Grist

For more than a century, zoning ordinances rooted in segregation have encouraged the construction of single-family homes, often at the expense of apartment buildings and other structures that promote urban density. Beyond contributing to a mounting housing shortage and spiraling prices, such policies have contributed to sprawl and dependence upon automobiles.

Canada has decided to try something different. 

The government has taken the unprecedented step of offering provincial governments billions of dollars in infrastructure funds with one catch: To receive it, they must require cities to abandon single-family zoning laws and allow the construction of fourplexes. This unusually broad policy, adopted in May, has implications beyond expanding the housing stock. It could help mitigate climate change.

Research has consistently shown that multifamily structures reduce overall vehicle miles traveled by placing people closer to urban centers and mass transit. They also use materials and energy more efficiently, driving down the carbon footprint of construction. “Higher density tends to reduce emissions, and by a pretty significant amount,” said Zack Subin, a housing and climate researcher at the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at UC-Berkeley.

If Canada’s approach works, it could encourage similar policies in the United States and nudge cities toward building a greater variety of climate-friendly housing. “Historical planning, rooted in segregation and exclusion, have effectively banned the most efficient forms of housing across most of our cities and suburbs,” Subin said. “Any reform like this is moving in the right direction.”

States like Washington, Oregon, California, and cities including Minneapolis and Austin, have in recent years taken steps to eliminate or amend single-family zoning laws. But none have gone to the lengths of the government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The country’s 2024 budget includes 6 billion Canadian dollars (about $4.4 billion) to accelerate new construction, with 5 billion Canadian dollars of that set aside as conditional infrastructure funds. To access the money, each of the nation’s 10 provinces and three territories must require municipalities to eliminate single-family zoning and allow fourplexes. They also must adopt updates to Canada’s building code, which is advisory, not mandatory, and enforce renter and home-buyer protections, among other measures. 

Ottawa is serious about enforcing the rules, too. When the city of Oakville, Ontario rejected a measure to permit fourplexes in May, Housing Minister Sean Fraser ordered the city to return more than 1 million Canadian dollars it had received. “If provinces don’t want to make some of the changes, they don’t have to accept the funding that we are putting on the table,” he said in response to conservative leaders who rejected the idea of eliminating single-family housing. (Any money the provinces and territories don’t claim will be offered directly to municipal governments.) 

To get around the fact that in most of Canada, as in the United States, zoning is handled at the local level, the government offers its carrot to provincial authorities. By dangling vast sums in front of them, federal officials hope to encourage action at “levels of government that have been resistant to change,” said Carolyn Whitzman, a housing policy expert at the University of Ottawa who helped shape the country’s latest national housing plan.

Fourplexes like this building in Oakland, California, typically require fewer construction materials than single-family homes and use energy more efficiently, making them a climate-friendlier form of housing. But not all cities allow them. San Francisco Chronicle / Hearst Newspapers via Getty Images

It’s an example of what is called a pro-housing policy, one in which a state (or, in this case, province) or the federal government offers money or other benefits to incentivize progressive policies like zoning reform or eliminating parking minimums. Canada’s approach echoes a proposal the Biden administration floated to dole out $10 billion in grants to states and cities to reform single-family zoning and build new housing. The program was watered down last year to provide just $85 million to cities that commit to removing barriers to affordable housing construction. (In 2021, California succeeded in introducing a program that offers municipalities pursuing zoning reform a leg up when applying for certain state grants and exclusive access to additional funds.)

Canada’s policy targets what housing experts call the “missing middle” in home construction: low-rise dwellings like townhomes and fourplexes that fall between a single-family home and an apartment building. Such structures have until recently been illegal in many parts of Canada and the United States. Allowing their construction could boost housing supply by facilitating the development of parcels previously off-limits to multifamily housing. “The majority of land with existing infrastructure — close to public transit, schools, parks, community services — have been exclusively zoned for single-family housing,” Whitzman said. The change could lead to more construction, greater housing availability, and lower costs, she said.

Whether such reforms will do that is, according to Subin at UC Berkeley, “still a live research question.” Only a few U.S. cities, including Minneapolis and Portland, Oregon, have adopted missing middle zoning reforms, and the long-term effects still aren’t understood. Local market conditions, like housing demand and land value, also affect the impact of allowing more fourplexes. Yonah Freemark, a transportation and land use policy researcher at the Urban Institute, said Canada’s reform will likely have only a modest effect on housing availability, since fourplexes tend to get developed mostly in areas that have relatively high housing values and amenities within walking distance. 

But such efforts offer an often overlooked benefit: They mitigate climate change. Neighborhoods with denser housing tend to have far lower emissions than the national average, in large part because people living in them tend to drive shorter distances and use more public transit. A recent study that Subin led at the Terner Center found that across the San Francisco Bay Area, higher population density corresponded with fewer vehicle miles traveled. San Francisco residents, for example, drove one-third the distance of those in Oakley, a suburb about 50 miles to the east with far less density.

Although access to public transit is a critical factor for reducing car dependency, Subin noted that higher density leads to fewer vehicle miles traveled even when people don’t ride the bus or take the train. Simply having homes and businesses closer together means that “people are still driving shorter distances, and walking and biking for a greater share of their trips,” he said. 

Fourplexes and other low-rise multifamily dwellings require less energy than single-family homes because they share insulated walls and roofs. They also require less materials to build, reducing the emissions associated with their construction. A recent study by researchers in Canada estimated that building missing middle housing in Ontario, Canada, could reduce future construction-related carbon emissions from residential buildings by as much as 46.7 percent. 

