A3. Agroecology

This article is part of Food Tank’s primer series, “Food Tank Explains.” Each installment unpacks the ideas, innovations, and challenges shaping today’s food and agriculture systems, offering clear insights into complex topics. To explore more articles in the series, click here.

Seed saving is the practice of collecting and preserving seeds to produce future crops from past harvests, creating a cycle of cultivation that has sustained agricultural communities for millennia. For thousands of years, farmers and gardeners have saved seeds, preserving biodiversity, strengthening food-system resilience, and maintaining cultural traditions.

By continually selecting and replanting seeds, farmers developed crops adapted to local conditions while maintaining genetic diversity that can improve resilience to pests, disease. Seed saving can also help farmers recover from storms, droughts, and other extreme weather.

For many communities, saving seeds is deeply connected to culture, identity, and community life. Many developed sophisticated traditions for collecting, storing, exchanging, and stewarding seeds. “We cannot separate culture and identity from the art, act, and love of growing food,” Sherry Manning, Founder and CEO of Global Seed Savers, tells Food Tank

Seeds can also serve as living records of history. Accounts collected by seed-saving organizations tell of a Holocaust survivor who smuggled bean seeds out of Auschwitz in the folds of her clothing, and gardens cultivated by internees at Germany’s Ruhleben camp during World War I. Refugees fleeing the city of Daraa in Syria carried eggplant and pepper seeds across the border to Jordan and replanted them in exile.

In her essay “Black Land Matters,” Leah Penniman, Soul Fire Farm cofounder, activist, farmer, and author of Farming While Black,  describes West African women who braided seeds into their hair before being forced onto transatlantic slave ships. “The seed was their most precious legacy,” Penniman writes, “and they believed against odds in a future of tilling and reaping the earth.”

There is evidence that hunter-gatherer communities collected and cultivated wild seeds as early as 30,000 years ago. During the emergence of agriculture around 12,000 years ago, communities around the world began selecting and replanting seeds. They gradually transformed wild species into domesticated crops that remain central to global diets today, like wheat, lentils, chickpeas, rice, and sorghum.

Farmers remained at the center of selecting and improving seed varieties for most of agricultural history. “But about 100 years ago, that began to change,” Ira Wallace, Co-owner of Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, tells Food Tank.

During the 20th century, mechanization, advances in plant breeding, and the growth of commercial seed companies profoundly reshaped agriculture. As food production became more centralized and food processing more prevalent, many farmers and gardeners shifted from saving seeds to purchasing them each season, and from local varieties to genetically uniform, high-yielding varieties.

A series of court decisions and regulatory changes in the 1980s and 1990s accelerated this shift by expanding intellectual property protections for seeds. Companies gained the ability to patent genetically engineered seeds, plant varieties, breeding methods, and genetic traits, transforming many seeds from a renewable and reusable resource for farmers into proprietary products governed by licensing agreements.

As seed companies consolidated, four firms came to control more than half of global seed sales. Supporters argue consolidation has increased investment in breeding and research, while critics contend it has contributed to the loss of locally adapted varieties. Roughly 75 percent of global crop genetic diversity has disappeared over the past century, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.

Patent protections generally prevent farmers from saving patented seeds, increasing reliance on commercial suppliers and narrow farmers’ options. Some researchers have also linked consolidation to rising costs; according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data, soybean seed prices increased by more than 200 percent between 2000 and 2020, while consumer prices rose 57 percent during the same period.

In recent decades, concerns about biodiversity loss, climate change, and consolidation in the seed industry have renewed broader interest in seed saving. That resurgence has helped fuel a broader movement centered on seed sovereignty, the idea that farmers and communities should have the right to control over the seeds they grow, save, exchange, and develop.

In Kenya, the Seed Savers Network advocates for stronger protections for Indigenous seeds while partnering with smallholder farmers to identify, preserve, and reintroduce local varieties at risk of disappearing. In the Philippines, Global Seed Savers works with farmers to establish community-owned seed libraries stocked with regionally adapted varieties.

Other initiatives focus on returning seeds to the communities that stewarded them. Nonprofits including Seed Savers Exchange have worked to rematriate heritage seed varieties to Indigenous seed keepers, while Native Seeds/SEARCH conserves thousands of traditional Indigenous crops.

Seed banks and seed exchanges have also expanded worldwide. In Norway, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault safeguards more than 1.3 million seed samples representing over 6,000 plant species. In eastern India, Vrihi maintains one of the region’s largest folk rice seed banks and promotes the practice of non-commercial seed exchange. The Crop Trust is dedicated to making crop diversity for use globally, forever and for the benefit of everyone, and operates genebanks worldwide.

Policymakers have also begun revisiting seed laws. In 2021, Maine became the first U.S. state to enshrine a right to food in its constitution, including the right to save and exchange seeds. And in 2025, Kenya’s High Court struck down provisions of the country’s seed law that penalized farmers for saving and sharing Indigenous seeds, a decision advocates described as a major victory for food sovereignty.

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In montane regenerative agroforests of southwestern Yunnan, tea trees grow not in rows, but in relationship. Their trunks and branches are covered in fungi, moss, and orchids as they spread through a layered ecosystem of fruit trees and understory. Birdsong and harvest songs fill the air. Volatile aromatics deepen around us as we gather tender tea buds and glistening leaves, nibbling fruit along the way.

Later, steeping the tea, its bitterness softens into lingering notes of honey at the back of the throat. Twenty years ago, first drinking tea from an agroforest, I realized I was tasting the landscape itself. In that cup was the high elevation, the dance of sun and shade through tree canopy, the mist, the dark living soil, the mulch, the weeds, the pollinators, and the microbes that cover the leaves, all translated into flavor. It also carried the knowledge of the communities who had long stewarded these landscapes through generations of observation, experimentation, harvesting, selection, and care.

Montane Indigenous Akha communities shaped these landscapes within a mosaic of home gardens rich with herbs and vegetables, rice paddies with local landraces, forests filled with wild foods and medicines, orchards, grazing lands, and cultivated fields. These landscapes reflect an understanding of food through relationships across species, seasons, ecosystems, and communities.

What I learned in these communities became a wake-up call for how I understand food and the entire global food and agriculture system. Food revealed itself as ecological and biological exposure, a living translation of biodiversity, climate, soil, microbes, and culture into the molecules that shape flavor, nourishment, memory, and human health.

We experience food as biological exposure through tens of thousands of interacting molecules. Molecules in whole foods carry the memory of ecosystems, farming practices, and cultural histories. Sunlight is remembered in sugars, grasses in the tissues of grazing animals, and microbial communities in the transformation of milk and grain into new flavors and nutrients.

Many of the molecules we cherish for flavor and nourishment evolved first as protection. Bitterness and heat discourage grazing or being fully consumed. Phenolics shield against ultraviolet light. Terpenes summon allies when leaves are under attack. What we experience as aroma, heat, or astringency are the survival strategies of living systems, biochemistry shaped over millions of years to endure stress and change.

Tea plants produce catechins to defend themselves and terpenes to communicate in dynamic environments. These molecules vary with climate, elevation, and agricultural management such as regenerative agroforestry. Humans experience these ecological shifts through flavor, nourishment, memory, culture, and wellbeing. Food is landscape metabolized.

This translation is not limited to plants. High on the Tibetan Plateau in northwestern Yunnan, yaks translate the chemistry of alpine grasses and wildflowers into milk rich with protein and lipid molecules that carry the signature of place and season. Tibetan communities note the shift in milk and butter quality as they herd at higher elevations, with plants getting more bitter and medicinal. Along ancient trade routes, yak butter from alpine pastures was blended with fermented pu-erh tea, bringing together the chemistry of mountain grasslands and tea agroforests in a shared cup.

