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When cleaning crews dug deep into New Orleans’ clogged drains in 2018, they pulled up leaves, mud — and 46 tons of Mardi Gras beads. 

The sheer magnitude of waste accumulated over decades of Carnivals — and its impact on the flood-prone city’s drainage system — shocked many residents and city officials. 

“Once you hear a number like that, there’s no going back,” then-Public Works director Dani Galloway said at the time. “So we’ve got to do better.”

But nearly a decade later, New Orleans is generating more Mardi Gras garbage than ever. During the roughly five weeks of this year’s Carnival season, crews collected 1,363 tons of beaded necklaces, beer cans, plastic cups, and other refuse along the city’s parade routes — a 24 percent increase from the year before and the highest total on record. The trash tonnage is the equivalent of 741 cars. In New Orleans terms, it’s roughly the weight of the Steamboat Natchez or more than 1 million king cakes.  

.nola-mardi-gras-trash { --color-primary: #3c3830; --color-secondary: #777; --color-orange: #F79945; --color-turquoise: #12A07F; --color-fuchsia: #AC00E8; --color-cobalt: #3977F3; --color-earth: #3c3830; --typography-primary: "PolySans", Arial, sans-serif; --typography-secondary: "Basis Grotesque", Arial, sans-serif; --spacing-base: 10px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--typography-secondary); margin: 1.5rem auto; padding: 0; position: relative; width: 100%; } .nola-mardi-gras-trash * { box-sizing: border-box; } .nola-mardi-gras-trash svg text { font-family: var(--typography-secondary); } .nola-mardi-gras-trash__title { font-family: var(--typography-primary); font-size: 24px; margin: var(--spacing-base) 0; text-align: left; } .nola-mardi-gras-trash__subtitle { font-family: var(--typography-secondary); color: var(--color-primary); font-size: 18px; margin: 0 0 var(--spacing-base); text-align: left; } .nola-mardi-gras-trash__axis-label { color: var(--color-primary); font-size: 14px; } .nola-mardi-gras-trash .axis-grid line { stroke: #e0e0e0; stroke-opacity: 0.7; shape-rendering: crispEdges; } .nola-mardi-gras-trash .axis-grid .domain { stroke: none; } .nola-mardi-gras-trash .domain { stroke: #3c3830; } .nola-mardi-gras-trash .bar-label { font-family: var(--typography-secondary); font-size: 12px; fill: var(--color-primary); text-anchor: middle; } .nola-mardi-gras-trash__footer { display: flex; justify-content: space-between; align-items: flex-end; margin-top: 0px; gap: 16px; } .nola-mardi-gras-trash__credits { display: flex; flex-direction: column; } .nola-mardi-gras-trash__note { color: var(--color-secondary); font-size: 12px; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 4px; display: inline-block; font-style: italic; } .nola-mardi-gras-trash__source { color: var(--color-secondary); font-size: 12px; margin-top: 0; display: inline-block; } .nola-mardi-gras-trash__credit { color: var(--color-secondary); font-size: 12px; margin-top: 3px; font-style: italic; font-weight: bold; display: inline-block; } .nola-mardi-gras-trash__logo { height: auto; max-width: 62px; min-width: 50px; margin-left: auto; padding-right: 20px; margin-right: 0; margin-bottom: 0; transform: translateY(-2px); } Mardi Gras revelers are leaving behind more trash than ever Tons of trash collected from New Orleans parade routes, 2011–2026 *No Carnival in 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Source: City of New Orleans Dennis Dean / Verite / Clayton Aldern / Grist / Alexander Grey / Unsplash (function() { const INIT_KEY = '__grist_nola_mardi_gras_trash_initialized__'; if (window[INIT_KEY]) { return; } window[INIT_KEY] = true; const COLORS = { TEXT: 'var(--color-primary)', BAR: 'var(--color-fuchsia)', BAR_NEGATIVE: '#E57373' }; const BAR_RADIUS = 4; const svg = d3.select('#nola-mardi-gras-trash-bar-chart'); const getSvgHeight = () => parseInt(svg.attr('height')) || 450; const formatCompactWithB = (n) => d3.format('~s')(n).replace('G', 'B').replace('k', 'K'); function calculateYTicks(height, fontSize = 14) { const minSpacing = fontSize * 2; return Math.max(2, Math.floor(height / minSpacing)); } function measureYAxisWidth(svg, scale, chartHeight, formatTick) { const tickCount = calculateYTicks(chartHeight); const TICK_PADDING = 4; const tempGroup = svg.append('g') .attr('class', 'nola-mardi-gras-trash__y-axis-measure') .style('visibility', 'hidden'); const axis = d3.axisLeft(scale) .ticks(tickCount) .tickFormat(formatTick) .tickSize(0) .tickPadding(TICK_PADDING); tempGroup.call(axis); tempGroup.selectAll('text') .style('font-family', 'var(--typography-secondary)') .style('font-size', '14px'); let minX = 0; tempGroup.selectAll('text').each(function() { const bbox = this.getBBox(); if (bbox.x < minX) { minX = bbox.x; } }); tempGroup.remove(); return { width: -minX, tickCount, tickPadding: TICK_PADDING }; } const rawData = [{"Year":"2011","Tons":"930"},{"Year":"2012","Tons":"835"},{"Year":"2013","Tons":"845"},{"Year":"2014","Tons":"895"},{"Year":"2015","Tons":"905"},{"Year":"2016","Tons":"940"},{"Year":"2017","Tons":"1328"},{"Year":"2018","Tons":"1150"},{"Year":"2019","Tons":"1075"},{"Year":"2020","Tons":"1120"},{"Year":"2021","Tons":"0"},{"Year":"2022","Tons":"1145"},{"Year":"2023","Tons":"1165"},{"Year":"2024","Tons":"1065"},{"Year":"2025","Tons":"1100"},{"Year":"2026","Tons":"1364"}]; const categoryColumn = 'Year'; const valueColumn = 'Tons'; const chartData = rawData.map(d => ({ category: d[categoryColumn], value: +String(d[valueColumn]).replace(/,/g, '') })); function wrapSvgText(textSelection, width, lineHeight) { textSelection.each(function() { const text = d3.select(this); const words = text.text().split(/\s+/).reverse(); let word; let line = []; let lineNumber = 0; const y = text.attr('y') || 0; const dy = parseFloat(text.attr('dy')) || 0; let tspan = text.text(null).append('tspan').attr('x', 0).attr('y', y).attr('dy', dy + 'em'); while ((word = words.pop())) { line.push(word); tspan.text(line.join(' ')); if (tspan.node().getComputedTextLength() > width) { line.pop(); tspan.text(line.join(' ')); line = [word]; tspan = text.append('tspan').attr('x', 0).attr('y', y).attr('dy', ++lineNumber * (lineHeight / 14) + dy + 'em').text(word); } } }); } function detectLabelOverlap(labels, bandWidth) { let maxLabelWidth = 0; labels.each(function() { const bbox = this.getBBox ? this.getBBox() : { width: 0 }; maxLabelWidth = Math.max(maxLabelWidth, bbox.width); }); return maxLabelWidth > bandWidth * 0.9; } let rotatedLabels = false; function renderChart() { svg.selectAll('*').remove(); const LEFT_PADDING = 8; let needsRotation = rotatedLabels; const baseBottomMargin = 30; const rotatedBottomMargin = 42; const baseMargin = { top: 12, right: 12, bottom: needsRotation ? rotatedBottomMargin : baseBottomMargin, left: 0 }; const node = svg.node(); const styleWidth = parseInt(svg.style('width')); const attrWidth = parseInt(svg.attr('width')); const bboxWidth = node ? node.getBoundingClientRect().width : 0; const containerWidth = (bboxWidth > 0 ? bboxWidth : 0) || (attrWidth > 0 ? attrWidth : 0) || ((!isNaN(styleWidth) ? (styleWidth > 0 ? styleWidth : 0) : 0) || 600); const svgHeight = getSvgHeight(); const height = svgHeight - baseMargin.top - baseMargin.bottom; if (height <= 0) return; const yMin = d3.min(chartData, d => d.value); const yMax = d3.max(chartData, d => d.value); const yDomainMin = yMin < 0 ? yMin * 1.1 : 0; const yDomainMax = yMax > 0 ? yMax * 1.1 : 0; const y = d3.scaleLinear() .domain([yDomainMin, yDomainMax]) .range([height, 0]); const { width: yLabelWidth, tickCount: yTickCount, tickPadding: yTickPadding } = measureYAxisWidth(svg, y, height, formatCompactWithB); const margin = { ...baseMargin, left: yLabelWidth + LEFT_PADDING }; const width = containerWidth - margin.left - margin.right; if (width <= 0) return; svg.attr('height', svgHeight); const x = d3.scaleBand() .domain(chartData.map(d => d.category)) .range([0, width]) .padding(0.25); svg.append('g') .attr('class', 'axis-grid') .attr('transform', `translate(${margin.left},${margin.top})`) .call(d3.axisLeft(y).ticks(yTickCount).tickSize(-width).tickFormat('')); const xAxis = g => { g.attr('transform', `translate(${margin.left},${height + margin.top})`) .call(d3.axisBottom(x)); const labels = g.selectAll('.tick text') .attr('class', 'nola-mardi-gras-trash__axis-label') .style('fill', COLORS.TEXT) .text(function() { const t = d3.select(this).text(); return t === '2021' ? '2021*' : t; }); if (detectLabelOverlap(labels, x.bandwidth())) { needsRotation = true; } if (needsRotation) { labels .style('text-anchor', 'end') .attr('dx', '-0.5em') .attr('dy', '0.25em') .attr('transform', 'rotate(-45)'); } else { const maxWidth = Math.min(80, Math.max(48, width / chartData.length - 6)); labels .style('text-anchor', 'middle') .call(wrapSvgText, maxWidth, 14); } }; const yAxisGenerator = g => g .attr('transform', `translate(${margin.left},${margin.top})`) .call(d3.axisLeft(y).ticks(yTickCount).tickFormat(d => formatCompactWithB(d)).tickPadding(yTickPadding)) .selectAll('text') .attr('class', 'nola-mardi-gras-trash__axis-label') .style('fill', COLORS.TEXT); svg.append('g').call(xAxis); if (needsRotation ? !rotatedLabels : false) { rotatedLabels = true; return renderChart(); } svg.append('g').call(yAxisGenerator); const chart = svg.append('g').attr('transform', `translate(${margin.left},${margin.top})`); const defs = chart.append('defs'); // Add dashed zero line when data crosses zero if (yMin < 0 ? yMax > 0 : false) { chart.append('line') .attr('class', 'zero-line') .attr('x1', 0) .attr('y1', y(0)) .attr('x2', width) .attr('y2', y(0)) .attr('stroke', '#888') .attr('stroke-width', 1) .attr('stroke-dasharray', '4,4'); } const grayFilter = defs.append('filter').attr('id', 'nola-mardi-gras-trash-greyscale'); grayFilter.append('feColorMatrix').attr('type', 'saturate').attr('values', '0'); const barsMask = defs.append('mask').attr('id', 'nola-mardi-gras-trash-bars-mask'); chartData.forEach(d => { const barY = d.value >= 0 ? y(d.value) : y(0); const barHeight = Math.abs(y(d.value) - y(0)); barsMask.append('rect') .attr('x', x(d.category)) .attr('y', barY) .attr('width', x.bandwidth()) .attr('height', barHeight) .attr('rx', BAR_RADIUS) .attr('ry', BAR_RADIUS) .attr('fill', 'white'); }); chart.append('image') .attr('xlink:href', 'https://grist.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/mardi-gras-sequins-alexander-grey.jpg') .attr('x', 0) .attr('y', 0) .attr('width', width) .attr('height', height) .attr('preserveAspectRatio', 'xMidYMid slice') .attr('mask', 'url(#nola-mardi-gras-trash-bars-mask)') .attr('filter', 'url(#nola-mardi-gras-trash-greyscale)'); chart.selectAll('.bar') .data(chartData) .enter().append('rect') .attr('class', 'bar') .attr('x', d => x(d.category)) .attr('y', d => d.value >= 0 ? y(d.value) : y(0)) .attr('width', x.bandwidth()) .attr('height', d => Math.abs(y(d.value) - y(0))) .attr('rx', BAR_RADIUS) .attr('ry', BAR_RADIUS) .style('fill', COLORS.BAR) .style('opacity', 0.65); const labelYears = ['2017', '2026']; chart.selectAll('.bar-label') .data(chartData.filter(d => labelYears.includes(d.category))) .enter().append('text') .attr('class', 'bar-label') .attr('x', d => x(d.category) + x.bandwidth() / 2) .attr('y', d => y(d.value) - 5) .text(d => d3.format(',')(d.value)) .style('fill', COLORS.TEXT); } if (document.readyState === 'loading') { document.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', renderChart); } else { renderChart(); } window.addEventListener('resize', renderChart); })();