For these reasons, encouraging greater housing density could be among the most underappreciated climate mitigation policies. UC-Berkeley researchers have found that building additional homes in underutilized urban areas is the most effective climate strategy available to California’s local governments. Yet most municipal climate action plans don’t mention adding housing as a climate tool, in part because it’s difficult to calculate the exact benefits. 

Housing experts cautioned that missing middle reforms on their own are insufficient to address the housing shortage or make a dramatic impact on emissions. “Just because you allow for housing does not mean the housing gets built,” Freemark from the Urban Institute said, pointing out that complex market dynamics ultimately determine what types of new housing gets built. He also said that large-scale apartment buildings built near public transit would more effectively address the need for housing while maximizing the carbon-cutting benefits of greater density. 

But as governments across the U.S. and Canada try new housing policies and wade into zoning reform, the two countries can learn from each other’s experiences. “There’s a lot of learning going on between them,” Whitzman said. “When we’re talking about these issues, the differences between Canada and the U.S. are very minimal.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Canada makes an unprecedented push for multifamily housing on Jul 18, 2024.

Each year, burning fossil fuels puffs tens of billions of metric tons of planet-warming carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. And for decades, the Earth’s forests, along with its oceans and soil, have sucked roughly a third back in, creating a vacuum known as the land carbon sink. But as deforestation and wildfires ravage the world’s forests, scientists have begun to worry that this crucial balancing act may be in jeopardy.

A study published in the journal Nature on Wednesday found that, despite plenty of turmoil, the world’s forests have continued to absorb a steady amount of carbon for the last three decades. 

“It appears to be stable, but it actually maybe masks the issue,” said Yude Pan, a senior research scientist at the U.S. Forest Service and the lead author of the study, which included 16 coauthors from around the world.

As the Earth’s forests have undergone dramatic changes, with some releasing more carbon than they absorb, Pan warns that better forest management is needed. “I really hope that this study will let people realize how much carbon is lost from deforestation,” Pan said. “We must protect this carbon sink.”

Roughly 10 million hectares of forest — an area equivalent to the size of Portugal — are razed every year, and ever-intensifying wildfires almost double that damage. The planet has lost so many trees that experts have warned forests may soon reach a tipping point, in which this crucial carbon vault would emit more planet-warming gases than it absorbs. Some studies have suggested that the Amazon rainforest, often called the lungs of the world, is already there.

Using data reaching back to 1990, the researchers analyzed hand measurements of tree species, size, and mass from 95 percent of the globe’s forests to calculate the amount of carbon being tucked away over three decades. For each biome studied — temperate, boreal, and tropical forests — the researchers considered how long-term changes in the landscape altered the region’s emissions-sucking power.

In the boreal forest, the world’s largest land biome that stretches across the top of the Northern Hemisphere, the researchers found a dire situation. Over the study period, these cold-loving tree species have lost 36 percent of their carbon-sinking capacity as logging, wildfires, pests, and drought devastated the land.

Some regions are faring worse than others: In Canada, wildfires have turned boreal forests into a source of carbon emissions. In Asian Russia forests, similar conditions caused the region to lose 42 percent of its sinking strength.

It’s the clear consequence of decades of worsening fires. A study published in Nature in June looked at 21 years of satellite records and was the first to confirm that the frequency and magnitude of extreme wildfires has more than doubled worldwide. The change is especially drastic in boreal forests, where these wildfires have become over 600 percent more common per year.

“I was just shocked by the magnitude,” said Calum Cunningham, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Tasmania and lead author of the wildfire study.

An overview of the dense canopy, alongside an area of deforestation, as seen in the Amazon rainforest in 2008 near Manaus, Brazil. Per-Anders Pettersson/Getty

Down near the equator, where tropical forests make up over half of the world’s tree cover area, the global carbon sequestration study found a complicated, three-part equation. Agricultural deforestation has caused a 31 percent loss of the old forest’s carbon-sinking strength. But new plant life has reclaimed large swaths of abandoned farmland, and the carbon-sucking power of these younger forests has made up for the losses from logging. Although persistent deforestation continues to create more emissions, the study found that when adding up these gains and losses, tropical forests are almost carbon-neutral.

So how has the globe managed to keep up the overall balancing act? The answer lies in temperate forests, where the carbon sink has increased by 30 percent. The study found that decades of reforestation efforts, largely by nationwide programs in China, are finally paying off. But the trend might not last. In China, urbanization and logging have begun to cut into tree cover. In the United States and Europe, wildfires, droughts, and pests have caused the temperate forest carbon sink to drop by 10 percent and 12 percent, respectively. 

Forest management efforts, along with the rate of emissions, will determine how this all plays out. A paper in Nature last year found “striking uncertainty” in the continued potential of carbon storage in U.S. forests, highlighting the need for conservation and restoration efforts.

Chao Wu, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Utah who led that 2023 study, said that mitigating emissions should be the biggest priority for solving the climate crisis. “But the other important part is nature-based climate solutions, and the forest will be a very important part of that,” Wu said. 

Richard Houghton, a senior scientist at the nonprofit Woodwell Climate Research Center who contributed to the latest sequestration study, says it’s “luck, in a sense” that the global forest carbon sink has remained stable. 

