Now’s your chance to catch up on what you may have missed before the new year rolls around. Here are some of the stories that our editors—and readers—really enjoyed this year.

As Chaga Keeps Trending, Mycologists Worry About Running Out

Chaga, a fungus found in colder climates, is a trendy ingredient in supplements and functional foods. But some foragers worry the supply is growing thin. [Read more]

Wary of Wolves, Some Western Ranchers Are Returning to Life on the Range

As the wolf population rebounds in the American West, cattle ranchers are going to extreme measures to coexist with the legendary predators. [Read more]

Can Linen Make a Comeback in North America?

Linen, a sustainable fabric made from the flax plant, isn’t produced on this continent. But some are hopeful a whole new industry could be on the horizon. [Read more]

These Dogs are in Crisis. Who Looks After the Guardians?

Livestock guardian dogs can do important work on farms. But they are being surrendered and euthanized in epic numbers. [Read more]

The Bourbon Industry Relies on White Oaks. Now, It’s All In on Stopping Their Decline.

Bourbon barrels are made from fresh white oaks, but we’re running out of viable trees. Now, the very industry that contributed to the problem has the most invested in finding the solution. [Read more]

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And, for extra credit, don’t forget to check out two special editorial series from the year that was: State of Abundance, about California agriculture and climate change, and Phonies, Fakes and Food Fraud, about the wide world of food fraud and fakery.

The post Year in Review: 5 Modern Farmer Stories to Revisit appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Here at Modern Farmer, we’ve noticed this phenomenon for ourselves. When we publish a story that explains how people are solving a problem, we often get a big response from readers. So, we’re going to be doing more of it. Starting in 2024, you can expect to see more stories about how people are fixing the food system in their own communities, as well as more actionable ways that readers can get involved.

For now, we invite you to revisit some of our favorite solutions-focused stories from the year that was.

‘Waste Wool’ is a Burden for Farmers. What if it Could be a Solution Instead?

Sheep farmers across the US and Canada often end up burning, burying or stockpiling wool. Entrepreneurs, researchers and community groups are working to flip the script by transforming discarded wool into a different kind of fertilizer. [Read more]

Plastic Mulch is Problematic—and Everywhere. Can We Do Better?

Plastic is used abundantly in agriculture, but it’s nearly impossible to dispose of sustainably. Researchers and growers are searching for solutions, and they’re using strawberries to do it. [Read more]

To Reverse a Troubling Trend, Farmers Are Adding Rocks to Their Fields

Across the country, farmers are taking a chance on a new method: adding crushed volcanic rock to fields to improve soil health (and sequester carbon in the process). [Read more]

Stopping Aquaculture Rope Pollution at the Source

When pieces of yellow rope kept washing ashore, industry and community got together to turn the tide and address the problem of marine microplastics pollution. [Read more]

Squeezing the Most Out of California’s Water Supply

As agriculture withers amid an ever-warming climate, a flexible approach to water management can help cushion the blow. [Read more]

The post Year in Review: 5 Solutions Stories That See a Way Forward appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Sara Polon founded the company with her mother in 2008, with the goal of making good food and sourcing local ingredients from farms surrounding the DC metro area. From there, the company grew, getting on the shelves at Whole Foods in 2016, followed by Costco, Kroger and other stores across the country. As the company grew, it began looking further afield to source its expanding ingredient needs. 

Then, everything changed. In 2020, Polon was faced with new supply issues as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. As she looked into solving them, she learned more about the food chain from which she sourced her own ingredients and the farmworkers who were suffering under extreme labor conditions. She vowed to change. 

Modern Farmer caught up with Polon to talk about her own commitments to sourcing ingredients equitably and why she wants to bring other companies on board as well.

This conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Modern Farmer: There are a lot of steps to get a vegetable from the field to your bowl of soup. As the purchaser and decision-maker, what do you prioritize?

Sara Polon: You know, we always used to talk about the story of our food. That was one of the phrases we turned to a lot when it came to staying focused as a company. But we were really looking at growing practices, like ensuring things were sustainable, and we hadn’t paid enough attention to humanity, the person who picks those tomatoes. 

When I started looking into our supply chain, I was really upset. Because we really tried so hard to implement the best, the safest practices possible here at our facility. But when I looked at our supply chain and I learned about what was going on on the farms, I was appalled. And it kind of changed our trajectory. 

If the organic tomato you are eating or cooking with was picked by a farmworker whose wages were stolen, who [was] subjected to abuse and assault, is it really worth the organic certification? I would argue no. We have now been working night and day to clean up our supply chain and get others to pay attention. 

MF: Is that when you became affiliated with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW)?

SP: Yes, and that’s how we became the first consumer packaged good (CPG) brand to get a fair food certification. 

The CIW was founded by a group of primarily migrant workers that were just fed up. They were fed up with the abuse, they were fed up with the stolen wages. They organized in church basements, after working full days in the hot Florida sun. And they started striking and highlighted all of the abuse that was going on on these farms. 

They started the Fair Food Program, which established basic standards. And you would think that these would be basic norms, such as access to a bathroom and to water and freedom from sexual assault and violence. Most importantly, there was recourse, meaning [that] if there’s a violation, there’s a phone number that farmworkers can call that’s staffed by CIW, and they can enforce these standards. 