“To see the waste go up that much, it’s just absurd,” said Brett Davis, founder of Grounds Krewe, a nonprofit group trying to make Mardi Gras more sustainable through recycling and waste reduction efforts. 

It’s a century-old tradition for riders on parade floats to shower crowds with beaded necklaces, toys, and other items — collectively known as “throws.” Most are cheap plastic trinkets. The beads are often laden with toxic chemicals, including unsafe levels of lead. Many throws are dropped moments after they’re caught, then crushed under feet and eventually swept up and hauled to landfills. 

City officials initially blamed the rise in rubbish on the popularity of this year’s festivities, which ran from January 6 to February 17 and included more than 30 float parades. An estimated 2.2 million people visited downtown New Orleans during the Carnival season, about 10 percent more than in 2025, according to the Downtown Development District, which drew on data from location analytics company Placer.ai.

“The increase from last year was directly associated with the larger crowds,” Matt Torri, the city’s sanitation director, told the City Council in March. “Anybody who was out at this year’s parades definitely took note that there seemed to be more people enjoying the Carnival season, which is great for the city.”

But a Verite News analysis of annual attendance and city cleanup records shows no clear relationship between crowds and trash levels. Overall, Mardi Gras waste tonnage has trended upward over the past decade, regardless of the year-to-year changes in attendance. The Mardi Gras season in 2020, for instance, drew more people — about 2.4 million — but produced roughly 241 fewer tons of garbage than in 2026.

In the early 2010s, trash tonnage hovered around 880 tons. It spiked in 2017, surpassing 1,320 tons, and has not fallen below 1,000 tons since. The only exception was 2021, when no trash was recorded because the city canceled parades and most Carnival festivities due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