For it to stay that way, Houghton and Pan said that increased restoration efforts and reduced logging are needed in all biomes, and especially in tropical forests, where 95 percent of deforestation occurs. “We don’t have enough preservation,” Houghton said, adding that protecting forests has added biodiversity and ecosystem health benefits. “There’s always more reasons to do a better job.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Amazingly, forests are still sucking up as much carbon as they were 30 years ago. But there’s a catch. on Jul 18, 2024.

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The spotlight

Eating a plant-based diet is one of the highest-impact actions a person can take to reduce their personal contribution to greenhouse gas emissions. A broader cultural shift toward plants in some of the meat-eatingest countries could lead to more efficient land use, less strain on water systems, and reductions in methane, the potent greenhouse gas that cows famously belch. Still, that’s easier said than done. On the individual level, people might have all sorts of reasons for clinging to animal products — including the concern that cutting them out will lead to nutritional deficiencies.

But one group of people is challenging the idea that a plant-based diet can’t be perfectly sufficient: the swole vegans of powerlifting, strength athletics, and personal training circles. My colleague Joseph Winters wrote a feature last week exploring the stories of some of these stereotype-smashing athletes.

While it’s difficult to put definitive numbers on the growth of veganism, Winters said, proxies indicate that the diet is gaining popularity generally — the plant-based meat market has grown hugely over the past few years, as has the prevalence of vegan restaurants and signups for “Veganuary” challenges (going vegan for the month of January).

“It’s definitely more normalized,” Winters said, adding that he had a lot of fun finding media coverage of vegan athletes from decades past. A 1974 Time magazine article that he cited in the piece exemplified the scrutiny that vegan and vegetarian athletes have often received; in describing the performance of NBA player Bill Walton, the article noted, “The vegetarian tiger played as if he had dined on red meat all week.”

“I think it’d be really weird if outlets covered vegan athletes like that nowadays,” Winters said. “Enough athletes have proven that you can cut out animal foods from your diet and still perform at a high level.”

In fact, one of the nutritionists he spoke to said that intense athletes are of the least concern when it comes to switching to a vegan diet. Because they’re already hyper conscious of protein and micronutrients like iron and B12, they should have little issue getting those things from plants instead of animal products. By contrast, “regular Joe” vegans might be at risk of deficiencies if they aren’t accounting for the protein and micronutrients lost by cutting out meat, dairy, and eggs. But another medical source Winters quoted said that most people don’t need to worry about hitting their daily protein requirement, as long as they’re eating a diverse diet without too many processed foods — whether those foods come from plants or critters.

“Personally, I think that Americans’ obsession with protein is misplaced, and I was very worried that I was going to be feeding that with this article,” Winters said. What Americans are more likely to lack is fiber — and eating more plants could help with that. (In fact, although this detail didn’t make it into the final piece, one of the vegan athletes Winters spoke to eats banana and orange slices with the peels still on, for an extra dose of fiber and micronutrients.)

By and large, the athletes Winters spoke to didn’t choose this diet to maximize their physical fitness — although many of them are performing at the top of their chosen fields. “They’re vegan mostly for concern about animals and the environment,” he said. “They also have this other part of their identity that’s focused on being an athlete, and they want to show that they don’t have to give up that part of themselves. They can have both at the same time.”

Vegan strength trainers are just one tiny niche of the population, but, Winters said, they’re contributing to a shift in what people imagine veganism to look like. It’s something he also thinks about personally, as a vegan marathon runner and biker.

“As a skinny man, I often worry that people think, ‘Oh, that’s what happens to you if you go vegan,’” he joked. “But then, I feel like I have good race times, which I can pull out when people doubt my athletic abilities — and say, ‘Look, you can still run somewhat fast on a vegan diet.’” (Let the record show that his half marathon time is 73 minutes — far faster than somewhat.)

We’ve excerpted Winters’ piece on swole vegans below. Check out the full story on the Grist site.

— Claire Elise Thompson

Meet the jacked vegan strength athletes defying stereotypes (Excerpt)

Over the past two years, Gigi Balsamico has won first place at more than a dozen strongman competitions in the eastern United States: Maidens of Might, Rebel Queen, War of the North, Third Monkey Throwdown. These events typically involve six to eight weight-lifting challenges on which competitors are scored based on criteria like the amount of weight they can handle and how many reps they can do.

Last month, Balsamico came out at the top of her weight class at Delaware’s Baddest. There, she hoisted four 100- to 150-pound sandbags onto her shoulders after completing six reps of a 315-pound dead lift. As the pièce de résistance, she harnessed herself to a Chevy Silverado — which itself was attached to a food truck trailer — and dragged it 40 feet in 40 seconds.

Balsamico is also a vegan of 11 years. It’s an identity she’s vocal about, out of a desire to push back on the notion that you need to eat meat to be strong. When she was a vegan-curious teenager, it gnawed at her that giving up animal products could mean sacrificing sports.

“I thought I was going to shrivel away to nothing,” Balsamico told Grist. Her Italian, sports-loving family had always eaten meat and dairy. “That’s what was always said to me, that you would basically get so skinny and die.”

But Balsamico’s love for animals compelled her to question these concerns. As a child, tending to neglected horses at a family friend’s farm prompted her to wonder why people didn’t see all animals as beautiful, each with its own unique personality. Horses, cows, sheep, dogs: “It was so apparent to me that there was no difference,” she said.

Meanwhile, veganism was at the beginning of a surge in popularity — concerns over the cruel conditions of factory farming, as well as the impacts of animal agriculture on the climate and environment, were helping to bring the marginalized diet closer to the mainstream. Although estimates vary, peer-reviewed research suggests that the chickens, cows, pigs, and other animals humans raise for meat and dairy contribute up to 20 percent of the planet’s overall greenhouse gas emissions.