Along the Pacific coast where I look out today, halibut and rockfish carry the chemistry of kelp forests, smaller fish, and cold ocean upwelling in their tissues, with fats and proteins shaped through phytoplankton blooms and marine food webs.

Through fermentation, bacteria and fungi transform molecules, breaking apart proteins, fibers, and other compounds into forms that are often more digestible, bioavailable, flavorful, and biologically active. These preservation techniques are collaborations across species, with microbes reshaping foods into new flavors, nutrients, and therapeutic attributes.

Science now offers high-resolution tools to see the chemistry behind this ecological exchange and knowledge, but it has always been present, rooted in reciprocity and sensed experience.

Long before laboratories could name the molecules in food, our mouths could taste them.

The molecules of different foods meet within us, shaping our senses, our cells, and our connection to the living world. Molecules that help tea plants survive in agroforests can also help buffer inflammation in our bodies. Our microbiome, the unseen ecological community within, responds to these molecules and sends its own signals through the gut–brain axis, influencing mood, energy, and resilience.

Within our cells, mitochondria translate biomolecules into the energy of life. What began as the plant’s way of surviving, the animal’s way of metabolizing landscapes, and the microbe’s way of transforming matter has co-evolved with human knowledge and culture. Through cultivation, cooking, and fermentation, we learned to partner with these living processes, shaping food even as it shapes us.

We feel this most vividly in intact ecosystems. In regenerative orchards, the air carries the volatile molecules of ripening fruit. On the Tibetan Plateau, yak butter holds the chemistry of alpine herbs. In Montana meadows, wild huckleberries glisten with pigments that shield the fruit from ultraviolet light. Through aroma, texture, and taste, we trace rainfall, altitude, soil health, and stewardship.

To eat is to be in relationship with sun and soil, with farmers and foragers, with microbes and animals, with those before us and those yet to be. The molecules that become our cells once belonged to forests, fields, pastures, and oceans. For a time, we carry those living worlds within us.

We do not exist apart from the living world. Through food, through biology, and through care, we participate in the great reciprocity of life and remember that we belong.

This is the first in a monthly series of essays.

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In Ecuador, TUNACONS is working to make the country’s offshore tuna fishing fleets more environmentally and socially sustainable. The organization is promoting responsible fishing practices that protect fish populations and preserve the long-term health of the ocean ecosystem.

Founded in 2015, TUNACONS emerged from a coalition of tuna industry leaders across Ecuador, Panama, and the United States. With the support of WWF Ecuador, the foundation launched its Fisheries Improvement Project (FIP) to advance science-based yield practices, implement technical training for industry professionals, and reduce the tuna industry’s environmental impact on marine ecosystems.

“The objective of the FIP was to help part of Ecuador’s purse seine tuna fishery resolve, in the short and midterm, the sustainability problems that were pending when we started in 2015,” Pablo Guerrero, Director of Marine Conservation for WWF Ecuador, tells Food Tank.

Ecuador is a major player in the global seafood market. According to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the country is the second-leading exporter of tuna behind Thailand, supplying largely to American, Japanese, and European markets.

Most of Ecuador’s tuna fishing fleet relies on purse seiners, large vessels that use wide, encircling nets to catch entire schools of tuna at once. While efficient, FAO reports that this method can result in bycatch, the accidental capture of non-target species like sea turtles, sharks, and juvenile fish. And abandoned nets can lead to ghost fishing, a phenomenon in which lost nets, traps, and fishing lines continue to catch and kill marine life long after they have been discarded.

A key tool in this type of fishing is the Fish Aggregating Device (FAD), a floating or anchored structure that imitates natural debris. It attracts schooling fish, making them easier to catch in bulk. Many industrial FADs are made from synthetic, non-biodegradable materials, which can contribute to ocean plastic pollution if they are lost at sea.

But through the ECOFADs program, TUNACONS is working to address marine pollution by manufacturing FADs produced entirely of biodegradable materials. In 2020, 20 percent of the TUNACONS fleet had already made the switch. By 2029, the rest will follow, as required by a recently adopted resolution from the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission for all fishing fleets operating in the eastern Pacific Ocean.

The FIP’s Observers on Board and Good Practices Program reduce bycatch by establishing reporting statistics to track progress, whether positive or negative. And the Program teaches fishers how to safely and effectively remove and release bycatch from purse seine nets.

TUNACONS’ purse seine fleet of 58 ships has 100 percent observer coverage. Guerrero explains that these observers document everything that happens on board, including how bycatch is handled and where it ends up. “The observers record whether or not best handling practices are applied, whether the bycatch returns to the water alive or dead,” he says.

To further reduce bycatch mortality, TUNACONS developed a best practices guide to safely remove large marine animals from purse seine nets. The foundation also partners with scientific satellite tagging programs to track sharks and manta rays after release, helping researchers determine survival rates when proper handling techniques are applied.

Last year, these efforts earned the TUNACONS fishery the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) Blue label.

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CLOC-LVC rejects Rodrigo Paz's divisive and polarizing actions criminalizing protest and failing Bolivia's peasant, Indigenous, and working-class organizations.

The post Bolivia: CLOC – La Vía Campesina Rejects the Divisive and Polarizing Actions Promoted by Rodrigo Paz appeared first on La Via Campesina - EN.

Each week, Food Tank is rounding up a few news stories that inspire excitement, infuriation, or curiosity.

The Rise of Raw Milk

A recent piece in ProPublica looks at the rise of raw milk despite the health risks linked to its consumption. 

Promoted by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and others, weekly sales of raw milk in the U.S. jumped as much as 65 percent between 2023 and 2024, according to NielsenIQ. Supporters say it can cure allergies, asthma, and lactose intolerance or deliver special probiotics.

Brown University Health and other experts state that there’s no evidence for these claims and instead point to the harm it can cause. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention note that unpasteurized milk can expose people to dangerous bacteria including E. coli, Listeria, Brucella, and Salmonella. All these can pose a serious risk to eaters—especially children under 5, adults over 65, as well as those who are pregnant or have weakened immune systems. Just last week, Idaho’s Department of Health and Welfare reported that 60 people became sick after consuming raw milk. 

But these concerns haven’t stopped farmers like Mark McAfee, the focus of ProPublica’s story. In the early 2000s, McAfee was a producer of pasteurized milk who didn’t think twice about offering a raw alternative. But when he connected with a community looking for a consistent source of unpasteurized milk, McAfee realized the demand that existed. In the years since then, McAfee converted his dairy to raw milk, and in 2011 he established a nonprofit to promote claims in support of raw milk’s benefits. 

When asked about the risks, McAfee largely denied them or brushed them off. But his own farm has been linked to illnesses. “I’ve put a couple kids in the hospital, and they have been sick, but they recovered,” he admits. 

ProPublica, however, reports that it’s not just a few cases: according to regulators, more than 230 people have been sickened in eight outbreaks linked to his farm since 2006. At least 40 have been hospitalized, and this total is likely much lower than the reality.

Still, people continue seeking out raw milk. Melanie Copeland in Huntington Beach has doubts that the outbreaks ever truly happened, stating that the possibility is “slim to none.” And Alyssa Wolfer in Bakersfield calls drinking raw milk a “true American freedom.” Even more concerning: the government isn’t stepping in to protect consumers. Instead, government officials have championed the industry’s expansion. 

New Paper Challenges Necessity of Synthetic Pesticides

A new briefing from the African Centre for Biodiversity (ACB) makes clear that Africa has the tools it needs to cut back on synthetic pesticides and support farmers’ health and livelihoods. 