.nola-mardi-gras-attendance-trash { --color-primary: #3c3830; --color-secondary: #777; --color-orange: #F79945; --color-turquoise: #12A07F; --color-fuchsia: #AC00E8; --color-cobalt: #3977F3; --color-earth: #3c3830; --typography-primary: "PolySans", Arial, sans-serif; --typography-secondary: "Basis Grotesque", Arial, sans-serif; --spacing-base: 10px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--typography-secondary); margin: 1.5rem auto; padding: 0; position: relative; width: 100%; } .nola-mardi-gras-attendance-trash * { box-sizing: border-box; } .nola-mardi-gras-attendance-trash svg text { font-family: var(--typography-secondary); } .nola-mardi-gras-attendance-trash__title { font-family: var(--typography-primary); font-size: 24px; margin: var(--spacing-base) 0; } .nola-mardi-gras-attendance-trash__subtitle { font-family: var(--typography-secondary); color: var(--color-primary); font-size: 18px; margin: 0 0 var(--spacing-base); } .nola-mardi-gras-attendance-trash__axis-label { color: var(--color-primary); font-size: 14px; } .nola-mardi-gras-attendance-trash .axis-grid line { stroke: #e0e0e0; stroke-opacity: 0.7; shape-rendering: crispEdges; } .nola-mardi-gras-attendance-trash .axis-grid .domain { stroke: none; } .nola-mardi-gras-attendance-trash .domain { stroke: #3c3830; } .nola-mardi-gras-attendance-trash .line { fill: none; stroke-width: 4px; stroke-linecap: round; stroke-linejoin: round; } .nola-mardi-gras-attendance-trash .line--projected { stroke-dasharray: 6 4; } .nola-mardi-gras-attendance-trash .pulsing-dot { stroke: white; stroke-width: 1.7px; } .nola-mardi-gras-attendance-trash .data-label { font-family: var(--typography-secondary); font-size: 11px; fill: var(--color-primary); paint-order: stroke fill; stroke: white; stroke-width: 3px; stroke-linejoin: round; stroke-linecap: round; } .nola-mardi-gras-attendance-trash__legend { display: flex; flex-wrap: wrap; gap: 6px 16px; margin-bottom: 8px; } .nola-mardi-gras-attendance-trash__legend-item { display: flex; align-items: center; gap: 6px; font-size: 13px; color: var(--color-primary); } .nola-mardi-gras-attendance-trash__legend-color { width: 16px; height: 3px; border-radius: 2px; flex-shrink: 0; } .nola-mardi-gras-attendance-trash__footer { display: flex; justify-content: space-between; align-items: flex-end; margin-top: 8px; gap: 16px; } .nola-mardi-gras-attendance-trash__credits { display: flex; flex-direction: column; } .nola-mardi-gras-attendance-trash__source { color: var(--color-secondary); font-size: 12px; margin-top: 0; display: inline-block; } .nola-mardi-gras-attendance-trash__credit { color: var(--color-secondary); font-size: 12px; margin-top: 3px; font-style: italic; font-weight: bold; display: inline-block; } .nola-mardi-gras-attendance-trash__logo { height: auto; max-width: 62px; min-width: 50px; margin-left: auto; padding-right: 20px; margin-right: 0; margin-bottom: 0; transform: translateY(-2px); } Carnival trash hit a record even as attendance lagged behind 2020 levels Downtown attendance vs. city-wide trash collection during Mardi Gras, 2020–2026 Attendance (downtown) Trash (city-wide, tons) Source: Placer.ai / New Orleans Downtown Development District / City of New Orleans Dennis Dean / Verite / Clayton Aldern / Grist (function() { const INIT_KEY = '__grist_nola_mardi_gras_attendance_trash_initialized__'; if (window[INIT_KEY]) { return; } window[INIT_KEY] = true; const COLORS = { TEXT: 'var(--color-primary)', SERIES: ['var(--color-orange)', 'var(--color-fuchsia)', 'var(--color-turquoise)', 'var(--color-cobalt)', 'var(--color-earth)'] }; const svg = d3.select('#nola-mardi-gras-attendance-trash-line-chart'); const getSvgHeight = () => parseInt(svg.attr('height')) || 400; // Format for line-end labels: 2 decimal places (e.g., 1.64M, 2.26M) const formatCompactWithB = (n) => { // For small values (< 1000), avoid SI prefix notation (which shows "m" for milli) if (Math.abs(n) < 1000 ? Math.abs(n) > 0 : false) { // Use up to 2 decimal places, trim trailing zeros return d3.format('.2~f')(n); } // Use .3s for 3 significant figures, giving 2 decimal places (e.g., 1.64M, 2.26M) return d3.format('.3s')(n).replace('G', 'B').replace('k', 'K'); }; // Format for y-axis ticks: clean round numbers (0, 500K, 1M, 1.5M, 2M) const formatAxisTick = (n) => { if (n === 0) return '0'; const absN = Math.abs(n); if (absN >= 1e9) { const val = n / 1e9; return (val % 1 === 0 ? val.toFixed(0) : val.toFixed(1)) + 'B'; } if (absN >= 1e6) { const val = n / 1e6; return (val % 1 === 0 ? val.toFixed(0) : val.toFixed(1)) + 'M'; } if (absN >= 1e3) { const val = n / 1e3; return (val % 1 === 0 ? val.toFixed(0) : val.toFixed(1)) + 'K'; } return n.toString(); }; function calculateYTicks(height, fontSize = 14) { // Limit to 4-5 ticks for cleaner appearance const minSpacing = fontSize * 4; return Math.min(5, Math.max(2, Math.floor(height / minSpacing))); } function measureYAxisWidth(svg, scale, chartHeight, formatTick) { const tickCount = calculateYTicks(chartHeight); const TICK_PADDING = 4; const tempGroup = svg.append('g') .attr('class', 'nola-mardi-gras-attendance-trash__y-axis-measure') .style('visibility', 'hidden'); const axis = d3.axisLeft(scale) .ticks(tickCount) .tickFormat(formatTick) .tickSize(0) .tickPadding(TICK_PADDING); tempGroup.call(axis); tempGroup.selectAll('text') .style('font-family', 'var(--typography-secondary)') .style('font-size', '14px'); let minX = 0; tempGroup.selectAll('text').each(function() { const bbox = this.getBBox(); if (bbox.x < minX) { minX = bbox.x; } }); tempGroup.remove(); return { width: -minX, tickCount, tickPadding: TICK_PADDING }; } const rawData = [{"Year":"2020","Attendance":"2400000","Trash":"1123"},{"Year":"2022","Attendance":"1900000","Trash":"1155"},{"Year":"2023","Attendance":"2100000","Trash":"1185"},{"Year":"2024","Attendance":"2000000","Trash":"1050"},{"Year":"2025","Attendance":"2000000","Trash":"1100"},{"Year":"2026","Attendance":"2200000","Trash":"1364"}]; const xColumn = 'Year'; // Dual-axis: Attendance on left, Trash on right const attendanceData = rawData.map(d => ({ x: new Date(d[xColumn]), y: +d.Attendance })); const trashData = rawData.map(d => ({ x: new Date(d[xColumn]), y: +d.Trash })); const seriesData = [ { key: 'Attendance', label: 'Attendance', color: COLORS.SERIES[0], values: attendanceData, axis: 'left' }, { key: 'Trash', label: 'Trash', color: COLORS.SERIES[1], values: trashData, axis: 'right' } ]; function renderChart() { svg.selectAll('*').remove(); const node = svg.node(); const styleWidth = parseInt(svg.style('width')); const attrWidth = parseInt(svg.attr('width')); const bboxWidth = node ? node.getBoundingClientRect().width : 0; const containerWidth = (bboxWidth > 0 ? bboxWidth : 0) || (attrWidth > 0 ? attrWidth : 0) || ((!isNaN(styleWidth) ? (styleWidth > 0 ? styleWidth : 0) : 0) || 600); const svgHeight = getSvgHeight(); const baseMargins = { top: 20, right: 20, bottom: 36 }; const height = svgHeight - baseMargins.top - baseMargins.bottom; if (height <= 0) return; const x = d3.scaleTime(); const yLeft = d3.scaleLinear().range([height, 0]); const yRight = d3.scaleLinear().range([height, 0]); // Attendance domain (left axis) — range from ~1.8M to ~2.4M like the original const [attMin, attMax] = d3.extent(attendanceData, d => d.y); const attPadding = (attMax - attMin) * 0.15; yLeft.domain([attMin - attPadding, attMax + attPadding]); // Trash domain (right axis) — range from ~1000 to ~1400 like the original const [trashMin, trashMax] = d3.extent(trashData, d => d.y); const trashPadding = (trashMax - trashMin) * 0.15; yRight.domain([trashMin - trashPadding, trashMax + trashPadding]); x.domain(d3.extent(attendanceData, d => d.x)); // Measure both y-axis widths const leftMeasure = measureYAxisWidth(svg, yLeft, height, d => formatAxisTick(d)); const rightMeasure = measureYAxisWidth(svg, yRight, height, d => formatAxisTick(d)); const LEFT_PADDING = 8; const RIGHT_PADDING = 8; const margin = { top: baseMargins.top, right: rightMeasure.width + RIGHT_PADDING + 8, bottom: baseMargins.bottom, left: leftMeasure.width + LEFT_PADDING }; const width = containerWidth - margin.left - margin.right; if (width <= 0) return; x.range([0, width]); // Each series uses its own y-scale const yScaleFor = (series) => series.axis === 'left' ? yLeft : yRight; svg.attr('height', svgHeight); const firstSeries = seriesData[0].values; const startYear = firstSeries[0].x.getFullYear(); const endYear = firstSeries[firstSeries.length - 1].x.getFullYear(); const totalYears = endYear - startYear; const minLabelSpacingPx = 60; const maxTicks = Math.max(2, Math.floor(width / minLabelSpacingPx)); const approxYearsPerTick = Math.max(1, Math.ceil(totalYears / maxTicks)); const niceSteps = [1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 25, 50, 100]; const stepYears = niceSteps.find(s => s >= approxYearsPerTick) || niceSteps[niceSteps.length - 1]; const xTickInterval = d3.timeYear.every(stepYears); // Grid lines based on left axis svg.append('g') .attr('class', 'axis-grid') .attr('transform', `translate(${margin.left},${height + margin.top})`) .call(d3.axisBottom(x).ticks(xTickInterval).tickSize(-height).tickFormat('')); svg.append('g') .attr('class', 'axis-grid') .attr('transform', `translate(${margin.left},${margin.top})`) .call(d3.axisLeft(yLeft).ticks(leftMeasure.tickCount).tickSize(-width).tickFormat('')); // X axis const xAxis = g => g .attr('transform', `translate(${margin.left},${height + margin.top})`) .call(d3.axisBottom(x).ticks(xTickInterval).tickFormat(d3.timeFormat('%Y'))) .selectAll('text') .attr('class', 'nola-mardi-gras-attendance-trash__axis-label') .style('fill', COLORS.TEXT) .style('text-anchor', 'middle'); // Left y-axis (Attendance) const yLeftAxisGen = d3.axisLeft(yLeft) .ticks(leftMeasure.tickCount) .tickFormat(d => formatAxisTick(d)) .tickPadding(leftMeasure.tickPadding); const yLeftAxis = g => g .attr('transform', `translate(${margin.left},${margin.top})`) .call(yLeftAxisGen) .selectAll('text') .attr('class', 'nola-mardi-gras-attendance-trash__axis-label') .style('fill', COLORS.SERIES[0]); 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Since 2020, when the Downtown Development District began tracking visits in the Central Business and Warehouse districts, annual attendance has stayed within a relatively tight range, between 1.9 million and 2.4 million. Still, the trash tally has swung wildly, indicating that other factors are at play. The development district doesn’t track citywide visits, but its annual downtown tally is considered the most accurate indication of Carnival attendance. 

The office of Mayor Helena Moreno and the city’s sanitation department did not respond to requests for comment. 

Parade trash remains a problem for the city’s drainage system. After the infamous bead blockage of 2018, the city began installing temporary filter contraptions, known as “gutter buddies,” at catch basins along parade routes, but conservation groups say the outfalls still spew more litter into canals and Lake Pontchartrain during the Carnival season.

The upswing in trash is occurring alongside a seemingly contradictory trend of waste reduction. In recent years, many parade organizations, called krewes, have cut back on plastic beads and other “junk” throws. They’ve opted for higher-value items like socks, baseball caps, wooden cooking spoons, and metal drinking cups. 

Grounds Krewe and other groups have also expanded their recycling efforts. They set set up stations to collect bottles, cans, and reusable throws, and some volunteers even pick through the parade debris for recyclable items. This year, the groups diverted about 28 tons from landfills. That’s despite the city pulling back its support for recycling this year because of budget concerns. Even if the city government spent the $200,000 it initially earmarked for recycling, “it’s not going to reverse the 24 percent gain” in waste, Davis said.  

There was some hope that the volume of throws would be curbed by rising prices for beads and other trinkets, a result of higher inflation and President Donald Trump’s steep tariffs on imports from China, where most beads are made. Some parade-goers said they noticed the change, taking to social media to complain about stingier krewes.

“We are really perplexed,” Davis said. “All that is happening, with people throwing fewer beads and a lot of krewes switching to higher-quality throws, but waste is still going upward.” 

The swelling tonnage may have less to do with the throwers and more with the catchers. Davis and some city leaders say parade-goers are setting up earlier, staying longer, and bringing even more of the comforts of home: folding chairs, canopy tents, coolers, grills, and wagonloads of food. They’re also chaining together walls of ladders, erecting scaffolding, installing portable toilets, and plunking down generators and old sofas. As the season ends, many of these items are broken, dirty, or too much of a hassle to haul home. 

These abandoned items, which can range in weight from 5 pounds for a folding chair to 300 pounds for a couch, are an increasingly heavy lift for cleanup crews, City Council President JP Morrell said.