Once the standards were founded, the CIW then went to retailers. It started with tomatoes and asked retailers such as Whole Foods and Walmart to commit to buying tomatoes from CIW certified farms. Now, 90 percent of the tomato farms in Florida are fair food certified.

MF: But that’s just tomatoes. 

SP: Yeah, it’s just tomatoes. And just in Florida. There are 1.3 million farmworkers in this county. How many are on fair food certified farms? Not nearly enough.

I think the issue is that consumers aren’t aware, because when consumers get fired up about something, retailers are forced to act. 

MF: You launched in 2008, but when did you learn about your own supply chain?

SP: Right, we launched in 2008, and our original mission was local. We knew a lot of the farmers by name, we sourced really hyper-locally. So, supply chain issues weren’t even a thing for us for the first seven or eight years, because we weren’t big enough. 

And then as our business grew, we had to go bigger. I have to be honest, it wasn’t until 2020 [that] I learned more. Because I never dreamed it. Now, I’m a vegan, and I’m very aware of the capacity for cruelty that humans have towards animals and towards each other. But I never dreamed that, in 2022 and 2021, these abuses would be so rampant. And that was very sobering.

MF: How did it feel to be even passively connected to those kinds of violations? For instance, the decision to keep meatpacking plants at full capacity during the early days of COVID or the wage thefts from farmworkers you mentioned?

SP: Crushing. It was crushing, and it made me question why I started this business. We start every management meeting every Friday with the golden rule: Do unto others as you would do to yourself, treat your neighbor as yourself. And I realized that I had failed. 

MF: This program is just for tomato farms now. What about onions, carrots, lettuce, any other crop? Are there plans to expand?

SP: We are working on it. And that’s the problem, that’s what keeps me up at night, because we need someone big to demand it. I could demand this change, that farms get fair food certified. But, I mean, a farmer would laugh at me with our current volume. But if we could get Nestle to pay attention or Unilever or Heinz to pay attention? I’m a soup company, and I know that to make good soup, you need good onions. Well, Progresso and Campbell’s, they have to buy this stuff, too. 

MF: Retailers are often forced to act when consumers get angry. Individual consumers often care quite a bit about abuses, but they also notice that their grocery bills keep rising. How do you get those people on board and comfortable with paying more for their food?

SP: A lot of the retailers have absorbed the cost; it’s maybe a half a penny more. So, I’m not telling you that your grocery bill is gonna go up by, you know, five dollars, which is a lot of money if you’re a parent feeding a family. I’m talking about maybe two pennies or three pennies. So, that’s been the amazing thing that the CIW has been able to do.

Also, I’ll say that this is not an elitist movement. I’m not telling you that you have to buy certified organic roma tomatoes from Whole Foods, although Whole Foods has been incredible. So is Walmart. So is Trader Joe’s. I am literally just asking you to go to Burger King [which has signed on with the CIW] instead of Wendy’s. This is just focusing on the humans.

MF: Even if the costs jump just half a penny per pound, if you are buying at the kind of volume that Campbells does, that’s a lot. Someone is going to crunch those numbers. 

SP: Absolutely. But also, I would counter that every company now has environmental, social and governance (ESG) departments. They have sustainability offices. And they all have budgets. So, you either put your money where your mouths are or you shut down those offices. Because if this office is made aware of modern-day slavery in their supply chain and chooses to ignore it, shame on them. 

And look, you and I both know that major corporations are experiencing record profits. And if I can absorb the cost, how can they not? I don’t buy it. 

This is also a bigger discussion about the value of food. We really shouldn’t be looking for massive savings when it comes to our food, because the economic pressure trickles down to our farmers and then to the labor. Everyone is struggling now, and I’m not trying to diminish that. But when it comes to food, just remember: When there’s price pressure, it trickles down to the human. And unless you can look that human in the eye and say, ‘Sorry, I need to pay nothing for this product,’ it just doesn’t add up. It’s not a way to build a sustainable society.

MF: For someone else in your position, other CEOs and commercial buyers, what do you propose they do? 

SP: The first thing I think someone in my position should do is go to a farm. I was just on a call earlier with another company that’s interested in the cause, and they have been on one of these farms, and we both agreed that they’re not like farms, they’re more like outdoor factories. They’re miles and miles of these huge vines of tomatoes, in the hot blazing sun with no shade. When I went down, I lasted half a day. 

People in my position need to see that, to have that connection, because it changes you. You think you know the story of your food until you actually go to the farm that it’s coming from. And then you realize you don’t know squat. Once you have that information, once you meet with these people, you realize it’s really important that we do something because the vulnerability of [farmworkers], it’s crazy. You can just so easily see the opportunities for rampant abuse.

So now, I’m here to make any introductions. I’m having multiple phone calls a week, I’m here to help. 

MF: How do you see the issue of farmworkers’ rights playing out as they are compounded by the natural environments of farms?

SP: First, I would ask about when some of the farm regulations were made and when they were updated. Like, if farmworkers have access to water at a reasonable distance, that needs to be looked at. 

I remember when San Francisco residents were told they needed to stay inside because ash was raining from the sky. But there were plenty of people that had to leave their homes. When you have people staying home in their air conditioners, you had workers out in the fields picking the strawberries, and there were stories of new moms with their infants strapped to their chest and ash falling from the sky. And you’re gonna tell me that the regulations say that water needs to be a mile away? I don’t want to hear that excuse, because that excuse does not take into account the humanity behind our food. 