Across the continent, a wide range of biological and agroecological approaches are helping farmers control pests, boost yields, and improve the environment. Despite this, the authors state that solutions often don’t evolve beyond pilot or experimental settings due to limited investment and labor, regulatory shortcomings and lacking institutional support. This contributes to the predominating idea that pesticides are indispensable. 

But ACB’s analysis of 90 studies from the last 15 years challenges the idea of pesticide-dependent food systems. They argue that if integrated, systems-level solutions are put into place to help farmers restore ecological functioning and reduce pest pressure over time, the transition away from these chemical inputs is possible. 

According to the Centre’s Director Mariam Mayet, “Productive and resilient food systems do not require escalating chemical use. They require ecological integrity, functional biodiversity, and policies that support farmers to work with nature rather than against it.”

Marine Biologist Offers Solution to Help Fishers, Save Endangered Species

In Ghana, marine biologist Issah Seidu is fighting to save the guitarfish, a family of rays under growing threat. Today, more than half of its species are critically endangered, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). 

The Guardian reports that Seidu launched a grassroots campaign to protect the guitarfish, whose meat is seen as a local delicacy, by encouraging fishers to raise the African land snail. In 2019, he and his team began meeting with fishers to understand what they would do if they didn’t catch guitarfish.

Initially, the conversations were difficult. Fishers worried for their livelihoods.But education and training helped the community understand the extinction risk, convincing around 200 to stop or scale back their guitarfish operations. 

Discussions with fishers also helped them settle on the harvesting of land snails—a popular source of protein that’s in demand—as a viable alternative. Seidu explains that farming giant snails makes financial sense: it’s lucrative and the investment needed upfront is minimal. And he’s seen success in the community. 

Now Seidu setting his sights on a longer term goal: helping to establish Ghana’s first locally-managed marine protected area.

IUCN’s Chair calls this work “exactly the kind of effort needed.” 

USDA Confirms Cases of Flesh-Eating Parasite in the U.S.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) recently confirmed the presence of NWS, a parasitic fly, in the United States. At least nine cases have been detected in Texas and New Mexico, according the to USDA. 

The larvae, which feed on warm-blooded animals, can lead to “severe, potentially fatal infestations, according to the agency. This can cause “serious damage to livestock and economic losses” for farmers.

Joint federal-state field teams are now working to expand surveillance and response efforts to control the spread. Canada is also taking precautionary measures, temporarily restricting the import of livestock, including horses, from affected areas in the U.S. 

Although the spread is alarming to farmers, the USDA has confirmed that NWS doesn’t infect meat, fruits, vegetables, or other food products, and the country’s food supply is still safe.

“Groundswell” Debuts for Global Audiences

“Groundswell,” the final film in a documentary trilogy celebrating the potential of regenerative agriculture, recently debuted on Amazon Prime. The release follows its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival.

Directed by award-winning Filmmakers, Josh and Rebecca Harrell Tickell and narrated by Woody Harrelson and Demi Moore, the film is the final chapter in a series that includes “Kiss the Ground,” released in 2020, and “Common Ground” from 2023.

“Groundswell” follows food systems experts including farmers, scientists, and Indigenous leaders across five continents who are proving that regenerative farming is viable and already delivering real results for communities.

Tied to the film’s release, the Tickells also launched One Billion Acres, a global campaign to accelerate the transition to regenerative agriculture.

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The post Food Tank’s Weekly News Roundup: Synthetic Pesticides Challenged, Marine Species Protected, New World Screwworm Detected in U.S. appeared first on Food Tank.

The Puyallup Tribe of Indians are organizing programming, events, and fan zones in Seattle, Washington during the 2026 FIFA World Cup. This marks the first time a Tribal Nation is formally represented at the World Cup, providing an opportunity for them to share their story, culture, traditions, and foodways with a global audience.

As Seattle prepares to host six matches for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, the city is working to ensure that the tournament leaves a positive lasting impact on the community. As part of these efforts, the Puyallup Tribe of Indians were named the Official Legacy Supporter of FIFA World Cup 26 host city Seattle.

A central goal of this partnership is the reestablishment of Lushootseed language, which appears in welcoming messages, murals, signage, and other SeattleFWC26 materials. This feeds into broader sustainability efforts, explains Amy McFarland, the Puyallup Tribe of Indians’ World Cup Project Director.

“It’s the sustainability of language, history, and economic development,” McFarland tells Food Tank. She adds that this also extends to medicine, foodways, and environmental protection.

The Puyallup Tribe are preparing for a collection of camassia, a tubular used for medicine. They are also focusing on reintroducing plants and ecosystems that have been destroyed, such as camas prairies. And through community gardens, they are highlighting Indigenous plants and medicines while promoting the importance of sustainability.

“We think about sustainability of our environment, taking care of our waters, ensuring that we know and teach our children how to forage, collect, harvest, and use traditional foods and medicine,” McFarland tells Food Tank.

Celebratory events are also engaging the broader community. Between June 19-21, the Puyallup Tribe will host one of their signature events, the first World Cup Pow Wow. Free to the public, the event will include food trucks, singing, dancing, and more. And on match days, they will organize official fan zones and viewing parties featuring live broadcasts of the games, food vendors, and youth activities.

To create additional opportunities for young people, the Puyallup Tribe have selected 25 youth ambassadors who will volunteer at the matches. They will distribute clean water to elders throughout the events and lead songs, dances, and stories.

“Youth is a vital part of what we have,” says McFarland. “Without teaching our young ones the way to do things, the future is not there.”

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We’re about halfway through the International Year of the Woman Farmer, declared by the United Nations to recognize a truth that Food Tankers already know well: That global food systems are cultivated by, sustained by, and nourished by women.

Some of my favorite parts of recent Food Tank events have been the nights we turn our stage over to farmers to share authentic stories from the ground. This year alone, women farmers have joined us onstage in Park City, UT; Dublin, Ireland; Adelaide, Australia; and Austin, TX to tell personal tales of their lives in the food system.

Women in agricultural communities are farmers and also simultaneously caregivers, nutrition providers, innovators, pillars of their communities, and so much more. As the International Year of the Woman Farmer calls attention to, gender gaps in income and in accessing resources like land ownership and financial markets have been well-documented. But there’s another factor that cannot get lost during this special year: Women’s health.

“Women are central to food systems, and therefore women’s health is also central to food systems,” Nabeeha Kazi Hutchins, President and CEO of PAI, a policy advocacy organization, told me on the Food Talk podcast. “If a woman’s health and reproductive health are not prioritized and supported…how is she going to be effective in her job, and how is she therefore going to be effective in feeding and nourishing the world?”

And the impact of women in food is multi-generational.

“Every day on our farm, we get up, we work hard,” Carina Roseingrave, Co-Founder of Burren View Farm, told our Food Tank audience from the stage at SXSW. “What we have, we’ve built for our family that are here now. But what’s very important to our family is to pass it on to the next generation. We don’t want to lose the next generation that’s coming behind us. We want to pass on the knowledge that was passed on from my grandmother.”

If that seems like a heavy load to carry mentally just as much as physically—it is. As Reema Nanavaty, Head of the Self- Employed Women’s Association (SEWA), told me on Food Talk, major challenges like the climate crisis weigh particularly hard on women farmers’ mental health and tend to impact their economic opportunities at disproportionately high levels. Part of Reema’s work with SEWA involves vital efforts to reduce the tragic rates at which young women farmers are dying by suicide.

