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Consumers should not believe the hype. California’s Proposition 12 is not putting hog farmers out of business. In fact, Prop 12 provides savvy farmers with the opportunity to sell their crate-free pork at a higher price into a stable marketplace. But a small group of policymakers are putting this much-needed economic opportunity at risk through the misguided Ending Agricultural Trade Suppression (EATS) Act (S.2019 and H.R.4417), and similar iterations.

California’s Prop 12, and Massachusetts’ similar Question 3, requires that fresh pork sold into the state be raised on farms not using gestation crates. These 7×2 foot crates house pregnant pigs for days, weeks and even months without giving animals the ability to stand up, turn around and lie down. Animal welfare expert Dr. Temple Grandin compares gestation crates to being strapped into an airplane seat for months at a time.

While gestation crates are the dominant industry practice today, they are out of touch with consumers’ animal care expectations. Both Prop 12 and Question 3 passed with sweeping voter support. A 2021 poll found that 75 percent of Americans say retailers and restaurants have a responsibility to ensure that gestation crates are not used by suppliers.

As general manager of high animal welfare meat brand Niman Ranch, which today works with a community of 500 plus Certified Humane® crate-free hog farmers, Prop 12 is a positive development. Not only does the law align with our animal care values, it also creates a stable market for crate-free pork that corporate commitments alone can’t provide. I’ve seen it time and time again: a company pledges to meet a certain attribute but walks it back with a leadership change or when market conditions shift. Prop 12 assures this flip flopping won’t be the case for gestation-crate free pork in California.

For too long, the conventional meat industry has been hyper-focused on efficiency and producing large amounts of cheap meat, while losing sight of the unintended consequences for livestock and farmers. Prop 12 is the right thing for both the animals and farmers, but it needs to be done in a structured manner where pork producers have support and dedicated markets. With Prop 12 fully implemented, there is market certainty and a clear path forward for those in the industry who want to participate in this opportunity.

Here are the facts: Prop 12 does not force any farm to go crate-free to comply with the law. No one is being forced to sell their pork into California. Experts estimate just 8 percent of mother pigs in North America will need to comply with Prop 12 to fulfill California’s fresh pork needs, leaving the remaining 92 percent free to stay unchanged and sell into the rest of the country.

Despite the sky-is-falling prophecies of barren grocery store shelves, Prop 12 compliant supply has proven more than adequate and many of the companies that fought the animal welfare law in the courts have found a way to convert operations to meet the requirements. This is in addition to the companies that have been crate-free since the beginning, like Niman Ranch, as well as those who used the several years following the law’s passage to prepare for Prop 12 compliance.

Despite the adoption of gestation-crate free practices across the industry, some powerful voices are pushing for Prop 12 to be rolled back through far-reaching proposals inserted into the new Farm Bill like the EATS Act. They are arguing Prop 12 is putting farmers out of business and their proposed solution is a sweeping federal overreach that not only would roll back Prop 12 but many other state animal welfare laws and beyond. I would flip the Prop 12 opposition’s argument on its head and contend that the law offers opportunity for specialized producers to sell more pork at a better price. And this isn’t just a benefit to the pigs and farmers; these niche producers have been shown to bring more jobs and economic value into their rural communities.

We can all agree it is a challenging time for the pork industry. But that is not because of Prop 12. There are countless factors at play from high grain prices, limited labor, industry consolidation and more. Rolling back Prop 12 won’t improve commodity producers’ outlook as the challenges facing much of the industry were present long before the law was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Farm Bill negotiations and drafting are well underway. We hope that rather than spending time trying to overturn Prop 12 through misguided measures like the EATS Act, the pork industry and policymakers instead focus on forward-thinking opportunities to help farmers meet consumer demand for higher welfare meat.

This op-ed was written by Chris Oliviero, general manager of Niman Ranch, a specialty meat company partnering with more than 600 independent family farmers producing Certified Humane® beef, pork and lamb to supply grocers and restaurants nationwide.

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Photo courtesy of Niman Ranch

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The World Trade Organization (WTO) recently concluded negotiations known as Fish Month to regulate subsidies that can lead to unsustainable fishing practices. During this period, new member states, including Barbados, Dominica, Senegal, and Uruguay formally accepted an Agreement to address issues of overcapacity and overfishing.

Fish Month comes after the WTO approved the Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies at the 12th Ministerial Conference (MC12). The Agreement regulates subsidies for illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing, subsidies for overfished stocks, or those with an unknown population and subsidies for fishing outside of national jurisdiction. The Agreement also requires member states to notify the WTO on the status of fisheries subsidies.

According to the WTO, the initial Agreement set at MC12 marks the first time the WTO has fully met a United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) target. SDG 14.6 is a target of SDG 14, Life Below Water, that relates specifically to regulating fisheries subsidies that contribute to overcapacity, overfishing and IUU fishing and minimizing the creation of new subsidies of these kinds. The Agreement is also the first WTO agreement focused on the environment and the first binding, multilateral WTO agreement on ocean sustainability.

In this latest round of discussions, the WTO Committee on Fisheries Subsidies negotiated the outstanding issue of subsidies that cause overfishing and overcapacity. As Fish Month drew to a close, 60 member governments had formally accepted the Agreement, representing 55 percent of the total that is needed for it to come into effect. 

The Committee will now present a text at the upcoming MC13 at the end of February 2024. During the Conference, the text will be reviewed and voted on by WTO ministers.

The WTO defines overcapacity as fishing at levels that exceed sustainable catch levels of a fishery, a practice which they argue leads to overfishing or IUU fishing.

Ernesto Fernández Monge, senior officer of Conservation Support for Pew Charitable Trusts and subsidies expert, tells Food Tank that the current negotiations focus on issues that members did not reach a consensus on by the time of the initial agreement.

“While the agreement reached at MC12 aims to prevent the most damaging impacts of fisheries subsidies, the ongoing talks can be seen as an opportunity to better address the underlying role of subsidies in driving overcapacity in global fishing fleets and incentivizing unsustainable levels of fishing,” Fernández Monge tells Food Tank. “As such, they are an opportunity to tackle more directly, and more broadly, one of the root causes of overfishing.”

According to the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development, fisheries subsidies are estimated to be about US$35 billion worldwide, with US$20 billion contributing directly to overfishing.

In December 2023, WTO Ambassador Einar Gunnarsson, Chair of the WTO fisheries subsidies negotiations, released a draft of the new agreement. Current negotiations are based on this text which prohibits subsidies that contribute to overcapacity or overfishing. It also requires member countries to consider the consequences of subsidies on overcapacity and overfishing before granting them and introduces exceptions for Least Developed Countries, and for countries that are actively keeping fisheries stocks at sustainable levels.

“Let us use this opportunity to take this very important, concrete step toward improving the health of our ocean, and thus the lives and livelihoods of people everywhere,” Gunnarsson says of the fish month negotiations.

Fernández Monge tells Food Tank that current negotiations focus on identifying how to regulate countries with the largest fishing industries compared to least developed and developing countries.

“Developing countries, particularly the small ones, are the ones that will benefit the most from the agreement,” Fernández Monge tells Food Tank. He explains that many countries with major fishing industries use subsidies to operate in the waters of other countries. This means that large countries are competing with small countries and local fishing communities for the same stocks, leading to depletion.