MF: It sounds like you’re advocating for a multi-faceted approach, where everyone has a role—consumers, farmers, farmworkers and retailers—and it only works well if everyone moves together. 

SP: Yeah, and it comes from a groundswell. I think we can all agree that it’s bad to have slavery in our supply chains. And if this is the thing that we can all agree on and we can all take action on and we can all solve, how inspiring would that be? And I might be extraordinarily naive, but all of those actors are going to get into line if the consumers are pissed off.

The post The CEO Who Wants Us to Care More About the Humanity Behind Our Food appeared first on Modern Farmer.

As Ruth Conniff reports in her new book, Milked: How an American Crisis Brought Together Midwestern Dairy Farmers and Mexican Workers (out today from The New Press), the reduction in American dairy farms has impacted generations of people and moved beyond borders. The longtime journalist and editor-in-chief of the Wisconsin Examiner spent a year looking closely at the changes in American dairy farms. A common element on most farms she visited: Mexican workers. Conniff set out to explore how American reliance on Mexican labor bonded these two seemingly disparate groups so tightly.

As Conniff writes, the fall of dairy farms on American soil coincided with a period of crisis in Mexico, which sent “millions of subsistence farmers off their land, sending them into the cities and walking across the desert looking for work.” 

The impetus for these concurring dilemmas, says Conniff, was the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, which was enacted in 1994. Under NAFTA, goods could be sold across the three participating countries (Canada, Mexico and the US) with reduced tariffs—or no tariffs at all. Cheap US corn flooded the Mexican market, causing thousands of Mexican farmers to go bankrupt when they could no longer sell their crop locally, eventually causing them to need to migrate north in search of work. “The rural parts of Mexico are suffering, in a more intense way, from some of the same forces that are afflicting rural parts of Wisconsin and Minnesota,” says Conniff. “Big Food and Big Ag are making it really hard to make a living for smaller farmers.” 

Those Mexican workers will often cross the US border illegally to work on dairy farms. While the H2-A visa allows agricultural workers entry to the country, it’s a temporary visa designed for seasonal work. Dairy farming, on the other hand, is year-round. No such visa exists for those workers. 

RELATED: Can Biodigesters Save America’s Small Dairy Farms?

“Circular migration is sort of a hallmark of Mexican workers in the United States,” Conniff explains. She describes a federal program from the 1950s, aimed at supplementing a labor shortage after World War II, which brought undocumented workers across the border to work on farms and in agricultural processing. “The flow back and forth across the border was very easy. Now, we have a militarized border and a moral panic about immigration, but people are still coming. And they’re still carrying whole US industries, especially agriculture, but they’re doing it under really dangerous conditions. And it’s really expensive.”

Conniff focused on a group of farmers in Wisconsin, each of whom employs Mexican workers. In alternating chapters, Conniff tells the stories of the farmers and then their workers, moving swiftly across the border to paint a picture of how  and why these folks are tied so tightly together—especially in the wake of the 2016 presidential election. 

“Most of the [farmers] I talked to voted for Trump, in spite of the fact that they are deeply involved with and completely economically dependent on these undocumented workers from Mexico,” says Conniff.  She describes one farmer named John who, at first, had reservations about employing undocumented workers. Desperate, he cast his doubts aside. 

“The documents John’s employees show him are almost certainly fake,” Conniff writes in the book. “John takes a don’t-ask-don’t-tell approach. Even his most ardent Trump-supporting neighbors agree with him on this issue: American agriculture would collapse without undocumented immigrant labor.” 

Part of the reason these farmers can hold these seemingly opposing views, Conniff reasons, comes back to NAFTA. Trump promised to do away with the agreement throughout his presidential campaign, once calling it the “worst trade deal” the US had ever signed. (In 2020, with NAFTA dissolved, the three countries entered into the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement instead.) “The way the farmers themselves explain it is to say ‘he doesn’t really mean it,’ or ‘yeah, he’s a loudmouth, but he’s going to do the right thing.’”

In that way, says Conniff, farmers were able to turn a blind eye to the president’s less palatable traits, such as Trump describing Mexicans as rapists, after stating “they’re bringing” drugs and crime across the border. Perhaps this was a bout of cognitive dissonance, or maybe it was willful ignorance. Either way, Conniff describes the American farmers bonding with their Mexican workers, even while some farmers still voted against their workers’ best interests. 

Many of those workers are conflicted as well. Just as important as speaking with the farm owners was hearing directly from the Mexican farmworkers. For many of the folks with whom Conniff spoke, the money they can make in the United States keeps their families fed and housed back home in Mexico. Conniff interviewed several farmers who sent money back to build houses, put their kids through school or started businesses. Still, their lives are often difficult. One woman Conniff interviewed, named Blandina, says that the farmers she and her husband work with treat them well, but there’s the expectation that they will work constantly and for less money than American colleagues. “Our labor is exploited,” Blandina told Conniff. So Blandina and her husband Pablo keep their goals in mind: sending their daughter to university and eventually moving home. 

RELATED: American Agriculture’s Reliance on Foreign Workers Surges

Of course, not every farmworker goes back to Mexico. As people build lives and communities in the United States, it becomes harder to leave. Conniff interviewed one family whose two sons were born in Wisconsin, making them US citizens. With kids, it’s even harder and more expensive to traverse the border, so the parents often stay put for years. And then “the kids go to high school, and potentially on to college in the United States, and they cannot imagine going back to subsistence living in a remote village in Mexico,” says Conniff. Now, there are “parents who have always dreamed of going back…and you have the kids who become increasingly distant from that idea.”