For me, as someone who’s devoted my career to researching gender in food and agriculture systems, I think any push toward uplifting the needs and rights of women and young girls—like International Year of the Woman Farmer—is a step in the right direction. I also hope that, alongside addressing economic inequities, we don’t ignore the need to protect women’s physical and mental well-being as part of our food system and sustainability solutions.

This takes both big-picture and small-scale efforts. As Rosinah Mbenya, Country Coordinator for PELUM Kenya, told me on an episode of Food Talk, we see a gap in on-the-ground efforts focused on youth- and women-centered landscape transformation. This needs to catch the attention of international development organizations and business and philanthropic leaders.

“There is a lot of work that needs to go into capacity-building,” she says. “But I’m looking forward to seeing more investments so that we can have increased financing and attention.”

At the same time, we cannot lose sight of the fact that food should be joyful and grounding and delicious—and that’s good for both physical and mental health, too!

I really loved what Lynsey Gammon, the Farm Director of Gracie’s Farm and the Lodge at Blue Sky, told us during a storytelling event at our All Things Food and Environment Summit during Sundance. It was her Italian grandmother, she said, who taught her “the art and love of growing food.”

“She could never really leave behind the love of growing food and the joy and love that it gave to her and the connection with the land and her history,” Lynsey told us. “Because, like so many women before her, farming was her ancestry. It ran through her veins.”

Here’s to the generations of empowered, hardworking, healthy women who feed us, from farms to our kitchen tables!

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In the largest agricultural state in the U.S., Regenerative California is creating new pathways to help new and beginning farmers build a different future for global food and agriculture systems.

The nonprofit, based in Monterey County, California, uses their demonstration farm to prove that regenerative agriculture is viable. Now in its second year, Regenerate 68! Farm grows berries and vegetables. The site is currently Certified Organic, and Kristin Coates, the organization’s Co-Founder and CEO, says they’re working toward Regenerative Organic certification.

As the farm evolves further Regenerative California is hoping to bring students onto the land to encourage more people to see a future in agriculture.

Coates explains that her children have no interest in farming. “They see this dead end,” she says. “I’m around all these synthetic fertilizer and pesticides. Why would they choose [this path]?” But, she says, “it doesn’t have to be business as usual.” Regenerative California wants to prove that there’s another way.

“We’re in conversations with local universities that are training the next generation of ag and farm workers,” Coates tells Food Tank, so they can serve as “a living classroom for regenerative agriculture.”  The organization is also working with vocational schools in the area.

Coates says she’s particularly excited about young people’s interest in gathering data, measuring the impact of climate-friendly farming practices, and improving biodiversity. “The other piece we’re seeing is this entrepreneurial spirit,” she tells Food Tank. “Young people are seeing that ‘I can have my autonomy, I can have independence, I can grow my own business.’”

One vocational school, Rancho Cielo, works with youth between the ages of 16 and 24, who learn skills in sectors including welding, hospitality, or agriculture. When they come to the farm, Coates explains, “we’re seeing this is a place to create an entirely new livelihood, and there’s a lot of enthusiasm to do that.”

Listen to or watch the full conversation with Kristin Coates on “Food Talk with Dani Nierenberg” to hear more about how Regenerative California plans to share their model with other counties, their work on blue food systems, and what it looks like to build trust and drive community engagement.

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The post In Monterey County, this Farm Is Building a Path to a Regenerative Food Future appeared first on Food Tank.

ELAP provides emergency assistance to eligible producers of livestock, honeybees, and farm-raised fish. It covers losses due to adverse weather or other loss conditions including blizzards, disease, flood, water transport, and wildfires.

The post What is ELAP? appeared first on RAFI.

This article is part of Food Tank’s primer series, “Food Tank Explains.” Each installment unpacks the ideas, innovations, and challenges shaping today’s food and agriculture systems, offering clear insights into complex topics. To explore more articles in the series, click here.

CRISPR is a gene-editing technology that can make targeted changes to the DNA of living organisms. Adapted from a immune system mechanism found in bacteria, it has become a widely used tool across medicine, research, and agriculture.

Short for clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats, CRISPR originated from a defense mechanism that bacteria use to identify and eliminate invading viruses. The system is made up of two key parts. One component identifies a target DNA sequence, another cuts it. The bacteria then stores fragments of the virus’s DNA, helping the bacterium recognize and eliminate the virus if it attacks again.

For thousands of years, humans have used genetic modification methods like selective- and cross-breeding to grow crops and raise animals with desirable traits, like corn that grows taller or watermelon that has fewer seeds. “Nature is basically gene editing all the time,” Alison Van Eenennaam, an Animal Geneticist and Biotechnology Specialist at the University of California, Davis, tells Food Tank.

But once the molecular mechanism for its DNA-cleaving ability was discovered, CRISPR was quickly repurposed into a tool for editing the DNA of living cells. In the past decade, CRISPR has taken the biomedical world and life sciences by storm and is now being used in thousands of labs worldwide.

When compared to other genome editing tools, researchers say CRISPR is more versatile and more efficient. They also underscore the tool’s accuracy. “Genome editors are far more precise than some of the tools we already use for plant breeding,” Christine Tait-Burkard, Group Lead at the Roslin Institute, tells Food Tank.

Gregory Licholai, a biotechnology entrepreneur and lecturer at Yale School of Management, compares earlier gene-editing methods to editing a book by removing entire pages. CRISPR, by contrast, allows scientists to edit individual letters, enabling more precise changes to DNA.

The technology has expanded opportunities for both biomedical research and the treatment of genetic disease. Researchers use CRISPR to create cell and animal models for studying diseases including cancer and mental illness, while clinicians have used CRISPR-based therapies to treat sickle cell disease. Scientists used CRISPR to edit disease-causing mutations in human embryos in 2017, and, in 2019, Victoria Gray became the first person in the U.S. to receive a CRISPR treatment for a genetic disorder.

Researchers from around the world have applied the technology to a wide range of crops and livestock, while patent data suggest growing commercial interest. CRISPR can improve crop yields by shortening breeding timelines and targeting and modifying genes linked with productivity and stress tolerance. Researchers used CRISPR to recreate naturally occurring traits in sorghum that help protect the crop from Striga hermonthica, a parasitic weed responsible for significant yield losses across parts of Africa.

CRISPR can also be used to improve food quality and shelf life. Scientists modified potatoes to reduce compounds that can be converted into acrylamide during frying, resulting in potato chips with substantially lower acrylamide levels. Researchers have also developed non-browning avocados to extend shelf life and reduce food waste.

Researchers are also exploring how CRISPR can support sustainable food and agriculture systems, including by developing crops with greater tolerance to drought and other environmental stresses. Researchers are also investigating whether gene editing can reduce food production emissions by modifying microbes and other organisms used in manufacturing processes.

The African Plant Breeding Academy, launched in 2013 by the University of California, Davis in partnership with the African Orphan Crops Consortium (AOCC) and AUDA-NEPAD, trains African plant breeders in advanced crop improvement techniques, including genomics and CRISPR-based breeding techniques.

Hosted in Nairobi, Kenya, the Academy has trained more than 150 scientists from 28 countries, helping strengthen local capacity to develop improved crop varieties. At the program’s launch, Howard-Yana Shapiro, founder of the AOCC, described the initiative as part of a broader effort to equip African scientists with the tools needed to improve nutrition, food security, and agricultural resilience across the continent.

Using CRISPR, scientists have modified traits in farmed animals and aquaculture species. Researchers at Auburn University developed blue catfish with improved resistance to bacterial disease, offering a potential alternative to routine antibiotic use in aquaculture. In livestock, researchers used CRISPR to remove a gene that enables the PRRS virus to infect pigs, creating animals resistant to a disease that costs the U.S. pork industry billions of dollars each year.