Following MC13, if members reach an agreement, this will either be added to the MC12 agreement as an amendment or as a new agreement that will need to be accepted by member countries.

Despite being adopted by consensus at MC12, the previous agreement has not gone into effect. This is because not enough WTO member states have formally accepted the agreement individually. There is a push to ratify the agreement by MC13.

“In addition to delivering the second wave of negotiations, we hope that the Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies will enter into force by MC13 as well,” says WTO Deputy Director-General Angela Ellard. “We know that many members are working hard to deposit their instruments before MC13.”

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Photo courtesy of Jean Wimmerlin, Unsplash

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Antarctic krill fishing has exponentially increased by over the past two decades by 400 percent, according to a report from the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources. As the krill fishing industry expands across the aquaculture and pharmaceuticals industry, scientists express concerns that these sectors will decrease krill’s carbon sink capacity and create competition for krill’s natural predators.

Catches in the Antarctic region are almost entirely driven by krill, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture report. The report reveals that 455,000 tonnes of Antarctic krill were captured in 2020, a sharp increase from the less than 100,000 tonnes captured in the late 1990s.

Aquafeed has used krill meal to accelerate fish growth and improve the color and taste of shrimp tails for decades. Carrying key nutrients and essential fatty acids, krill can augment fishmeal and other expensive ingredients in aquaculture feed without the burden of poor feed performance, according to the Global Seafood Alliance. Despite krill’s remote concentration in the Southern Ocean, the commercial desirability for harvesting krill is high.

The global aquaculture industry has grown rapidly in recent decades. According to the State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture report, the industry grew from supplying a mere four percent of fish 70 years ago to accounting for over half of the fish eaten in 2018. The global growth of fish farming has driven the demand for Antarctic krill as an alternative to wild fish in fish feeds, according to a report from the Changing Markets Foundation.

While growth in the aquaculture industry has expanded demand for krill, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) believes the more recent discovery of krill’s nutritional benefits has also contributed to the increased krill fishing demand in the pharmaceutical sector.

“The dietary supplement part of krill fishing has changed the nature of the fishery to show a way to make more valuable products from krill than people realized was possible,” Dr. George Watters, Director of the Antarctic Ecosystem Research Division at NOAA, tells Food Tank.

Because of growing demand, the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) has regulated the total krill catch within a 620,000 tonne ‘trigger’ level distributed across four regions in the southwest Atlantic. Although CCAMLR set an overall catch limit of 5.62 million metric tons a year, the trigger level was set to prevent the krill fleet from concentrating its fishing in small areas. If the specified catch limit for a subarea is reached, the fishery will close to avoid potential impacts to the local ecosystem.

Watters, the U.S. Representative to the Scientific Committee for CCAMLR, says that quotas are just one of the management problems they are facing in creating a more adaptable system. He says that developing protective zones in the Antarctic could also help regulate fishing to ensure krill’s natural predators have access to food.

Yet a study from CCAMLR finds that even with precautionary quota systems and protective zones, harvesting Antarctic krill has an outsized impact on predators further up the food chain. Krill feed on phytoplankton, acquiring energy to make them a vital food resource for a number of predator species whales, seals, fish, penguins, and a range of seabirds.

Watters explains including how this challenge is exacerbated by the uneven and ever-changing distribution of krill across the ocean.

“You have all of this krill passing by, but sometimes natural variation can cause periods of low performance for predators,” Watters tells Food Tank. “This causes you to think about how it’s not just the total amount of krill that’s important, it’s the nature of the krill swarms.”

Krill are also essential climate crisis mediators, making the Southern Ocean one of the largest carbon sinks in the world. According to Big Blue Ocean Cleanup, krill consume phytoplankton that store carbon and release oxygen, and then excrete this carbon in tiny pellets that sink to the ocean floor.

The complex nature of krill as both a keystone species in the Southern Ocean and a commercially desired resource has contributed to variability regarding the future of krill fishing. Simon Seward, EVP of Human Health & Nutrition for Aker BioMarine says many data gaps still exist, especially as climate crisis impacts in the region accelerate. Aker BioMarine is a biotech innovator and Antarctic krill-harvesting company creating products for human nutrition, pet food, and aquaculture.

“It is clear that we need to harvest more from the ocean, but we need to do so in more innovative and sustainable ways, and in a manner that protects ocean health and marine biodiversity globally,” Seward tells Food Tank.

With the heightened pressure on land-based resources, Seward says the krill fishery, as one of the most underutilized and sustainable fisheries in the world, might actually be a solution for future food systems.

“It is clear that we need to harvest more from the ocean, but we need to do so in more innovative and sustainable ways, and in a manner that protects ocean health and marine biodiversity globally,” Seward tells Food Tank.

In 2015, Aker BioMarine partnered with the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition and WWF-Norway to establish the Antarctic Wildlife Research Fund (AWR). The fund, which has successfully raised more than US$1.4 million since its inception, aims to support Antarctic research projects on krill and the ecosystem.

“The objective of AWR is to help close these gaps [in data] by providing additional funding to help various experts complete or expand their work,” says Seward. “Many projects have already been supported with additional grants and initiatives underway that will help protect the long-term health of the ecosystem in the Southern Ocean.”

This article was written by Liza Greene.

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Photo courtesy of Shannon Lyday/NOAA Animal textures

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The African Union is finalizing the draft protocol on intellectual property rights to the agreement establishing the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). While the AfCFTA aims to eliminate global trade barriers and boost intra-Africa trade, many civil society organizations worry that regulations will endanger seed systems and smallholder farmers’ rights.

The AfCFTA, which entered into force in May 2019, is one of the flagship projects of the African Union Agenda 2063: The Africa We Want. As the largest free trade area since the formation of the World Trade Organization, the AfCFTA intends to advance trade in value-added production across all service sectors of the African economy. By contributing to the establishment of regional value chains in Africa, the African Union hopes to foster industrialization, job creation, and investment to enhance the continent’s position in the long term.

The draft protocol will apply to all categories of intellectual property, including plant varieties, genetic resources, and traditional knowledge. The specific objectives will aim to promote coherent intellectual property rights policy and a harmonized system of intellectual property protection in Africa.

But many small farmer associations and alliances for food sovereignty are questioning the implications of this protocol on seeds and rural communities in Africa.

“You cannot protect or help farmers rights when you are talking about plant breeders’ rights,” Susan Nakacswa, Africa Programme Officer at GRAIN, tells Food Tank. GRAIN is a small international non-profit organization that works to support small farmers and social movements in their struggle for community-controlled and biodiversity-focused food systems.

There are an estimated 33 million smallholder farms in Africa, contributing up to 70 percent of the food supply, according to the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). Most of these smallholder farmers are women who work on less than two hectares of land, grow mainly subsistence crops, and rely on family labor, according to GRAIN.

“We are a continent where about 60 percent of the pupils depend on agriculture for their livelihoods,” Famara Diedhiou, Coordinator of Seed Working Group at Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA), tells Food Tank. “So whenever a protocol, or whenever a policy is related to agriculture, we need to wake up and stand up to see what it is about.”