“The reality is that they get their use out of this stuff, and then it becomes a tremendous amount of debris that our workers have to deal with because these people had no intention of ever picking this stuff up,” he said. “It goes towards a sense of abject entitlement — that our entire city exists to serve other people’s whims.”

Discarded Mardi Gras beads and trash cover a street after 2014 Mardi Gras celebrations in New Orleans, Louisiana. Gerald Herbert / AP Photo

Many of these gear-laden revelers are territorial, roping off patches of sidewalk or spreading tarps across grassy street medians, known locally as neutral grounds. These public-space appropriators have come to be known as the “Krewe of Chad,” after the name, spraypainted across a large patch of grass, went viral in 2013. 

These “Chadders,” as Morrell calls them, appear emboldened by the recent ebb in the enforcement of the city’s parade rules. Officially, early birds aren’t supposed to set up until four hours before a parade starts, but this rule is regularly flouted. In 2024, the list of banned items grew to include many of the things that have become commonplace — tents, tarps, and viewing platforms among them. A crackdown that year, which included the seizure of truckloads of encampment gear, appeared to briefly change behavior, Davis said. 

But last year, the city announced it would scale back enforcement and prioritize security after a terror attack on New Year’s Day killed 14 people on Bourbon Street. 

Enforcement was further scaled back by the city’s current budget crisis. Amid layoffs and other cutbacks aimed at reducing a $220 million deficit, Morrell admitted that efforts to clear Carnival encampments would be “spotty.”

“How are they going to enforce it? Well, to be honest, we’re hard up for cash,” Morrell said on an Instagram post in early February. He stressed that police and other city departments would “do their best,” but enforcement wouldn’t be as “robust as it could be.”

Torri, the sanitation director, said the city had the capacity to clear large items on just one day before the final cleanup on Fat Tuesday. “Mardi Gras Day was a major undertaking,” he told the council in March. Crews started working at 8 a.m. and didn’t finish until 1 a.m. “It’s a full day of cleaning because of everything that people have brought. Tarps, ladders, tents, coolers, grills are left because they’re disposable things that were only intended to last the weeks of Mardi Gras.”

Davis predicted the trend toward fewer but better throws will continue, and his organization will keep pushing for more reuse and recycling. But, he added, the policies meant to curb parade encampments — and the waste they leave behind — are only as effective as their enforcement.

“Having the krewes throw less is great, but what’s really heavy is a couch and all the stuff people brought out in wheelbarrows,” Davis said. “Unless we have police out there and the trucks to haul it away, this kind of behavior creeps back. And that’s what we’re seeing now.” 

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This story was originally published by Grist with the headline New Orleans wants to fix its Mardi Gras mess. So why is the trash pile still growing? on May 11, 2026.

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Join us on May 21st at 6:30pm for a panel on Radicals, Realists, and Repression: The State of Activism in the US. The panel will feature Prof. Thomas Zeitzoff, professor…

Zimbabwe’s Fast Track Land Reform Program (FTLRP), launched in 2000, sought to correct colonial-era land inequalities by redistributing land from approximately 4,500 white commercial farmers — who held over 70% of arable land — to millions of landless Black Zimbabweans. While rooted in legitimate grievances, the program’s hasty and often violent implementation triggered severe economic collapse, social disruption, and environmental degradation.

This case study examines the FTLRP’s historical context, motivations, and wide-ranging impacts, drawing critical lessons for future land reform efforts across Africa and beyond.

Read the case study here

No Kings No Wars.Step Up For Democracy.

Mary Purdy, an integrative and eco-minded Registered Dietary Nutritionist, is the former Managing Director of the Nutrient Density Initiative. Her work integrates personal well-being and ecological health. As a dietary educator, she connects the dots between farming practices, food systems and individual health. Mary is also an adjunct faculty at the Master’s Program in Sustainable Food Systems at The Culinary Institute of America. She is a podcaster and author of “Serving the Broccoli Gods” and “The Microbiome Diet Reset.” This article is an edited transcript of her talk at a recent Bioneers Conference.

The concept of One Health states that humans and our health are inextricably connected to the health of the environment, of our fellow animals, of bees, birds, and are interdependent. The cornerstone of those relationships is the soil. Currently, the industrial way that we are producing food is contributing to greenhouse gases and biodiversity loss. It is using enormous amounts of land, using and contaminating freshwater, contributing to eutrophication which is killing our marine life, eroding our soil, and is a leading cause of soil contamination and air pollution. We’re losing habitats for people and animals. And a lot of this is disproportionately affecting BIPOC and marginalized populations.

Along with all of that collateral damage, the food system is producing, in large proportion, foods that don’t support health and well-being. Half of all Americans are diabetic or prediabetic. About 40% of Americans will be diagnosed with cancer and one third of teenagers are prediabetic.  Needless to say, we have a serious health crisis on our hands.

The majority of calories come from ultra processed foods, which sometimes is the only food accessible or affordable to people. A large chunk of the protein that we consume comes from industrial processed animals. Agriculture uses over one billion pounds of pesticides every single year, and we have increased the use of synthetic fertilizer 800 percent compared to 50 to 75 years ago. If we want to change this system, we should look at corporate farms and large agribusinesses that promote the practices that degrade our environment and make us suffer. 

But I don’t want to blame the farmers. I want to honor and uplift them. Farmers are doing incredible work and getting paid very little money for it. But the question is: “Why have we been farming this way?” The main reason is that yield is emphasized over quality of food. There’s a reliance on government subsidies that incentivize farmers to continue to use industrial practices. There’s security in using agrochemicals which have been in use for a long time. There’s a lack of time, resources, and education.

The current system does not provide the basic minimum nutritional needs of vitamins A, C, E, D, K or minerals. We’re not getting enough fiber. We’re not getting enough omega 3 fatty acids. We’re definitely not getting enough polyphenols to help support our health and well-being.

Why is this? Because food grown in the industrial system is less nutritious, in other words the food is not nutrient dense. The Nutrient Density Initiative defines nutrient-dense foods as foods that are rich in the vitamins, minerals, fiber, healthy fats, and polyphenols that research has shown to be beneficial for human health. And that these foods are also free of ingredients that we know degrade our health – agrochemicals, pesticides, additives, etc. All of these nutritional qualities are absolutely influenced by the way that we grow our food and the agricultural practices that are used.

Nutrients drive every chemical reaction in your body. The production of neurotransmitters in your brain and your gut are driven by nutrients. The creation and function of your immune system is driven by nutrients. The synthesis of your liver that is trying to neutralize all the toxins that regularly come into your body are driven by nutrients. So our brain and our body are functioning in accordance with the nutritional value of that food that we give it.

We are what we eat, kind of. The idea that food is our medicine isn’t always true, although it should be. The USDA has documented a significant decline in the nutritional quality of food over the past 50 years. There are up to 25 to 50 percent less vitamins and minerals, depending on the crop, than there were 5 decades ago. There are lower levels of polyphenols and omega 3 fatty acids in a lot of the foods that should be high in them. The science is really clear about this.

Food and nutrition start in the soil; 95 percent of our food is grown or raised on soil. When the soil is healthy, humans tend to be healthier. Soil health and fertility directly influence the nutritional quality of food. Healthy soils provide those essential nutrients. Soils are the medium in which food is grown and determines the quality and flavor of food. So when nutrition is deficient in the soil, there is less uptake by the plant of those nutrients.

Graphic by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) via Creative Commons

So, what is healthy soil? There are different definitions. I will characterize three. The first one is having a diverse community of a large number of microorganisms in the soil. Second is soil organic matter, which is made up of decomposed plants and animals that provide living plants with nutrition. And lastly, it is a well-developed structure so the soil is able to withstand floods, droughts and erosion by retaining water. Good soil structure also allows plant roots to reach deep into the soil and gather more nutrients.

Soil health is not only one of the strongest pathways to improve the quality of nutrition, but it also increases soil’s capacity to sequester carbon and support healthier ecosystems.  

The plant is not acting alone. Plants depend on soil microbes for their health. There’s a wonderful symbiotic relationship with the plant and soil microorganisms. The plant’s roots only go so far, so plants need help. The microbes provide that help by bringing minerals and other nutrients to the root zone in exchange for carbohydrates that the plants provide to the microbes. Beneficial microbes suppress the pathogenic microbes that we don’t want in the soil. And they are key for helping the plant synthesize the compounds called polyphenols, which have wonderful antioxidant properties and also provide flavor to the plants.

Polyphenols have a really positive influence on human health. When we don’t get enough polyphenols, people become more susceptible to all different kinds of diseases.

Additionally, polyphenols are a prebiotic feeding the beneficial microbes in our gut. Flavonoids are a type of polyphenol and flavones are a class of flavonoids that contribute to aroma and flavor. There is a strong connection between flavor and nutrition.

When we eat a carrot or a piece of spinach that has not been excessively washed or heated, along with it, you are ingesting some of the microorganisms from the plant’s microbiome which helps support our gut microbiome.

But when synthetic fertilizers are used to grow crops, that hinders the formation of the plant’s roots going further down into the ground to take up nutrients. Additionally, when we use synthetic chemical fertilizers year-after-year, there is a depletion of nutrients in the soil. Microbial diversity is reduced. It reduces phytochemical production, as well as things like vitamin C and trace minerals in plants. Chemical fertilizers are also bad for the environment. They run off of the farm into waterways contaminating drinking water.

And then there’s pesticides. Pesticides also reduce the soil microbial diversity. When people get exposed to pesticides, whether that’s direct exposure or from residues, there’s a higher incidence of endocrine disruption issues, cardiovascular, and neurodegenerative diseases. A lot of farmers are struggling with Parkinson’s disease. Birth defects, respiratory illnesses, cancers are also caused by pesticides. Needless to say, farm workers are on the front lines of exposure to toxic chemicals. So there’s a serious environmental injustice issue around pesticides.