The technology’s precision and versatility and the potential ability to repair disease-causing mutations has sparked excitement in the scientific community, Licholai says. And the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) calls CRISPR a promising tool for agriculture, citing its potential to contribute to food security, climate adaptation, and more efficient food production systems.

But CRISPR has raised concerns among some researchers, ethicists, and policymakers. A series of studies have linked the technology to unintended genetic changes, highlighting the need for continued research into its safety. And in a briefing to the U.K. Parliament, the Nuffield Council on Bioethics warned that gene editing could contribute to “unethical or unsustainable practices” if it enables animals to endure poorer living conditions rather than improving animal welfare.

Care must therefore be taken to ensure that genome editing does not contribute to an acceleration of unethical or unsustainable practices,” the Council states. They emphasized that the introduction of genetically edited animals to the marketplace should be guided by robust public dialogue and aimed at raising animal welfare standards.

Moving forward, FAO argues that gene editing’s potential to improve food security, nutrition, and environmental sustainability will depend on effective governance. The organization calls for clear regulatory frameworks, ongoing safety assessments, and attention to economic, social, and ethical considerations, while encouraging greater international coordination as countries develop different approaches to regulating gene-edited products.

According to the Food and Drug Law Institute, despite various hurdles to overcome, CRISPR is “likely to revolutionize how we eat.”

Articles like the one you just read are made possible through the generosity of Food Tank members. Can we please count on you to be part of our growing movement? Become a member today by clicking here.

Photo courtesy of the National Cancer Institute

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The Secretariat of the Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples’ Mechanism (CSIPM) for relations with the United Nations Committee on World Food Security (CFS) is seeking for a full-time administration and logistics officer during the period September – December 2026, with possibility of a longer-term extension of the contract.

• Location: Rome, Italy
• Working hours: Full time 
• Closing date for applications: 15 July 2026

Background

The Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples’ Mechanism (CSIPM) for relations with the United Nations Committee on World Food Security (CFS) is the largest international space of social movements, Indigenous Peoples’ and civil society organisations working to eradicate food insecurity and malnutrition. The Mechanism was founded in 2010 as an essential and autonomous part of the reformed CFS. The purpose of the CSIPM is to facilitate civil society and Indigenous Peoples’ participation and articulation into the policy processes of the CFS.

The CSIPM is an open and inclusive space that gives priority to the organisations and movements of the people most affected by food insecurity and malnutrition. Since it was founded, several hundred national, regional or global organisations have participated in the CSIPM. Far more than 380 million smallholders and family farmers, agricultural and food workers, fisherfolk, pastoralists, Indigenous Peoples, consumers and urban food insecure around the world are affiliated to organisations that participate in the CSIPM. The Mechanism respects pluralism, autonomy, diversity and self-organisation and tries to ensure a balance of constituencies, gender, and regions.

The CSIPM Secretariat is dedicated to facilitating the functions of the CSIPM, supporting the implementation of its work plan and activities during the CFS inter-sessional period and throughout the CFS Plenary Sessions. The CSIPM Secretariat supports the different CSIPM structures and articulations both in terms of governance and policy thematic work, accompanying all related processes. It is also responsible for providing coordination, facilitation, logistical, financial, and communication support to increase the overall capacities of the space and its participating organisations. The CSIPM Secretariat’s team is currently composed of 3 people with longstanding experience in the follow-up and coordination of the overall CSIPM activities, including the related logistics. The CSIPM is looking for a 4th team member to provide logistics and administration support, who will be accompanied by the rest of the team in the handover process

Main duties and tasks of the Administration and Logistics Officer are:

Logistics:

• Support in the organisation of in-presence meetings and online calls, including the organisation of interpretation;   
• Ensure the reservation of flights and hotels and an adequate accounting and archiving of these expenses.
• Supporting CSIPM participants in providing the necessary documentation for their Schengen Visas requests 
• Reimbursement of participants expenses and ensuring an adequate accounting and archiving of these expenses.
• Support the registration process to CFS meetings, CFS Plenary and the Annual Forum of the CSIPM.
• Preparation of meetings documentation, including photocopying, organising and assembling folder for participants and distributing meeting materials.
• Communication with service providers (website, applications, universities, hotel etc.)

These tasks will be implemented with the support and in close collaboration and coordination with the CSIPM Secretariat team particularly with the Secretariat’s Coordinators. 

Administration of funding and administrative tasks:

• Account for CSIPM expenditures on a weekly/bi-weekly basis. Work in close collaboration with the CSIPM Coordination to evaluate expenditures against available budget
• Liaise with CSIPM host organisations that administer funds on behalf of the CSIPM to:
  • Facilitate the signing of funding contracts between hosting NGOs and donors;
  • Ensure payment of invoices on a weekly basis;
  • Prepare sub-contracts between CSIPM and the NGOs for the transfer of funds provided by the CSIPM for the regional/constituency consultations.
• Work in close collaboration with the CSIPM Coordinators for the preparation and finalisation of service contracts for CSIPM consultancy services (i.e. interpreters, translators, communication experts, website designer, etc.), and working contracts for CSIPM secretariat staff.
• Support the CSIPM Coordination in:
  • In close collaboration with the CSIPM Coordination, keeping an overview and control of CSIPM funding needs, income and expenditure.
  • Supporting in the liaison with FAO Partnerships Division for the preparation of Letter of Agreement for funds provided by Member States
  • Liaising with the CSIPM host organisations to facilitate access to resources and their use.
  • Supporting the preparation of funding proposals for submission to donors, working closely with the CSIPM Coordination, particularly for multi-year funding projects, and follow up the process until their final approval and signature.
• Exploring and proposing long term options for the administration of CSIPM funds, for example by identifying and selecting organisations that could administer CSIPM financial resources or researching and follow up of procedures to establish a legal entity and association for the CSIPM.
• Managing working group email lists once or twice a week. 
• Brings a problem-solving attitude and is willing to support the team with research or ad hoc tasks when capacity is stretched, understanding that this role may occasionally require stepping in on areas outside the core remit to keep things moving.

Reporting:

• Support the CSIPM Coordination in the preparation of financial reports and narrative reports for submission to donors.
• Work in close collaboration with the CSIPM Coordination and hosting organisation during audits on financial reports
• Support in the preparation of quarterly/biannually Financial Reports and status of CSIPM funding needs to be presented to the CSIPM Finance working group and the Coordination Committee (CC) during the CSIPM Annual Forum and CC meetings. 

Profile and requirements

The CSIPM is looking for an Administration and Logistics officer committed to support social movements, Indigenous Peoples’ and civil society organisations meaningful participation in global food governance spaces, that has a positive and problem solving attitude and that enjoys working in a team and for the service of rights holders, marginalised communities and in contact with decision makers. 