For the past 30 years, industrialized countries have been forcing governments of the global South to adopt laws that privatize seeds so that farmers have to pay for them and keep seed companies afloat, according to GRAIN. The 1994 World Trade Organization (WTO) agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights was the first global trade agreement that set international norms for private intellectual property rights over seeds. Because the notion of allowing patents on life forms, such as plants or animals, is widely contested, the WTO agreement aimed to create a compromise between governments. This allows countries to exclude plants and animals from their patent laws while requiring that they provide some form of intellectual property protection over new plant varieties.

Nearly half of all African countries have already introduced an intellectual property rights system on seeds. Most of them follow the model of the 1991 convention of the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV). The UPOV system faces substantial criticism for promoting genetic uniformity of crops and preventing peasants from reusing seeds. The key question revolves around whether the AfCFTA will challenge this dominant system. According to Nakacswa and Diedhiou, the outlook is not optimistic.

“We’ve sort of looked at the whole conversation around free trade agreements as an extension of what we know as colonialism,” says Nakacswa. “It’s the power dynamics and control that is taking place because governments, corporations, foundations and development agencies want to commercialize and industrialize farming, especially African farming.”

As of August 2023, 47 of the 54 signatories (87 percent) have deposited their instruments of the AfCFTA ratification.

Looking ahead, Nakacswa and Diedhiou emphasize that raising awareness around the importance of farmers rights and local sovereignty are critical steps towards addressing the AfCFTA.

“The next step is now to create, to make it a public discussion, for any citizen to know this actor, including farmers and simple citizens,” Diedhiou says, “And then we start to denounce it.”

This article was written by Liza Greene.

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Photo courtesy of Amuzujoe, Wikimedia Commons

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It is obvious to most of us that food is a human right. But our discussions of food justice need to be grounded—literally—in what experts are calling a right to healthy soils.

Without well-nourished soil, “the global issues of climate change and food security cannot be addressed,” says soil scientist Dr. Rattan Lal. He’s the recipient of the World Food Prize and a Distinguished University Professor of Soil Science at The Ohio State University.

I had the opportunity to chat with Dr. Lal recently at a U.N. human rights conference on food justice in Doha, Qatar. World leaders had some crucial discussions at that summit—and, as always, I personally learned so much from Dr. Lal.

“The right to food and right to soil are inextricably linked,” Dr. Lal says.

If we want good food, we need good soil. Ninety-five percent of food nutrients come from soils, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization calculates—which makes the problem of soil erosion so much more concerning.

As Adrian Lipscombe, a chef and the Founder of the 40 Acres Project, put it: “If we don’t have soil health, we’re not going to have food.”

Soil erosion specifically refers to the removal of topsoil from the land’s surface, which can be caused by factors like water, wind, and tillage. Of course, some of these processes are natural—but healthy soils have the resiliency to resist excess erosion, whereas degraded soils are more vulnerable to even natural climatic cycles.

About a third of the world’s soils are currently degraded, the FAO says, and poor land management practices and hyper-industrialized agriculture is pushing that number higher.

And that has direct impacts on our food supply and climate. Poor soils can cut crop yields by up to 50 percent—which, if we’re not careful, could result in more soil being tilled to grow more crops, which degrades more soil, which pushes us closer to climate catastrophe.

And while poor soils hurt the environment, good soils can help repair the earth. Healthy soils, boosted by regenerative farming practices, can sequester more carbon from the atmosphere and more effectively store and drain water. Farmers can use techniques like no-till growing, cover cropping, rotational grazing and planting, and implementing other buffers against erosion.

“We need the soil for our physical sustenance,” says the amazing Leah Penniman of Soul Fire Farm, “but I also very much believe we need the soil for our psycho-spiritual wellness.”

Luckily, plenty of powerful, inspiring organizations around the world are pushing us in the right direction. Food and Land Use Coalition is building an evidence base to help producers and investors scale up solutions. 1000 Landscapes for 1 Billion People is bringing together individual advocates into a powerful voice for regenerative landscapes, broader than farms alone. Better Soils, Better Lives is helping heal soils among smallholders in sub-Saharan Africa with green manure and cover cropping, and the Vision for Adapted Crops and Soils is working across the African continent to build nutritious food production through soil health.

We’re seeing the power of storytelling, too. The film “Common Ground” does a great job documenting farmers who are using regenerative agriculture to heal the planet and protect our health—in economically beneficial ways. The organization behind the film, Kiss the Ground, has launched a campaign to help 100,000 more farmers transition 100 million more acres of U.S. farmland toward regenerative practices by the end of the decade.

And they’re pushing innovation. Because most grains need to be replanted every season, it’s hard for even regenerative farmers to minimize the disturbance to their land and build biodiversity, says Tim Crews, Chief Scientist & Director of the International Initiative at The Land Institute. So they’re working to highlight how perennial grains can help rebuild soils.

“Developing new perennial grains that persist year over year opens up unprecedented opportunities for farmers to greatly improve soil health as a natural outcome of agriculture,” he tells Food Tank.

But they can’t do it alone.

We need policymakers, investors, business leaders, chefs, and researchers to take serious steps toward making soil health a fundamental part of our institutional approach to food and agriculture.

Take the Soil Health Act, for example: It’s a proposed piece of legislation Dr. Rattan Lal is advocating, to complement the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act. Let’s put this in the next Farm Bill!

Just last month, several members of the U.S. House of Representatives introduced the Innovative Practices for Soil Health Act, which would boost the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s ability to support farmers and land caretakers in adopting more regenerative methods. And I’m pleased that the Inflation Reduction Act, passed in 2022, committed a historic US$20 million toward rebuilding healthy soils, improving water quality, and conserving the land.

“You don’t have to own a farm or a ranch to make meaningful change,” says rancher Gabe Brown, of Brown’s Ranch in North Dakota. “It starts with each and every one of us. It can start in your local community with community gardens using regenerative practices. You can insist that your schools source and serve regeneratively grown food.”

He’s absolutely right.

I’m going to be blunt: If we’re not prioritizing soil health in our conversations about food justice and the human right to nutritious food, we’re falling short.

There’s so much that each of us can do to build a stronger foundation underneath our feet.

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Photo courtesy of Zoe Schaeffer, Unsplash

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A video by Denis Thomopoulos of Cool the Climate highlights ways for eaters to enjoy a plant-based and plastic-free Valentines Day meal.

The short clips highlights strategies to avoid waste including shopping for vegetables from a local farmers market and opting for shelf stable ingredients packaged without plastic.

Through cartoons, games, and other materials Cool the Climate works to raise awareness of the climate crisis. For Valentines Day, they teamed up with the Plastic Pollution Coalition, an alliance working toward a world free of plastic pollution, to highlight sustainable ways to celebrate.

According to the U.N. Environment Programme, roughly 400 million tonnes of plastic waste are produced every year and approximately 36 percent of all plastics produced are used in packaging.

Watch the video now by clicking HERE.

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The recently opened Smart Pantry, a collaboration between the Hunter College NYC Food Policy Center and Share Meals, ensures that students have access to meals. In the United States, nearly 30 percent of college students experience food insecurity, and an alarming 40 percent of CUNY students in New York City face food insecurity.

