They are tulip snails, a mollusk found in the sandy bottoms of shallow pools along the south eastern coast of the US. And while they may not be the typical fare you expect at a swanky seafood restaurant in the US, at Seabird, they sit proudly alongside menu classics such as crab, yellowfin tuna and oysters. 

Seabird, in Wilmington, NC, is a sustainable seafood place that utilizes foraging to get many of its ingredients—and to act as an opportunity for education. Rather than rely only on farmed fish or wild caught fish that is shipped from ports across the world, Neff tries to work with local food, which can create a bit of uncertainty in the menu. Ordering 50 pounds of swordfish from a distributor is a fairly straightforward process. But with local fishing and foraging, you’re working with a wild population, and you’re not guaranteed to find what you set out for. You’re also limited by the seasonality of the food. 

 “I think everybody knows that tomatoes or okra or cabbages are seasonal,” says chef and owner Dean Neff. “But I don’t know that everyone knows the seasonality of oysters or speckled sea trout. Being able to have conversations about that and about sustainability with seafood was important to us.” 

Neff opened the restaurant in 2021 with his partner, and he started working with foragers to access local ingredients at sustainable levels. That’s when he met Ana Shellem of Shell’em Seafood, a coastal forager and sustainable fisher who works along the coastline of Masonboro Island. Shellem began foraging five years ago, after many years of harvesting wild shellfish. As a conservationist, Shellem is careful when and where she harvests, only bringing in what is in season and in small quantities. “When you eat wild and in season…I only eat oysters in season, even though with farmed oysters, you can eat them year round. But I think everything is at its finest when it’s in season. Eating a tomato in the winter is not as exciting as eating a tomato in the summer and appreciating the flavor profiles.”

Most shellfish seasons have to do with their cycle of breeding and molting, normally coinciding with water temperature. For instance, stone crabs along the east coast are out of season in the summer months, when the crabs will molt, shedding their shells and pumping the warm sea water in and out of their bodies to create new exoskeletons. It’s when the crabs have shed their shells that they can mate, creating nests for their egg sacs. That mating and molting will be done by October, and the season will pick up again then. It’s similar for lobsters. Over the summer, lobsters will migrate into warmer, shallower water to feed and molt, which makes them easier to catch. However, a lobster without its hard shell is trickier to transport, so the peak of lobster season is often earlier in the springtime or in December, before the waters get too cold. 

Each organism in the ocean, just like on land, has a season of rest, regrowth, or stasis, followed by a season of abundance. As consumers, we’re often used to eating strawberries in January or oysters in June. But to truly be aligned with seasonality, Shellem and Neff say, is to widen your palate and embrace other options. 

“It’s amazing to work with James Beard chefs that are educated and able to experiment with obscure things, like the tulip snails that Dean’s been working with, or North Carolina whelks. The seaweeds I get to bring him are really fun, like the sea bean or prickly pear cactus,” says Shellem. “I’ll even drop off samples so they can make a staff meal, just to educate their staff as well. It is so much fun to see so many people so passionate about the same thing with the same goal.”

But here’s where it gets tricky. Eating seasonally or prioritizing local foods is not just about trying new things. It’s also about learning what the limitations are and sometimes, living with disappointment. Foragers on land, for instance, will only take a certain number of mushrooms in a patch, to ensure sufficient regrowth. For Shellem, the same principle applies to seafood. She gathers what she needs for her restaurants and leaves the rest to flourish. That can make for an uncomfortable conversation at the dinner table. “When we were first opening, we explained to the servers that we’re going to run out of a particular fish tonight, and for some people that gives them anxiety,” says Neff. “But I think that should make you happy. Because that’s the nature of a sustainable restaurant; supplies are limited. We will be constantly changing.” For Neff, leaning into that change, and getting his customers used to it, is key. 

For Shellem, the lesson is more blunt but arguably more widely applicable. “I think if people could be more comfortable with being told ‘no’ sometimes, that would be awesome.” 

As for the tulip snails, Neff says they’ve been popular, and they’ve even had customers come in specifically looking for the snails. “We had people come all the way from France, not too long ago, and they said their main agenda was to eat at the restaurant,” which Neff concedes is a lot of pressure on one dinner order. However, it also means his message is spreading. “It meant so much to them to try [an ingredient] so unique that they’ve never had before.” 

The post Meet the Modern Chef and Forager Duo Bringing Snails to the Menu appeared first on Modern Farmer.

So, you want to get involved in a community fridge, but you’re not sure where to start. You’ve come to the right place.

Finding a fridge

You can search for a fridge in your neighborhood with databases like this one from Freedge. You might have luck finding one near you or a fridge to visit on your next vacation. You can also search for community fridges in your area on platforms such as Instagram, where many groups stay active. And some groups, like in New York, also share maps of their specific city. 

Once you’ve found a fridge at which you’d like to volunteer, the best thing to do, organizers say, is just to show up. “Get to meet the other people who volunteer or the people who use it, and have conversations with them about what they need and what they’re looking for,” says Victoria Jayne, with South Philadelphia Community Fridge. 

Think about what you’re able to offer. Do you have a car? You could help with deliveries of food. Maybe you don’t drive, but you have a spare hour or two every week. One of the most consistently needed jobs is cleaning and maintenance of the fridge. Bring a sponge and paper towels and help out with a few minutes of scrubbing. 

If you don’t have time for regular volunteering, you can still help with the most important part of the community fridge—the food. If you’re doing your grocery shopping, pick up a few extra items to fill the shelves. Do you frequently have work meetings where there are tons of leftovers? Bring them to the fridge. The film and TV industries are notorious for having extra food every day, for instance. Can you connect the organizers to a restaurant or grocery store interested in donating food on a regular basis?

What should you bring?

There are a few things to keep in mind when stocking a free fridge. First, label things, even if it’s just some masking tape or a sharpie. “You’re doing a great thing,” says Julie Haire with Los Angeles Community Fridges. “We love the sentiment, but you also should realize [the food] will be thrown out if it’s not labeled.” Even if you know what that food item is by looking, not everyone will, and they also won’t know when it was made or when it expires. It’s also important to think about how people might be able to eat the food. If it’s in a can or needs to be heated up, that might be OK for some of your neighbors. But unhoused folks are unlikely to have access to cooking utensils. For that reason, Haire says that “grab and go” foods are the best options.

Also, fridges are not your dumping ground for inedible food or ingredients past their prime. A good rule of thumb is to put yourself in the shoes of someone going to the fridge. Would you choose that item? If the answer is no, it’s better saved for the compost bin. 

Starting a fridge

But what if there isn’t a community fridge in your area? You’re in luck. You get to be the person who starts one. 

First, check out if there are fridges in other cities in your state or province. They may be able to help you start a chapter in your city, and you can become a member of their team. Many mutual aid groups are happy to bring on more folks who align with their mission and can help spread the word even further. 

You might even be able to become part of an established group such as Freedge through its fiscal sponsorship. If you want to be a nonprofit to be protected under legislation such as the Good Samaritan Food Donation Act, but the process is onerous for a group your size, you could see if a sponsorship would help. “You find an existing nonprofit that says ‘OK, you’re a part of my nonprofit now,’ and all you have to do is report every year with financial statements,” says Ernst Bertone Oehninger, founder of Freedge. As Oehninger found out, a sponsorship is often a great way for smaller groups to get started while still working together under the same umbrella organization. 

Then, go over the resources. Many established fridge groups have FAQs available online to help you get started. Freedge even shares legal guidelines, to help you figure out everything you need to know when it comes to health and safety, as well as your responsibility when it comes to hosting. 

Choose a location

You will need a fridge, a way to plug it in and a host. For some, this is in front of the apartment building; for others, a community center. Oehninger says location is key. “If you are in a place that is more downtown or has a good supply of food services around, then your work as a volunteer is easier [when it comes to stocking the fridge], but it’s more difficult to clean, because of the high turnover,” he says. Ultimately, though, your fridge needs to be accessible. Think about where it might be best seen from all angles and by people both walking or driving by. 

