COPs are historically where key climate decisions are made, such as the Kyoto Protocol, in which signing parties agreed to decrease greenhouse gas emissions, and the Paris Agreement, which committed parties to the goal of keeping warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

However, current world government actions are not enough to meet the climate goals set by the Paris Agreement, and even promises made at this year’s conference (and in years past) may not be enough to move the world closer to those goals. The climate conferences are not without their share of criticism. This year, the president of COP28, Sultan Al Jaber, has come under fire after claiming there wasn’t sufficient scientific evidence that a phase-out of fossil fuels could help lower global temperatures. Food production accounts for 26 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, and past COP conferences have been accused of greenwashing, in part by offering meat on the menu while talking about reducing global meat consumption. Critics have long accused COP conferences of being all about the talk, with little action. It remains to be seen what, if anything, will actually happen as a result of this year’s discussions. 

This year, at COP28 in Dubai, global food systems and agriculture were discussed more than ever before. Here are the key food and agriculture takeaways from this year’s conference, which wrapped up today.

Takeaway 1: Leaders linked climate and food systems with declaration

More than 130 countries signed the Declaration on Sustainable Agriculture, Resilient Food Systems and Climate Action, also known as the Emirates Declaration. That’s a mouthful, but the declaration appears to have weight behind it. More than $2.5 billion has been put aside for this declaration, including a $200-million fund from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation looking specifically at agricultural research. 

This declaration, first and foremost, emphasizes the importance of including agriculture and food systems solutions to meet climate goals. “We stress that any path to fully achieving the long-term goals of the Paris Agreement must include agriculture and food systems,” says the declaration.

Signees commit to taking action by 2025 to scale up and strengthen mechanisms for resilient food systems, with the goal of reducing environmental impacts and increasing security for those who work in the food system. Signees will review their progress next year, at COP29. Read the full text.

Takeaway 2: The FAO released a roadmap for sustainably feeding the growing population

During COP28, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Commission released a list of recommendations for what needs to change in the global food system to meet climate goals. The goal of this roadmap is to successfully feed the growing world population while staying aligned with emissions targets.

One of the recommendations in this roadmap was that meat consumption should shift to favor lower-impact animals that still meet nutritional needs. This is in reference to the emissions produced by animal agriculture, which are the food items that have the greatest environmental impact.

Meanwhile, companies and groups such as Tyson Foods, JBS and the North American Meat Institute attended COP28 to make the case that they have a place in the future of food.

Other recommendations include increased adoption of precision agriculture technologies and addressing obstacles to land tenure, with a special focus on women and Indigenous peoples. Read the full roadmap here, or click through this visualization here.

Takeaway 3: Countries made plans to tackle food waste, starting with the US

Announced first at COP28, the USDA has released a draft of the new National Strategy to Reduce US Food Loss and Waste. With an initial investment of $30 million, the strategy sets out four goals for the federal government. 

The goals include  the prevention of the loss of food where possible and preventing the waste of food. The other goals are to increase recycling rates for organic waste and, finally, to support policies that echo these aims. With roughly one third of available food going uneaten globally, a strategy centering food loss and solutions such as composting could make a big difference in the US.

“Food loss and waste poses a real challenge to agriculture, food and the climate. In order to tackle this problem, and in turn build a resilient food system and mitigate climate impacts, we must explore and implement innovative solutions,” said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack in a release.

The policy is a joint effort between the USDA, FDA and EPA, and a 30-day public comment period is now open. You can add your comments on the policy here. 

Takeaway 4: Negotiators had trouble nailing down specifics

Sunday was Food, Agriculture and Water Day at COP28, and negotiators released a draft document, intended to help countries move towards sustainable agriculture and track progress. However, as reported by Indian media outlets, while the document references sustainable agriculture, it doesn’t pin down specific targets for goals related to food, water, health and agriculture. The document also points out that the funding required to adapt these systems “remains insufficient,” but it does not specify how much is actually needed. Other climate agreements have seen a softening in language as well, moving from a “phase out” of fossil fuels, to a “reduction.” 

Speaking at COP over the weekend, Vilsack even said that the final statement from the convention may not mention food or agriculture, as “there wasn’t enough time to negotiate a text.” Vilsack referenced disagreements between nations on how to measure progress of climate goals. 

Vilsack did highlight the US’s contributions to COP’s overall goals, including the investment of close to $20 billion to help agricultural producers reduce emissions and enhance carbon sequestration in their soil. 

Takeaway 5: New partnerships and coalitions emerged

This year’s COP has resulted in the emergence of several new initiatives that will be worth keeping an eye on. One was the International Soil Carbon Industry Alliance, formed among 28 organizations, which will focus on developing our understanding of soil carbon sequestration, a topic that has had an amorphous definition in the carbon credit market. 