The Smart Pantry, designed as a retrofit kit for refrigerated and shelf stable vending machines, offers students a discreet and accessible means of obtaining free, culturally appropriate, and nutritionally rich food.

To access food, students scan a QR code on the machine, take a survey that assesses the level of food insecurity they’re experiencing, and receive points which correlate to different food options. While the survey responses do not impact the amount of points a student receives, the data will help the NYC Food Policy Center and Share Meals develop a better understanding of the rate of food insecurity amongst Hunter students across a four month time span.

Students start the week with enough points for a few ready-made meals, or ingredients to take home. The machines are stocked with a variety of food options including sandwiches, soups, and breakfast items from local vendor Maiden Voyage Catering/e.terra Kitchen, ready to eat upcycled stew from Matriark Foods, and produce from regional farm distributor GrowNYC.

Bella Karakis, Co-Founder and CEO of e.terra Kitchen, says, “e.terra Kitchen and our catering division, Maiden Voyage Catering, are proud to support the Hunter College NYC Food Policy Center and Share Meals’ Smart Pantry Initiative. By providing nutritious, locally-made meals for the Silberman Campus Smart Pantry in East Harlem, we are helping with community health, while amplifying the talents of local food entrepreneurs and small businesses.”

This initiative will expand access and impact of Hunter’s existing food pantries, located at the main campus at 68th Street and the Brookdale campus, to an additional 1,300 students at the Silberman campus in East Harlem. While other CUNY food pantries are open when staffed, the Smart Pantry will be accessible when the Silberman Campus is open to students.

Smart Pantry also has a commitment to supporting local businesses and minimizing food waste. “We know the impact in keeping dollars local reverberates and amplifies throughout communities in the metropolitan region and throughout our state, strengthening our regional food system, increasing its resiliency,” says Annette Nielsen, Executive Director of the Hunter College NYC Food Policy Center.

By sourcing products from local Minority and Women-Owned Business Enterprises (MWBEs) and partnering with organizations like Matriark Foods, which focus on upcycling food that would otherwise go to waste, the Smart Pantry not only provides nutritious meals but also contributes positively to the local economy and environmental sustainability.

Anna Hammond, Founder and CEO of Matriark Foods, notes, “A staggering amount of nutritious food never leaves the farm, and all of that food could be used to feed people experiencing food insecurity. Matriark Foods is on a mission to make that food accessible in the form of delicious soups that nourish people while increasing markets for small and mid-scale farms and reducing the negative effects that wasted food has on the environment.”

The inclusion of cooking classes as part of the initiative is a valuable opportunity for students to gain practical skills in meal planning, food safety, and efficient ingredient use. The classes inspire students to make the most of the ingredients available to them and promote cultural diversity and sustainability in cooking practices.

The Smart Pantry also uses technology to ensure privacy and reduce stigma. By allowing students to access the pantries during off-hours and using a contactless system via smartphone, the Smart Pantry respects students’ privacy and eliminates potential barriers to accessing food.

“I remember my days as a college student when I was struggling with food security,” says Jon Chin, Founder of Share Meals, “Often, I would be studying on campus until all the buildings closed and I would be starving. My choices for dinner were limited and I would end up getting fast food or going to bed without eating. A Smart Pantry would have made those days so much easier.”

This article was written by Sycamore May.

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Photo courtesy of the Colorado Department of Agriculture

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The West African Regional Center of Excellence on Improving Adaptation to Drought (CERAAS), a research organization based in Senegal, is building resilience in West and Central Africa by empowering women in agriculture.

“Women in rural areas are the labor workforce in Africa’s food system,” says Marème Niang Belko, Agronomist at CERAAS. “But most of them are analphabetic, or have a very low level of education, and constraints to time management.”

Many women in West and Central Africa lack access to technology, quality seeds and fertilizers, agricultural infrastructure, credit, extension services, and markets. They are also poorly represented in the scientific and research community, according to Africa Development Bank: In 2016, women comprised only 6 percent of researchers in Guinea, 11 percent of researchers in Mali, and about 17 percent in Côte d’Ivoire.

“Women’s time…because of home, child, and family care, is very low to participate in scientific events and training, to efficiently work to win proposals, to access the table of decision-making and information,” says Belko.

CERAAS was started in 1989 by the Senegalese Institute of Agricultural Research (ISRA) and the West and Central Africa Council for Agricultural Research and Development (CORAF), the largest sub-regional research organization in Africa. Today, almost 50 percent of CERAAS research programs are led by women, according to Belko.

“Women dominate the staff members…they are researchers, field and lab technicians, administration officers, communication officers, account officers, control and quality staff, students,” says Belko. “They [have made] positive change and impact.”

CORAF collaborates with the African Women in Agricultural Research and Development program (AWARD) to provide scientific and leadership capacity-building for women fellows, including Belko. Belko is now co-leading the Crop Innovation in West Africa (CIWA) project in Senegal, working to connect West African plant breeders with CIWA’s gender team to ensure that farming activities are more resilient and inclusive. She also co-founded SenAWARD, an AWARD alumni association helping women scientists share knowledge and learn about calls for proposals, training, workshops, and more.

The region has seen progress, but much more work is needed to empower women in agriculture, according to Mariame Maiga, PhD, Regional Gender and Social Development Advisor at CORAF.

“While efforts are made to improve women’s access to needed agricultural resources to enhance food productivity to meet the population food demand, the agricultural sector is still faced with challenges, as it needs to be more gender-responsive and inclusive enough to meet sustainable food system objectives,” says Maiga.

Women need better access to and control over resources like agricultural technologies, land, quality seeds, inputs, extension services, finance, and markets to increase their productivity and economic growth, says Maiga. Providing access to services like phones, for example, can help to facilitate this.

Belko emphasizes that finding opportunities to empower women in West and Central Africa requires “understanding their work, constraints and opportunities, preferences and needs.” This includes understanding women’s decision-making and spending power within their families and communities, which often prevents their capacity building and development.

And government leaders can play an important role by promoting women’s participation in and contribution to policy development, facilitating easier access to land and finance, and providing other training and support where needed, says Belko. “Find out the entry points of women’s empowerment.”

For Maiga, empowering women is not only a social justice and equality issue—it is imperative for the region to meet U.N. Sustainable Development Goals.

“Persisting gender inequalities in agricultural research and development threatens efforts towards a region free from hunger, malnutrition, and poverty,” Maiga and co-authors write in a forthcoming book on gender and youth dimensions in agricultural research and development.

“Closing the gender gap with women’s empowerment and leadership is critical to West and Central Africa’s food system,” says Maiga.

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Photo courtesy of Habib houndekindo, Wikimedia Commons

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The OSC Packaging Collaborative is now accepting submissions for its annual packaging awards. They aim to celebrate innovative and sustainable packaging alternatives, responsible practices, and circularity.

Developed by One Step Closer (OSC), the OSC Packaging Collaborative is working to remove petroleum-based plastics through the development and scaling of compostable and renewable alternatives. 

Submissions for the 2024 OSC Packaging Innovation Awards can be made to three different categories. Innovations in Materials recognizes advancements in the development of novel, sustainable packaging materials. Innovation in Re-fillable Packaging Systems highlights solutions that promote reusability and help consumers reduce waste. And Innovation in Supply Chain Waste Reduction focuses on waste reduction in the manufacturing or delivery process. Companies can submit to all three categories, but only one solution per category is allowed. 