Organizers tell us they frequently find free refrigerators on Craigslist or Facebook, but they especially like models with a glass door for people to easily see what’s inside.

Curb Appeal

Dress it up. A plain fridge is a sad fridge. Think about the curb appeal of your fridge. You’re likely to get more attention and more community engagement with a fridge that looks appealing. For some groups, such as Los Angeles Community Fridges, that means decorating each fridge in a different design and ensuring fridges can hold community bulletins and notices.

Next, it’s important to think about how the fridge might be exposed to the elements and what that might look like. You can find instructions from many groups on how to build a fridge shelter, which is a relatively simple process but can help protect your fridge in the long run. 

Build a team

Think of the fridge as a community resource that isn’t just about combating waste and hunger, but is a place that can bring a neighborhood together. Ask people to join you. There are many ways volunteers can help: pick and deliveries, stocking, cleaning, coordination, finding new donation partners, social media

Fill it up

Lastly, but most importantly, it’s time to stock the fridge. Donations from individuals are always appreciated, but the best way to keep the fridge regularly stocked is to form agreements with businesses that would otherwise throw away their food. In New York City, there’s a partnership with local Panera Bread locations, which nets the fridges a regular supply of pastries and baked goods. Other groups we spoke with talked about setting up agreements with local or chain grocery stores or restaurants. 

If you’re looking for advice on how to approach a business about a partnership, the team at Los Angeles Community Fridges has sample scripts you can use.

But, ultimately, no matter what you are able to do for a fridge, Jayne says getting involved at any level is a help. “It’s really important to have that volunteer base, where you have a group of people who are really committed, because it is work to keep one running and it does require a community.” 

The post Community Fridges 101 appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Preventing waste is one of the main motivations that drives Umpster and has been for the almost 30 years he’s been organizing in his Brooklyn neighborhoods, but it’s not his only one. 

Umpster knows what it’s like to be hungry. As a teenager, he began volunteering with Food Not Bombs, a mutual-aid group dedicated to feeding folks in his community. But when his shift was over, he would “load up my bag with food, instant oatmeal and stuff like that, to get me through the weekend before I went back to school.” 

But it wasn’t until 2020 that Umpster opened his first community fridge- right in front of the building where he lives. In Bed Stuy, Umpster’s neighborhood in Brooklyn, food insecurity and access was already a problem when the pandemic hit. By February, Umpster could see more of his neighbors struggling to feed themselves and their families.

At first, he mostly promoted the fridge and its offerings in the free section of Craigslist. “I’d be like, ‘we got a bunch of free bagels today, a bunch of salad greens…come by the fridge, take what you want, leave what you want,” says Umpster. The fridge began gaining traction in his neighborhood, and he began promoting it on other social platforms such as Instagram. Then, one of his posts was reshared by a popular local radio station, and it took off. 

Umpster got a call from a friend in neighboring Crown Heights and Flatbush and then the Bronx who wanted to start a fridge, so he helped find a few on Craigslist and fill them with food. “Before long, people were setting up fridges without even getting in touch with me, which is awesome. People just started moving.” The mutual-aid network In Our Hearts NYC  helped organize groups and fridges where each neighborhood runs independently but they are all in contact with each other. Umpster describes the group as collectively or “anarchistically” organized, meaning there’s no hierarchy. 

For many, the community fridge serves multiple purposes. It’s a tangible way to help your neighborhood, as food prices continue to rise, and it helps reduce food waste. But it’s also a meeting place and community space, a way to start a conversation with your neighbors. “I have these really tight connections and bonds with people who live on my specific block. And there are a lot of people who I used to just kind of nod to when I went down the street and maybe wave and smile, maybe say hello. And now we know each other intimately. We spend holidays together, we work together on projects, and it’s pretty incredible. The neighborhood comes to the fridge a lot,” says Umpster.

Where it all started

Community fridges have been around for a while. They go by different names, such as “free fridge” or “community pantry,” but the aims are pretty simple. First, they help to alleviate food waste, and second, they directly address food insecurity. 

The rates of food insecurity shot up during the pandemic, with two peaks. The first was at the start of the pandemic, as people lost jobs and so much was up in the air. And the second peak happened once COVID supports ran out. In 2022, 17 million households in the US reported trouble finding food, which is additionally frustrating considering the amount of food that ends up in landfills. 

The amount of food waste in North America is staggering. In the US, close to 40 percent of food is wasted, with 92 billion pounds of food thrown away each year. Canadians create 50 million tonnes of food waste every year, but there are estimates that more than half of that waste could be prevented.

That’s where community fridges come in. 

The food comes to fridges in one of three main ways. Ideally, organizers have consistent larger donations from grocery stores and other retailers. If a grocer has a load of apples, juice boxes or lettuce and they know it will pass the sell-by date, they will often partner with a community fridge. Volunteers will pick up the load of food and stock the fridges as food becomes available. Then there are individual donations. These can be leftovers from your dinner or a loaf of bread you grabbed at the grocery store that you don’t need. For many fridges, neighbors can pick up what they need and drop off what they have to give. Lastly, there are the restaurant donations. Just like retail stores, some restaurants partner with community fridges to pick up unsold meals and redistribute them. 

Independent fridges exist everywhere, with more than 600 recorded across the UK. In Canada, there are fridges in nearly every province; likewise in every state across the US. There are fridges in Singapore, Australia, Sweden and myriad other countries. Eighteen states across the US, including North Carolina, Colorado and Iowa, have even introduced legal protections for community members who run the fridges. Those protections are helpful, as most of the fridges are run by volunteers—this is a solution led by community members for community members, so volunteers often live in the neighborhood. They help clean the fridge, stock it and do regular checks to make sure everything is working properly.

Unsurprisingly, some of the biggest cities in the US have the most active networks of community fridges. In New York City, there are fridges across all five boroughs. One of the best tools they have is social media. The volunteers have text threads, a Signal chat, and they post often on Instagram, TikTok and other platforms. In their chat, they are often coordinating pickups of food from restaurants or retail stores and deliveries to various fridges around the city. 

The blueprint

There’s no one way to run a community fridge. But if you’re looking for a blueprint, start with Davis, California. 

About a decade ago, when Ernst Oehninger was a grad student at the University of California, Davis, he put a fridge in his yard. It was a shared house; he lived there with other UC Davis students, and they had an extra fridge. Why not put it outside, where it was accessible, and share food with their neighbors, some of whom were other students?

That fridge lasted for a few months, and it was refilled by Oehninger, his housemates and, occasionally, some neighbors. He was feeding people in his neighborhood, and his community was coming together. But, things got serious after a few months. Some neighbors complained; they had some worries that having a free fridge would encourage unhoused people to frequent the neighborhood, and that it would in turn be a safety concern. That didn’t happen, says Oehninger, but there was some pushback. 

“We started having food safety inspectors called, since we didn’t have any food safety licenses. So, the fridge was shut down,” he says. What was frustrating, he recalls, is that what was considered appropriate by one health inspector might be condemned by another; there were no guidelines for community fridges at the time. But, by that point, he was invested in the project. Oehninger spent a year, with his housemates and friends, researching and negotiating with the health department, trying to find a way to have a free fridge on their property. 

And not just their property. Once they worked with the health department to produce guidelines, they started expanding into other neighborhoods, installing fridges at homes, outside of willing businesses or churches with food banks. By 2017, Oehninger’s project had grown large enough that he incorporated, which would allow him to get better insurance and be protected by laws such as the Good Samaritan Food Donation Act, which protects people who donate food from legal liability if someone gets ill. 

Just like that, Freedge was born. 

Oehninger and his team (he had enough community members come together at this point to have a team) started tracking other community fridges in the region. They found examples in the Bay Area and Los Angeles. Word started to spread, and people in other states began reaching out and asking for advice on how to start their own fridges. “There was one in Colorado we helped set up. There was another one in Texas, and there was one in DC. We put that one in touch with [a group] in Florida,” he says. They had started with about 20 fridges in their region before the pandemic. By 2021, they had a network of more than 400 fridges nationwide. 