Balsamico cut out all animal products from her diet at the age of 14, justifying the decision to her parents in a “39-minute PowerPoint” on the health benefits of plant-based eating. The weight lifting came a couple of years later, mostly out of curiosity: “I just wanted to see if I could do it,” she said. And she could — in 2022, she began winning first place for her age and weight class in every strongman competition she entered, racking up a streak of victories that she has yet to break.

“I haven’t had meat in 11 years of my life, and I can pick up 700 pounds on my back,” she told Grist. Balsamico now coaches other aspiring athletes at a gym in Pittsburgh, and is affiliated with an international team of vegan strength competitors called PlantBuilt.

Balsamico and her teammates are just a few of the many plant-based athletes who are using their “swole” bodies and competition results for social change, showing on social media and through word of mouth that you don’t have sacrifice “gains” — slang for muscle mass gained through diet and exercise — in order to eat a diet that protects animals and the environment. One block of tofu at a time, they’re defying expectations about what’s possible without animal protein — and weathering unsolicited criticism from those who insist, against all evidence to the contrary, that “soy boys” are inherently weak.

— Joseph Winters

Read the full piece here to learn more about how endurance athletes, strength builders, and fitness coaches are championing a diet that’s lighter on the planet.

More exposure

• Read: about some of the vegan athletes who will be at the Paris Olympics this summer (Bon Appétit)
• Read: about how chefs are veganizing the beloved Caesar salad, 100 years after its creation (Grist)
• Read: about the growing popularity, and acceptance, of vegan and vegetarian diets (Forbes)
• Read: about Joey Chestnut, the winner of the Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest 16 years running, being banned from the competition after signing an endorsement deal with a competitor — Impossible Foods (New York Times)

A parting shot

Behold: Gigi Balsamico, one of the vegan strength athletes Winters interviewed, pulling a Chevy Silverado and food truck trailer as part of Delaware’s Baddest, a strength competition she competed in last month.

IMAGE CREDITS

Vision: Lily Lambie-Kiernan / Grist

Spotlight: Lily Lambie-Kiernan / Grist

Parting shot: Courtesy of Gigi Balsamico

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This story was originally published by Grist with the headline These power athletes are shifting attitudes about what vegans can look like on Jul 17, 2024.

Standing knee-deep in an emerald expanse, a row of trees offering respite from the sweltering heat, Rosa Morales diligently relocates chipilín, a Central American legume, from one bed of soil to another. The 34-year-old has been coming to the Campesinos’ Garden run by the Farmworker Association of Florida in Apopka for the last six months, taking home a bit of produce each time she visits. The small plot that hugs a soccer field and community center is an increasingly vital source of food to feed her family. 

It also makes her think of Guatemala, where she grew up surrounded by plants. “It reminds me of working the earth there,” Morales said in Spanish. 

Tending to the peaceful community garden is a far cry from the harvesting Morales does for her livelihood. Ever since moving to the United States 16 years ago, Morales has been a farmworker at local nurseries and farms. She takes seasonal jobs that allow her the flexibility and income to care for her five children, who range from 18 months to 15 years old. 

This year, she picked blueberries until the season ended in May, earning $1 for every pound she gathered. On a good day, she earned about two-thirds of the state’s minimum hourly wage of $12. For that, Morales toiled in brutal heat, with little in the way of protection from the sun, pesticides, or herbicides. With scant water available, the risk of dehydration or heat stroke was never far from her mind. But these are the sorts of things she must endure to ensure her family is fed. “I don’t really have many options,” she said. 

Now, she’s grappling with rising food prices, a burden that isn’t relieved by state or federal safety nets. Her husband works as a roofer, but as climate change diminishes crop yields and intensifies extreme weather, there’s been less work for the two of them. They have struggled to cover the rent, let alone the family’s ballooning grocery bill. “It’s hard,” she said. “It’s really, really hot … the heat is increasing, but the salaries aren’t.” The Campesinos’ Garden helps fill in the gap between her wages and the cost of food.

Rosa Morales, left, and Amadely Roblero, right, work in the Apopka garden in their free time. Ayurella Horn-Muller / Grist

Her story highlights a hidden but mounting crisis: The very people who ensure the rest of the country has food to eat are going hungry. Although no one can say for sure how many farmworkers are food insecure (local studies suggest it ranges from 52 to 82 percent), advocates are sure the number is climbing, driven in no small part by climate change. 

The 2.4 million or so farmworkers who are the backbone of America’s agricultural industry earn among the lowest wages in the country. The average American household spends more than $1,000 a month on groceries, an almost unimaginable sum for families bringing home as little as $20,000 a year, especially when food prices have jumped more than 25 percent since 2019. Grappling with these escalating costs is not a challenge limited to farmworkers, of course — the Department of Agriculture says getting enough to eat is a financial struggle for more than 44 million people. But farmworkers are particularly vulnerable because they are largely invisible in the American political system.

“When we talk about supply chains and food prices going up, we are not thinking about the people who are producing that food, or getting it off the fields and onto our plates,” said Nezahualcoyotl Xiuhtecutli. 

Xiuhtecutli works with the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition to protect farmworkers from the occupational risks and exploitation they face. Few people beyond the workers themselves recognize that hunger is a problem for the community, he said — or that it’s exacerbated by climate change. The diminished yields that can follow periods of extreme heat and the disruptions caused by floods, hurricanes, and the like inevitably lead to less work, further exacerbating the crisis.

