for winter produce. Another farmer made enough money selling eggs and chicken that they were able to establish a goat herd and, eventually, a flock of sheep to add goat milk products and wool to their repertoire.

The science of ecology has a truism: In the face of disturbance, diversity confers stability and resilience to the biosphere. Perhaps the same holds true for food systems.

Thinking of starting a Farm Stop? Here are some resources:

Get the book How to Start a Farm Stop by author Katie Barr. Purchase the book or find a free downloadable PDF at this link.

Argus Farm Stop offers online training workshops on starting a farm stop or an online market here: https://www.argusfarmstop.com/learn

You can also visit these farm stops. Know of others? Share your favorite farm stop in the comments!

Local Roots Market and Cafe in Wooster, OH
The Wild Ramp in Huntington, WV
Argus Farm Stop in Ann Arbor, MI
Boone Street Market in Jonesborough, TN
Agricole Farm Stop in Chelsea, MI
Keller Market House in Lancaster, OH
FARMacy Community Farmstop in Rock Hill, SC
Lakeshore Depot in Marquette, MI
Random Harvest in Craryville, NY
Bloomington Farm Stop Collective, Bloomington, IN
Philmont Cooperative in Philmont, NY
Public Market in Wheeling, WV
East Lansing Food Co-op in Lansing, MI
South East Market in Grand Rapids, MI
Meadowlark Market & Kitchen in Lander, WY
Foodsphere is The Entrepreneurial Center of Local Roots
Purplebrown Farm Store, in Peninsula, OH
Lowe Creek Farmer’s Market, in Prospect, KY
Liberty Prairie Farm Store, in Grayslake, IL

The post Is the Farm Stop Revolution Upon Us? appeared first on Modern Farmer.

There was just one problem: Lewis and Barker could not afford to buy the farm or the land on which it sits—that is, until they worked with an agricultural land trust.

What is a land trust?

Land trusts can be non-profit conservation organizations or, in some instances, government bodies that work to conserve agricultural land in perpetuity.

Without farmland to grow crops or ranchland for livestock, we don’t eat. Conserving farmland underpins a stable local food supply. Without agriculture, jobs are lost; 22.1 million full- and part-time jobs were related to the agricultural and food sectors in 2022, which equals 10.4 percent of the total US employment. Keeping farmland in farming is crucial for our food supply and food security, and it’s why the American Farmland Trust (AFT), a national conservation organization, advocates for keeping farmers and farmland together. 

The AFT predicts that more than 300 million acres of farmland and ranch land could change ownership within the next two decades, with some of it transitioning out of agriculture use permanently. As retiring farmers exit the field, they are looking to the equity they’ve built up in their land on which to retire. That can be a significant sum, something that young or new farmers may not be able to afford. (According to the USDA’s 2022 Census of Agriculture, farmers under the age of 35 account for only nine percent of all producers.) But real estate developers can afford it. 

“Between 2001 and 2021, the country lost 11 million acres of agricultural land,” says Jen Dempsey, director of the Farmland Information Center and senior advisor for the AFT. “Development,” she says, “remains the most significant and direct threat to farmland.” 

Ben Miles, is the Southeast Program manager for Land Trust Alliance (LTA), a member organization with 950 land trusts nationwide. “Most farmers and ranchers could find a buyer willing to purchase their property and develop it, whether into 10-acre ranchettes or 1/8-acre lots,” he says. 

A land trust is able to purchase land outright, remove the development potential and then lease or sell the land back to a farmer. It is also able to help a beginning farmer if the selling price being asked by an existing farmer is too high. 

Community land trusts retain ownership of the property while the farmer pays a tenancy back to the trust to farm the land. But this can be a mixed bag. The farmer owns the buildings and the equipment, but not the land. 

[RELATED: Q&A: How Community Land Trusts Help to Preserve Farmland]

“Farmers look at their property values going up to retire,” says Lewis. Without value in the land, it becomes difficult for the farmer to gain equity or retirement savings. 

How do land trusts work?

By far the most popular way a land trust works is through the purchase of a conservation easement: a legally binding agreement between a land trust and a property owner, designed to keep farms and ranches conserved for agricultural use in perpetuity. 

The land is first appraised without any conservation restrictions placed on it. This is generally the higher value of the land with zoning and development potential attached to it. It is then appraised with conservation restrictions placed on it. The difference between the two values represents the “easement” value of the property. In 2022, the AFT and the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service sent out a survey to land trusts across the US. The majority of respondents to the survey, 88 percent, reported conserving 5.9 million acres of farmland and ranchland through conservation easements. 