The selected candidate will have: 

• A university degree, relating to economy, administration, political science, or an equivalent combination of a relevant undergraduate degree, plus related work experience and on-the-job training;
• 3 years work experience related to project administration management; basic financial administration, including budget tracking, expense reporting, and supporting financial reporting processes;
• Experience in organising and preparing international meetings and events with peoples’ organisations and social movements and a substantial understanding of what this entails and how it is different from other type of meetings. 
• Commitment to supporting civil society participation in inter-governmental policy dialogue and decision-making; 
• Working experience with social movements, Indigenous Peoples, and civil society organisations that promote human rights approaches to food security and nutrition, gender equality, and food sovereignty will be considered a plus;
• Excellent oral and written communication skills are necessary;
• Strong organizational and time-management skills, with attention to detail;
• Proactiveness in taking on further responsibilities as the learning and handover process advances
• Good working knowledge of Excel and Word;
• Good knowledge in managing online community and video-conferencing platforms such as Zoom;
• Fluent in English and knowledge of Italian. Working knowledge of another language between Spanish and French is an asset;
• We are looking for someone who
  • Is committed, reliable, responsible and proactive with good problem-solving skills;
  • Enjoys working in a multi-cultural environment and can contribute harmoniously to team work;
  • Can adapt to a flexible working schedule and can work and communicate well under pressure and tight deadlines;
  • Has experience collaborating effectively and working in a team, fostering clear, transparent and respectful communication.
  • Takes ownership of their work and communicates proactively even when problems arise, e.g. when deadlines or tasks are at risk, including being comfortable flagging when something has not been completed rather than letting it go unnoticed.

We offer

• Working in a unique and dynamic space of civil society and Indigenous Peoples’ democratic participation to the United Nations;
• Being part of a highly motivated, welcoming, professional, caring and intercultural team in the context of intercontinental diversity; 
• An appropriate remuneration and a rewarding work environment. Further details will be provided in the event of an interview;
• The position is based in Rome. The selected person will be offered an Italian working contract (either a consultancy contract or a so-called co.co.co. contract with paid leave and holidays) with a monthly net salary that lies at 1.800 Euro. 
• The first contract offered will last for a trial period of four months (September to December 2026); if performance is positively assessed the contract will be further extended. In case of extension and after one year, the contract typology will be confirmed with the selected candidate. The salary may be reviewed subject to performance assessment and availability of funds. 

If you are fit for this role, we invite you to submit your CV and a one-page cover letter highlighting your motivation and most relevant experiences to this role. Applications should be sent to: csmrecruitments@gmail.com by 15 July 2026. 

Timeline of the recruitment process 

• 15 July – Deadline for submitting applications
• Weeks of 20 and 27 July – First round of interviews. 

Selected applicants will be asked to participate in an online interview (or potentially in-person if the candidate is based in Rome) with the full team of the CSIPM Secretariat, as well as the responsible of the hosting organization of the CSIPM. 

• Short-listed candidates might also be asked to pass a written evaluation task, and a second interview. 
• The selected person is expected to join the CSIPM Secretariat from the first week of September 2026. 
• The CSIPM office, where part of the work will take place, is in FAO Headquarters, Viale delle Terme di Caracalla, 00154 Roma, Italy. In addition, the CSIPM Administration and Logistics Officer will be required to go on bi-weekly basis to the office of the hosting organization of the CSIPM, currently located in the Garbatella neighbourhood. 

The post CSIPM Vacancy: Administration and Logistics officer appeared first on CSIPM.

In the midst of increasing grocery prices and decreasing nutrition assistance benefits, food security and access challenges are multiplying by the day across North Carolina. As food security organizations and emergency food assistance programs continue to help their neighbors, Come to the Table (CTTT) is here to help, too.

The post Come to the Table Technical Assistance Opportunities appeared first on RAFI.

Massive loss of bee colonies, lower crop yields, and higher price tags at the grocery store are among the impacts industry experts anticipate following the closure of the United States’ largest bee research lab.

The U.S. Agricultural Research Service began shuttering Maryland’s Beltsville Agricultural Research Center (BARC) in late April and plans to relocate its programming elsewhere in the country, citing “outdated or underutilized” buildings. The center’s bee research lab is a global leader in bee health research and supports American beekeepers through free testing, disease management, and the development of pest control techniques.

The closure follows a few challenging years for American beekeepers, who lost around 60 percent of their colonies nationwide in 2024 and early 2025 to viruses spread by varroa mites, the nation’s dominant bee pest. At the time, researchers from the Beltsville Bee Lab traveled to several states to collect samples for analysis. In February 2025, the Trump administration fired thousands of U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) employees. Department officials also “prohibited” Beltsville researchers from sharing their findings with beekeepers, according to Dr. Jennie Durant, a food systems researcher at UC Davis and former USDA fellow.

“What was most frightening—and this is where we’re so scared about losing Beltsville — is that these mites were all resistant to the most commonly used pesticide that beekeepers use to control mites,” Durant tells Food Tank. “Beltsville Bee Lab is the number one lab that’s been helping beekeepers control mites.”

The lab, which has operated for over a century and has been in Beltsville since 1939, is best known for its Bee Disease Diagnosis Service, through which American beekeepers can submit samples of bees or brood comb and receive free disease analysis reports. As varroa mites continue to develop resistance to new pesticides and tropi mites—a newer pest in the U.S.—begin to decimate colonies, experts like Durant hope that the lab’s closure is reversed.

“Beekeepers are used to having the Beltsville Bee Lab on speed dial—and without having that lab with that particular specialization, they’re really concerned about who’s going to do that crisis intervention and support when they’re dealing with major pests and disease,” said Durant, who recently published a book on how industrial agriculture threatens bee health. “They don’t know who’s going to be their crisis support team anymore.”

For many beekeepers, pollination services make up half or more of their income. Bees, which Durant describes as the “gig workers” of American agriculture, are economic powerhouses that play an outsized role in the U.S. food system, pollinating crops worth around US$15 billion every year. Honey production also racked up US$353 million in 2025.

Each February, nearly all of the nation’s commercial bee colonies are transported to California for almond pollination. In 2024, Californian almond farmers alone spent over US$325 million on pollination services.

The lab’s closure may also create long-term impacts on food and agriculture systems, including small upticks in grocery costs. Though seemingly subtle, those increases can “have a real effect for disadvantaged communities,” she said, since bees pollinate a range of nutritious crops, such as almonds, blueberries and squash.

“One of the key dynamics that has happened already is that farmers are getting fewer bees, and there’s maybe a less robust crop or slightly lower yields,” Durant says. “Those lower yields and that scarcity that’s on the market is going to have a direct impact on consumers.”

In addition to mites, the survival of bee colonies is also threatened by several other challenges, including extreme weather caused by climate change, poor nutrition as a result of biodiversity loss, and exposure to certain agrochemicals.

Maryland lawmakers in April described the BARC’s closure—part of the USDA’s larger reorganization plans—as “illegal,” claiming that it violates provisions of the Agriculture Appropriations Act for fiscal year 2026. This also follows the Trump administration’s proposal to defund the U.S. Geological Survey’s Ecosystems Mission Area program, which supports a key research center for bees in North Dakota, according to Durant.

Durant encourages consumers to tell their legislators about the importance of the lab’s research efforts, and when possible, buy organic to support farms where bees face less exposure to agrochemicals. She also warns that following a recent survey of USDA employees slated for relocation—of which 76 percent said they would not continue with their jobs—the BARC’s relocation will strip beekeepers and farmers of critical expertise.

“Researchers are truth-tellers, and truth-tellers provide data that does not match the agenda of this administration,” Durant tells Food Tank. “Most people are not going to move. Even though they love their jobs and they want to serve the community, it’s just not an option for them, and the administration knows that.”

Articles like the one you just read are made possible through the generosity of Food Tank members. Can we please count on you to be part of our growing movement? Become a member today by clicking here.

Photo courtesy of Simon Kadula, Unsplash

The post How the USDA’s Reorganization Is Straining American Agriculture appeared first on Food Tank.

Come to the Table is excited to announce the launch of a new podcast, Food & Conversations. Hosted by David Allen and Justine Post, the podcast will feature interviews with leaders who are working to build a more just food system – advocates, experts, farmers, and more. Through these conversations, we hope to share tools, […]

The post Food & Conversations Podcast appeared first on RAFI.