“By fostering creativity and sustainability in design and application, we pave the way for a future where packaging not only meets functional requirements but also aligns with broader goals of environmental stewardship,” Lara Dickinson, Executive Director of OSC, tells Food Tank. “Our hope for the awards is that they not only recognize exemplary achievements in packaging, but they also serve as a catalyst for driving positive change in the industry.”

Submissions will be accepted until February 16, 2024. Winners will be notified on March 1 and recognized on March 14 at the 2024 Natural Products Expo West in Anaheim, CA. Companies can submit their packaging solutions to the Awards by clicking HERE.

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The post The OSC Packaging Collaborative Is Seeking Innovative Solutions to Cut Waste appeared first on Food Tank.

Wellness in the Schools (WITS), a national non-profit, works to ensure access to nourishing food and active play in public schools. As part of their Chefs in Schools initiative, WITS is partnering with the New York City’s Mayor’s Office and the Department of Education’s Office of Food and Nutrition Services (OFNS). The program assigns chefs to train school cafeteria workers in cooking wholesome school lunches and teaching aligned nutrition education classes to select schools, supporting meal participation. 

The 72 chefs who work for Wellness in the Schools teach cafeteria workers culinary skills and children the importance of eating nutritiously. The WITS chefs also train OFNS chefs on how to execute newly developed recipes by New York City’s Inaugural Chef Council. Tasked with developing menu items for NYC schools, the Council includes prominent chefs from around the City.

The goal of the Chefs in Schools program is to “provide meals to NYC public school children that are scratch-cooked, plant-based, and culturally relevant, and to give OFNS cooks workforce development skills, such as mise en place, storage and organization, and batch cooking,” Alexina Cather, the Director of Policy and Special Programs at WITS, tells Food Tank. 

Over the next two years, the 72 WITS chefs will spend a total of one month at each of New York City’s 1,200 public schools. The chefs have already begun training cafeteria staff, sampling recipes with students, and teaching students how to make some of the lunch recipes in WITS’ Food Lab at their flagship schools. 

“Chefs, increasingly, are leaders in their communities…{bringing in a chef} elevates school meals and makes families and kids feel like someone is paying attention to their food and that they care,” Cather explains. 

According to Advocates for Children in New York, one in nine NYC students is experiencing homelessness. WITS is working to ensure that the free universal school meals every public school child in New York City has access to are nutritious. 

Cather says that “regardless of what neighborhood each student lives in… they should be coming to school knowing that they are going to have options, that they are going to have wholesome food that is nutritionally dense, every time they show up at school.”

WITS is also overcoming the challenges of encouraging kids to eat unfamiliar foods by meeting students and families where they are. Studies in the journal Appetite, have found that children are most likely to enjoy a new food after trying it eight or nine times, and once they make it themselves. But “if you are on SNAP benefits at home as a parent, you don’t have ten times for your kid to try a new food. Your food budget is so limited that you have to make sure that what you put on their plate they’re going to eat,” Cather tells Food Tank. 

That’s why WITS is taking action and encouraging students to try new foods by offering samples of new meals, where “the emphasis is just on trying it…and celebrating that because that is the biggest hurdle,” says Cather. Additionally, the organization’s culinary and nutrition classes (aka WITS Labs) allow students to cook the dish before it debuts on their menu, so when it does appear on their plates, students are excited to try it. 

As the WITS and the Mayor’s Office partnership rolls out, Cather is thinking about how to turn programs like Chefs in Schools from pilot into policy, offering schools, families, and communities more opportunities for accessing real and good food.

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The post Serving Up Success: Chefs in Schools Transforming NYC’s Public School Lunches appeared first on Food Tank.

During a recent event organized by Food Tank and Traditional Medicinals, speakers discussed the growing interest in plant-based medicine, the role of herbal medicine in food systems, and the potential benefits these products can have on human and planetary health.

For millennia, food has been used as a form of medicine. “The line between food and medicine was much less clear,” says Holly Johnson, Chief Science Officer at the American Herbal Products Association. Around the 18th and 19th centuries, however, The Center for Food as Medicine and The Hunter College New York City Food Policy Center reports that many Western cultures began to shift away from nutrition-based medicine. 

But that is beginning to change again, Taryn Forrelli, Chief Science Officer for Traditional Medicinals says. She has noticed “explosive growth” in eaters’ interest in herbs including lemon balm, raspberry leaf, and spearmint. “I think people are realizing how disconnected we have become over the last 100 years or so with the rise of modern pharmacy,” she says. “And they’re wanting to get back to that connection to nature.”

To help eaters incorporate more herbs into their diets, the speakers believe that access to both the herbs themselves as well as knowledge about herbal medicines is key.

Jocelyn Boreta, Executive Director of the Botanical Bus, focuses on increasing access through a mobile herb clinic. “Herbalism is activism,” Boreta says. Through the clinic, her team provides herbal medicines to treat the health conditions, ranging from digestion issues to mental health challenges, that clients are facing. She believes that this work is particularly important for the immigrant communities she works with who have faced displacement. “We look at plant medicine as radical love, as cultural identity.”

The speakers also encourage eaters to grow their own herbs, whether in a backyard or windowsill. But Nadja Cech, Professor of Chemistry at the North Carolina Greensboro notes that not everyone has space in their own home to grow these herbs. For that reason, she says, “I’m a huge proponent of community gardening.”

But these medicinal plants are only helpful if speakers know how to use them, says Johnson. “I think it’s not just access, having it in your yard, but maintaining the knowledge of what those [plants] are used for and can be used for.”

When eaters aren’t able to grow their own plants, but are still interested in herbal medicines, they also need the knowledge to access quality products. Deborah Vorhies, CEO of the FairWild Foundation notes that contamination affects products from around the world. “So I think looking for evidence of quality and evidence of traceability…through certification is really, really important,” she says.

As eaters re-familiarize themselves with herbal medicines, Guido Masé, Chief Formulator at Traditional Medicinals says that he sees “this possibility to bring herbal medicine into the lives of human beings, particularly those of us in Western culture who might be experiencing a little bit of disconnect from our ancestral roots, and do it in a way that honors and preserves the traditional knowledge that connects people, plants, and place.”

Watch the full conversation HERE or listen to it on “Food Talk with Dani Nierenberg.”

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The post Harvesting Health: The Role of Herbal Medicine in Food and Agriculture Systems appeared first on Food Tank.

During The Players Tailgate at Super Bowl LVIII in Las Vegas, NV, Food Recovery Network (FRN) and local college students will recover surplus food to prevent it from going to waste. 

FRN, a student-led movement dedicated to fighting food waste and hunger, will work with volunteers, including students from the University of Nevada Las Vegas, to rescue uneaten food and donate it to the Just One Project. The nonprofit recipient works to address food insecurity in southern Nevada through a pop up mobile market, a brick and mortar community market, and grocery delivery. 