In the case of Oyster Bay, the former owners sold the easement value of the property to Community Farmland Trust. They were then able to retire, having leveraged the equity in their property. Lewis and Barker were able to buy the more affordable property without the development rights attached. Since 2018, they have been producing and selling free-range chicken eggs and meat on the farm’s idyllic 40 acres.

“The fee interests—the dirt, the soil, the property—are in our names,” says Lewis, while the conservation easement is in the land trust’s name. The property owner, in this case Lewis and Barker, retains ownership and usage of the land—such as the right to continue farming or to raise livestock. The legal agreements governing an easement are extremely comprehensive including the buying and selling of the farm property. “Easements can be amended and altered slightly, but it can be a very challenging process,” says Lewis. As a general rule, once the land is conserved and the easement filed with the land records office, it is binding and travels with the property for all current and future owners. Even if Lewis and Barker sell the property, the conditions and restrictions on the easement remain in place forever. 

But nothing is perfect. “The easement in our situation reduced the overall cost of the initial purchase in 2018, but now, as property values overall have risen, the land is worth almost the same as before the purchase,” says Lewis.

This is a concern for Lewis and Barker, as they wonder what will happen when it’s their turn to retire and pay the land forward. Their daughter currently does not want to farm. So, will the property again become unaffordable?

Lewis also cautions that land trusts can be complicated legal quagmires and that those entering into a trust should have tempered expectations. Lease agreements, inheritance regulations and the shared responsibility of land stewardship between the trust that owns the land and the farmer can take time to work out. It took Lewis and Barker more than three years to finally have everything in place. All three parties involved (the sellers, the land trust and Lewis and Barker) needed to work out the details of the sale and conservation restrictions being placed on the land. The land trust had to do land surveys and environmental assessments to obtain a grant that let them purchase the easement. “It all takes time,” says Lewis.

How can farmers get started with land trusts?

For farmers looking to conserve their land in a trust and for young agrarians interested in acquiring farmland, the AFT’s Land Transfer Navigators program in partnership with the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service is a good place to start.

“Some land trusts,” says Miles, “also have programs connecting new farmers with retiring farmers, through Farm Link programs, or run incubator or community farms, so they may be able to directly help new farmers get access to land and to get their business started.”

Land access and the ability of young farmers to be able to purchase land is a pressing problem that could be addressed in the upcoming Farm Bill. The Increasing Land Access, Security and Opportunities Act is one of several bipartisan bills addressing the issue. Led in the House of Representatives by Joe Courtney (D) from Connecticut, Zach Nunn (R) from Iowa and Nikki Budzinski (D) from Illinois, it hopes to prioritize projects that give direct financial assistance to farmers, involve collaborative partnerships and transition farmland from existing producers to the next generation.

“We are in a land access crisis,” says Lewis. “As farmers get older and look at how they can retire, we need all the options on the table.”

Correction: An earlier version of this story stated that land trusts are legal agreements administered by non-profit conservation organizations. The conservation easement is the legal agreement, while the land trust is the organization that holds or owns the easement. 

The post Holding onto Farmland, One Conservation Easement at a Time appeared first on Modern Farmer.

 In the aftermath of the war, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was accepted by members of the United Nations (U.N.) at the Palais de Chaillot in Paris. Among the resolutions in the foundational text is Article 25. It reads, in part: “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care.”

The right to food seems so basic; in 1948, it seemed unimaginable that we would be where we are today, with 828 million people living in hunger, according to the latest numbers from the World Health Organization. Most of those people—more than 85 percent—live in areas affected by conflict and war.

In 2015, the U.N. targeted 2030 as the year it would end hunger and food insecurity. In the past decade, we’ve seen catastrophic wars and food crises in South Sudan, Syria, Yemen, Haiti, Gaza, Ukraine and Somalia topping the list, with tens of millions of their citizens suffering almost unimaginable hardship, hunger and suffering. The populations in those conflict zones risk starvation, because access to food has been either coincidentally or intentionally cut off. 

While the U.N. unanimously passed a resolution condemning the use of food insecurity and starvation as a tactic of war in 2018, the resolution isn’t legally binding. The only way the millions of people in conflict zones are getting food that they don’t grow or find themselves is through the efforts of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and nonprofits, often staffed by volunteers who risk their lives to deliver food to people on the front lines.

The circumstances and details of delivery vary considerably. 