Pesticides are having a negative impact on the human gut microbiome and inhibit phytochemical synthesis. A plant under stress normally creates phytochemical compounds as an immune response to protect themselves when it is exposed to things like pests, predators and adverse weather conditions. When we eat the plant, we get the benefit of the phytochemicals which make our immune system strong as well. However, if a pesticide is used to protect the plant, the plant doesn’t have to produce those immune-enhancing compounds.

Phytochemicals, which is the family name for different polyphenols, are associated with better cardiovascular health, better brain health, better blood sugar balance, improved lung function, better immune health, less incidents of cancer, as well as a healthier and diverse gut microbiome.

In contrast to an industrial chemical approach to farming, there are practices – whether we call them regenerative, conservation, organic, common sense, or traditional – that build the health of the soil and, as a result, grow more nutritious crops: reducing the disturbance to the soil by using low or no tillage, having a lot of biodiversity on the farm or garden, keeping the ground covered with cover crops or mulch, using compost, rotating crops, eliminating chemicals, and integrating livestock into the fields. It’s not just about using one or two of these practices, it is the whole suite that increases soil health and grows more nutritious crops.

And the good thing is that they also have planetary benefits. When we garden or farm, whether it is large scale or small scale, we are helping to elevate the ability of the soil to sequester carbon, which is key for the climate crisis. These practices also help provide pollinator habitats and reduce environmental harm in general.

There’s a huge variation between the nutrient density of plants that come from different farming systems, but in general, when we see more of these agroecological practices in play, we see higher levels of vitamins, minerals, beta carotene, etc. and lower levels of heavy metals.

The Nutrient Density Initiative works with Edacious, a nutrition analysis food lab. We had a number of our members, who use these practices, send in samples of their produce and meat products and had Edacious compare them to the conventional versions of the same product.

Peaches tested from Frog Hollow Farm had over 200% higher vitamin C compared to the conventional peaches, much higher iron levels, much higher alpha carotene, and a number of other vitamins and minerals were much higher. While we may not be able to say definitively that we will always get the same results, data like this suggests a link between the positive benefits of soil health and the nutritional density of plants.

The regeneratively grown citrus that we tested had higher amounts of flavones, and higher total value antioxidant levels when compared to conventionally grown samples.

We also looked at dairy. An Alexandre Family Farms dairy product, when compared to a conventional product, had a much more favorable omega 6 to 3 ratio which is very important for inflammation and other immune functions. It also had higher protein and higher levels of certain nutrients such as calcium, B2, and phosphorus.

The Rodale Institute did a side-by-side trial comparing butternut squashes grown conventionally and with regenerative methods and found that regenerative butternut squash had higher total polyphenols, and higher levels of carotenoid levels.

We conducted a pilot protein project. Nutrient Density Initiative members sent in chicken and beef products, and once again compared them to conventionally grown counterparts. We found higher amounts of omega 3s, lower amounts of overall fat including saturated fat, more balanced omega 6 to 3 ratios, more protein per serving, and no heavy metals detected in the products raised with the regenerative practices.

These are small trials, there’s always going to be variation depending on environment, depending on species or varietal of food, etc. I want to make sure that, at this point, I am not making grandiose claims, but that data we have collected so far is clearly demonstrating that when the soil is healthy, we’re going to produce crops with higher nutritional density.

So when and if possible, we can be citizen eaters. Support organic and regenerative farmers who are using the practices that I mentioned, let your grocer know that you want nutritious food, choose minimally processed food, if you can. Let your politicians know food nutrition is an issue you care about. Ask them to support a Farm Bill that actually protects soil health and biodiversity, and rewards the farmers for doing regenerative practices.

The post The Path to Good Health is Made of Soil appeared first on Bioneers.

Dan Kittredge is an organic farmer in Massachusetts following in the footsteps of his parents who are organic farming movement pioneers. As a farmer, he became interested in the flavor and aroma of food, and turned his attention to researching the complexities of food quality and nutrient density. Dan has worked with researchers, NGOs, and farmers in India, Russia, and Central America. In 2010, he founded the Bionutrient Food Association to educate and empower people to make healthy food choices based on research and science. This article is an edited transcript of Dan’s talk at a recent Bioneers Conference.

My parents were back-to-the-land homesteaders starting in the early 1980s. They bought land and built a farm. Their day job was running the Northeast Organic Farming Association, commonly referred to as NOFA. They wrote some of the first organic standards in the country and produced a conference; that was their day job, but their lifestyle was the farm.

After working on their farm through my teens and 20s, I got married and realized I needed to make a living. Like a lot of farmers, I wasn’t able to because the farm suffered with pest pressure and disease pressure. So I started studying beyond the organic rubric because organic was not providing me the success I was looking for. I looked to nature and saw plants flourishing, but didn’t see plants flourishing in my fields.

I did a lot of research and shifted my farming practices, still staying within an organic framework. I got to a point where pests were dissipating, diseases were dissipating, yields were going up, flavor was going up, shelf life was going up, cost of production was going down, and I was making a living farming, working 20 hours a week. At that point, I felt obliged to start talking about what I was learning. I knew the permaculture, biodynamic and agroecology communities, but none of them were focusing on the nutritional caliber of food, so in 2010, I founded an organization called the Bionutrient Food Association, focusing on the nutritional quality of food as the objective.

By quality, I’m talking about flavor, aroma, and nutrient value, not aesthetics and uniformity, which is how a lot of food is defined by the industry today. Our initial work for a number of years focused on education: conferences, courses, workshops, etc. We found a lot of success in educating people about how nature evolved things to grow, as opposed to a narrow focus on NPK fertilizers and soil pH, which are the things that people are taught in universities about agronomy. We decided to teach people how nature has been growing plants for hundreds of millions of years, and as we did that, we found success across multiple ecosystems, with various scales, and with different crops, and tried to figure out a way to bring that to scale.

Economics is a powerful force in today’s age. Our goal was to figure out how to align economic incentives with ecological benefits and human health benefits. If we could provide a dynamic where people buying food could differentiate between a higher and lower nutritional content of, for example, carrots, our supposition is that people will choose the higher and leave the lower quality on the shelf. The work we’ve been doing for the last eight years from a research standpoint is characterizing that variation, identifying what causes it, and developing ways to assess it.

Dan Kittredge

From a foundational standpoint, our vision is to go beyond labels and certifications. It’s not about if you are organic or not, if you are regenerative or not, if you are local or not. We want to give people the ability to actually measure the nutrient levels of the food in real time, and the science with which you would do that is called spectroscopy. That’s how the Hubble space telescope works. It’s how the James Webb telescope works. We can read the atmosphere of a planet 10,000 light years away and determine that it has methane in it. If we can do that, we should be able to tell what a carrot a few millimeters away is made up of.

We built our first handheld meter in 2017 and our first lab a year later. We had people send in carrots and spinach from across the U.S., from grocery stores, farmers’ markets and farms, organic, and non-organic. We wanted to survey the supply chain, to find out how much nutrient variation there is. In 2019, we set up our second lab in California at Chico State University. That year in both of our labs in Michigan and Chico State, we had farmers send in crops from the field in triplicate. They would harvest the crops, they would pull samples of the soil, and they would answer management data questions: What was the variety? When did you plant it? How did you prepare the soil? What’s your fertility program? So we could overlay nutrient variations in food against managing practices and causal factors against soil metrics to see what patterns we could find.

In 2020 we set up our third lab in Europe. Farmers sent in crops from their fields for testing and citizen scientists sent in crops from grocery stores and farmers’ markets. We tested samples for four years – 10,000 crop samples, 25 different crops, hundreds of farms, from four continents – to understand the nature of the supply chain and what causes nutritional variation in foods. All the data is available on the Bionutrient Food Association website and is in the public commons.

As an example, let’s look at sulfur, which is an element or nutrient the body needs to function. In carrots, the lowest level we found was 8.41mg per 100g. The highest level was 33.19. That’s a 4x variation. If we assign 100 to the highest level, the vast majority of the samples were between 20 and 40 out of 100. Most carrots have relatively low levels of sulfur in relation to what they could have.

Phosphorous in carrots, we found an 8x variation. Most carrots tested in the 27th percentile. The vast majority of the sample sets were below the 50th percentile. Most crops have relatively low levels of nutrients in them in relation to what they could have. There is a presumption that all food is uniform. We have found that that is absolutely not the case.

What about antioxidants? Antioxidants are known to protect cells against free radical damage and help prevent disease. Antioxidants are measured in FRAP (Ferric Reducing Antioxidant Power) units. In carrots, 4.92 FRAP units per 100 grams is the lowest we found, 195 is the highest we found. That’s a 40 to 1 variation.

In the old days, before they invented pharmaceuticals, medical practitioners talked about medicinal plants, which have intense flavor and aroma that are associated with compounds such as polyphenols, terpenoids, and alkaloids which promote good health.

Humans have evolved with a capacity to discern relative nutrient levels in food through flavor; a whole bunch of our DNA is associated with discerning nutrient levels with our noses and our tongues. It’s the high flavonoid compounds that are understood to be anti-cancer, anti-diabetes, and protect against heart disease, etc.

Our testing showed a 20x variation in flavonoids. Most samples were in the 7th percentile. The vast majority of the samples were below the 20th percentile. Almost everything out there in the supply chain is relatively poor in relation to what’s possible.