“We all deserve access to nutritious food—food is a right,” Regina Anderson, Executive Director of FRN, tells Food Tank. “Food Recovery Network provides on the ground food recovery to demonstrate with love and respect how easy, cost effective and fast it can be for all of us to recover food from our large-scale events like the Bullseye Event Group Players Tailgate party before the Big Game, conferences, higher education institutions–you name it–so that we can provide that food to our neighbors who just need some help.”

The Bullseye Event Group Players Tailgate brings together more than 50 active National Football League (NFL) players, celebrities, and guests for food, drinks, and entertainment before the Super Bowl. This marks the fourth year that FRN will recover uneaten food from the Players Tailgate. During last year’s Super Bowl in Phoenix, AZ, FRN reports that they recovered enough food to produce more than 2,400 meals for those in need. 

The NFL estimates that Super Bowl events generate as much as 63,500 kilograms of donatable food and drinks. And every year in the United States more than one third of food goes to waste, according to ReFED. Once surplus food finds its way to landfills, it releases harmful greenhouse gases as it breaks down.

“When we recover surplus food, we also help our environment by not sending that food to landfill,” Anderson says. “With just small actions, we can make a tremendous change in the U.S. and move from food waste to food recovery.”

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Photo courtesy of Food Recovery Network

The post Food Recovery Network Teams Up with Local Students to Recover Surplus Food During Super Bowl LVIII appeared first on Food Tank.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) recently published a report to assess eaters’ perceptions of dollar stores. It finds that these businesses can be important fixtures in communities and suggests there are opportunities to use their position to increase access to healthy foods.

“The goal of our healthy retail work is to ensure that people have access to healthy food no matter where they live or shop. Dollar stores have been top of mind for us within the space and so that’s really where the inspiration motivation for this report came from,” Sara John, Deputy Director at CSPI and co-author of the report, tells Food Tank.

The authors of the report sought to understand the role dollar stores play in providing food, particularly for financially constrained households. To do this, CSPI researchers collected data through a national survey, focused on 750 individuals living near dollar stores with limited financial resources. The survey looked at respondents’ perceptions, shopping behaviors, and views on healthy choices within these stores.

The report finds that dollar stores, rapidly proliferating across the United States, play a significant role in food acquisition for communities. Respondents viewed dollar stores positively for their convenience and affordability but identified barriers such as low-quality products, inadequate staffing, and limited healthy food availability, urging for increased access to healthier choices within these stores.

“We’re hoping, at least from a corporate perspective, that the survey results demonstrate to Dollar General and Dollar Tree stores that healthy food expansion, especially in areas that stand the benefit the most, makes sense for both their business and the communities they serve,” John shares with Food Tank.

CSPI reports that dollar stores are the fastest-growing food retailer in the United States by number and dollars spent on food. Data from Nielsen shows that there are over 37,000 dollar stores in the U.S. and CSPI reports that more than 35,000 of these stores are owned by just two companies: Dollar Tree and Dollar General. According to John, just 16 percent of Dollar Generals offer fresh produce in their stores.

But the authors believe that opportunities exist to bring more healthy foods into these stores and to take advantage of the positive attitude that consumers have toward the businesses. Based on their findings, the authors recommend a multifaceted approach involving policy actions at local and federal levels, corporate responsibility, and continued research efforts.

Suggestions included implementing policies to regulate and improve the healthy food offerings in dollar stores, enhancing SNAP retailer standards, expanding fresh food options in underserved areas, and collaborating with community organizations and agencies to improve healthy food access through dollar stores. Additionally, CPSI advises corporate entities to prioritize having healthy items on shelves, report progress on environmental and social goals, and engage in collaborations to understand barriers to stocking healthier foods.

Following the report’s release CSPI also launched the corporate campaign Don’t Discount Families Dollar General. It asks dollar stores to accept Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) benefits at more locations, making healthy foods more accessible for moms and children.

“I think it’s important to not only be doing research to inform policies, but also to make sure we are researching and evaluating existing policies as well,” John tells Food Tank. “We need to better understand the impact of these policies that are being passed and any potential unintended consequences that they may have.”

This article was written by Natalie Wright

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The West and Central African Council for Agricultural Research and Development (CORAF) is working to break down research silos among governments and across geographies in West and Central Africa. According to Dr. Abdou Tenkouano, former Executive Director of CORAF, these initiatives are critical to building climate resilience in the region.

“This is a global village,” Tenkouano tells Food Tank. “We are all inter-connected, interdependent, interlinked.”

CORAF, now under the new leadership of Dr. Alioune Fall, is the largest sub-regional research organization in Africa, working with 23 national agricultural research systems in the Sahelian, Coastal, and Central regions of Africa to improve agricultural research and economic growth. The organization focuses on localized solutions to issues facing farmers.

“What we’ve learned from the pandemic is that there is a restriction of movement that causes the necessity of what we call proximity economies,” or shorter, local food value chains, says Tenkouano. “At the local level, one should be able to produce as much as what is needed.”

Most agricultural production in West and Central Africa is from smallholder farmers. In addition to growing millet, sorghum, maize, and other crops, they produce seeds to use the following year. During the Ebola crisis from 2014 to 2016, farmers across the region were going hungry because of food shortages, trade restrictions, border controls, and rising food prices. Many, unfortunately, were resorting to eating the seeds they had intended to plant the following season. In response, CORAF mobilized entrepreneurs to source seeds of appropriate varieties and transport them across country borders.

“This was the first time that we had a regional response to a regional issue,” says Tenkouano.

Tenkouano notes that successful regional initiatives must seek out and respect farmers’ input. As an organization, CORAF takes a participatory approach to creating long-lasting agricultural solutions.

“From the beginning, we identify the issues together [with farmers], then we design the approach to solving together…that is a landmark thing that we do at CORAF,” says Tenkouano. “You cannot work on solutions away from where the problems are…Most farmers are local actors of change.”

But this model is not common in typical research settings. According to Tenkouano, often, solutions fail to meet their intended outcomes because research is conducted separately and brought to the farmers once complete.

“We can make things at the community level, involve the community from the start, so that they can own the process from the start,” says Tenkouano.

This participatory model of solution development will be critical to climate adaptation efforts in West and Central Africa, but “we need to give local context some support,” says Tenkouano.

According to a 2022 report by the International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, localizing—or transferring responsibilities, capacities, and resources to national and local actors—can effectively build resilience in disaster-affected countries. But in 2022, just 1.2 percent of total international humanitarian assistance was provided directly to local and national actors.

Investing in local organizations and solutions is also an opportunity to help the region move away from a dependence on a global market, says Tenkouano. According to the United Nations, currency depreciation and high inflation are causing food bills to rise in West and Central Africa, which is highly dependent on imports to feed its growing populations.

CORAF’s regional initiatives seek to build resilience by “embracing all at once” interconnected issues like market access, trade, women’s equity, and the empowerment of youth.

“The best innovations are maybe not in the biophysical context, the best innovations are in the social constructs,” says Tenkouano.

For example, women and youth make up 62 percent and 65 percent of the agricultural labor force, respectively, according to Mariame Maiga, PhD, Regional Gender and Social Development Advisor at CORAF. They, however, have limited access to productive agricultural resources—like appropriate technologies and innovations, quality seeds and fertilizers, agricultural infrastructure, credit, extension services, and markets—because of the gender gap in agriculture.