Now, Freedge, an official nonprofit organization, acts as an unofficial overseer. It has a section on its website offering tips and guides to folks who want to start their own fridge, including food safety protocols and how to deal with health inspectors. There’s a group Slack channel for fridge coordinators across the country to chat with each other. Freedge still maps and tracks free fridges across the country and even gives out micro-grants to other groups that want to join its umbrella network to start a community fridge. 

The community is growing

During the pandemic, four new fridges popped up in Los Angeles. That’s now grown into Los Angeles Community Fridges (LACF), with more than a dozen locations. 

Julie Haire started volunteering with LACF in 2021, when the pandemic highlighted food insecurity around the country. Haire had always been focused on food waste, often dropping excess food off at local church pantries. But when she connected with LACF and saw how wide community fridges could spread, she was hooked. One of the most inspiring things, says Haire, is how LACF “deputizes the community” to help maintain each fridge. If a volunteer checks the Los Feliz fridge and finds that, for instance, someone threw mashed potatoes all over it, “we could put it up on Instagram and ask ‘can someone help us clean this?’ and luckily, someone from the community will go do it,” says Haire. “We put out the call, and the volunteers go in.” 

Film sets are a particularly fruitful source for fridges in Los Angeles and NYC. Craft services and catering from the film and television industries make a lot of food, and typically, a lot gets wasted. Haire and other fridge volunteers in LA try to connect with as many sets as possible to pick up that extra food—some of it straight from a fresh take. “I went to a filming, I think it was The L Word. And they were doing a grocery scene, and they had all of this really nice produce [in the background]. They had huge things of flour and Crisco and spices, all of this stuff that they would not know what to do with ]after filming].” Naturally, Haire was happy to take it off of producers’ hands when filming wrapped up.

South Philly Community Fridge (SPCF) in Philadelphia, started up in August of 2020 and has grown to include fridges at six locations, with a roster of about 75 volunteers. They’ve found a unique way to raise awareness of their fridges–merchandise, including mugs, sweatshirts and tote bags. All of the designs were conceived by local artists, and they are playful and eye-catching. “I was at a museum with my husband and he was wearing one of our shirts, and someone stopped us and said ‘we’re from New Jersey, and we want to start a community fridge. So we exchanged emails,” says SPCF’s Victoria Jayne. “We want to have fun with the merch. It’s fun to show up.” 

It’s also easy to grab attention from the community when the fridges are colorful and cute. Like many organizations, the LACF encourages community members to decorate and paint their fridges with eye-catching designs, posters, signs—anything to make them stand out and get people involved. The one in Inglewood has a motif of bananas; the Los Feliz fridge features a dancing hot dog with a top hat. It’s fun and quirky and highlights the fridges as a community project. 

Myth busting

There are some myths about who uses community fridges. The biggest one, says Jayne, is the idea that community fridges are for a specific type of person. 

“Something we really try to stress about mutual aid is that it’s here for everybody and anyone. It doesn’t have to be something that’s means tested,” she says, meaning that there’s no prerequisite for using the fridge. No one is going to check your income level or try to determine how much food you “need.” Jayne says that, in her neighborhood, she’s seen people who work full time and don’t have access to traditional food pantries use the fridge or people without cars who can’t drive to out-of-the-way food banks. “Something that people have asked me or other volunteers in passing is ‘how do you know the person who’s taking food really needs that?’ and I’m like, ‘I haven’t met anyone who didn’t need to eat to live.’”

Another myth that Haire works to bust in Los Angeles is the idea that a fridge will attract unhoused people to the neighborhood in the first place. “We have a fridge in Eagle Rock that is outside of a community center, and neighbors complain all the time because of the homeless problem. And we’re like, is it the fridge? Or is it that it’s 2024 and we’re experiencing unprecedented numbers of people living on the streets right now?” For Haire, those are even stronger reasons to continue the fridges, not a reason to stop. 

The fog has lifted

Although the Philadelphia group started during the beginning of the COVID pandemic, Jayne says the need has only grown since then. In August of 2020, there were job losses and many struggled getting to the grocery store. But, there were also enhanced safety nets for people. “There was additional money for unemployment, additional money for SNAP, and there was the child tax credit,” says Jayne. “As we’ve come out of this period of active pandemic, we’ve seen those benefits taken away from people, and that’s resulted in significantly higher usage.” 

When Ernst Oehninger, from Freedge, thinks about the period just before the pandemic, he likens it to a fog that blanketed our collective consciousness before 2020 and dissipated in the midst of lockdowns and COVID protocols. As a community, many were confronted with the number of systemic issues facing everyone, from police brutality around the murder of George Floyd to lack of health care, climate change, and food insecurity. “People started thinking about how they were relying on the state for this or a corporation for that,” says Oehninger. “And a lot of people started realizing that they could work with their community instead.” While Oehninger says some of these issues are inherent to the US, he did clock an expansion of mutual aid programs globally during that time. 

Oehninger says part of what makes the fridges such an attractive option for users is the dignity it affords people. Sadly, there’s still a stigma attached to using a food bank, and there can be administrative hurdles in the process. “A free fridge doesn’t ask for my documents,” says Oehninger. Rather, it’s just a group of people coming together to help, no questions asked. 

As Jayne puts it, the fridge is an exercise in community. “There’s a Mariame Kaba quote that says ‘everything worthwhile is done with other people.’”

The post From Community, For Community: The Rise of the Free Fridge appeared first on Modern Farmer.

And despite the name, bird flu doesn’t only impact birds. Since 2022, there have been four cases reported in humans and, more recently, more than 100 herds of dairy cattle in the US alone. The infection has also been found in both the milk and meat of these animals. This month, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency updated its testing eligibility for cattle and said it would now cover some of the testing fees, to ensure any outbreaks are dealt with swiftly. Luckily, in humans, the disease isn’t known to be fatal, but it can lead to high temperatures, breathing trouble, diarrhea, conjunctivitis and potentially more serious complications such as pneumonia or respiratory illness. 

So, what does this mean for your grocery order? Let’s break it down. 

First, poultry. Is it safe to eat?

Yes. Experts say it is highly unlikely that humans can contract the virus from properly cooked meat or eggs. This means cooking eggs until the yolk and whites are firm and chicken to at least 165°F. And to be safe, keep raw poultry away from any other foods. 

But what’s even more important is that infected meat or eggs are very unlikely to reach grocery store shelves in the first place. According to a USDA predictive model, there is a less than five percent chance that infected eggs or meat might make it to the grocery store—and the model also predicts that if that did happen, 98 percent of infected eggs could be recalled immediately. 

But what about milk?

Recent studies of about 300 commercially available dairy products revealed inactive HPAI in one in five samples. That number seems like a lot on the surface, but there’s one key element: pasteurization. There is increasing evidence that the pasteurization process neutralizes the virus, making pasteurized dairy products safe to consume. 

In the 297 samples tested by the USDA, there was no instance of a live, viable virus in any pasteurized product. 

Is beef ok?

As with poultry and eggs, it’s highly unlikely that infected beef would make it to store shelves in the first place. However, if it does, experts also agree that properly cooked beef carries very little risk of transmitting the virus to humans. Cooking your meat to an internal temperature of at least 165 degrees Fahrenheit (74 degrees Celsius) will neutralize avian flu, E Coli and any other bacteria. 

So, what do I need to know?

The main thing to ensure when shopping for or preparing food is that you’re following safe food guidelines. Consuming raw eggs (looking at you, cookie dough) or unpasteurized dairy products could increase your risk of not just HPAI but salmonella, E Coli, listeria or other food-borne illnesses. Raw ground beef can also be a transmitter of those illnesses, so store beef at 40 degrees F or below, and use it within a few days. It’s also best to cook ground beef to an internal temperature of at least 160 degrees F. 