Soil naturally stores carbon, making it a valuable resource for fighting climate change. However, the carbon credit market, which allows companies to offset their carbon footprint by purchasing carbon credits that, in theory, protect carbon sinks from being disturbed, lacks consistency and is therefore vulnerable to greenwashing. A better understanding of soil carbon sequestration can lead to best practices for land management and carbon storage. Read our breakdown of some of the obstacles the carbon credit market faces here.

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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.

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The transition to fully organic agriculture was a pillar of Gotabaya’s 2019 campaign, during which he proposed the move be phased out over a 10-year period. Just a few months after his election, the COVID-19 pandemic rocked the world. That didn’t stop Gotabaya from implementing a complete ban on the importation and use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides on April 26, 2021. What was intended to be a positive move ahead for Sri Lanka’s nearly two million farmers soon backfired. 

The consequences of the decision were apparent quickly.  Al Jazeera reported that nearly a third of all agricultural land in the country remained dormant due to the ban. 

[RELATED: Farmers Struggle to Keep Up With the Rising Costs of Fertilizer]

Within six months of the ban, rice production in the country—a once very sufficient industry—dropped 20 percent, forcing Sri Lanka to import $450 million of rice to meet supply needs and surging rice prices rose nearly 50 percent.

Now, Sri Lanka will pay farmers across the country 40,000 million rupees ($200 million) to compensate for their barren harvests and crop failures. In addition to the funding, the Sri Lankan government will pay $149 million in price subsidies to rice farmers impacted by the loss. 

But Sri Lanka’s farmers who accrued huge debts and crop failures say the repayment is insufficient. The hit to the tea industry alone—Sri Lanka’s main export and source of foreign exchange—is estimated to have amounted to an economic loss of $425 million.

The ripple effect of the ban impacted the entire country. According to Foreign Policy, after the ban and the pandemic, nearly half a million Sri Lankans have sunken below the poverty line. 

Sri Lanka’s economic crisis—triggered by COVID-19 tourism closures and compounded by the agriculture industry collapse—has caused severe food shortages and even blackouts. As its first move in response to tea production crumbling and economic issues, the government partially lifted the agrochemical ban in November 2021—allowing the use of some non-organic farming practices while producing tea, coconut and rubber. Now, the country has entirely lifted the ban, but commercial banks lack foreign exchange to support importers trying to replenish the stock they went through during the ban.

In a 2021 USDA report concerning the country’s switch to only organic practices, the agency predicted “the lack of organic fertilizer productive capacity, coupled with the absence of a formalized plan to import organic fertilizers in lieu of chemical fertilizers, raises the potential for an adverse impact on food security.” And that’s precisely what happened. 

The post Sri Lanka’s Organic Experiment Went Very, Very Wrong appeared first on Modern Farmer.

The cattle breed, known as PRLR-SLICK, was developed using a genome-editing technique called CRISPR, which is used to breed animals with specific traits. Unlike genetically modified organisms (GMO), which typically involve adding genetic material from other organisms and result in a plant or animal that would not exist in nature, gene-editing utilizes genes already native in a species, resulting in an organism that could, theoretically, occur through a natural breeding process.

[RELATED: Breeding Better Beans]

The federal agency called the decision to introduce the beef cattle to be raised for meat “low risk” after determining that the intentional genomic alteration (IGA) of the cattle does not cause any safety concerns. Pending a forthcoming safety review, the meat could land on shelves in as little as two years.

In a press release, the FDA explained that IGAs are “alterations made using molecular technologies that introduce changes to the genome of an animal.” According to Successful Farming, a “precision breeding” company called Acceligen in Minnesota is responsible for utilizing the CRISPR technique to produce the slick-coat cattle. It’s not the first to use the technology on cows, however. In 2020, researchers at UC Davis used CRISPR technology to breed a cow, named Cosmo, designed to produce 75-percent male offspring.

In the past, the FDA has approved similar genetic modifications in salmon, goat, chicken, rabbit and, most recently, pigs. However, the PRLR-SLICK cattle are the first to receive an official “low-risk determination for enforcement discretion,” meaning the administration deemed there are no practical differences in the final product (meat) made by the gene-edited cattle and conventionally bred cattle. 

With the slick-coat trait occurring naturally in some cattle, the gene-edited cattle are the same—as far as a consumer is concerned—as other cattle with the same traits. “Further, the food from the cattle is the same as food from conventionally bred cattle that have the same slick-hair trait,” said the FDA. 

[RELATED: What Does the Future of Ethical Meat Look Like?]