That’s where groups that advocate on behalf of agricultural workers come in. There are campaigns across the country pushing for legislation to help undocumented workers and their families. Conniff writes about the Wisconsin Farmers Union, which works in tandem with immigrant rights activists to push for driver’s licenses for undocumented workers. There’s also Voces de la Frontera, a worker-led organization dedicated to immigration reform and workers’ rights. While those groups, and others like them, push for change, Conniff says it’s important to take stock of where we are presently. “We have this two-decade-old economic relationship that is absolutely baked into the way we run our dairy and agricultural economy,” she says. “It’s a fantasy to think that you’re just going to build a wall, and this will end, and it will be the best economically for the United States.”

Instead, Conniff says that after her year reporting this book, she has come to recognize the importance of a legal year-round visa for agricultural work as a clear first step. The idea has bipartisan support, and it simply acknowledges the real work that people are doing. “Then the bigger question is, how do people live livable lives? How do we have sustainable work lives and sustainable food, and people don’t have to smuggle themselves in the trunk of a car across the border?” Conniff asks. “And how do we [preserve] those beautiful small farms that have made Wisconsin such a lovely place?”

Milked reaches far beyond the people its author profiled. The stories are personal and universal, stretching into farms and fields across the country and over borders. Farmers and workers will continue to be bonded together by the economic demands of both countries. 

In the meantime, the number of dairy farms in the country continues to drop.

The post In New Book, Relationship Between US Dairy Farmers and Mexican Workers Laid Bare appeared first on Modern Farmer.

According to the survey, conducted by an organization called Stronger America Through Seafood (SATS), 84 percent of the 1,020 participants found it important for America to expand its seafood production through offshore fish farm growth once learning that many American companies currently build their operations in other countries, taking technology, jobs and revenue overseas.

Aquaculture, simply speaking, is the controlled cultivation of fish or other aquatic life in the water. Aquaculture farmers use large nets in the ocean or, in some cases, freshwater to breed, raise and harvest fish, shellfish, kelp and other organisms. 

RELATED: Bill Seeks to Standardize and Promote Offshore Aquaculture

The organization highlights that America currently imports 85 percent of its seafood, mostly from Europe and Asia, and ranks only 16th in aquaculture production worldwide—facts the organization wishes to see change. SATS’ goal is for the country to have a more clarified policy framework that allows for more American aquaculture production. It says the development of more offshore fish farms would boost not only the country’s supply of sustainable fish but also the economy and labor market. 

“Now is the time for Congress to act and put in place federal policies that would establish an aquaculture industry in US federal waters—and the majority of voters agree,” the campaign manager of SATS, Sarah Brenholt, said in a press release. “According to our recent survey, more than two-thirds stated they would feel more favorable towards a member of Congress who established pathways for offshore aquaculture so the US could benefit from the economic and environmental benefits that aquaculture provides.”

With a 2020 executive order, the Trump Administration supported the idea of increasing aquaculture—currently the fastest-growing sector of the food production industry—in the United States. The order called for “more efficient and predictable” permitting for the offshore fish farms, and it claimed that the inaction of policies within the order would “propel the US forward as a seafood superpower,” increase food security and improve American industries’ competitiveness, according to the NOAA.

RELATED: Where to Look for Climate- and Environment-Friendly Seafood

But not everyone agrees that investing in American aquaculture is the way to go. In fact, advocates for sustainable fishing, fishing industry folks and environmental and Indigenous groups sent an open letter to the Biden administration in April, calling on the president to revoke the Trump-era executive order supporting more aquaculture industry in the country. 

The letter, published through an organization called Don’t Cage Our Oceans, says the expansion of aquaculture would “contaminate our marine waters with drugs, chemicals, and untreated wastes while creating a breeding ground for pests and diseases.” The letter goes on to outline that pollution caused by the farms could potentially harm wild-caught fish populations, and in doing so, effectively decrease seafood production instead of bolstering it. 

Those who signed the letter say that the offshore fish farms may just replace the wild fish population with farms, which they say would not only offer consumers lesser-quality fish but undermine historical fishing communities and their practices.

The post Majority of US Voters Support Offshore Aquaculture Expansion appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Lawyers for Tyson Foods, one of America’s largest meatpacking companies, drafted an early version of a 2020 executive order that allowed plants to continue operating during the COVID-19 pandemic, a new Congressional report based on company emails shows.

It’s been reported that the meatpacking industry wrote a draft version of President Donald Trump’s executive order, but the new Congressional investigation shows that Tyson Foods—mostly in collaboration with Smithfield Foods—authored the specific language that the industry pushed to federal officials. Similar language in Tyson’s draft would appear in the finalized executive order signed a week later.

RELATED: Trump to Order Meat Processing Plants to Stay Open

It’s one example laid out in detail in the report that shows meatpacking CEOs petitioning their allies in the federal government to curb any safety measures that “could reduce their production and profitability.”

The report, compiled by the staff of the House Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis and released Thursday, reveals that the country’s largest meat companies coordinated with each other—and with political appointees at the federal agency charged with their regulation, the US Department of Agriculture—to keep meatpacking plants operating at maximum capacity while thousands of workers were infected in the COVID-19 pandemic’s early months.