If you are someone who regularly comes in contact with farms, be they poultry or cattle, following a strict biosecurity plan will help reduce the risk of transmitting infections. That means tightening visitor access to your farm, wearing clean boots and clothes and removing or controlling any standing water. In the meantime, officials are looking at several solutions to mitigate these outbreaks, including new vaccines.

The post How Much Do You Really Need to Worry About Bird Flu? appeared first on Modern Farmer.

There are many organizations out there, from large national groups to regional and community efforts, all working to help young farmers start their careers. Whether you’re looking for advice on organic farming or you want to try an apprenticeship or you want to understand federal policy, there’s a group for you. 

This is a (definitely non-exhaustive!) list of just a few of the organizations that can help get you started on the right path. 

Young Agrarians – This Canadian group has resources and mentorship for farmers across the country and apprenticeship programs for people in western Canada. 

National Young Farmers Coalition – This national group has 24 chapters across the US, and it has a goal of remaking the food system to be more equitable. 

Future Farmers of America  – This national student organization prioritizes agricultural education as a path to success in many fields, including farming, biology, chemistry, engineering, and more.

4H – This is a huge youth program, with more than 500,000 volunteers and six million participants. Kids complete hands-on projects, such as raising livestock.

Canadian Young Farmers Forum – This organization prioritizes education and training, with farmer-to-farmer networking. Its annual conference brings farmers from across the country together. 

Greenhorns – Based in Maine but running nationally, this organization works to reform the agriculture industry with a focus on regenerative ranching, ecological restoration and food justice. 

Junior Farmers Association of Ontario – Like many regional organizations, the JFAO works with farmers between the ages of 15 and 29 from all over Ontario, hosting monthly meetings and even an international exchange program.

Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program from the USDA – This program provides grants for education, mentorship and technical assistance. 

Young Farmers and Ranchers program from the American Farm Bureau Federation – This leadership program for young Farm Bureau members helps develop and advocate for public policies that strengthen agriculture and rural communities. 

National Farmers Union Youth Advisory Committee – This arm of the NFU represents young farmers across Canada. The group has two seats on the NFU Board of Directors, and holds events like an annual retreat.

This story is part of our Future Farmers series, highlighting the joys and hurdles of a career in agriculture today. You can read more of this series here. 

The post Where to Get Started: A Guide For Young Farmers appeared first on Modern Farmer.

For young people interested in a career in agriculture, there can be many roadblocks in their path. The price of land continues to rise, grants and educational opportunities can be hard to come by and there’s a steep learning curve for folks who didn’t grow up in a farming family.  

As we kick off our coverage of Future Farmers, we wanted to hear directly from the people facing these impediments: the young farmers themselves. What issues are they really grappling with? Is our perception of the agricultural landscape accurate or do they see a different future playing out? 

Modern Farmer sat down with Sara Dent, co-founder of the Young Agrarians, to talk about issues young farmers face and some surprising ways we can start to solve them. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

Modern Farmer: It seems that there are a lot of issues that young farmers face when starting out: cost, a knowledge gap, land access and more. Do you see a common thread that ties these issues together or does it seem like we’ll have to tackle things individually?

Sara Dent: Well, just to start, I’d like to note that I’m on Tla’amin, Klahoose and Homalco Nation land. And I think this conversation is really fascinating, because if you look before colonization, and see how the land was stewarded and the abundance of systems, you look at how colonization came in that it used up a lot of the natural resources. It broke up the people and the ecology of the landscape and parceled it into the British land title system. And now we’re in 2024, we have market failure conditions for agriculture. And there’s a low tolerance at the institutional level for recognizing those market failure conditions. 

When I first started Young Agrarians, it was really driven by enabling coordination in the sector and addressing three main barriers, which is access to land, access to capital and access to knowledge.

The piece that we could start with was access to knowledge and facilitating that through farmer-to-farmer conversations. Farmers are the ones that train new farmers and support new people to get their feet underneath them. We started working on the land access piece in 2016, and now we’re trying to increase influence around the access to capital piece, advancing policy at a municipal, federal and provincial level. But policy is really like a living body. It’s composed of everybody. It’s composed of the eaters, it’s composed of the people growing the food, it’s composed of the banks [that] are lending it to the agricultural space, governments that are regulating agricultural space and creating the eligibility criteria that evaluates the whole sector.

And we are seeing a major decline in agriculture; the farming population in Canada is very low. Indeed, the last census showed that [of the 262,455 farm operators] fewer than 23,000 were under the age of 35.  

MF: So, if policy is the most, let’s say, unwieldy of the areas of influence you mentioned, what are the policy challenges?

SD: One of the big policy challenges for new farmers in the country is that, for a lot of governments, their norm is bigger industry, the policy is really driven by bigger industry, bigger farms. But when you look at new-generation people coming in, they have to start somewhere. So, we often talk about “scale-appropriate” policy.

For young people entering the sector, people that are actually accessing land, how do we support them? And then the people who are in that startup window of your one, two, year five? And they’re all starting at different scales. But we really try to focus with government on talking about scale appropriate. The old market analysis says “the bigger the better.” But a lot of big farms have huge debt margins, and if they have a bad year, it can be really damaging for them. However, what they have going for them is if they own the land, at least they have that equity in the land. 

You can see that smaller-scale models might actually be more effective financially than larger-scale models. New farms today have to figure out what their value proposition is, they have to be really super focused to figure out how they’re going to survive and what their niches are. So, in my mind, one of these big policy shifts is understanding that bigger isn’t always better. 

MF: You mentioned that there are three main areas that new farmers can struggle with: access to capital, knowledge and land. Let’s start with capital. Why is it more difficult for young people to get access to capital or loans?

SD: So, traditional lending is based on leveraging asset as collateral in order to get approved for a loan. If you look at new-gen farmers that are coming in, that don’t necessarily own the land, so they have nothing to offer up as collateral, and they aren’t able to access traditional lending. They can’t afford to buy the property, they can’t qualify for that mortgage and they can’t access the lending. 

What we’re working towards is getting the Canadian Agricultural Loans Act updated so that it allows character-based lending and working capital for farmers, so that they don’t have to own the land in order to access the lending program. There’s a really interesting loan program out of Quebec called FIRA, the originator of which, Paul, has done incredible work. It’s a land acquisition fund, and then they sell it back to the farmer as they get their business underneath them.

But there’s a big lending gap in the country today. For example, there’s no provincial lender in British Columbia that does character-based lending. In Ontario, the Fair Finance Fund has a national fund for BIPOC candidates, because those candidates weren’t able to get their loans from the traditional lenders. For example, First Nations farmers on reserve land, they aren’t the title holder of the land, so accessing that loan capital is just not possible. 

MF: Access to land feels tied into the access to capital issue, as well. Many people just can’t afford to purchase land. 

SD: Yeah, absolutely. Every year, farmland values are published across the country, looking at the per-acre rates, and I always find the per-acre rates a little disingenuous, because you might have a per acre average rate for an entire province, but if you’re trying to buy something in northern BC versus southern BC, it’s going to be completely different per acre. 

But for people who can’t acquire the land, leasing becomes an important option for new farmers who are just getting their feet underneath them—and, you know, making sure that farming is really for them, that they have a value proposition in the business that they’re operating, that they’re working at the right scale. So, we’re running our BC Land Matching Program, putting out resource guides for farmers across the country to help them navigate that leasing space. Because when you’re leasing, you’re at risk of losing the property if the owner sells. Or what if the owner dies, what if the kids inherit the land? How do you negotiate a lease that has all the right terms in it for your agricultural operation? That’s part of the educational resource work that Young Agrarians has been doing over the last decade, to try and prepare new entrants better for leasing properties. We learned a lot from looking at the US models, like Land for Good and California FarmLink. 

MF: And then lastly, there’s access to knowledge. Young Agrarians has an apprenticeship program to pair up new farmers with working mentors to help bridge that gap. 