The FDA reviewed genomic data and other information provided by the developer to reach its safety determination.  

Steven Solomon, director of the FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine, said in the press release that the decision will likely pave the way for future gene editing. “We expect that our decision will encourage other developers to bring animal biotechnology products forward for the FDA’s risk determination in this rapidly developing field, paving the way for animals containing low-risk IGAs to more efficiently reach the marketplace.”

Farmers that plan to use the PRLR-SLICK cattle will not have to register with the administration. 

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There are more than two million American farms and ranches. Nearly 30 percent of all jobs across the US are tied to food and agriculture, with half of those people working directly in the sector and the other half indirectly linked through manufacturing, shipping or retail. That’s more than 43 million jobs across the country, adding up to $2.3 trillion in annual wages.

Many of the study’s sponsors—which include the American Beverage Association, the American Farm Bureau Federation, the Fertilizer Institute and the US Dairy Export Council—noted that quantifying these numbers was crucial, especially as we look at exports coming from the United States in the face of supply chain crunches. “As they work to promote their states’ agricultural products for export around the globe, state commissioners, secretaries and directors of agriculture recognize that a thriving U.S. agricultural industry not only feeds our economy, but also nourishes the world,” said Ted McKinney, CEO of the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture (NASDA), in a release. 

The report looks at national numbers, but it also breaks them down state by state and even by congressional district. For instance, exports from New York totalled $2.5 billion last year, and more than 2.6 million people work in food and ag in Florida.

[RELATED: The Cost of COVID]

Two years into the pandemic, the survey shows that some areas of the industry are returning to pre-COVID numbers. There are about three million more jobs than at this time last year, with wages also climbing by 12 percent. Of course, there are also losses. Some estimates place the number of COVID-related deaths of agricultural workers at around 15,000 from March 2020 to March 2021. Nearly every community and corner of the industry experienced loss. 

For the industry sponsors, this report isn’t just a measure of how they’ve done but a look to the future. The study is “an outstanding reference when connecting with both policymakers and consumers, who rely on a steady supply chain but aren’t always familiar with food and ag’s economic significance,” said Brad Doyle, president of the American Soybean Association.

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The legislation states that farmworkers will eventually be entitled to overtime pay after 40 hours of work. If signed by Oregon Governor Kate Brown, as is expected, the law will require a five-year phase-in process. Starting in 2023-2024, the overtime compensation will kick in at 55 hours per week, then 48 hours in 2025-2026, with the 40-hour max beginning in 2027. The Oregon Senate passed the bill in a 17-10 vote.

The increased risk for farmworkers associated with hotter temperatures, tumultuous fire seasons and overall impacts of climate change was top of mind at the hearing, where some of the more than 1,000 people who submitted testimony raised the point that farmworkers are required to work outdoors regardless of the high temperatures, thick smoke and other extreme weather events.

And the work environment for Oregon farmworkers keeps getting more hostile. According to the National Weather Service, 2020 was the hottest year on record in Oregon since the service began in 1940, with July 2020 setting the record for the hottest month ever in Oregon. This year, Governor Brown has already declared the state’s first drought emergency in Klamath County—a month earlier than any drought declaration last year—citing low snowpack and streamflow numbers in prediction for another dry year. 

[RELATED: How the Pacific Northwest Heat Wave Is Affecting Farmworkers]

The testimony went on to highlight how farmworkers—who are often predominantly migrant workers—have long been under-compensated for their labor. The state of Oregon has more than 86,000 farmworkers, according to the US Bureau of Labor and Statistics. More than 90 percent of those workers are Latinx, primarily of Mexican origin, according to a study published by the University of Oregon. 

Because the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), which establishes minimum wage, overtime pay, recordkeeping and youth employment standards, excludes farmworkers, states are not federally required to compensate them with overtime pay, and the laws differ state by state.

This decision lands Oregon on a short list of states in which all farmworkers are covered by overtime laws alongside California and Washington. In states including Minnesota, New York, Maryland and Hawaii, some but not all farmworkers are eligible for overtime pay. All other states either do not include farmers in their overtime legislation or don’t have laws that mandate overtime pay for any occupation. 

Like Oregon, Washington is also phasing in overtime pay in the agricultural industry, with farmworkers currently earning overtime after 55 hours a week, down to 40 hours by 2024. In California, the legislation stating that farmworkers must earn the same overtime pay after 40 hours (as is the case for the majority of hourly workers) takes effect this year—excluding farms with 25 or fewer employees, which must begin to pay overtime for 40 plus hours starting in 2025.

The post Oregon Becomes Eighth State to Pass Overtime Pay for Farmworkers 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. 

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