Meatpacking industry leaders understood the threat coronavirus posed to their employees, emails show. But rather than enforcing safety measures, such as social distancing and masking, the companies instead asked the federal government to exclude them from public health measures meant to protect employees from illness and death.

The USDA largely did as the companies asked, according to the report. In several instances where state or local officials temporarily closed down meatpacking plants due to high rates of coronavirus infections among workers, USDA leaders intervened on the companies’ behalf and pushed public health officials to reopen plants.

USDA officials led the charge to convince the White House to enact the executive order authored by Tyson.

“The shameful conduct of corporate executives pursuing profit at any cost during a crisis and government officials eager to do their bidding regardless of resulting harm to the public must never be repeated,” subcommittee chairman Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., said in a press release provided to Investigate Midwest.

In media statements, the companies named in the report defended their overall safety efforts during the pandemic, but they did not address any of the specific actions outlined in the subcommittee’s investigation.

Tyson Foods said it has worked with officials at all levels of government to navigate the pandemic’s challenges. (Tyson’s fact sheet on its COVID-19 response can be read here.)

“This collaboration is crucial to ensuring the essential work of the US food supply chain and our continued efforts to keep team members safe,” it said in a statement. “For example, last year Tyson Foods was supported by the Biden Administration as we became one of the first fully vaccinated workforces in the US. Our efforts have also included working cooperatively and frequently with local health department officials in our plant communities.”

Smithfield Foods’ spokesman, Jim Monroe, said COVID-19 presented a “first-of-its-kind challenge,” and to date the company has invested “more than $900 million” supporting worker safety.

“The meat production system is a modern wonder, but it is not one that can be re-directed at the flip of a switch,” he said. “That is the challenge we faced as restaurants closed, consumption patterns changed and hogs backed-up on farms with nowhere to go. The concerns we expressed were very real and we are thankful that a true food crisis was averted and that we are starting to return to normal.”

RELATED: Congress Is Investigating Meatpacking Plants for COVID-19 Safety Violations

The North American Meat Institute (NAMI)—the industry’s lobbying organization—said the subcommittee’s report “distorts the truth” about the industry’s effort to protect employees.

“The report ignores the rigorous and comprehensive measures companies enacted to protect employees and support their critical infrastructure workers,” NAMI’s president, Julie Ann Potts, said. “As more became known about the spread of the virus, the meat industry spent billions of dollars to reverse the pandemic’s trajectory, protecting meat and poultry workers while keeping food on Americans’ tables and our farm economy working.”

Trump’s agricultural secretary, Sonny Perdue, who personally lobbied other government officials to keep plants open, is now the chancellor of the University System of Georgia. In a statement, the system said, “Chancellor Perdue is focused on his new position serving the students of Georgia.”

Dulce Castañeda, co-founder of Children of Smithfield in Crete, Nebraska, a group that has advocated for meatpacking workers’ rights and protection during the pandemic, said the report is not surprising based on what she already knew about the lack of science-backed coronavirus mitigation measures in meatpacking plants.

“Drafting its own executive order was a complete overreach of the private sector in convincing government officials to put profit over people,” Castañeda said. “The meatpacking industry disenfranchised the ability of public health departments and local governments to enforce public health measures inside plants. These companies have more than animal blood on their hands. They are also responsible for the loss of human lives as workers died on their clocks.”

(Other individuals and companies denoted in this story could not immediately be reached for comment. The story will be updated with their responses if and when they are received.)

The report is based on more than 151,000 pages of documents collected from meatpacking companies and interest groups, as well as interviews with meatpacking workers, union representatives, former federal officials, and state and local health authorities.

The subcommittee’s investigation into meat companies’ handling of the pandemic is ongoing, as JBS is still producing documents relevant to the investigation, according to the press release.

Meatpacking workers were more likely to be exposed to the coronavirus than workers in other kinds of manufacturing jobs, primarily because employees often work shoulder-to-shoulder as they cut and package meat.

More than 400 meatpacking plant workers have died from the coronavirus, according to Investigate Midwest tracking. There have been at least 86,000 positive cases.

‘Potentially explosive’ executive order

Tyson Foods and Smithfield Foods initiated the push for an executive order to keep plants operating, the emails the subcommittee obtained show. The industry’s lobbying group, NAMI, executed the plan.

On April 9, 2020, South Dakota officials temporarily shuttered a Smithfield Foods plant in Sioux Falls after hundreds of workers had tested positive for COVID-19. Two days later, Smithfield CEO Ken Sullivan reached out to his counterpart at Tyson Foods, Noel White, with an idea—an executive order that would prevent authorities from shutting down meatpacking plants.

The next day, Sullivan shared the idea with even more CEOs of other major meatpacking companies, including National Beef, JBS and Cargill. He called for “a Presidential Executive Order, invoking the Defense Production Act as a mechanism to manage public perception and state/local interdiction,” he wrote in an email.

The following day, Tyson produced a draft executive order that would shield companies from closure and also protect them from potential lawsuits by infected workers or their families.

Not everyone in the industry was on board with the idea of an executive order, however.

Johnsonville CEO Nick Meriggioli supported liability protection for meat companies but pushed back on Tyson and Smithfield’s approach in an email to Potts, NAMI’s president.