“Gender inequalities in agriculture remain one of the main causes for the underperformance of the sector, with major negative impacts on food and nutrition security, economic growth, and sustainable socio-economic development of the populations,” says Maiga. “Closing the gender gap with women’s empowerment and leadership is critical to West and Central Africa’s food system.”

According to Maiga, the region’s food system does not currently have enough seeds to meet farmers’ demand. In 2022, CORAF developed a gender-smart approach to fill this gap by organizing a regional platform for women entrepreneurs in the seed industry, including a series of trainings on production techniques, quality control, policies, business management, and communications. The platform is now being used as a tool for scaling drought-tolerant and biofortified seed varieties in West and Central Africa while promoting women’s entrepreneurship.

And in 2023, CORAF trained more than one thousand women and youth in seed multiplication, processing, marketing, and management as part of the Comprehensive African Agriculture Development Programme initiative, and the Food System Resilience Program in Benin, Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria, Mali, Senegal, Togo, and Tchad. Programs such as this build local capacities across the seed value chain while fostering entrepreneurship among women and youth in the seed sector.

Tenkouano is hopeful about new, digital solutions arriving to accelerate knowledge-sharing and connect women and youth leaders to better resources.

“[Young people] are highly connected among themselves, highly connected to the world. And they are very skilled at manipulating those gadgets and apps that pop in every day,” says Tenkouano. As “electronic extension agents,” youth are taking new technologies and making sure they are disseminated to those who could benefit. “These are areas that are new, that did not exist 10 years ago. And I think it’s all exciting, I can’t even begin to think of all the possibilities.”

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The post Building Resilience Through Localization in West and Central Africa appeared first on Food Tank.

A version of this piece was featured in Food Tank’s newsletter, released weekly on Thursdays. To make sure it lands straight in your inbox and to be among the first to receive it, subscribe now by clicking here.

To become good stewards of the planet, we need to connect with our ‘climate emotions’—because that’s how we move from grief and anxiety toward a sense of purpose and thriving, says science writer Britt Wray.

Bottled water is a US$300 billion market—and it’s creating a trifecta of plastic waste, resource extraction, and social inequity, says sociologist Daniel Jaffee.

When author Will Harris inherited his family’s farm, he also took on the conventional practices that came with it—but he took a big gamble and is now practicing regenerative agriculture and working with nature, not against it.

Sound interesting?

Wray’s book, “Generation Dread: Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Crisis,” Jaffee’s book, “Unbottled: The Fight against Plastic Water and for Water Justice,” and Harris’s book, “A Bold Return to Giving A Damn: One Farm, Six Generations, and the Future of Food” are all among the 20 books included in Food Tank’s new winter book list.

The books we’re highlighting this season include a comprehensive how-to guide for preserving fresh ingredients, deeply researched analyses of food banks and how to prevent food waste, and collections of essays on building a better food system. Writers include farmers, activists, researchers, United States Senators, chefs, poets, and so many others.

The books on this list look to the past, seek to analyze the present, and lay out bold visions for the future. These books are starting points to explore new topics—go down new pathways—as you deepen your understanding of food and agriculture.

Books on the list include: “A Bold Return to Giving A Damn: One Farm, Six Generations, and the Future of Food” by Will Harris; “Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry” by Austin Frerick; “Food, Inc. 2: Inside the Quest for a Better Future for Food” edited by Karl Weber; “Food Waste, Food Insecurity, and the Globalization of Food Banks” by Daniel N. Warshawsky; “Generation Dread: Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Crisis” by Britt Wray; “Globalisation and Livelihood Transformations in the Indonesian Seaweed Industry” edited by Zannie Langford; “Good Eats: 32 Writers on Eating Ethically” edited by Jennifer Cognard-Black and Melissa A. Goldthwaite; “How to Start a Farm Stop: A Pattern Language for Local Food Systems” by Kathryn Barr; “Invitation to a Banquet: The Story of Chinese Food” by Fuchsia Dunlop; “My Side of the River: An Alaska Native Story” by Elias Kelly; “Saying NO to a Farm-Free Future: The Case for an Ecological Food System and Against Manufactured Foods” by Chris Smaje; “School Food Politics in Mexico: The Corporatization of Obesity and Healthy Eating Policies” by José Tenorio; “The Preserving Garden” by Jo Turner; “TOXIC: From Factory to Food Bowl, Pet Food Is a Risky Business” by Phyllis Entis; “Ultra-Processed People: The Science Behind Food That Isn’t Food” by Chris van Tulleken; “Unbottled: The Fight against Plastic Water and for Water Justice” by Daniel Jaffee; “University Engagement with Farming Communities in Africa: Community Action Research Platforms” edited by Anthony Egeru, Megan Lindow, and Kay Muir Leresche; “What We Sow: On the Personal, Ecological, and Cultural Significance of Seeds” by Jennifer Jewell; “What if CAFOs Were History?: The Rise of Regenerative Farming” by Leo Horrigan; and “Wild, Tamed, Lost, Revived: The Surprising Story of Apples in the South” by Diane Flynt.

I hope you’ll take a look at the full list HERE.

I also want to share a recent episode of the Food Tank podcast, which features Dr. Cary Fowler, the Special Envoy for Global Food Security. He recently launched a new program in Africa called Vision for Adapted Crops and Soils, which aims to boost crop productivity and nutrition security through resilient, biodiverse agriculture.

“We’ve got to get the fundamentals right,” he said. “And the fundamentals are always going to be soils and crops.”

I couldn’t agree more. You can listen to our full conversation HERE.

What books have you been reading lately that have expanded your understanding of food and agriculture? Share them with me at danielle@foodtank.com so I can add them to my own reading list and recommend them to other Food Tankers!

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.

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The post These 20 Books Are Your Guide to the Past, Present, and Future of Food and Ag appeared first on Food Tank.

Through the expansion of the online Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, grocery retailers including Amazon are making it easier for low-income families to access the foods they need. 

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Amazon was among a handful of companies working with the U.S. Department of Agriculture on a pilot program that allowed shoppers to use their SNAP benefits online. The new platform allowed eaters to purchase groceries from participating retailers and have them shipped directly to their front doors.

But by March of 2020, when governments were advising that everyone stay home, the program was still only available in select states. “We understood that this very vital subsidy for food was not available beyond brick and mortar,” Nancy Dalton, the Head of Community Experience and Customer Marketing for Amazon Access, tells Food Tank. 

The pandemic fueled the expansion of the program as the need “to get as many states online as possible,” became more apparent, Dalton says. Today, consumers can use Online SNAP in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. 

At Amazon, Online SNAP falls under Amazon Access, a suite of programs and services that Dalton and her colleagues design and implement to expand access to food and other basic necessities. 

For Dalton, whose family relied on SNAP benefits for a time, this work is personal. “I had to go to the corner store with the brown and purple money to get food for our household,” she tells Food Tank. “And I saw my mother hold her head down and feel ashamed about that. And even me, as a kid, I was like ‘Oh, I hate this money because it makes us look different.’”

Dalton believes that Online SNAP is a powerful advancement that allows eaters, regardless of their income, to shop without feeling how she once did. This program “allows people who receive [SNAP] the dignity to order within their home where no one knows what type of payment you’re using,” she tells Food Tank.