There isn’t a lot of aid available, either. Enrolling in federal assistance programs is out of the question for the roughly 40 percent of farmworkers without work authorization or for those who fear reprisals or sanctions. Even those who are entitled to such help may be reluctant to seek it. In lieu of these resources, a rising number of advocacy organizations are filling the gaps left by government programs by way of food pantries, collaborative food systems, and community gardens across America.

“Even though [farmworkers] are doing this job with food, they still have little access to it,” said Xiuhtecutli. “And now they have to choose between paying rent, paying gas to and from work, and utilities, or any of those things. And food? It’s not at the top of that list.”

A migrant worker tends to farmland in Homestead, Florida, in 2023. Chandan Khanna / AFP via Getty Images

Historically, hunger rates among farmworkers, as with other low-income communities, have been at their worst during the winter due to the inherent seasonality of a job that revolves around growing seasons. But climate change and inflation have made food insecurity a growing, year-round problem. 

In September, torrential rain caused heavy flooding across western Massachusetts. The inundation decimated farmland already ravaged by a series of storms. “It impacted people’s ability to make money and then be able to support their families,” Claudia Rosales said in Spanish. “People do not have access to basic food.” 

As executive director of the Pioneer Valley Workers Center, Rosales fights to expand protections for farmworkers, a community she knows intimately. After immigrating from El Salvador, she spent six years working in vegetable farms, flower nurseries, and tobacco fields across Connecticut and Massachusetts, and knows what it’s like to experience food insecurity. She also understands how other exploitative conditions, such as a lack of protective gear or accessible bathrooms, can add to the stress of simply trying to feed a family. Rosales remembers how, when her kids got sick, she was afraid she’d get fired if she took them to the doctor instead of going to work. (Employers harassed her and threatened to deport her if she tried to do anything about it, she said.) The need to put food on the table left her feeling like she had no choice but to tolerate the abuse. 

“I know what it’s like, how much my people suffer,” said Rosales. “We’re not recognized as essential … but without us, there would not be food on the tables across this country.”

Supporters of farmworkers march against anti-immigrant policies in the agricultural town of Delano, California, in 2017. Mark Ralston / AFP via Getty Images

The floodwaters have long since receded and many farms are once again producing crops, but labor advocates like Rosales say the region’s farmworkers still have not recovered. Federal and state disaster assistance helps those with damaged homes, businesses, or personal property, but does not typically support workers. Under federal law, if agricultural workers with a temporary visa lose their job when a flood or storm wipes out a harvest, they are owed up to 75 percent of the wages they were entitled to before the disaster, alongside other expenses. They aren’t always paid, however. “Last year, there were emergency funds because of the flooding here in Massachusetts that never actually made it to the pockets of workers,” Rosales said. 

The heat wave that recently scorched parts of Massachusetts likely reduced worker productivity and is poised to trigger more crop loss, further limiting workers’ ability to make ends meet. “Climate-related events impact people economically, and so that then means limited access to food and being able to afford basic needs,” said Rosales, forcing workers to make difficult decisions on what they spend their money on — and what they don’t.

Read Next As heat becomes a national threat, who will be protected? Nate Rosenfield

The impossible choice between buying food or paying other bills is something that social scientists have been studying for years. Research has shown, for example, that low-income families often buy less food during cold weather to keep the heat on. But climate change has given rise to a new area to examine: how extreme heat can trigger caloric and nutritional deficits. A 2023 study of 150 countries revealed that unusually hot weather can, within days, create higher risks of food insecurity by limiting the ability to earn enough money to pay for groceries. 

It’s a trend Parker Gilkesson Davis, a senior policy analyst studying economic inequities at the nonprofit Center for Law and Social Policy, is seeing escalate nationwide, particularly as utility bills surge. “Families are definitely having to grapple with ‘What am I going to pay for?’” she said. “People, at the end of the month, are not eating as much, having makeshift meals, and not what we consider a full meal.” Federal programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, are designed to help at times like these. More than 41 million people nationwide rely on the monthly grocery stipends, which are based on income, family size, and some expenses. But one national survey of nearly 3,700 farmworkers found just 12.2 percent used SNAP. Many farmworkers and migrant workers do not qualify because of their immigration status, and those who do often hesitate to use the program out of fear that enrolling could jeopardize their status. Even workers with temporary legal status like a working visa, or those considered a “qualified immigrant,” typically must wait five years before they can begin receiving SNAP benefits. Just six states provide nutrition assistance to populations, like undocumented farmworkers, ineligible for the federal program.

Los Angeles Food Bank workers in California prepare boxes of food for distribution to people facing economic or food insecurity during the COVID pandemic in August 2020. Mario Tama / Getty Images

The expiration of COVID-era benefit programs, surging food costs, and international conflicts last year forced millions more Americans into a state of food insecurity, but no one can say just how many are farmworkers. That’s because such data is almost nonexistent — even though the Agriculture Department tracks annual national statistics on the issue. Lisa Ramirez, the director of the USDA’s Office of Partnerships and Public Engagement, acknowledged that the lack of data on hunger rates for farmworkers should be addressed on a federal level and said there is a “desire” to do something about it internally. But she didn’t clarify what specifically is being done. “We know that food insecurity is a problem,” said Ramirez, who is a former farmworker herself. “I wouldn’t be able to point to statistics directly, because I don’t have [that] data.” 