SD: Yeah, we work with farmers who are doing agri-ecology, who want to do education and train. I think we’ve had something like 70 farms work in the program and a little over 80 young people go through the apprenticeship program, but in the big picture, we actually need about 500 of apprenticeships and farms per province. Right now, we’re running that program in Western Canada, British Columbia to Manitoba. And the question is, will that program work at a national offering? The complexity there is finding the right farms and then also having things like housing and being well suited to being educational. 

It’s really beautiful when somebody comes in and they have this life-changing experience and the light is turned on and they’re in love with farming and that’s their pathway forward. 

MF: It must be so gratifying when it feels like a match between apprentice and farm really clicks. 

SD: That’s why I still do this work. We get notes from people regularly, like someone who took a business boot camp course, and then you talk to them two years later, and they’re operating their business. And there’s a lot of beautiful stories that have come out of the network that definitely keeps the staff going. 

MF: We’ve talked about some community-level and grassroots solutions, like your apprenticeship program. But what might solve some of these issues at a federal or policy level? 

SD: I started doing some national policy writing stuff on behalf of the organization in 2021. And I started to understand that there were a lot of people at the institutional level who were interested in these issues, but the knowledge gap (from the policy makers) was significant. 

One thing I talk a lot about is eligibility criteria for new entrants. I think that’s really important, because new farmers are totally under invested in Canada and arguably also in the United States, in North America in general, perhaps even globally. They’re extremely under invested, so getting people to think about their eligibility criteria is really key.

I could be in a meeting with somebody working on eligibility criteria for a financial loan program and I’ll say ‘could you put a $50,000 greenhouse on your credit card and then wait to get reimbursed months later?’ And many people realize, ‘oh, yeah, that’s right. I can’t do that. I can’t just go out and buy all this equipment on my credit card and wait to get repaid for it.’

So, I’ve been addressing the elephant in the room by going directly for the eligibility criteria. Because without it, the farmers that look at this application form are just never going to be able to access your programs. 

MF: That sounds like a great entry point into this conversation. 

SD: Exactly. And some of the legislation needs to change, and a lot of it is just getting the right people at the table over and over to change the cultural conversation. 

This story is part of our Future Farmers series, highlighting the joys and hurdles of a career in agriculture today. You can read more of this series here. 

The post What Are the Big Issues for Young Farmers? We Asked Them appeared first on Modern Farmer.

That’s just one of the slice-of-life videos Westerfeld shares with the nearly 185,000  followers of @family_farm_life. You can see the team (his family, on the family-run 8,000-acre Texas ranch) seeding corn fields, unloading hay bales or showing off truly impressive farmers’ tans. 

The Westerfelds farm corn and wheat and run a herd of cattle as well. Through it all, Joshua films and edits videos that show what farm life is like—and he’s connecting with young people. He says roughly 70 percent of his audience is 18 to 34 years old. 

Westerfeld loves TikTok, and he has for a while. He started making videos for social media a few years ago, when he was still in high school. About three years ago, when TikTok began its rise as the social media platform to beat, he transitioned over and started gaining a following. For Westerfeld, the app is all about connections. “It’s a support system,” he says, noting that he seeks out other farmers’ content on the platform and they find his. “I’ve seen times where farmers will post a video with a problem, like some piece of equipment that they’re not sure how to fix, asking for help. And you’ll see the comment section is just filled.” 

On Westerfeld’s corner of the app, affectionately referred to as FarmTok, conversations between farmers and non-farmers are  ongoing and can help people feel more connected to and conscious of where their food comes from. On his corn seeding video, viewers asked questions like “why are the seeds blue?” and “why don’t you use seeds from the previous year’s harvest?” 

But this interplay between farmers and consumers could go away soon. Last month, President Joe Biden signed a bill into law that would force TikTok’s Chinese-owned parent company, ByteDance, to either sell TikTok within a year or face a US-wide ban over fears that ByteDance could be compelled to share data on US users of the app with the Chinese government. TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew responded (in a video posted to TikTok, naturally) that the company had no interest in selling and that it  plans to fight the ban in courts. Recently, a group of eight prominent TikTok users have also launched a lawsuit against the US federal government, claiming that a ban violates their rights to  free speech. 

According to TikTok, more than  seven million small businesses in the US advertise on its platform in some way, and 90 percent of those small businesses in the agricultural space say the app has helped them reach new audiences. The hashtag “agriculture” has more than  two million videos, and the platform says it has  collectively attracted more than 23 billion views in the last year alone.

For Huey Boelen, with nearly two million followers on the app, the impact of TikTok on small farming businesses has been impressive. Boelen previously worked at both dairy and row crop farms, and he has posted videos from both. There’s a “network effect” with TikTok, he says. Many social media apps start by making an account and connecting to friends or family, people you know in real life. With TikTok, the algorithm is such that it works in the opposite fashion, feeding you videos from around the world, even if you don’t follow the person. “I leaned into that,” he says. Boelen would post videos from around the farm, such as  footage of a calf being born, and label it as educational. “That’s when people really started to interact.” Those connections led to more people viewing his videos, which led to more people clicking over to learn more about the farms. 

For Boelen, the focus from Congress on an app like TikTok seems almost wasteful. He notes that the country’s national debt is $34 trillion. “Infrastructure is not the greatest in this country. Education needs to be better,” he says. “The dollars [are not] being spent in the right places.” 

As a platform, TikTok has allowed people around the world to connect with each other, for good or ill. The French government banned the app amid violent protests in its island territory of New Caledonia, and the app has been accused of promoting anti-semitisim in how it shows videos that reference the war between Israel and Hamas. There have been concerns about the mental health of users who devote a lot of time to the app.

Still, in congressional hearings with Chew last year, it seemed as if some members of Congress weren’t even familiar with how the app worked—simply that it is connected to China. “I think Congress is pretty out of touch with [TikTok users], ” says Westerfeld, who watched that hearing. “There may be bad sides to TikTok. There are good sides, too, like the farming side. It’s helping people, giving people careers, helping small businesses … I don’t think [Congress] understands the impact.” 

If the ban does come down, both Boelen and Westerfeld say they have looked at other platforms, and they have experimented with putting videos on sites such as  YouTube. They may be able to find new audiences on new platforms. But they also express some sadness that many TikTok users could lose out on what they see as an education. “The less people understand farmers, the more likely it is that they’re not going to be on our side when [things such as  the next Farm Bill comes up,” says Westerfeld. “I’m able to learn stuff every day [from TikTok]. I can only imagine what it’s like for somebody who’s never seen farming before.”

The post Unsubscribe? FarmTok Worries About a TikTok Ban appeared first on Modern Farmer.

“This is getting ridiculous! I just spent $370 on groceries and have barely any food… How are people supposed to survive like this? Why is having three meals a day a luxury now?”

“Since the boycott, I’ve spent some time analyzing what I spend and where, and I’ve realized I can go entirely without the big three: Loblaws, Sobeys or Metro. I haven’t stepped foot in any of their stores since and I don’t plan on ever doing it again.”

These are just a few of the thousands of comments that Canadian Redditors have left on the page “Loblaws Is Out of Control,” where members share stories of $9 butter or tubs of $28 feta (twice the price of a competitor). The page was started by an Ontario woman, Emily Johnson, in November, as a way to share frustrations about high grocery prices. It quickly attracted members, with more than 79,000 people joining up in a matter of months. And they had a lot to talk about. In February 2023, the Consumer Price Index noted that food prices were up more than 10 percent year over year, double the national rate of inflation. It was the seventh straight month of double-digit food price increases. 

As more members joined the page, talk of a grocery store boycott began to intensify. 

Canada’s grocery market is dominated by five main retailers, which make up 76 percent of the market. The country’s biggest grocery chain, Loblaws, has cornered 28 percent of the market entirely. The company runs multiple brands of grocery and pharmacy chains, has several in-house lines that it sells, including the President’s Choice and No Name brands, and has long been a source of ire for Canadians struggling with rising food prices. While general economic inflation and rises in the cost of living do account for some hikes in food prices, these Redditors allege that price hikes have more to do with corporate greed and lack of competition than anything else. 