“Logistics for delivery of aid differ depending on many factors, from the location, geography and weather to the nature of the disaster, beneficiaries, time of year and level of conflict,” says Christine Quinn Antal, co-founder of the nonprofit Task Force Antal and a veteran with years of experience operating in conflict zones and managing crises. Task Force Antal focuses on providing food, evacuation support and humanitarian aid with a team of elite special operations veterans in conflict zones across the world. “Keeping supply chains safe and secure is always a major focus, so we can maintain confidence that the food and supplies we’re delivering make it to the intended location without any tampering.”

Delivering aid in Somalia

For decades, Somalia has been enduring conflict and extreme drought. While the country’s Civil War was sparked in 1991 when Siad Barre’s military junta was overthrown, it has since devolved to include multiple warring rebel groups. Currently, more than four million people there are acutely food insecure and 1.7 million children aged five and under are expected to suffer acute malnutrition this year, according to CARE International.

CARE works in 97 countries, in a mission to promote social justice and defeat poverty. Justus Liku, the Kenya-based senior director of Humanitarian Response and Impact, explains that delivering food aid is one measure CARE takes to assist those in need. 

“The drought in Somalia has killed tens of thousands of people and decimated crops and livestock that people depend on for their lives and livelihoods,” says Liku. CARE relies on food imported from nearby Kenya and Ethiopia and imports corn from Western Europe.

It also relies on imported nutritional supplements that malnourished children and parents need, as there is no supplement industry local to Somalia. “Getting food aid to people is very challenging in Somalia because there are so many conflicts, so crossing from one zone to another requires a great deal of planning and coordination.”

To conquer the logistics of delivering food by truck from one conflict zone to another within Somalia, CARE relies on a chain of local connections who meet each other near border crossings and deliver food from one truck to the other. 

“The drivers know each other, and remain in contact,” says Liku. “It is complicated, but [it’s] the best way we have found to get food to people across Somalia.” 

Thankfully, says Liku, mobile phone service is much more dependable in Somalia than in other countries in which CARE works, which enables delivery drivers to utilize GPS when necessary and communicate with each other and the people they’re trying to reach. 

Finding local on-the-ground contacts is key to the NGO Human Appeal’s approach in Somalia, as well as its other efforts in 27 countries, including Sudan, Pakistan, Yemen and Iraq. In 2023, Human Appeal delivered food and nutritional support to 773,426 people. Each delivery, by design, was different. 

“Local partners know the context and local challenges, and identify duly vetted local implementing partners,” says Owais Khan, deputy CEO of Human Appeal, a nonprofit organization working across the world to deliver aid and fight poverty and injustice. In an email, Khan told Modern Farmer that the group has an established model to assess the ability and capacity of local partners to help with food delivery projects. “The same applies to suppliers who need to be screened, have a solid track record and economically viable prices.”

Understanding each country’s needs, the demographics of the target group, the local diet and preferences and any other specific requirements such as religious or other food codes is essential, says Khan —and frequently, locals are the only ones who can truly decipher these often unwritten rules for outsiders. 

The U.N.’s Humanitarian Response Plan in Somalia is woefully underfunded, with about 9.8 percent of the $1.59 billion needed funded this year.

“There are so many countries and people in need,” says Liku “and not enough funding.”

Delivering aid in Gaza 

Food security experts warn that the war between Israel and Hamas has caused a food crisis that threatens every single person living in Gaza. Currently, about half of the population—1.1 million people—are facing severe hunger and the possibility of famine, according to Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, an agency that monitors global hunger. Delivering food has been a dangerous endeavor recently, when at least 112 Palestinians were killed and hundreds more wounded amid an aid truck delivery in Gaza. 

World Central Kitchen (WCK), a nonprofit founded in 2010 by Chef José Andrés, has delivered more than 350 million meals around the world. WCK delivered food to Israelis after the October 7 attack that sparked the country’s war with Hamas and now is delivering food to Gaza. 

In early March, WCK began exploring routes into Gaza, eventually partnering with the NGO Open Arms in securing a maritime route through Cyprus. The mission has been dubbed Operation Safeena, which translates to Operation Boat or Vessel in Arabic. 

WCK has come under fire recently following allegations of sexual harassment within the top levels of the organization; however, that does not seem to have hampered its aid work. A spokesperson for World Central Kitchen said that WCK continues “to prepare about 300 tons of humanitarian food aid for a second sailing to Gaza from the Larnaca, Cyprus port.” 