What causes that variation? Some people say genetics. We tested different carrot varieties–Napoli, Bolero, Nantes, Mokum. We found a wide range in nutrient levels in the same crop variety, and have not found any connection between genetics and nutrient levels.

Then we tested soil type and have not seen any connection between soil type, bioregion, or climate zone, and nutrient levels.

Some people say point of purchase: we tested crops from farm stands, CSAs, farmers markets, home gardens, and stores and saw quality variation in all categories. We see variation everywhere. None of these dynamics is sufficient to predict quality.

Based on our testing, regenerative, organic, biodynamic, and permaculture also do not seem to, from a scientific standpoint, connect to increased nutrition. None of these various individual factors seem to correlate with increased nutrient levels.

The first question we started with was: What is the spectrum of nutrient variation? We found that the spectrum of nutrient variation was large. Second question: What causes it? What seems to cause it is functionality of the biological system, not individual practices or certifications. Third question: Can you build a handheld, consumer priced, flash-of-light nutrient meter at a consumer price point?  

We published the answer to that question in a peer-reviewed journal called Nature: Scientific Communications. The Bionutrient Food Association developed a handheld spectrometer, which is open source technology, to prove the concept. You can flash a light in the store on a vegetable or fruit and get a reading of its nutrient density and discern relative quality. Because nutrient density is associated with flavor, that may be helpful in encouraging your children to eat more fruits and vegetables.

From our research we now know that nutrient variation exists. And we can go beyond labels, certifications, and claims to measure it on a continuum of 1 to 100. That way consumers can make choices based on the nutritional quality of the food.

The challenge is to arrive at an accepted definition of nutrient density for different foods. We focused on beef first because it has a larger ecological footprint than any other food on the planet. More acres of land are used to produce beef than anything else. The hypothesis is if cows eat what they have evolved to eat rather than an unnatural diet of grains, they will be healthier, the land will be healthier, and the people who eat them will be healthier.

Agriculture has a significant effect on climate and ecosystem function, and if we can inspire a shift in the way the land is managed to improve its function that will have beneficial impacts for everyone. In researching beef, we looked at a number of different metrics: in the soil, management practices, feed stocks, and assessments of the microbiome of the animals. Our thesis is that there’s going to be patterns between soil function, ecosystem function, animal welfare, and human health. We are using a scientific method to look for the patterns of nature.

Finally we did human trials. Feed humans this meat and see what happens to them. Take the data from the meat, and the microbes, and the management, and the human health trials, give it to statisticians, and see what patterns they can find.

This is where we’re at right now. It looks like there are eight biomarkers that predict overall system function. Those eight biomarkers are measured and scored 1-100 and that information becomes public. Our understanding is that sensors to measure nutrient density can be built into phones; the cameras in your phone could be a spectrometer. Chinese phone companies have already built spectrometers into the backs of phones. Consumers will be able to test the food at point of purchase. Food can be tested by the grower or in the supply chain. We can have a completely open dataset sharing and learning, where the market can be incentivized to focus on nutrition as opposed to volume and aesthetic.

We feel that this project is important enough that one small NGO should not be doing it solely. A broad coalition of allies should be working on this globally. We’ve proposed a treaty on the definition of nutrient density. We engaged in a listening tour on six continents, and met with nutritionists, agronomists, chefs, corporations, government people, farmers, and eaters and asked them to tell us what you think about our plan. This is a process we think could potentially have a massive impact on the planet, and we welcome peoples’ engagement.

The feedback I’m getting from some of the biggest global food corporations is they want help to transform their supply chain before the public knows about this. They want to get ahead of this before they are threatened by it. We’ve done our market research, we understand that consumers want flavor, nutrition, and are concerned about the well-being of their children. So this is an economic advantage for any food company that is a first mover in the space.

Working in harmony with nature seems to be the best way forward to accomplish the goal of optimizing nutrient density in food. The question is how do we align economics with that, and how do we empower the transition. Most people have been trained in a reductionist paradigm, but they need to be supported in that transition to a holistic perspective. Some of the simplistic talking points such as if you cover crop, all will be well, is detrimental. It is incomplete and it is reductionist. You have to optimize soil health, which is all the levels of life in the soil. There are many tools in the toolbox, cover cropping is one, minimal tillage is one, biochemistry is one. Farmers must be empowered with a full toolbox, without dogmas and empiricism to support them in the process.

We are in the process of collecting the metadata to share and learn together in a mycelial fashion.

Our organization has been educating farmers for 18 years about how to work with nature. We’ve got hundreds of hours of content on our YouTube page, freely available. Now we teach courses. It takes a shift of consciousness required to understand that you are serving nature, you are in right relationship with nature, not that you’re applying practices. If you think that you can go out and do one practice and that’s all it takes, you’re missing the point. The biggest issue is understanding your role in the process.

It’s a shift in paradigm from recommending practices to humble, gentle listening and service. It’s a shift of perspective from a colonized approach to a more Indigenous perspective. The colonized perspective is thou shalt grow a cover crop; thou shalt use compost. In contrast, the Indigenous perspective is: I’m in service to the land, what does it need now? And only when we can get into that place of humility should we expect to be proper stewards.

The post Not All Food is Created Equal appeared first on Bioneers.

This article Mothers are the most underestimated force for change was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

When Trump won the first time in 2016, I drank shots of tequila in front of my computer and then passed out in anguish. When Trump won in 2024, I couldn’t do that. This time around, I was a mom. 

By afternoon on election day, the red shifts on the map became overpowering — and yet I still had to pick up my son from childcare. I had to get him dinner, sing songs in the bathtub and make up stories for his stuffed animals. I still had to create a world that was joyous, delicious and full of love even though I was horrified by the political present.  

This is a very particular muscle I have had to build since becoming a mother. It’s different than building a practice of hope. It’s beyond feelings and all about the tangible needs of life. It’s being able to turn hope into something physical even when deeply worn down. Moms, aunties, grandmothers and other caretakers — we have to pull ourselves off the couch and make the sandwiches and brush the hair. 

Every day, in the face of whatever the greater world holds, we build our own pockets where injustices are righted, love is given and joy is present. We calm down tantrums with love and humor. We teach lessons on sharing and taking turns. This complicated dynamic mothers must hold, of nurturing children while social injustice rages, is something I’ve seen resonate across social media recently, with many women commenting on the realities of keeping children loved and happy while the world burns. 

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Mothers are the everyday weavers of utopia. Philosophers, journalists, tech experts, Hollywood writers and pundits may throw up their hands and proclaim that our species is doomed, and yet in millions of homes around the world, mothers and caregivers are ensuring that on the contrary, we do live in a world of joy where resources are shared. The past few years of being a new mom have taught me we need to do more than survive; the real magic comes with what we co-create with our children — the evidence that a better world is possible. 

One of the unique aspects of motherhood is that, even while you’re dealing with the immediacy of food, shelter, joy, love, raising a human also means having one foot in the future. The writer and healer Prentis Hemphill said in a recent podcast episode, “Children as Sacred,” that “our culture actually seems to be anti-children and to me therefore anti the future. … What a child compels you to do is create, what a child compels you to do is nurture, to plant a seed, to think about what will grow beyond your life.”

This is no small feat, and might be one of the most underexamined sources of social change out there. Mothers are inherent futurists, just as gardeners are. Even when our children are in the womb, we have to be mindful of every chemical we come in contact with and what it could do to their development down the line. When our kids are growing up, we are constantly aware of how much of their future self is molded from the compendium of all the lessons we teach them. 

“Almost all of parenting is digging really deep for reserves when you are out of it,” said Jenny Zimmer, the co-executive director of the group Mothers Out Front. “Like you’re out of energy, you’re out of time, you’re out of patience, you’re exhausted, and you’re still finding the reserves to set [your kids] up for success.” 

It is this deep commitment to not just hoping for a better future, but knowing that it is formed through the actions we choose today, that directly links what we do now to what will become.

A better future is being built by the everyday work of caretakers to instruct the next generation that love and goodness can exist.

There’s nothing quite like the early years of motherhood for forcing people to realize they can’t do it all on their own. If you try to do all the things yourself, you will quickly break. It is with the village, the community that life gets a bit easier. “Mothers can do more because we know how to work together,” Zimmer noted. 

My formative activist years were working with the Burmese pro-democracy movement, and I remember witnessing women’s meetings where heavy discussions were held on moving aid to refugee camps, or monitoring elections — all while someone’s baby was being passed around from woman to woman. A group of women would chop up fruit to share, and others would help clean up. Communal care was the fundamental driver that allowed more women to step into leadership and peace-building. 

In Minneapolis and other cities besieged by ICE recently, it’s regularly mothers who are organizing food to deliver to those in need, raising money for affected families, forming safety patrols at kids’ schools and participating in ICE watches. Ashley Fairbanks helped start the group Stand with Minnesota, which is a center point of a lot of the mutual aid. In a recent interview with The Guardian, she said “We’re building a helper reflex where, instead of encountering a problem and saying that we can’t do anything, we’re just trying to do it.” 

There is so much to learn from mothers in Minnesota who are showing that the future can be better — by moving their anguished bodies to attend protests, deliver diapers and pick up their neighbors, and showing our children and our communities that we can operate with more humane ways of being. 

America does not have the best track record with positive visions of the future. The vast majority of films set in the future are dystopian, with a stalwart hero making their way through techno-fascism. In fact, when I tried to find films with a positive vision of the future, where humanity was able to come together and create something better — it’s pretty much just the “Star Trek” movies and “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure,” and even in those the vision of the future Earth is limited (“Star Trek” mostly takes place off Earth, and “Bill & Ted” gives us just a  few minutes’ glimpse of the peaceful future). 