In addition to high costs, Loblaws has refused to sign a proposed Grocer Code of Conduct, saying that it worried that would lead to even higher prices on food. Loblaws has also struggled to regain public trust after its involvement in a bread price-fixing scandal over the 2010s. [Update: On May 16, the CEO of Loblaw Companies Limited told media they would sign the code of conduct as long as its grocery competitors did too.]

Frustrations reached a fever pitch; Loblaws was an obvious target for a boycott for many Canadians. 

On May 1, Loblaws announced its  2024 first-quarter profits; they’re up nearly 10 percent over the same time last year. The same day, the boycott officially started, with tens of thousands of shoppers vowing to ignore Loblaws. In smaller communities, where Loblaws stores are the only option, thousands vowed to cut their purchases.

Boycotters are demanding that both Loblaws and Walmart agree to sign the code of conduct, as well as commit to price caps on essential items and no retailer-led price increases for the rest of the year.

Loblaws chairman Galen Weston told media that the boycott is an example of “misguided criticism.” Weston said that he understood the frustration, but that expectations that Loblaws would be able to dramatically drop prices “betrays a misunderstanding of what’s actually driving food prices higher in this country.” However, Redditors have posted their own examples of small victories, which they attribute to the boycott: offers of extra reward points, photos and videos of items with large markdowns and alleged conversations about falling sales numbers.

With a boycott underway, the Reddit thread has become a place for people to offer tips and help their neighbors—with many finding ways to highlight local food or farmer’s markets. One user created We Food Wise, a site to help shoppers compare grocery prices. Another shared the site AltGrocery, which promotes local and indie food sellers, as well as farmer’s markets and co-ops. 

“The pandemic made us all acutely aware of food prices and shortages, prompting questions about the trustworthiness of local supermarkets and whether food prices are justifiably higher post-pandemic,” said the creator of AltGrocery, in an email. They have opted to remain anonymous, as they say they want the focus of the site to be the farmers and food producers. 

So far, AltGrocery has received about 107,000 visitors, and it has even had to temporarily suspend the map feature due to high traffic. AltGrocery says it is updating the map functionality, so users can find local markets from their mobile phones. It is also working on introducing filter systems, which will allow people to sort food by price. It has also brought in about $800 in donations to put towards site upkeep. “I plan to keep running beyond any boycotts. I think, if anything, [the site has] educated people to second guess where they get their food from and how much something is being sold for.”

Local markets have seen a boom in sales already. Edmonton-based Forage Market, an online farmer’s market, saw a 37-percent boost in website traffic since the boycott began, leaving them cautiously optimistic. “The first day of the boycott, we were up 27 percent. That’s great, we’ll take that. And then the next day, we were up 175 percent,” says Courtney Hanak, business development manager for the market. “The support is always appreciated. But we’re definitely trying to think about how we can make this last. How can we show consumers that this is an option year round?”

Hanak and her business partner started the market during COVID, when empty grocery shelves were a norm. “We started asking ourselves, why aren’t we buying locally? I’m seeing empty grocery shelves, but I know that the farmer down the road grows [these products].” They found that traditional farmer’s markets weren’t always accessible, either by location or hours, so they opted for an online warehouse model. Customers can go on the website to select products from individual farmers, just like stalls at a farmer’s market, but Forage will package and ship them out together. 

Hanak says she’s happy to see people getting more acquainted with farmer’s markets and local food. “There’s still this myth that people assume the farmer’s markets will be more expensive. But with inflation and the grocery prices and where they’re at now, it’s not… We’ve done cost comparisons, and we end up beating the average grocery cart total by about $2.”

And many shoppers are happy to pay prices on par with grocery stores if they know where that money is going. “If you pay a farmer…then they’re going to take that dollar, and they’re going to spend it on a local hairdresser, they’re going to spend it at the local cafe, they’re going to spend it on items that are also provided locally. So, we are feeding our own economy rather than funneling our money to millionaires and billionaires,” says Kara Friesen, owner of PieceMeal, a Nova Scotia-based meal kit. Friesen works with local farmers to collect in-season produce, then puts together weekly meal kits, with recipes and instructions so people can easily throw meals together. When she heard of the boycott, she created the Loblaws Boycott promotion, offering a discount for new signups in the last two weeks of May.

Friesen is supportive of the boycott, but she recognizes that it’s not easy for everyone. “It is often hard for people to access food outside of the grocery stores, because these retailers are highly competitive and can sell food for less than it’s actually worth, because of things like the retail fees that they charge suppliers,” says Friesen. She recommends figuring out what you are able to purchase locally, with fresh produce at the top of the list. Then, make a meal plan around what’s available, and purchase only what you have to from bigger stores. 

“I’ve devoted a lot of time to researching our food systems and how it affects every aspect of our lives,” says Friesen.”When I saw the boycott, I just sort of breathed a sigh of relief and thought this is really something that could gain traction and maybe help educate the public a little bit more about how important it is to understand the food system.” 

Many in the Reddit community have spoken about expanding the boycott past May or to include other stores. The creator of AltGrocery also told Modern Farmer they would be interested in expanding their site to include the US, as mergers and consolidation have also resulted in high food prices further south. 

Emily Johnson, the creator of the Reddit page, has met with officials from Loblaw to talk about the demands of the boycott. She’s also started a petition with Canada’s House of Commons to ask for stronger anti-trust laws and investigate the pricing structure of large grocery stores. The petition has nearly 7,000 signatures so far. 

Update: On May 16, Lobaw CEO Per Bank told media that the company was ready to sign on to the Grocery Code of Conduct, provided that other grocers also sign. 

The post $9 Butter? Canadian Redditors Say No Thank You appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Transitioning away from a system often characterized by carb-heavy, frozen and fried food can be a multi-year process, says Dreibelbis, and it starts with an in-depth assessment. “[Is the district] cooking anything at all? Are they buying everything prepackaged?” says Dreiblebis. “Do you have the equipment that you need to start cooking from scratch, even smallwares like cutting boards and knives? Some districts don’t even have that.”

From there, small changes add up to make a big difference: More than 28 million lunches are served every day in schools across the US, and for some students, that lunch is their most nutritious meal of the day. For schools with a breakfast program, evidence suggests that students who eat breakfast at school score higher on tests. But schools are up against many roadblocks, from staffing challenges to rising food costs.

Changing a school’s lunch program takes time, resources and commitment. Modern Farmer spoke with the four trendsetting schools to find out how they’ve made changes in their school lunches, what’s working and what the kids are saying about their new favorite foods. 

Lowering the pressure 

“I was just reading that one in six kids have high blood pressure,” says Julie Udelhofen, food service director at Clear Lake Community School District in northern Iowa. “Sodium is an issue; so is sugar. We see it every day.” 

For Udelhofen, the health of the roughly 1,450 kids in her schools is a top priority, with sodium a particular issue. To combat the rise of sodium, Udelhofen has made two major changes. First, she’s moved away from pre-packaged and frozen foods as much as possible and brought in local fruits and vegetables, conducting taste-tests with her students. “We’ve done beets, kohlrabi, rutabaga and parsnips. We had all kinds of radishes, and about 10 different varieties of peppers, and the kids go down the line and pick their favorites,” says Udelhofen. The key, she says, is to introduce these foods in a low-pressure environment, making it a game of sorts. “It’s a lot of fun, because the kids are wholly invested in it. They will stop and taste things and talk to us.” 

Behind the scenes, Udelhofen and her team have drastically cut sodium levels by making their own spice blends, which have been a big hit with the kids. “That’s one of the best things we’ve done, especially in the middle school and high school.” They offer a garlic and herb blend, along with Greek and Italian seasonings that kids can add to their meals, without the heaping helping of sodium from traditional blends. 

Broccoli at breakfast

Most adults are probably not grabbing broccoli at breakfast, but somehow, Tina Kindelberger, food service supervisor at Sandy Valley Local School District in eastern Ohio, has turned the children in her schools into broccoli fiends. 