“Perhaps the intent should be to get federal assistance to gain priority on PPE and testing supplies,” Meriggioli wrote. “I am concerned that it could become a social/public relations nightmare if we are too aggressive in asking for an EO to make us off limits. If not handled right, it could come across as all the industry is interested in is ‘production at any cost.’”

The American Farm Bureau Federation also disapproved of the executive order, writing “the perception that there is a balance to be struck between worker safety/health and productivity is potentially explosive.”

After receiving pushback from the Farm Bureau, Potts told the CEOs of Tyson, Smithfield, JBS, Cargill, National Beef, Hormel, Seaboard, and Clemens that they would “back-channel” the request for an executive order with Sonny Perdue, the Trump-appointed Secretary of Agriculture.

Perdue “has made his desires known on this topic to AFBF,” Potts wrote.

Instead, on April 18, 2020, NAMI signed onto a Farm Bureau-approved formal letter to President Trump asking that he allow food companies to operate “without undue disruption,” with no mention of an executive order. But behind the scenes, lobbyists engaged with federal officials about the possibility of enacting an order.

According to the report, “Smithfield and Tyson were initially reluctant to drop the public ask for an executive order, but ultimately did in the interest of time.”

A day after sending the scaled-back letter, White, Tyson’s CEO, appeared impatient with the lack of movement. He emailed Potts and suggested an agency other than USDA might be more effective in enacting the order.

“As of my conversations with USDA this afternoon, they still think they are on it…and in better shape with POTUS than other agencies. I have said we have to see some results!”’ Potts replied.

As previously reported, NAMI provided the draft version of the executive order to the USDA, which then passed it to the White House. The draft version NAMI provided to the USDA has the exact same language as the version Tyson lawyers wrote up.

Trump signed the order a week later, on April 28, 2020, after several calls among White House, USDA and meatpacking leaders.

As USDA officials suspected, the order didn’t explicitly prohibit plant closures. But it did give the federal government ammunition to intimidate public health officials who wanted to impose temporary closures.

After the executive order was issued, a national Farm Bureau official asked Little whether the executive order shielded meat companies from potential coronavirus-related lawsuits.

RELATED: COVID-19 Infections and Deaths at Meatpacking Plants Much Higher Than Previously Thought

“It is subtle, but it does…We are avoiding mentioning it at all costs. It is a terrible fact, but it is what it is,” Little replied.

Based on that exchange, the report’s authors wrote that the meat industry recognized “the optics of lobbying against measures intended to protect workers from a lethal virus while simultaneously seeking insulation from liability for ensuing worker illnesses and death.”

Potts said the report “has done the nation a disservice.”

“The Committee could have tried to learn what the industry did to stop the spread of COVID among meat and poultry workers, reducing positive cases associated with the industry while cases were surging across the country,” she said. “Instead, the Committee uses 20/20 hindsight and cherry picks data to support a narrative that is completely unrepresentative of the early days of an unprecedented national emergency.”

Cargill said worker safety is its number one priority.

“Throughout the pandemic we’ve worked hard to maintain safe and consistent operations. At the same time, we have not hesitated to temporarily idle or reduce capacity at processing plants when we determined it necessary to do so,” its statement reads. “The well-being of our plant employees is integral to our business and to the continuity of the food supply chain.”

The ‘industry’s go-to fixer’

When meat company CEOs wanted the USDA to help them out, they knew who to call.

Mindy Brashears, the former Under Secretary of Agriculture for Food Safety and head of the Food Safety and Inspection Service, was the top food safety official in the US. when the pandemic began. While inspectors employed by her division—many of whom worked in meatpacking plants—risked contracting coronavirus on the job, Brashears helped meat companies skirt coronavirus mitigation measures.

The report details how Brashears, often referred to by just her first name in meatpacking CEOs’ emails, became the industry’s key ally within the federal government. The report calls her the “industry’s go-to fixer.”

On March 13, 2020, when the Trump administration was putting together its White House Task Force on coronavirus, a meatpacking lobbyist told Brashears on the phone that the industry “would certainly like [Brashears] to be involved in any discussion regarding meat.” Brashears agreed and promised to find a way to be more involved.

She often handed out her personal cell phone number and email address to meat companies, according to the emails the subcommittee obtained. In more than one instance, companies sent “official” communication to Brashears’ work email and “presentations” to her personal email.

Brashears’ work email is subject to public records laws. Her personal email is not.

It would be a violation of federal law for Brashears to use her personal email to conduct government business, unless she copied her work email or forwarded the relevant emails to her work email address within 20 days, according to the report.

“The Select Subcommittee has not obtained evidence that she did so,” the report states.

NAMI also obtained advance copies of internal FSIS and USDA documents from “a friend” working at the USDA, though the report does not specify which USDA employee leaked the confidential documents.

Also, when USDA political appointees intervened in the decisions of local health authorities to temporarily close meatpacking plants with large coronavirus outbreaks, career staff were “sidelined,” the report states.

Current USDA officials and staff told the Congressional subcommittee that Brashears and other political appointees left “no paper trail” of their interactions with state and local health authorities. Many of these meetings did not appear on the agency’s public calendar, according to the report.

‘Pesky health departments’

Brashears also played a key role in convincing local health departments that they didn’t have the authority to close down meatpacking plants where large outbreaks occurred. One industry lobbyist told a meatpacking executive that she “hasn’t lost a battle for us.”

Between March and May 2020, 42 states and territories issued stay-at-home orders. Meatpacking companies, worried that the stay-at-home orders would keep their employees home, urged USDA officials to take action.