Without that insight, little progress can be made to address the crisis, leaving the bulk of the problem to be tackled by labor and hunger relief organizations nationwide.

“My guess is it would be the lack of interest or will — sort of like a willful ignorance — to better understand and protect these populations,” said social scientist Miranda Carver Martin, who studies food justice and farmworkers at the University of Florida. “Part of it is just a lack of awareness on the part of the general public about the conditions that farmworkers are actually working in. And that correlates to a lack of existing interest or resources available to build an evidence base that reflects those concerns.”

The lack of empirical information prevented Martin and her colleagues Amr Abd-Elrahman and Paul Monaghan from creating a tool that would identify the vulnerabilities local farmworkers experience before and after a disaster. “What we’ve found is that the tool that we dreamed of, that would sort of comprehensively provide all this data and mapping, is not feasible right now, given the dearth of data,” she noted.

However, Martin and her colleagues did find, in a forthcoming report she shared with Grist, that language barriers often keep farmworkers from getting aid after an extreme weather event. Examining the aftermath of Hurricane Idalia, they found cases of farmworkers in Florida trying, and failing, to get food at emergency stations because so many workers spoke Spanish and instructions were written only in English. She suspects the same impediments may hinder post-disaster hunger relief efforts nationwide.

Martin also believes there is too little focus on the issue, in part because some politicians demonize immigrants and the agriculture industry depends upon cheap labor. It is easier “to pretend that these populations don’t exist,” she said. “These inequities need to be addressed at the federal level. Farmworkers are human beings, and our society is treating them like they’re not.”

A hand-painted sign at the Apopka garden highlights the poor conditions farmworkers say they experience in the fields, despite growing the food that helps to feed the nation’s population. Ayurella Horn-Muller / Grist

Tackling hunger has emerged as one of the biggest priorities for the Pioneer Valley Workers Center that Claudia Rosales leads. Her team feeds farmworker families in Massachusetts through La Despensa del Pueblo, a food pantry that distributes food to roughly 780 people each month.

The nonprofit launched the pantry in the winter of 2017. When the pandemic struck, it rapidly evolved from a makeshift food bank into a larger operation. But the program ran out of money last month when a key state grant expired, sharply curtailing the amount of food it can distribute. The growing need to feed people also has limited the organization’s ability to focus on its primary goal of community organizing. Rosales wants to see the food bank give way to a more entrepreneurial model that offers farmworkers greater autonomy. 

“For the long term, I’d like to create our own network of cooperatives owned by immigrants, where people can go and grow and harvest their own food and products and really have access to producing their own food and then selling their food to folks within the network,” she said. 

Mónica Ramírez, founder of the national advocacy organization Justice for Migrant Women, is developing something very much like that in Ohio. Ramírez herself hails from a farmworker family. “Both of my parents started working in the fields as children,” she said. “My dad was eight, my mom was five.” Growing up in rural Ohio, Ramírez remembers visiting the one-room shack her father lived in while picking cotton in Mississippi, and spending time with her grandparents who would “pile on a truck” each year and drive from Texas to Ohio to harvest tomatoes and cucumbers all summer. 

The challenges the Ramírez family faced then persist for others today. Food security has grown so tenuous for farmworkers in Fremont, Ohio, where Justice for Migrant Women is based, that the organization has gone beyond collaborating with organizations like Feeding America to design its own hyperlocal food system. These hunger relief efforts are focused on women in the community, who Ramírez says usually face the biggest burdens when a household does not have enough money for food.

Migrant women, she said, “bear the stress of economic insecurity and food insecurity, because they are the ones who are organizing their families and making sure their families have food in the house.”

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Later this month, Ramírez and her team will launch a pilot program out of their office that mimics a farmers market — one in which farmworkers and migrant workers will be encouraged to pick up food provided by a local farmer, at no charge. That allows those visiting the food bank to feel empowered by choice instead of being handed a box with preselected goods, and they hope it will alleviate hunger in a way that preserves a sense of agency for families in need.

Although federal lawmakers have begun at least considering protecting workers from heat exposure and regulators are making progress on a national heat standard, so far there’s been no targeted legislative or regulatory effort to address food insecurity among farmworkers. 

In fact, legislators may be on the verge of making things worse.

In May, the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives Agriculture Committee passed a draft farm bill that would gut SNAP and do little to promote food security. It also would bar state and local governments from adopting farmworker protection standards regulating agricultural production and pesticide use, echoing legislation Florida recently passed. The inclusion of such a provision is “disappointing,” said DeShawn Blanding, a senior Washington representative at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit advocacy organization. He hopes to see the version that eventually emerges from the Democrat-controlled Senate, where it remains stalled, incorporate several other proposed bills aimed at protecting farmworkers and providing a measure of food security.

Those include the Voice for Farm Workers Act, which would shore up funding for several established farmworker support initiatives and expand resources for the Agriculture Department’s farmworker coordinator. This position was created to pinpoint challenges faced by farmworkers and connect them with federal resources, but it has not been “adequately funded and sustained,” according to a 2023 USDA Equity Commission report. Another bill would create an office within the Agriculture Department to act as a liaison to farm and food workers.

These bills, introduced by Democratic Senator Alex Padilla of California, would give lawmakers and policymakers greater visibility into the needs and experiences of farmworkers. But the greatest benefit could come from a third proposal Padilla reintroduced, the Fairness for Farm Workers Act. It would reform the 1938 law that governs the minimum wage and overtime policies for farmworkers while exempting them from labor protections.