“It’s so cute when they do that,” says Kindelberger. “I see kids walking in here with packs of broccoli, and it’s 7:30 am.”

Kindelberger started her team’s transition to scratch cooking by first just making raw fruits and vegetables available to the kids at each meal. Rather than change everything they were cooking at once, they just added in a case in the cafeteria with packages of produce such as carrot sticks, tomatoes, snap peas, bananas, apples and yes, broccoli. “The kids seem to be excited when we bring out new things and try new things. I had plums out one day, and I couldn’t believe how many kids asked me what they were. They’d never seen a plum,” says Kindelberger. But they’re now primed to try these raw fruits and veggies, which also means they’re more willing to try the cooked options as the district moves to scratch cooking.

Kindelberger and her team feed about 700 students a day, from kindergarten to high school, and each age group has different tastes and preferences. For her, the first step to changing the menu was consulting with the kids. “I meet with [students] on a regular basis, and we get a lot of feedback,” she says. One request, from the older students, was a breakfast smoothie station. So, Kindelberger got a grant for a blender, and now there are fresh fruit smoothies. “The biggest thing is getting your kids involved, getting their opinions, because it does matter. They want to be heard.”

Spaghetti and moose balls

Local food looks a lot different in parts of Alaska than in much of the rest of the US. While many school districts are working with beef and potatoes, Carlee Johnson McIntosh, the food service director in the Petersburg School District in Southeast Alaska, has a freezer full of Sockeye salmon and moose meat. For her, working with local farmers sometimes means getting food delivered by boat from neighboring island farms. 

Her commitment to eating and preparing local foods started from a young age; Johnson McIntosh has allergies and was always looking for ways to alleviate and control her symptoms, so she became interested in what she was eating. Now that she supervises 450 students at her schools, she’s especially committed to ensuring they have high-quality and freshly prepared options. She’s spent the last decade advocating for changes at the school level, from altering when kids can eat breakfast to updating the kitchen facilities to allow for more scratch cooking. 

“Previously, the mealtimes were crammed together. The breakfast was before school and almost nobody showed up. Now, we’re after the bell,” and kids actually show up for breakfast, she says. She’s also had to push the district on purchasing more raw food and getting her staff certified to do more than just reheat frozen packages. “My first step was to talk to our health authority and see where our deficiencies are. Why is it that we are not adequately meeting a restaurant standard? We are feeding an at-risk population, so we should be held to the same standards [as other facilities].” 

That required some creativity on her part. While previous frozen options might be chicken nuggets, for Johnson McIntosh, local proteins are more likely to be moose, herring eggs or Sockeye salmon. So, that’s what they have. Now, the kids are chowing down on moose stroganoff or spaghetti and moose-balls, along with a daily salad bar. 

One-bite policy

Not every new menu item is going to be a hit. Denise Tapley-Proctor, food service director at Regional School District 89 in Maine, knows that well. As she’s moved her team over to scratch cooking, there have been some fantastic wins and some less-than-stellar reviews. “We did a vegetable panini that the adults in the school system really liked and the high school kids were OK with. But the little kids were like, ‘no, don’t put vegetables in my grilled cheese.’ It was just a no go.” 

But that’s all part of the process, says Tapley-Proctor. One of the staff on her food service team introduced the “no thank you bite” policy when introducing a food of the month. You don’t have to eat the whole thing, but you have to take one bite to try it. Plus, you get a sticker if you do. 

The one-bite policy has been a great help to Tapley-Proctor and the team while they feed about 225 students a day. It’s allowed them to take a gradual approach with the changes, phasing in one new meal or even one new ingredient at a time. 

“Instead of bringing the box of instant potatoes, see how much longer it takes and how much better the flavor is [to make your own],” she says. “If we have leftover rolls from the day before that we didn’t serve the kids, if you cut them up and throw some spices on them, bake them in the oven, you have homemade croutons, and the kids are excited to put it on the top of their meal. It’s the little things that lead to the big thing.”

They’ve also started working with local farmers, teaching kids how plants grow. “We’ve learned that if the children have a stake in it somehow, like if they grow the food, they’re more apt to want to eat it,” she says. They’ve grown tomatoes in the school garden, then used the after-school program to make a salsa, which went on the menu the next day. “The kids were like, ‘this is our salsa,’” she says. 

Tapley-Proctor says it’s been a process for the staff as well. She’s helped them get training from the Chef Ann Foundation on kitchen skills and learning new recipes. But even with extra effort, she says the feedback from the kids is what makes it worth it. While serving a chicken pot pie, one of the students told them that it “made her belly happy.” Another boy was having a bad day, and then had some fresh watermelon with lunch. “This makes me think of summer and fireworks,” he said. “He had gone from a bad mental health day to a good mental health day because of the food.” 

Care about your cafeteria? Here’s how to get involved

The USDA will finalize proposed legislation around school lunches this month, with updates to its nutrition standards and exceptions for local and traditional foods. In the proposed changes, schools would have to reduce sodium levels, limit added sugars and would be allowed to use locally grown, raised or caught food that has been minimally processed in their menus. Updates will be phased in over the next five years, with the first changes coming to menus in the fall of 2024. 

If you have kids in school and are interested in helping bring about changes in your own district, everyone Modern Farmer spoke with recommended reaching out to the food service director at your school to find out what kinds of foods the school is working to introduce to kids and how. They’re the ones that feed your kids every day and can speak about their goals when it comes to nutrition. Some schools will even welcome parents to join their kids for a lunch period, to get a first-hand look at what’s on offer. 

You can also get involved at the state level, organizing around campaigns such as Healthy School Meals for All. For a list of what’s happening in your state, check out this map from the National Farm to School Network. 

And if you work in a school district, Dreibelbis advises that you make the switch to scratch cooking one step at a time. Take a cafeteria classic: boxed macaroni and cheese. You can change one element at a time, such as purchasing a pre-mixed cheese sauce but cooking your own pasta. Once that’s second nature, add one more element. “If you’re making something like a homemade cheese sauce, you’re using flour, butter, milk, cheese and salt. And right there alone, you’re going from what was probably 30 ingredients to five.”

The post On the Ground With the Schools Learning What It Takes To Improve Lunch Menus appeared first on Modern Farmer.

In a landfill, food and organic materials are dumped into the landfill, with more waste continually piled on top, creating compacted, oxygen-deprived areas where bacteria flourishes to break down the organic matter. The decomposition process generates methane, a greenhouse gas. According to the EPA, “municipal solid waste landfills are the third largest source of human-related methane emissions in the US.” 

Put another way: The majority of things we casually toss into the trash can be composted, with big benefits for the planet. 

Composting is a pretty basic concept, although there are several ways to go about it. Essentially, composting speeds up the decomposition process by adding organic matter to an oxygen-rich environment and then letting the bugs and fungi that break down matter do their thing. There are small, backyard-scale composting setups with worms (known as vermicomposting), large, industrial-sized bins that rotate the matter consistently to ensure the right airflow and all sizes in between. Whatever method you use, eventually, the end result is compost—a nutrient-rich soil that can be used as a soil amendment. 

Roughly 15 million American households have access to a food-waste compost program, with about 400 programs spread across 25 states. That’s about 12 percent of households across the country. If composting is a big win for cities—taking waste out of landfills, producing fertilizer and engaging citizens in the recycling process—why doesn’t everyone do it? Well, like most public works initiatives, it’s not that simple. 

To learn more about which municipalities offer composting across the US and Canada—and to add your city to our list—check out our compost map here. 

‘One size doesn’t fit all’

So, what does it take to implement a new composting program? In 2017, Washington, DC’s Department of Public Works put together a survey to assess the feasibility of a compost program for local residents. There are a lot of considerations; in this case, it found that the main obstacle was processing capacity. For a city of about 700,000 people, where does all of that waste actually go? 