What we need are the mother-filled stories of creation. How from small seeds, wondrous things can be born. Constructing a better future won’t come from some miracle technology that propels us forward. It comes from the everyday work of caretakers to instruct the next generation that love and goodness can exist.

Two directly opposed worldviews vying with each other in America right now are the much-publicized, hyper-individualized ideology of pseudo-macho tech oligarchs, and the quieter reality of mothers leaning into collective movements for a better world. A patriarchal worldview tells us that social change comes through highly publicized “wins” or technological silver bullets. 

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In my conversation with Zimmer, she spoke about how working with mothers has shifted her understanding of what social progress looks like. “I had to reframe victory in my mind from a big win to basically like a journey. There’s always going to be opposition,” she said. “And so when I think about bringing my kids into organizing spaces with me, it’s less that I want them to see my team win something. And it’s more that I want them to see that a good life is spent in a collective project of trying to make things good for everybody.”

A mother’s commitment is incalculable. Rebecca Solnit wrote to me that the concept of motherhood comes down to the idea that “there is a superpower in being absolutely unshakably committed to something/someone morally and in every other way, to your last breath, and because that commitment wants to see goodness all around, doesn’t it manifest goodness?” The future of this planet is being deeply shaped every day by caretakers moving forward with love and an unfeigned commitment to a better future. Once we recognize this for the superpower it is, we can build more systems that embrace its potential. 

If we start accepting that mothers are a powerful force for good, then we need to support systems that can scale their engagement. Mexico City has built 15 “Utopias,” large community centers aimed to take some of the burden off of low-income caregivers. Bogota, Colombia is experimenting with manzana del cuidado, or care blocks, which support caregivers by clustering services together. Many other countries are enacting policies like extended maternity and paternity leave, subsidized child care and health care benefits that help mothers be more able to engage with public life. 

It would be hugely beneficial to society if instead of isolating and limiting people who have a “helper reflex” superpower, we instead built more ways to expand the utilization of this skillset. Mothers are a crucial force for change, not only in our homes and communities, but on a much wider scale — if they have the support they need to unleash their superpowers.

This article Mothers are the most underestimated force for change was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

Emails obtained by Public Domain and Fieldnotes show the Interior department worked closely with Continental Resources to secure drilling permits in Converse County, Wyoming, despite a court injunction restricting new drilling on public land there. Continental Resources supplied the Bureau of Land Management with a playbook to bypass environmental restrictions meant to protect the county’s groundwater, and the BLM has since rushed to issue over 70 permits to Continental using the loophole.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum received $250,000 in campaign donations from Continental Resources, which is controlled by billionaire oil tycoon Harold Hamm, when he ran for president in 2023. Burgum has also received around $50,000 in oil royalties from land he leased to Hamm’s company.

“This reminds me of the days of the Bush-Cheney administration’s massive push to drill the West, when it was obvious that the oil industry was calling the shots when it came to public land management,” Erik Molvar, executive director of Western Watersheds Project, told Public Domain. “But we never had such direct and obvious proof that oil corporations were giving the orders, and BLM officials at the highest levels were obediently carrying them out.”

CWP says goodbye to executive director

In the latest episode of the Center for Western Priorities’ podcast, The Landscape, we say goodbye to former Executive Director Jennifer Rokala. In a conversation with the entire CWP team, Jen reflects on the highs and lows of leading CWP for 11 years, what she’s most proud of, and what gives her hope for the future of America’s public lands. Listen now wherever you get podcasts or watch on YouTube.

Quick hits How many federal public lands jobs did the Mountain West lose?

KUNC

Congressman seeks probe of $11 million no-bid contract for Park Service fountain revamp

E&E News

Opinion: Pikes Peak region’s outdoors future depends on LWCF funding

Colorado Sun

Navajo Nation residents push back on possible copper mine

KNAU

How controlled burns can help save taxpayers billions

Grist

This fight unfolding in southern Utah could have implications for states trying to take over federal lands

Bloomberg

Shared ground: Coalition forms to promote affordable housing on public lands

Deseret News

Wildfire is an increasing threat to the West’s recreation economy, according to new research

The Conversation

Quote of the day

Proposed budget cuts and growing bureaucratic obstacles are threatening to slow or stop LWCF-funded projects across the country… Whatever your politics, that should concern you. LWCF has never been a partisan program. It was built on a bipartisan foundation and has delivered results under presidents and Congresses of both parties for 60 years.”

—David Leinweber, founder of Pikes Peak Outdoor Recreation Alliance, Colorado Sun

Picture This

@Interior

Big Stone National Wildlife Refuge offers a chance to unplug from the stresses of daily life and reconnect with Minnesota’s tallgrass prairie.

Photos by Mike Budd / USFWS

Feature image: Interior Secretary Doug Burgum (left) and oil tycoon Harold Hamm (right); Source: Burgum photo by Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia, Hamm photo by david_shankbone via Flickr

The post Interior bypasses court injunction at behest of oil donor appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

1. Background and Context

Secure land tenure, agroecology, and ecological restoration are deeply interconnected pillars of sustainable development in Africa. Evidence from AFSA’s work across the continent demonstrates that when communities, particularly smallholder farmers, pastoralists, women, youth, and Indigenous Peoples, have recognized and protected rights to land, they are more likely to invest in long-term practices that regenerate soils, conserve biodiversity, and build resilience to climate shocks.

Agroecology provides a proven framework for such practices by combining traditional knowledge with ecological principles to restore degraded landscapes while advancing food sovereignty. Ecological restoration, in turn, thrives where tenure security empowers communities to steward their territories.

It is against this backdrop that AFSA is commissioning this consultancy to develop a campaign strategy that bridges grassroots struggles with continental and global policy spaces, while amplifying community voices and driving systemic change.

The Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA) is inviting consultants to submit a technical and financial proposal for a consultancy to design and develop a comprehensive campaign strategy for the Protect Our Land, Restore Our Soil Campaign, which AFSA plans to roll out in mid-2026 over a three-year period.

AFSA is seeking an experienced consultant (or team) with a strong background in land governance, agroecology, food sovereignty, ecological restoration, food system advocacy, and movement-building in Africa, and we believe your expertise aligns well with the scope and ambition of this assignment.

2. Objective of the Assignment

Develop and design a campaign strategy to build a continental campaign and movement that places secure land tenure and ecological restoration at the centre of Africa’s transformation.

3. Scope of Work

The consultancy will entail the following components:

a) Background Paper Development

• Synthesize evidence on the interconnections between secure land tenure, agroecology, food sovereignty, and ecological restoration.
• Review AFSA documentation, relevant continental and national policy frameworks, and community testimonies.

b) Campaign Strategy Design

• Develop a robust campaign strategy aimed at:
  • Shifting public and political narratives
  • Mobilizing diverse constituencies
  • Influencing policy processes
  • Building sustained public pressure for land governance reforms.
• The strategy should prioritize:
  • Protection of communal land rights
  • Prevention of land grabbing
  • Promotion of agroecology as a pathway to healthy soils, climate resilience, and food sovereignty.

4. Expected Deliverables

The consultant will be expected to deliver the following outputs:

1. Inception Report
   • Detailed work plan, methodology, and stakeholder engagement approach.
2. Background Paper
   • A comprehensive, well-referenced paper linking land tenure security, food sovereignty, and ecological soil restoration as the foundation of the campaign.
3. Campaign Strategy Package, including:
   • Strategic framework and advocacy roadmap of the campaign
   • Three-year implementation plan
   • Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) framework
   • Branding and communications toolkit.
4. Validation and Final Outputs
   • Validation meeting and report
   • Final (approved and launched) campaign strategy
   • Translated background paper and campaign strategy (English French).

5. Proposed Methodology

The consultancy is expected to apply a mixed-method approach, integrating doctrinal analysis and participatory techniques, including:

• Desk Review of scholarly literature, policy documents, and AFSA materials (Agenda 2063, AU Land Governance Strategy, Malabo Commitments, etc.);
• Participatory Research and human-centred design approaches through virtual FGDs with farmers, pastoralists, women, youth, and Indigenous communities;
• Key Informant Interviews with policymakers, CSOs, traditional leaders, land and agronomy professionals, AFSA Land working group, regional bodies, and funders;
• Stakeholder Consultations and Co-creation Workshops;
• Iterative Drafting and Validation with the AFSA Secretariat and steering committee.

 8. Submission Requirements

Kindly submit here your brief details here (https://forms.gle/gboWrxyGe7zrSE8cA) within 5 days (or not later than May 13). Please don’t attach CVs, technical proposals, financial proposal at this stage. We’ll invite selected candidates to submit these 1 week after the closing date.

Please feel free to reach out to me via admin@afsafrica.org if you require any clarification.

We look forward to receiving your proposal and potentially working together to advance land justice, agroecology, and ecological restoration across Africa.

In this special episode of The Landscape, the entire Center for Western Priorities team joins us for an interview with Jennifer Rokala, CWP’s outgoing executive director, to celebrate her 11 years leading the organization. Jen reflects on key victories throughout her tenure at CWP, the organization’s evolution as a communications-driven conservation hub, and her advice for Aaron as he steps into the role of executive director.