The USDA raised the industry’s concerns all the way to Vice President Mike Pence. The Department of Homeland Security ultimately designated meatpacking workers as “critical infrastructure” employees, exempting them from stay-at-home orders and social distancing requirements.

This occurred before the industry had taken steps to address outbreaks among its employees, the report states.

“Email correspondence related to the meatpacking industry’s push to be designated as ‘critical infrastructure’ makes virtually no mention of the health risks to the meatpacking employees being forced to work,” the report states.

For example, in May 2020, Koch Foods’ chief operating officer, Mark Kaminsky, emailed National Chicken Council lobbyists to say he thought the only worker safety measure that plants should take was screening for high temperatures.

RELATED: The Cost of Covid

Chicken Council vice president and lobbyist Ashley Peterson agreed, then said, “Now to get rid of those pesky health departments!”

Without addressing Peterson’s comments, National Chicken Council president Mike Brown thanked the industry’s front line workers in a statement. He said he regrets the “report failed to shine light on the momentous efforts between industry, government and state and local health officials to keep employees safe and to keep Americans fed during one of the most challenging and uncertain times in our nation’s history.”

Political appointees from the USDA, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the White House called local health departments on several occasions, claiming that the executive order blocked local authorities from closing meatpacking plants, no matter how severe the outbreak was.

By May 2020, companies and USDA political appointees were “regularly” intervening, the report states.

Some examples of federal interference in local public health decisions took place at Rochelle Foods in Rochelle, Illinois; JBS in Greeley, Colorado; Tyson Foods in Center, Texas; and Foster Farms in Livingston, California.

The health director in Rochelle said his understanding from meeting with Trump administration officials was he couldn’t shut the plant down over safety concerns. The experience was echoed in what Merced County Department of Public Health officials told the subcommittee.

When the Merced County health officials issued a temporary closure order for a Foster Farms plant in California, executives reached out directly to Brashears. She, in turn, called the local health department.

Local health officials told the subcommittee they left the call with the understanding that closure was not an option and that they would need to find a solution to the coronavirus outbreak that wouldn’t involve a decrease in production at the plant.

The health department ultimately succeeded in enforcing a temporary closure, but it compromised with the USDA by giving the company a 48-hour notice, the report said. Ultimately, at least 392 Foster Farms employees contracted coronavirus and eight died.

The post The Meatpacking Industry Drafted Trump’s 2020 Order to Keep Plants Open At the Expense of Worker Safety appeared first on Modern Farmer.

The vast majority of the USDA’s funding is mandatory, meaning that it reflects ongoing programs that don’t have to be re-upped each year; SNAP, for example, is a mandatory program. The total proposed funding for the 2023 budget isn’t very different from 2022’s, but there is an increase of about $4.2 billion, or around 17 percent, in discretionary funding. In general, there aren’t any huge shakeups for the USDA, but some changes in emphasis and, notably, some decisions that haven’t changed can tell us about President Biden’s vision.

There are significant new proposals in the budget for climate action, including $1 billion for climate-smart and conservation efforts, more funding for climate monitoring and more money for education and encouragement of the use of climate action through the 10 USDA “Climate Hubs.” 

[RELATED: Biden Bets the Farm on Climate]

The SNAP budget, easily the largest in the USDA, is proposed to increase to $111 billion from $105.8 billion. SNAP, formerly known as the food stamp program, is an incredibly efficient program both for those who use it and for the economy as a whole; despite this, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has, according to Politico’s reporting, refused to extend some of the universal nutrition assistance programs that were created during the worst of the pandemic.

The proposal also includes, according to DTN Progressive Farmer, $44 billion for the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) to help smaller processing facilities, in a sort of attempt to lessen the control of the major meat processors over the industry. There are some extra bits of funding for minority farmers (heirs’ land resolutions, for example), rural communities (the expansion of rural broadband) and Indigenous communities (funding for research, education and grants). 

Outside of agriculture, Biden’s budget proposal includes increased military funding, increased funding for police and a new increased tax on the ultra-wealthy.

The post Biden Administration Releases 2023 Budget Proposal appeared first on Modern Farmer.

This week, the USDA confirmed the presence of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) in two non-commercial backyard flocks (less than 50 birds) in Connecticut and western Iowa. While it’s possible for the virus to spread to humans, no human cases have been reported. 

The detection of the bird flu in Iowa is especially concerning, considering the state is home to the largest number of egg-laying hens in the US. The 2015 outbreak of the same pathogen resulted in the death and eradication of 50 million birds across 15 states, with 33 million hens killed in Iowa alone, costing the federal government nearly $1 billion. But because the Iowa flock in question was small and non-commercial, there aren’t yet any supply chain issues in the region, says the USDA.  

New confirmed cases continue to pop up across the nation. The USDA reported the most recent confirmation of the pathogen in a flock of broiler chickens in Missouri today. 

This recent avian flu outbreak stretches across the country, with the first confirmed case detected in Indiana on Feb. 9. Indiana’s outbreak, which started in commercial turkeys, resulted in the killing and removal of 171,000 birds. The spread continued to Kentucky, where 284,000 birds were killed. Delaware had to destroy 1.2 million birds after an infection was detected in a commercial chicken flock. 