The city just did not have the space to divert waste from the landfill at that time. However, in the intervening years, industrial composting programs in DC-adjacent Prince George’s County have increased, and other cities such as Boston have started composting—a development that Rachel Manning, a program analyst within Washington’s Department of Public Works, and her team have watched with interest. Finally, in August of 2023, seven years after its initial study, Washington launched its pilot compost program. 

The city now has about 10,000 households participating in the pilot program, with regular curbside pickup of compost, along with trash and recycling. Manning says the team sends out regular surveys to participants to see how things are going throughout the program, which is scheduled to last for a year. “Something that’s interesting to us is understanding that one size doesn’t fit all,” Manning says of the issues that have popped up from resident responses. “Maybe not everyone fills up a five-gallon bin, maybe some people want more than five gallons…so there’s a little bit of thinking about what are the right sizes of these containers? What type of [truck] fleets do we need to serve all these homes? Right now, it’s not the same size as our trash packer trucks, because we’re not servicing as many people. But also, food has a lot of moisture in it, so you need a particular vehicle for that. Also, [the Department of Public Works] has a goal to electrify all of their fleet. So, we need to think about electric vehicles, and what the capacity is there.” 

So far, Manning says the program has been a success. It has about a 70-percent adoption rate among participants and has diverted more than 400 tons of waste from the landfill. The city also brings the compost back to residents (if they ask for it) to use in their gardens, so there’s even more incentive for residents to compost. This summer, when the program is scheduled to come to an end, Manning and the team will evaluate moving forward with composting on an even larger scale. 

‘We’re willing to pivot’

“I’m going to tell you a secret,” says Melissa Kozakiewicz, assistant city engineer in Kansas City, Missouri. “I always start with pilots, and using the word ‘pilot,’ I can pivot and be flexible when things are working and when they’re not….but we aren’t going to take it away.” 

Kozakiewicz, who has previously built up a compost program in Jersey City, New Jersey, is now spearheading the compost pilot program in Kansas City. She’s hoping to replicate some of her previous successes, particularly in how she makes the program available to residents. “You have to be really deliberate and careful with how you introduce [a compost program]. You don’t want anybody to feel like you’re jamming something down their throat, because then they’re out,” says Kozakiewicz. Instead, she works at a pace with which the community is comfortable and integrates demonstrations at big public events, such as a Fourth of July parade. That way, residents get comfortable with composting as part of their public life and might be more inclined to continue doing it at home. 

[RELATED: Map: Who Composts?]

Kansas City also doesn’t currently offer a curbside pickup of compost. Instead, its model is a drop-off program. The city has five current drop-off locations, with 10 more to come around the city this year. Kozakiewicz says that helps prevent contamination of waste, because compost bins aren’t lying around next to trash or recycling containers. If residents make a trip to a special, designated location, it helps to reinforce what that location is for. It also helps ward against another common concern for cities: vermin and pests. “We have one of our drop-off spots inside of City Hall’s garage. It’s a publicly accessible space that anybody can use,” says Kozakiewicz, and the regular foot traffic allows for a lot of feedback if something’s amiss. “If you call me and say ‘Hey, I was at the City Hall garage, and it looks terrible,’ I can call somebody right this minute to go check it out.” (Data on adoption rates for composting are harder to find, but studies suggest that in the case of recycling programs, residents are more likely to participate when the programs offer curbside pickup.)

Both Kansas City and Washington, DC, are experimenting with programs at the municipal level and with just a portion of their residents so far. But can these programs scale up? Recent state-wide legislation is trying to answer that question. 

In Vermont, a state-wide food scrap ban went into effect in 2020. Residents separate their food scraps and either compost them in their own homes, drop them off at a designated station or sign up for curb-side pick-up. The law also prioritizes reducing food waste upstream, ensuring more food goes to food banks or is turned into animal feed. At the time of implementation, Josh Kelly, materials management section chief at the state’s department of environmental conservation, told Vermont Public that state legislators had been working on reducing waste since 2012. “We have had a state goal to have 50 percent of the waste that we produce separated and recycled, reused or composted. And that goal has never been met in all the years that it’s been in place.” In the year following the ban’s implementation, sales of backyard composters in Vermont more than doubled, and a survey last year found that 61 percent of Vermont residents felt a “moral obligation” to keep food out of landfills (although the state is still not meeting that 50-percent goal).

California is hoping to see some of that success, after it implemented state-wide legislation in January of 2022. The goal of the law, says Lance Klug, with CalRecycle’s office of public affairs, is to reduce the amount of organic waste in landfills by 75 percent and reroute 20 percent of fresh, unsold food to Californians in need, both by 2025. The law requires all cities and counties in the state to implement programs to collect organic waste and increase food recovery from sites such as grocery stores. So far, says Klug, the program is chugging along, although it’s run into issues ranging from COVID-related supply chain slowdowns to a slower adoption rate than hoped for. Roughly 75 percent of jurisdictions in California now have a composting program in place, and in 2022, about 200,000 tons of unsold food was recovered and redistributed to folks who needed it. However, as reported by the Associated Press, it’s unlikely the state will meet its 2025 goals. 

‘Education can’t be understated’

Not everyone has a state or even a city supporting them in the effort to compost. But for some folks, that doesn’t matter—they just do it anyway. 

For Bob Ferretti, that was no small feat. He’s the associate director of administrative services at Yale University, which at any given time has about 25,000 students, staff and faculty on the campus. That’s a lot of waste. 

About 15 years ago, Ferretti and his team began the process of figuring out how to facilitate a composting program on campus—made more difficult by the fact that, at the time, the city of New Haven, Connecticut, where Yale is located, did not have a program in place municipally. (Currently, there’s still no residential program for would-be composters in New Haven. However, the city does mandate that if you are a large business, produce enough compost and are located within 20 miles of a compost facility, then you are required to use it.) “There’s really no composting infrastructure within the state at an industrial scale,” says Ferretti. “There were small organic operations within local farms and things like that, but nothing that could handle the volume we were producing.” 

[RELATED: He Wanted to Start Up a Composting Operation. Outdated Zoning Laws Stood in the Way.]

At first, Ferretti recalls, Yale had to hire trucks to cart the compost daily from campus to a facility on the New York State border, which was a few hours round-trip. It wasn’t the best environmental solution, Ferretti says, for an effort aiming to curb greenhouse emissions. “We did meet with the city to try and come up with something even more local,” says Ferretti. “I don’t think there was a ton of real estate available for it.” Plus, says Ferretti, there were questions about who would own that kind of project. Would it be a municipally run program that only serves Yale? A private program for the university but that utilizes local government? Ultimately, Ferretti and his team found an industrial composter within the state, only about 30 minutes from campus, and partnered with it. 

There were some initial wins for the Yale project. As students who lived on campus mostly lived in residence halls and ate at large dining facilities, much of the waste was already centralized, making it less difficult to collect than in a spread-out city. But this was more than a decade ago, and Ferretti says they had needed to do a lot of education to get everyone on board. “We did a lot of waste stream audits for visual awareness, you know, where we dumped out bags of trash across campus and had people in Tyvek suits sorting through and showing people what’s in our waste stream so that they became aware of how much could be diverted,” says Ferretti. “We would have the students actively weigh plates after every meal, to see how much food was scraped into this bucket, so that they know how much was being composted.” There were still challenges with cross contamination, as silverware, latex gloves or other generic trash was easily dropped into the wrong container. “Education can’t be understated,” says Ferretti. 

There’s a lot to consider when starting up a new compost program. Even if your municipality offers curbside trash and recycling collection, adding compost to the mix isn’t as simple as buying a few more trucks and hiring some new workers. But with each new program that gets introduced, there are more examples of how to make composting work for cities, towns and even private entities of any size. 

In Kansas City, Kozakiewicz says the important thing to remember is not to wait for things to be perfect—you’ll be waiting a long time. “You’ve got to kind of push a little, using the resources that you have,” she says. “Nobody’s interested here in building a new landfill.” 

The post Composting Makes Sense. Why Don’t More Cities Do It? appeared first on Modern Farmer.