Plus, the team talks about the best food in the West. Here are the restaurants mentioned during this episode:

• Hot Tomato Pizza – Fruita, Colorado
• Bin 707 – Grand Junction, Colorado
• Eegee’s – Tucson, Arizona
• Taco Party – Grand Junction, Colorado
• Rome Station – Rome, Oregon
• BirdHouse – Page, Arizona

News

• Emails Show How Interior Dept Delivered New Drilling Permits for Burgum’s Billionaire Ally — Public Domain
• Shared ground: Coalition forms to promote affordable housing on public lands — Deseret News
• Solar ranch aims to prove grazing cattle under the panels is a farmland win-win — Los Angeles Times

Resources

• Housing and conservation experts agree: Public lands can’t solve the housing crisis. Here’s what can — Center for Western Priorities via Substack
• Watch this episode on YouTube 

Produced by Aaron Weiss, Lauren Bogard, Kate Groetzinger, and Lilly Bock-Brownstein
Feedback: podcast@westernpriorities.org
Music: Purple Planet
Featured image: Center for Western Priorities team

The post Jennifer Rokala on 11 years fighting for public lands at CWP appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

May 4, 2026: Read letter from San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace, Greenaction, California Environmental Justice Coalition and allies demanding closure of the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant

Click Here to Read The Letter to Senator Laird

 

If you can’t afford to live, what does democracy actually offer you?

It’s a question sitting just beneath the surface of many political debates right now. For people struggling to get by, the idea of protecting democracy can feel abstract at best, disconnected at worst. And even in more progressive spaces where democracy is treated as urgent, it’s often framed as a parallel concern — something to defend alongside economic issues, rather than through them. As Raj Patel puts it, people are increasingly being asked to accept a kind of tradeoff: focus on affordability now, and worry about democracy later. If the system hasn’t delivered for working people, it’s not hard to see why some might question whether it’s worth defending at all.

At the Bioneers Conference 2026, labor organizer Saru Jayaraman, policy expert Angela Glover Blackwell, and journalist Raj Patel took that tension head-on — and flipped it.

This Isn’t What Democracy Is Supposed to Do

For decades, Angela Glover Blackwell has worked across issues such as housing, transportation, and environmental justice, but over time, she came to see a deeper pattern behind them all. “It is the failure to understand, to lean into, and to make real the promise of democracy that has kept us from solving these problems.” For Blackwell, democracy is not just a process of voting or representation — it has a stronger purpose. “It is co-governance for human flourishing,” she says. “That’s all it is.”

That definition reframes the entire conversation. If democracy exists to support human flourishing, then it cannot be separated from the conditions in which people live. As she puts it, “You can’t have human flourishing if the people aren’t putting in their two cents…if they’re not telling you what they need.” And yet, the version most people experience falls far short. “The reason that democracy has been so feeble,” she argues, “is because it has always tried…to function for a few, not for the all.”

That gap — between what democracy promises and what it delivers — doesn’t just shape outcomes. It shapes expectations. As Patel observes, participation often becomes “an exercise in which we are being trained to expect less.”

What It Feels Like When Democracy Fails

While Blackwell frames the broader vision, Jayaraman grounds it in day-to-day realities. “We’ve been fighting on affordability for decades,” she says, “and the response we’ve gotten…from people with power is: That’s cute. That’s sweet. But we are here to save democracy.” In her work organizing restaurant workers, she has seen how economic pressure reshapes who gets to participate — and how. “Democracy doesn’t work when the majority of people are unable or terrified to come speak up, and then a minority of people are paid to come speak for their bosses.”

She describes a dynamic in which workers are often pressured by employers to attend meetings and oppose wage increases, and in some cases show up to testify in legislative hearings as well. Meanwhile, those who actually need higher wages often can’t risk being visible. “They’re working three jobs and terrified…of showing up with their name and their face.”

In that context, calls to “protect democracy” can feel hollow. Even within the Democratic Party—where support for wage increases is often assumed—Jayaraman argues that meaningful progress is frequently blocked or diluted. “My experience of democracy,” she says, “is Democrats blocking wage increases…because we have not created the consequences for those Democrats.”

The Mistake We Keep Making About Affordability

What the panel makes clear is that affordability and democracy are not separate issues; they are the same fight. Blackwell is direct: “The affordability problem is that we, as a nation, have not invested in human flourishing.” Focusing only on prices — on eggs, gas, rent — misses the deeper issue. “If we think we can separate the absence of a vibrant democracy from the suffering that is happening in this country,” she says, “we don’t understand what democracy was for.”

Jayaraman pushes the same point from another angle, noting that even progressive conversations about affordability often avoid the most obvious lever. “Why are none of even the most progressive people talking about…raising wages?” she asks. “Life will never be affordable unless people have enough money in their pockets.” And beyond economics, she emphasizes what low wages actually do: “When they are paid as little as $2 or $3 or even $15… it devalues who they are. Every worker has value and skill…And everybody…wants to feel like they are contributing to meaning.”

Across both perspectives, the argument converges: Affordability is not just about costs. It’s about dignity, participation, and whether people have the capacity to engage in public life at all. That raises a deeper question: What do we actually mean when we say something is “affordable”? As Patel points out, “There’s a difference between cheap and affordable.” Cheap, he argues, is often “a way of displacing one cost onto someone else…usually the working class and the rest of the web of life.”

What a Real Democracy Would Require

If current systems fall short, what would it actually look like to get this right? Jayaraman’s answer is simple and concrete: “In a real democracy, workers would be able to have one job instead of three. They could show up…They could overpower any lies…And they would be listened to.” That vision ties material conditions directly to political power. Without time, stability, and security, participation becomes limited to those who can afford it.

Blackwell echoes this, emphasizing that democracy must be judged by how it works for those most impacted. “Democracy only functions when it can function for those who have been most marginalized in society,” she says. “That is the mark of a great democracy.” She points to a familiar example: curb cuts in sidewalks, originally designed for people with disabilities but now used by everyone. “When we solve problems with nuance and specificity…thinking about those who have been rendered most vulnerable…the benefits cascade out to everybody.” Building a democracy that works for the most vulnerable, in other words, isn’t a niche goal. It’s the foundation of one that works at all.

Raising Expectations Is the Strategy

So what does it take to move from theory to action? For Jayaraman, it starts with refusing to accept the limits of what feels politically possible. “For so long our side has settled,” she says. “We negotiate against ourselves before we even get in the room. We need to say…what we actually need. Nobody wants less than what they need.”

That’s the logic behind the Living Wage for All campaign she describes, which pushes for significantly higher minimum wages across cities and states. But the strategy is not just about policy — it’s about participation. “If we can give people some hope…they will show up, they will participate,” she says. “Maybe it will get them to one job, and then they can engage on all the issues we want them to engage on.”

Blackwell points to a broader shift that has to happen alongside it. “What we need is transformative solidarity.” Not a transactional version — “you sign my petition, I’ll show up for your march” — but something deeper. “Your issue is my issue,” she says, “because I can’t have the world that I want to live in if all of these things are not addressed.”

Participation Depends on Capacity

Throughout the conversation, there is a clear push to expand what counts as democratic participation. “I get so tired of democracy being either vote or run for office,” Jayaraman says. She points to how, in many places throughout the world, democratic participation extends well beyond voting alone. Ballot initiatives, organizing, public debate — these are all part of democratic life. But they depend on something more fundamental: people having the capacity to engage.

And that brings the conversation full circle. “The glimpse of what happened during the pandemic is the answer,” Jayaraman says — not as a model to replicate, but as a moment that revealed what becomes possible when people have more time, stability, and leverage. During that period, even amid widespread disruption and loss, millions of workers left their jobs, wages rose in some sectors, and many people had more space to organize and engage. “It gives us a glimpse of what could happen if Americans could have one job.”

The post What’s Standing in the Way of Civic Participation — and How to Change It appeared first on Bioneers.

Invest In People Not War & Impeach Convict Remove.

War Is Not The Answer.

Healthcare Not Warfare

Introduction by bryant terry, artist, chef, publisher and author.

The right to food and the right to land are fundamental to human freedom, dignity, and self-determination, but locally and globally, land and food have been leveraged as tools of oppression. Fortunately, they can also be portals for liberation. Renowned groundbreaking Black Kreyol farmer and food justice activist, Leah Penniman, founder of Soul Fire Farm and author of Farming While Black, offers us living proof that when Land is reunited with her people, mutual thriving can flourish in the form of solutions to climate chaos and food apartheid. Even in this era of intense state repression, community self-determination and solidarity can be foundational to building a powerful movement for land and food sovereignty.

This talk was delivered at the 2026 Bioneers Conference.

Leah Penniman will be teaching a Bioneers Learning course in December 2026: Children of the Land: Soul Fire Farm’s Approach to Raising and Mentoring Young People. Learn more and register.

Leah Penniman, a Black Kreyol farmer, author, mother, and food justice activist who has been tending the soil and organizing for an anti-racist food system for 25 years, currently serves as founding Co-Executive Director of Farm Operations at Soul Fire Farm in Grafton, New York, a Black & Brown-led project that works toward food and land justice. She is the author of: Farming While Black: Soul Fire Farm’s Practical Guide to Liberation on the Land (2018) and Black Earth Wisdom: Soulful Conversations with Black Environmentalists (2023).

EXPLORE MORE The Food Web Newsletter

Dive into the Food Web with Bioneers and learn more about how a transformed food system can be a source of community wealth, creative culture, and individual health, as well as a way to fulfill our sacred calling as humans for environmental stewardship.

‘The Seed Was Their Most Precious Legacy’: Why Black Land Matters

Leah Penniman tells how the ancestral grandmothers in the Dahomey region of West Africa braided seeds of okra, molokhia, and Levant cotton into their hair before being forced to board transatlantic slave ships. As expert agriculturalists, the seeds and the ecosystemic and cultural knowledge they represented were their most precious legacy

The post Leah Penniman – Free the People! Free the Land! appeared first on Bioneers.