WCK is focused on delivering culturally appropriate, shelf-stable foods, such as beans, carrots, canned tuna, chickpeas, canned corn, parboiled rice, flour, oil and salt. To date, WCK has delivered 39 million meals by land, sea and air to Palestinians. More than 1,500 trucks have been dispatched for on-the-ground deliveries across Gaza from WCK’s Cairo warehouses, and more than 60 community kitchens have been opened in Gaza. During the sacred month of Ramadan, WCK is delivering daily airdrops, the spokesperson said. 

Delivering aid in Ukraine 

The war between Russia and Ukraine began in 2014 when the republic of Crimea was invaded by Russian troops in disguise. On February 24, 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion. Today, an estimated 3.7 million people are displaced in Ukraine, and 14.6 million people require humanitarian assistance, including food.

Children are especially vulnerable, says Susan Mathison, who co-founded Common Man for Ukraine in 2022 with Steve Rand, Lisa Mure and Alex Ray.

“When we visited Ukraine to see what we could do, we decided to focus on children, because we came to understand the enormity of what they were facing,” says Mathison. “Hundreds of thousands of children have been sent on trains from Eastern to Western Ukraine by their mothers who hope to keep them safe. Informal safehouses have sprung up to care for 2.5 million children.”

Two of the founding members of Common Man are members of the Plymouth Rotary Club in New Hampshire, and they used that connection to launch their mission.

“We knew we’d have to embed with local organizations on the ground if we wanted to succeed,” says Mathison. “So we called the Rotary presidents in Poland and Ukraine, and from there built an incredible network and system of delivery.”

Thus far, they have delivered more than three million meals to hungry children in more than 100 safehouses across Ukraine, using trucks driven by around 200 volunteers. They deliver locally produced traditional foods such as groat (similar to muesli or granola), canned meat and fresh produce grown by local producers, often to houses in the dead of night, and not necessarily with electricity. 

“Sometimes, I feel like we’re not doing enough,” says Mathison. “How are we really helping if we can only serve a fraction of the people in need? But I’ve been there to see the looks on the faces of the children when they receive the food, and that’s when I realize that what we are doing does matter, because every child matters.”

Hope for Ukraine, a non-profit launched in 2016 by Ukraine native Yuriy Boyechko, has raised more than $8.4 million since the full-scale invasion began and operates under a similar model.

“We realized that millions would need our help,” says Boyechko. “We began organizing food and field kitchens and figured out how to deliver meal kits that would feed families of four for (over a week).”

Currently, Hope for Ukraine is supplying 1,500 families with meal kits every week, with the help of co-partners on the ground and more than 100 volunteer groups, which deliver food to the most hard-hit regions in frontline towns. The non-perishable food they deliver is largely locally sourced, with the goal of boosting the economy, and providing the kinds of food locals are used to. 

“For a lot of people, this is their only lifeline,” says Boyechko. “Their infrastructure has been destroyed, and without this they will have no food. We are also operating five field kitchens with other pop-ups when possible and as needed.”

Currently, an estimated 10 percent of Ukraine’s humanitarian needs are being met, and Mathison says that donations have fallen off precipitously since the October 7 attack in Israel and the ensuing war there. 

“There are so many problems happening in the world, it’s easy to stay frozen,” says Mathison. “But if we could all just focus on one country, or one child, or one project, the world will be a better place. Pick something that will make your heart sing.”

Want to donate to an NGO or food charity? Here’s what you should consider: 

To ensure the safety of staff and success of the mission, always look at how the NGO interacts with and incorporates local groups into their work. 

“At the end of the day, any organization you support should be working with the actual citizens and organizations based there,” says Antal. “They are critical to know how to get in and get out, especially in armed conflicts.”

To ensure your funds are actually going to help, ensure that the charity is legally registered and abides by the rules and regulations of its governing body. Also important is that it submits an annual report of its expenses, so you can see exactly where the money is going. 

“A charity with a sustained track record of delivering aid to where it is needed most and regularly reporting its work to its donors is also key,” says Khan. “A professionally managed charity will always have internal policies and procedures that are applied across all internal functions to ensure proper governance and standards.”

In addition to the NGO’s featured above, here are vetted and widely respected organizations which you can feel safe donating money to:

The World Food Programme: Founded in 1963, it is the lead U.N. agency that responds to food emergencies and combats hunger worldwide. 

Oxfam America: A global organization founded in 1942 fighting to end poverty and injustice. 

Action Against Hunger: A global humanitarian organization that takes action against the causes and effects of hunger. 

The post How Does Food Get Delivered to Hungry People in Conflict Zones? appeared first on Modern Farmer.