[RELATED: Bird Flu Is Back in the US]

The USDA reports that the cases of HPAI confirmed in Indiana are the first signs of the strain in commercial poultry in the US since 2020. However, a subtype of the HPAI virus known as H5N1, which was responsible for crushing the poultry industry in 2015, was detected in wild birds in North and South Carolina in late January of this year. 

Recent avian flu cases in small, backyard flocks like the one in Iowa have also been found in states including Michigan, Maine, New York and Virginia.  

According to the department, the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) is working closely with state officials to depopulate properties with infected birds—which will not enter the food system—to mitigate the spread. Officials are suggesting poultry farmers immediately report sick birds and tighten their biosecurity measures by limiting the contact of wild and commercial animals. 

Despite the large number of cases detected across the nation, the USDA says there is no “immediate public health concern” and, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, no human cases have been reported yet. 

The post Bird Flu is Rapidly Spreading Through US Poultry Flocks appeared first on Modern Farmer.

The department’s discriminatory practices factored into 90 percent of Black farmers losing the 14 million acres of land they once owned in the 20th century. The USDA was even found to be distorting data to create the illusion of rising numbers of Black farmers under the Obama Administration.

As a result of its history of racial discrimination, the department has had to shell out major dollars in settlements, including $2.2 billion to Black farmers in the “Pigford” settlements of 1999, and in 2010, a $760-million settlement of the “Keepseagle” class action lawsuit on behalf of Native Americans in 2018. And farmers are still awaiting the $5 billion in debt relief that Congress approved in March 2021 for farmers of color as part of a COVID-19 aid package. 

Today, Black farmers make up only 1.4 percent of all US farmers, down from 14 percent in the 1920s, according to the Census Bureau.

[RELATED: How Did African-American Farmers Lose 90 percent of Their Land?]

Now, the department is looking to solve its long legacy of equity problems. 

In an effort to “address equity issues, including racial equity issues, within the Department and its programs,” the USDA has launched a new Equity Commission. The commission is funded by and required under the American Rescue Plan that President Joe Biden signed into law last March, and it was created to address the institutionalized racism within the USDA and its practices. 

On Monday, the commission held its inaugural meeting, where its 15 members, who include farmers, lawyers, policy advisors and academics, convened virtually. The commission is co-chaired by Deputy Agriculture Secretary Jewel Bronaugh. Other members include Mireya Loza, an associate professor in the Department of History and American Studies Program at Georgetown University; Derrick Johnson, president and CEO of the NAACP; Hazell Reed, a retired vice chancellor for research and economic development from the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluf; and Ertharin Cousin, founder and CEO of Food Systems for the Future and former executive director of the United Nations World Food Programme.

One major job of the Equity Commission is to issue an interim report and deliver actionable recommendations to the USDA within its first year, and produce a final report in 2023. 

During Monday’s public meeting, Arturo Rodriguez, co-chair of the commission and former president of the United Farm Workers of America, said that one of his goals is to secure eligibility for federal programs for undocumented workers, who make up more than half of the farm workforce. Extending department resources to undocumented immigrants, non-English speakers and farmers without broadband access was also a topic for discussion in the first meeting. 

“USDA acknowledges we have not done enough to provide all farmers and ranchers an equal chance of success and prosperity,” said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack in a press release, “and we are striving to change that.”

The post New Equity Commission Sets Out to Strengthen the USDA’s Equitable Practices appeared first on Modern Farmer.

While the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) maintained that wolf populations were no longer threatened, US District Judge Jeffrey White in Oakland, California said in his decision on Feb. 10 that the call to entirely remove the predators from the protective list was based too heavily on wolf populations only in the Rocky Mountains and near the Great Lakes, according to the Capital Press. 

More specifically, the FWS said the West Coast wolf population was an extension of the more Eastern wolf populations, a statement White said is an error. “The Service did not adequately consider threats to wolves outside of these core populations. Instead, the Service avoids analyzing these wolves by concluding, with little explanation or analysis, that wolves outside of the core populations are not necessary to the recovery of the species,” White wrote in his decision. 

White’s ruling restores federal protections to all wolves in Western and Central Oregon and Washington, as well as California. However, wolves located in Eastern Washington and Oregon, Idaho and Montana remain off the endangered list under the 2020 US Fish and Wildlife Service rule removing wolves from the list in 45 states. 

[RELATED: How Can Farmers Coexist With Wolves?]

The original delisting of wolves was finalized in November 2020 and led to a controversial wolf hunting season in some states such as Wisconsin—the first state to resume wolf hunting that year—where the season had to be cut short after hunters killed 218 wolves in three days, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. 

The decision to put wolves back on the list is at odds with many ranchers’ wishes, as it prohibits them from killing wolves they believe to be a threat to their livestock. In 2021, organizations such as the American Farm Bureau Federation, the American Forest Resource Council, the American Sheep Industry Association and the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, among others, defended the decision to delist wolves, citing the dangers an unchecked wolf population has on livestock, according to the Farm Bureau. 

A lack of sufficient statistics on wolves’ impact on livestock leaves the subject up for much debate. Environmental and conservation groups that challenged the initial ruling, including those such as Earthjustice, the Center for Biological Diversity, Defenders of Wildlife and the Humane Society of the United States, celebrated White’s decision to reinstate wolves to the list. 

Both the FWS and ranching groups involved in the case could appeal White’s decision. 

The post Some Wolves Are Back on the Endangered Species List appeared first on Modern Farmer.