Statement from the National Confederation of Indigenous Native Peasant Women of Bolivia “Bartolina Sisa" - alerting about persecution, illegal detentions, and acts of torture.

The post Bolivia: The “Bartolina Sisa” Organization Reaffirms Unity. Denounces Government Attempts at Division and Co-optation appeared first on La Via Campesina - EN.

Each week, Food Tank is rounding up a few news stories that inspire excitement, infuriation, or curiosity.

USDA Proposes Closure of Bee Research Facilities

Bees and other pollinators are essential to our food system. They are uncredited workers who support the production of many of the fruits, vegetables, and nuts we consume everyday. But pollinator populations are facing increasing stress due to climate change-related threats and diseases.

Globally, wild bee and native pollinator populations are declining rapidly, and managed honeybees are experiencing similar threat. Last year, commercial beekeepers in the U.S. reported losing about 60% of their honey bee colonies, the highest loss rate since tracking.

At a time when we need to increase support for bees and beekeepers, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has, instead, proposed the federal closure of essential bee research facilities.

One facility is the Beltsville Bee Research Lab in Maryland which has provided support for beekeepers, run disease diagnostics, and conducted essential research for over a century.

The closure of bee research labs reflects a growing trend Food Tank has been reporting on: at the very moment when more support is needed, federal funding is instead being stripped.

Food Insecurity in the U.S. Rises Beyond COVID Rates

Similarly, last year, the US Department of Agriculture stopped collecting data on American food insecurity, arguing that the studies were “redundant” and served to “fear monger.”

But Americans are experiencing food insecurity. The data still exists and it’s shocking.

A new survey released last week from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that food insecurity in the U.S. has reached its highest rate in six years.

Hunger is now more widespread than it was during the summer of 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic triggered severe economic disruption and unemployment.

As grocery prices continue to climb and Americans face higher fuel costs, many families are being forced to make impossible choices between necessities.

The report shows about 10% of families reported missing meals. For lower income families, this number doubles. Nearly 20% of families reported having to skip meals or go without food due to financial constraints.

The report also comes on the heels of the FAO’s declaration that a broader global food security crisis may be on the horizon. Geopolitical conflicts and disruptions to the supply of energy, fertilizer, and other agricultural inputs could lead to lower crop yields, and increased global hunger, in the years ahead.

The Colorado River is at a Historic Low

Just as food insecurity is rising globally, water access is becoming an increasingly urgent issue across the American West.

The rules that govern the Colorado River, the primary water source for much of the region, will expire at the end of 2026. But despite years of negotiations, the seven basin states (California, Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, and New Mexico) still have not reached an agreement on how the river should be managed.

The challenge is driven largely by climate change. More than two decades of drought, rising temperatures, and declining snowpack have reduced river flows and pushed the system’s two largest reservoirs to historically low levels.

The stakes are enormous. The Colorado River supplies water to about 40 million people and irrigates millions of acres of farmland. Any decision about how water shortages are allocated will directly affect farmers and food production.

The negotiations taking place this year will likely shape water policy across the American West for decades to come.

Climate Resiliency and Learning from Dryland Farmers

Now, more than ever, we need to focus on climate resiliency for farmers.

One of the most important places to look for solutions is in the farming communities that have been adapting to water scarcity for generations.

Across dryland regions like East Africa and central Australia, farmers have spent generations producing food in water-scarce and variable environments.

These farmers understand what it means to farm through drought, uncertain rainfall, and extreme heat and, as these conditions increase, this knowledge is becoming more important than ever.

Éliane Ubalijoro with CIFOR-ICRAF said recently that drylands are “rich with opportunity, ecological intelligence, and the potential to drive resilience, economic vitality, and sustainable prosperity for millions.”

Food Tank recently published a list of 10 amazing dryland crops you may not be familiar with. These crops are grown by farmers who are leaders in climate resiliency.

FIMCON Gathers Food is Medicine Professionals

Food Tank attended FIMCON, the largest gathering of food is medicine professionals, last week in Washington, D.C. The event brought together healthcare providers, researchers, policymakers, and advocates who are working to demonstrate how access to healthy, nutritious food can prevent and manage chronic diseases.

As conversations around healthcare continue to evolve, events like FIMCON showcase innovative strategies that recognize food not only as a basic necessity but also as a powerful tool for treatment and prevention.

The goal for food is medicine dialogue in the future is to ensure farmers are always at the center of these discussions.

Articles like the one you just read are made possible through the generosity of Food Tank members. Can we please count on you to be part of our growing movement? Become a member today by clicking here.

Photo courtesy of Mike Newbry, Unsplash

The post Food Tank’s Weekly News Roundup: Colorado River at Historic Low, Dryland Farmers Lead in Resiliency, and Bee Research Facilities’ Proposed Closure appeared first on Food Tank.

Artificial intelligence and digital technologies are already transforming food systems and daily lives. For peasants, smallholder farmers, fisherfolk, pastoralists, Indigenous Peoples, women and youth, the stakes are high: these technologies can deepen power concentration, land and resource grabbing and the erosion of sovereignty, excluding the peoples whose knowledge and labour sustain food systems. At the same time, community-led initiatives show how these technologies can support self-determination, peasant and Indigenous knowledge and innovation. Rights-holders must be at the centre of any decision-making on the use of these technologies, and this open consultation is an opportunity to engage. 

The High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition (HLPE-FSN), the independent science–policy body of the Committee on World Food Security (CFS), has published a draft background note on AI, digitalization and data governance for open consultation until 15 June 2026. The note will inform the CFS High-Level Forum (HLF) on 30 June, whose outcomes can contribute to identifying key messages and policy considerations for future discussions or potential workstreams of the CFS.

Deadline for submissions: 15 June 2026 (23:59 CEST)

The HLPE-FSN is inviting written inputs in English, French and Spanish, regarding the overall orientation of the note and experiences on AI, digitalization and data governance in food systems.

Questions to guide the e-consultation

– Share your feedback on the overall orientation of the note: 

1. Are the issues identified by the HLPE-FSN the most important issues related to Artificial Intelligence, digitalization and data governance affecting food security and nutrition, globally and in specific contexts? 
2. Are there any other key issues that should be added and elaborated? If yes, please provide a justification of why they are important, together with relevant literature and data.

– Share your inputs and experience on Artificial Intelligence, digitalization and data governance in food systems: 

1. Are the issues identified fully capturing the links with food security and nutrition (FSN) outcomes?
2. Is there any aspect of direct or indirect FSN outcome that should be further elaborated?
3. Is there any example or case study that deserves to be mentioned?
4. In particular, do you have examples of effective policies to improve FSN outcomes of the use of Artificial Intelligence, digitalization and data governance in food systems?
5. Is there any missing reference to key literature and data? 

Submit your contribution directly through the HLPE form before 15 June 2026 (23:59 CEST).

Deadline: 10 June 2026.

The CSIPM Data Working Group is coordinating a collective input to this consultation. Join the Working Group and share your inputs by 10 June (five days before the official deadline) so the CSIPM can consolidate a contribution. 

Join the CSIPM Data Working Group 

The post HLPE open consultation on Artificial Intelligence, digitalization and data governance for food security and nutrition appeared first on CSIPM.

Here in the U.S. but certainly also all over the world, when people have questions about health and wellness, nearly three-quarters of us turn to the internet first. And in a country where 1 in 2 adults is experiencing diabetes or pre-diabetes and 7 in 10 faces overweight or obesity, according to The Food is Medicine Institute at Tufts University, nutrition is increasingly a central subject we’re relying on technology to help guide.