Migrant workers pick strawberries south of San Francisco in April. Visions of America / Joe Sohm / Universal Images Group via Getty Images

“As food prices increase, low-income workers are facing greater rates of food insecurity,” Padilla told Grist. “But roughly half of our nation’s farmworkers are undocumented and unable to access these benefits.” He’d like to see an expedited pathway to citizenship for the over 5 million essential workers, including farmworkers, who lack access to permanent legal status and social safety benefits. “More can be done to address rising food insecurity rates for farmworkers.”

Still, none of these bills squarely addresses farmworker hunger. Without a concerted approach, these efforts, though important, kind of miss the point, Mónica Ramírez said. 

“I just don’t think there’s been a fine point on this issue with food and farmworkers,” she said. “To me it’s kind of ironic. You would think that would be a starting point. What will it take to make sure that the people who are feeding us, who literally sustain us, are not themselves starving?”

For 68-year-old Jesús Morales, the Campesinos’ Garden in Apopka is a second home. Drawing on his background studying alternative medicine in Jalisco, Mexico, he’s been helping tend the land for the last three years. He particularly likes growing and harvesting moringa, which is used in Mexico to treat a range of ailments. Regular visitors know him as the “plant doctor.” 

“Look around. This is the gift of God,” Morales said in Spanish. “This is a meadow of hospitals, a meadow of medicines. Everything that God has given us for our health and well-being and for our happiness is here, and that’s the most important thing that we have here.”

Jesús Morales views plants like moringa, which is used in Mexico to treat a range of ailments, as “the gift of God.” Ayurella Horn-Muller / Grist

He came across the headquarters of the state farmworker organization when it hosted free English classes, then learned about its garden. Although it started a decade ago, its purpose has expanded over the years to become a source of food security and sovereignty for local farmworkers. 

The half-acre garden teems with a staggering assortment of produce. Tomatoes, lemons, jalapeños. Nearby trees offer dragonfruit and limes, and there’s even a smattering of papaya plants. The air is thick with the smell of freshly dug soil and hints of herbs like mint and rosemary. Two compost piles sit side by side, and a greenhouse bursts with still more produce. Anyone who visits during bi-monthly public gardening days is encouraged to plant their own seeds and take home anything they care to harvest. 

“The people who come to our community garden, they take buckets with them when they can,” said Ernesto Ruiz, a research coordinator at the Farmworker Association of Florida who oversees the garden. “These are families with six kids, and they work poverty wages. … They love working the land and they love being out there, but food is a huge incentive for them, too.”

Ernesto Ruiz kneels in the Farmworker Association of Florida’s garden in Apopka, which he oversees. He opens the site twice a month to people living nearby, who are encouraged to take home anything they care to harvest. Ayurella Horn-Muller / Grist

Throughout the week, the nonprofit distributes what Ruiz harvests. The produce it so readily shares is supplemented by regular donations from local supermarkets, which Ruiz often distributes himself.

But some of the same factors driving farmworkers to hunger have begun to encroach on the garden. Blistering summer heat and earlier, warmer springs have wiped out crops, including several plots of tomatoes, peppers, and cantaloupes. “A lot of plants are dying because it’s so hot, and we’re not getting rains,” said Ruiz. The garden could also use new equipment — the irrigation system is manual while the weed whacker is third-rate, often swapped out for a machete — and funding to hire another person to help Ruiz increase the amount of food grown and expand when the garden is open to the public.

Demand is rising, and with it, pressure to deliver. Federal legislation addressing the low wages that lead to hunger for many farmworkers across the country is a big part of the solution, but so are community-based initiatives like the Campesinos’ Garden, according to Ruiz. “You do the right thing because it’s the right thing to do,” he said. “It’s always the right thing to feed somebody. Always.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The people who feed America are going hungry on Jul 17, 2024.

Demand for steel is on the rise globally, driven by population growth and the expanding economies in developing nations. The material will also be important to the green energy transition, forming the backbone of infrastructure like wind turbines, solar panels, and hydroelectric dams. Every part of the steel supply chain is heavily polluting, and the places in the U.S. where the steel industry is concentrated are disproportionately low-income and nonwhite, highlighting yet another instance in which the promises of development and climate solutions come at a steeper cost for some communities. What’s more, the country’s steel production is dominated by just two companies: U.S. Steel and Cleveland Cliffs. 

For both companies, much of their production begins with taconite, a low-grade iron ore mined in the northeast Minnesota’s Mesabi Iron Range, which is processed into pellets that get shipped to the steel mills of Gary, Indiana. The extraction of the ore from taconite rock releases a slew of toxic pollutants into the air, including mercury, lead, and dioxins. In this region, the most concerning of these emissions is mercury. 

Studies have connected mercury to a litany of negative health effects. It’s a neurotoxin that can interfere with brain development in unborn children and an endocrine disruptor that can weaken the immune system. Scientists have yet to determine a quantity of mercury that is safe for human consumption. One recent study found that there is “no evidence” for a threshold “below which neuro-developmental effects do not occur.” And while the taconite industry releases less than a ton of mercury into the atmosphere every year, the metal is toxic in extremely small quantities: A fraction of a teaspoon can contaminate a 20-acre lake. 