This week, I was in Washington, D.C. for FIMCON, a new national Food is Medicine Conference. I moderated a panel that explored how we can communicate nutrition and health messages to the public using a mix of digital platforms, behavioral science, and emerging artificial intelligence (AI) tools. I spoke with experts including Nira Goren, MD, Head of AI for Societal Health & Food is Medicine at Google; Noosheen Hashemi, Founder & CEO of January AI; and Sarah Mastrorocco, VP & GM of Instacart Health.

I find it fascinating that the increasing public realization of the power of Food is Medicine in recent years has coincided with the boom of generative AI, and I’ve got to be honest: It makes me both excited and nervous. GenAI is a hugely powerful tool—and with major opportunity comes the serious challenge of using it responsibly. That’s exactly why we need to talk about it.

According to a study in Frontiers in Nutrition, AI can be used to deliver personalized nutrition recommendations, enable early dietary interventions to prevent chronic diseases, and optimize food processing to reduce food waste. At the Periodic Table of Food Initiative, researchers are using AI alongside a global database to map out what they call the “dark matter” of food—the overwhelming majority of biomolecules in food we don’t know about—to improve human and planetary health.

These potential impacts stretch from your forks all the way back to our farm fields. At the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) this week, the annual Menus of Change summit brought together chefs, advocates, and private-sector food leaders to discuss ways that food systems of the future—including health-oriented technologies like AI—begin in the kitchen.

And as we’ve reported at Food Tank, AI tools can also help farmers improve their land management practices via precision agriculture; analyze climate risks and predict disruptions before they become disastrous; and strengthen transparent and traceable supply chains.

But of course, no technological solution is a silver bullet. Along with well-documented environmental impacts that cannot be ignored, generative AI exists in an overwhelming internet information ecosystem that is not always accurate.

“Unfortunately about 50 percent of the information online in nutrition is disinformation,” Nira Goren of Google told us at Food Tank’s SXSW Summit earlier this year. “So navigating that sea of information—what’s high quality, what’s not high-quality, why are these two institutions saying conflicting things—is something we wanted to help make better.”

To address this, Google is working with the Tufts Food is Medicine Institute to ensure their tools and models are both building upon and delivering the best available public nutrition information.

And the public health landscape has changed significantly in recent years. For example, challenges around obesity have really only become predominant in the past few decades, says cardiologist Dariush Mozaffarian, the Director of the Food is Medicine Institute at Tufts University.

“I graduated medical school in 1995; we were talking about eating disorders (when) we talked about nutrition. There wasn’t an obesity epidemic in 1995. So this has happened in just the last 30 years in our adult lifetimes,” he says.

And the economic stakes are higher than ever, too. Besides the quality-of-life impacts of poor nutrition, health care spending and lost productivity from sub-optimal diets cost the economy US$1.1 trillion in the U.S. alone, per The Rockefeller Foundation. So the costs of getting things wrong—or doing nothing!—are enormous.

There’s no question that the food movement needs to ask serious questions about the future of generative AI. When it comes to protecting biodiversity, establishing food sovereignty, and even the idea that food is our first and best medicine, we often find deeply powerful answers in Indigenous wisdom that has guided humanity for millennia. As the climate crisis becomes more intense, we cannot afford to make certain sacrifices but we also cannot afford to leave powerful tools on the table unused.

In other words, some new problems require new solutions. Investing in emerging technologies to bolster our efforts to nourish the planet can truly pay off—if we manage them responsibly and center equity and justice in all of our decision-making.

Articles like the one you just read are made possible through the generosity of Food Tank members. Can we please count on you to be part of our growing movement? Become a member today by clicking here.

Photo courtesy of Nathan Dumlao, Unsplash

The post Asking Serious Questions About AI’s Role in Food is Medicine appeared first on Food Tank.

The country is currently facing a runoff election to choose its new president. National organizations representing Indigenous Peoples and peasants have outlined a critical agenda to ensure full respect for their rights.

The post Peru: Indigenous Peoples and Peasants Mobilize Against the Threat of a Setback for Democracy appeared first on La Via Campesina - EN.

FoodCorps and Teachers College, Columbia University recently announced a new microcredential designed to help K-5 teachers integrate food education into everyday classroom learning. The six-week program, Food Education in the Classroom (Food-E), combines nutrition science and experiential learning to help educators foster students’ knowledge, curiosity, and confidence around food.

Food-E is launching on the 80th anniversary of the National School Lunch Program, which feeds nearly 30 million students every school day and is an important source of fruits and vegetables for many children, Rachel Willis, President of FoodCorps, tells Food Tank.

But access alone is not enough, according to FoodCorps. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data shows that 60 percent of U.S. children fall short of fruit intake recommendations and 93 percent do not consume enough vegetables.

The launch comes eight months after the One Big Beautiful Bill Act cuts eliminated SNAP-Ed, a federal nutrition education program that served roughly 90 million Americans, including 35 million children. One consequence of those cuts, Willis says, was the loss of nutrition educators in schools and communities. Food-E is designed to help address that gap by preparing K-5 teachers to integrate food education throughout the school day.

The course integrates biology, ecology, environmental science, sociology, and history, allowing educators to connect food lessons to existing learning standards rather than treating food education as a separate subject. Willis says conversations with Pamela Koch, Associate Professor of Nutrition and Education at Teachers College and head of the Food-E program, helped shape this approach.

Koch’s work with educators reveals a common challenge: many teachers recognize the value of food education but struggle to fit it into already packed curricula. Food-E addresses that challenge by helping educators identify opportunities within lessons they already teach. A geometry lesson, for example, might incorporate food through concepts such as measurement, shapes, or fractions.

The course also encourages teachers to make use of “micromoments”—brief periods before an assembly, during transitions, or at the end of the school day—to spark conversations and curiosity about food. Rather than adding another responsibility to educators’ workloads, Willis says the goal is to make food education a natural part of students’ daily learning experiences.

Food-E pairs nutrition science with experiential learning, helping educators help students engage with food through hands-on activities. According to FoodCorps, an average of 60 percent of students who participate in its food education programs report greater preference for fruits and vegetables. Students who participate in more hands-on activities, such as cooking and gardening, consume up to three times as many fruits and vegetables.

Willis says Food-E is designed to help more educators bring these experiences into the classroom through activities ranging from cooking and gardening to science experiments, taste tests and food-related storytelling, helping students build curiosity, confidence, and agency around food from an early age.

In addition to nutrition science and classroom activities, Food-E challenges participants to think critically about their own experiences with food. Early modules ask participants to reflect on their memories of school meals, the messages they received about food growing up, and the experiences that shaped their attitudes toward eating. The course also explores how those experiences can influence classroom conversations and shape students’ perceptions of food.

Willis says this work is important because educators have an opportunity to help children develop curiosity and confidence around food rather than judgment or anxiety. Reflecting on her own experience, Willis says her work in food education has led her to reconsider some of her own assumptions about food. Food-E, she explains, creates space for educators to do the same while ensuring that students have the opportunity to develop their own relationships with food.

Making Food-E broadly accessible was essential to FoodCorps’ vision for the program. Willis says the organization wanted to create a resource that could support nutrition educators, classroom teachers across disciplines, and individuals with little or no prior experience in food education. That approach extends to the program’s cost. FoodCorps set the enrollment fee at US$295 in an effort to reduce barriers to participation and make it easier for both schools and individual educators to enroll.

FoodCorps envisions a future in which all 50 million public school students have access to food education and nourishing meals at school. Willis says Food-E is a critical tool for scaling that impact. By equipping more educators with food education tools, Willis believes the program can help build support for policies and practices that expand children’s access to nourishing school food.

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