The nation’s six taconite plants, all in this region of Minnesota, are owned by U.S. Steel and Cleveland Cliffs. In May 2023, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed a regulation that would require the companies to cut their mercury emissions by around 30 percent. In order to meet that standard, the companies would have to install equipment that would inject carbon atoms into their industrial chimneys so that the carbon would attach itself to the mercury atoms, making the pollution particles bigger and allowing them to get trapped in a filter before they would be released into the atmosphere. The agency estimates that its regulation would cost the industry $106 million in capital costs and $68 million per year thereafter. 

Last month, when the standards were finalized, both companies sued. They argue that the regulation would pose “irreparable harm” to the industry, because of the steep costs of implementation. They also argue that the EPA’s proposed method for reducing mercury pollution would actually be worse for public health, causing a 13 percent increase in the amount of the toxic metal deposited in the local environment. 

“EPA is not only requiring industry to restructure its operations and build new pollution-control facilities at unprecedented costs, it is requiring facilities to commit to associated disruption of their current operations, spend hundreds of millions of dollars, and risk their productive capacity and, indeed, ability to operate completely, to design, permit, and install a technology with no demonstrated ability to actually work,” the companies wrote.

Jim Pew, a lawyer at Earthjustice who has litigated multiple lawsuits against the EPA for its failure to curb pollution from the taconite industry, pointed out that the costs of implementing the required equipment would be a tiny fraction of the companies’ annual sales, which totaled $40 billion in 2023. Pew noted that U.S. Steel recently initiated a $500 million stock buyback program, the mark of a healthy income revenue stream. As for the companies’ claim that the technology would increase mercury pollution, Pew called it “meritless.” The companies are “relying on a premise they know to be false” — that taconite plants would add the carbon technology without also improving their filtration system. 

“I find this reprehensible and shameful,” Pew said. “While it’s claiming that it can’t spend money to clean up historic pollution, U.S. Steel is just handing out money to its shareholders.” 

In an email, a spokesperson from U.S. Steel told Grist that the company’s lawsuit was meant to ensure that the EPA’s new regulations are “in line with sound science and regulatory procedures.” The spokesperson went on to say that the company had tested the available emissions-reduction technology at one of their plants in Minnesota and determined that it would not be in compliance with the mercury limits established by the agency. “We remain committed to environmental excellence, as do the nearly 2,000 hardworking men and women of our Minnesota Ore Operations.” Cleveland Cliffs did not respond to multiple requests for comment. 

Pew sees the lawsuit as part of a multipronged attack by the steel industry against federal regulation. Over the past several years, the EPA has also proposed standards for the other types of facilities involved in steel production. These two companies have threatened litigation at every turn, recently petitioning a bipartisan group of lawmakers to send a letter to EPA Administrator Michael Regan, asking him to loosen the new standards for steel mills.

Taconite is dumped from railroad cars in Minnesota, 1965. Minnesota Historical Society via Getty Images

By the terms of the Clean Air Act, the EPA was supposed to propose standards to control toxic releases from taconite plants in 2003. When they failed to do so, environmental advocates from the Save Lake Superior Association and other groups sued the following year. In a federal circuit court, the EPA acknowledged that it had fallen short of its duties and promised to move with “all due process and speed” to fill the gaps in its regulations. 

Years passed without a federal rule, and in 2007, Minnesota initiated an effort of its own, setting a standard for mercury pollution in water and, two years later, becoming the first state to develop a plan to achieve it. The standard required industries across the state to slash their emissions by a cumulative 93 percent, and over the following decade, power plants, crematoria, and other mercury emitters achieved major reductions. Emissions from the taconite industry, however, remained exceptionally high. Its share of the state’s total mercury releases jumped from 21 percent to 46 percent between 2005 and 2017.

Mercury contamination is particularly worrisome for tribal nations like the Fond du Lac Band, which fish and grow wild rice throughout the state’s vast network of rivers, lakes, and streams. “We find that across a lot of ceded territory, there’s a lot of good regulation but there’s been a lot of flexibility in enforcement,” said John Coleman, an environmental scientist at the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission.

Tribes repeatedly petitioned the EPA to make good on its 2003 promise. They had good reason to be concerned: One study had found that 10 percent of babies born on the north shore of Lake Superior have elevated mercury levels in their blood. 

It took the agency until last May to finally propose its regulation, which, of course, is under challenge. Still, for the tribes of northeast Minnesota, the EPA’s rule was a resounding disappointment. Even if U.S. Steel and Cleveland Cliffs reduce their mercury emissions by 30 percent, the companies’ operations would still allow hundreds of pounds of mercury to enter the state’s waterways each year. 

“It is of our view that these proposed standards do not go far enough toward restoring and protecting the health and well-being of the environment and our community,” wrote Paige Huhta, the Fond du Lac’s air program coordinator in a letter to the EPA last July. She pointed out that the EPA itself had found that exposure among specific subpopulations, including some tribes, may be more than twice as great as that experienced by the average American. But when the agency finalized the rule this past March, it did not budge from its original reduction requirements.

“Water is an important part of the landscape up here,” said Nancy Shuldt, the Fond du Lac Band’s Water Projects Coordinator. “We have a water-rich landscape and water resources form the foundation of tribal lifeways.” 

And because it is a metal, mercury does not break down into less toxic substances like other industrial pollutants. It stays in the environment for hundreds of years. In northeastern Minnesota, and to a specific group of people, much of the damage has already been done.

Editor’s note: Earthjustice is an advertiser with Grist. Advertisers have no role in Grist’s editorial decisions.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Tribes in Minnesota are paying the steepest price for the steel industry’s mercury pollution on Jul 17, 2024.