That’s why the Amazon Access team is also working to spread awareness of this option to communities. “A lot of what we do both online, but mostly at the grassroots level, is to spend time actually walking people through the process…step by step,” Dalton says. From there, “we watch it in action. And then we continuously build on our instruction mechanisms and our communication mechanisms to make sure that they’re covering all of the needs of those who might be digitally adept and those who might actually need a little bit more help.”

Listen to the full conversation with Nancy Dalton on “Food Talk with Dani Nierenberg” to hear about overcoming the initial skepticism many eaters expressed around online grocery shopping,  how Amazon Access is partnering with community-based organizations to increase their impact, and Dalton’s focus on Food is Medicine programs to help more households access nutritious foods that meet their needs. 

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The post Overcoming Barriers to Food Access Through Digital Grocery Solutions appeared first on Food Tank.

The Rockefeller Foundation recently announced that it will put an additional US$80 million toward Food is Medicine (FIM) programs in the United States over the next five years. The new commitment will bring the Foundation’s total funding of FIM interventions to over US$100 million. 

“There is no time to waste for unlocking Food is Medicine’s great potential to advance health equity by improving nutrition security,” says Devon Klatell, Vice President for Food, The Rockefeller Foundation.

More than half of the new funding will go toward the Health Care by Food Initiative, a multi-year collaboration with the American Heart Association. Through the partnership they are working to identify effective Food is Medicine approaches that incorporate nutritious food into healthcare settings.

Additionally, The Rockefeller Foundation plans to invest in public, private, and nonprofit organizations to build better infrastructure to support the growth of FIM, educate for better policies to expand to accelerate action, and improve access to accurate information about FIM. 

During its inaugural Food is Medicine Summit, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) also signed a memorandum of understanding with The Rockefeller Foundation to accelerate the adoption of FIM interventions. 

FIM solutions are designed for integration into the healthcare system to treat, manage, and prevent chronic disease, which affect roughly 6 in 10 Americans, according to the U.C. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Programs include medically tailored meals and produce prescription programs.

Elizabeth Yee, Executive Vice President of Programs at the Rockefeller Foundation said during the Summit that their latest announcements mark the next step in their investment in community wellbeing. “We’re in the next frontier of what we’re trying to do.”

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Local Foods Mohawk Valley (LFMV), located in Clinton, New York, wants to forge a future for online farmers’ markets in a post pandemic world. The organization is motivated to increase access to local food and during LFMV’s first year of operation has also boosted farmers’ lifestyles, community relations, and the local economy.

LFMV launched in spring of 2022. Their online store is open from Wednesday morning through Sunday evening, allowing consumers to shop across categories or farms. Once the order window closes on Sunday evening, farmers have until Tuesday afternoon to harvest and collect order requests on their farms before dropping off their product at a local church in Clinton. Shoppers can pick up their order Tuesday evening in an hour and a half long curbside delivery window.

Online farmers’ markets grew in popularity nationwide at the height of COVID-19 as consumers craved localism at socially safe distances, according to eMarketer. Jack Riffle, founder of LFMV, says their success in establishing year-round community access to local food has propelled the online market into a flourishing existence in the wake of the pandemic.

Riffle wanted to create the online market with both farmers and community members in mind. There is an in-person market in Clinton’s village center, but it operates seasonally and is only open between 10:00AM- and 4:00PM on Thursdays.

“If you’re someone who works a regular 9 to 5 you just can’t go to the farmers market and are essentially excluded from access to local food,” Riffle tells Food Tank. By offering an online marketplace in addition to the in-person one, Riffle hopes LFMV can meet the needs of working families and families with children.

The winter can also be challenging for farmers. “Sometimes winter sales can be quite lean because you don’t have these regular outlets for food distribution,” Riffle tells Food Tank, “so an online farmers market can bridge that gap and allow farmers to continue having income and customers to continue having access to local food.”

Riffle has also found that having an online option for farmers’ markets has helped increase productivity on the farm. Through working with farmers, he has found that the time spent by farmers selling their goods at markets directly detracts from their efficiency on the farm. He believes the addition of an online platform is an easy win for farmers, opening valuable time in their day while also reducing food waste.

“You are only harvesting or packaging what you’re selling, you’re only dropping off, not standing and waiting to see if a customer comes or doesn’t come,” says Riffle. “The idea of a guaranteed sale reduces some of the stress from a farmer’s perspective.”

Suzie Jones from Jones Family Farm was one of LFMV’s first vendors. Jones Family Farm has been a vendor at Clinton’s in person market for over ten years. They began selling online for the first time when the pandemic hit, joining together with other local farms in a “Farmer’s Park-It,” a model that provided a short 30-minute weekly pickup window in a shopping plaza parking lot.

While the “Farmer’s Park-It” helped Jones Family Farm stay afloat during the peak of the pandemic, Jones recalls challenges in maintaining and marketing an independent online store. LFMV has since alleviated some of these responsibilities.

“I am spending considerably less time putting together the weekly orders than I did for the ‘Farmer’s Park-It,’” Jones tells Food Tank. “I can concentrate on telling our story and sharing recipes rather than pushing people to place an order.”

While access and efficiency are at the heart of LFMV’s mission, Riffle has found that the drop off and pick up windows at the church have become a meeting space for Clinton community members. According to Riffle, this congregation has helped foster relationships among community members, including students at the local college, Hamilton.

Riffle hopes to continue building community relationships and supporting Clinton residents’ access to healthy and local food.

“We’ve kept over US$50,000 in the local economy,” says Riffle. “That money has gone straight to the farmers. Without LFMV, where would that money go?”

This article was written Liza Greene.

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Maine lobster fishers recently won reprieve on new federal regulations to protect the endangered North Atlantic right whales. According to the Maine’s Lobstermen Association, The regulations could dramatically change lobster fishing practices, impacting fishers and Maine’s island communities who depend upon this resource.

The North Atlantic right whale population is declining, with 340 individuals left and fewer than 70 breeding females, according to the Center for Biological Diversity. The Center finds fishing gear to be a leading cause in the species’ spiral towards extinction.

“During New England’s year-round lobster season, there are over 1 million vertical fishing lines connected to millions of heavy traps that rest on the ocean floor,” Ben Grundy, Associate Oceans Campaigner from the Center for Biological Diversity’s Ocean program, tells Food Tank. “This creates a dangerous maze for North Atlantic right whales and other marine animals to navigate without becoming entangled.”

The Center, alongside other conservation groups, spearheaded a series of federal initiatives in an effort to implement stricter fishing gear regulations and reduce the lobster fishery’s threat to right whales. According to Grundy, the debate around the federal fishing regulations comes down to one key question about National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries: Are they “adhering to its responsibilities to protect North Atlantic right whales as mandated by the Endangered Species Act and Marine Mammal Protection Act?”

In 2022, a federal court ruled in favor of the Center and other groups, finding that NOAA had violated the Endangered Species Act and Marine Mammal Protection Act, and was not doing enough to reduce the lobster industry’s threat to right whales.

But later that year, Maine’s congressional delegation inserted a six-year delay on new federal lobster fishing regulations into a US$1.7 trillion spending bill passed by Congress. The delay will avoid closures that could destroy the industry while allowing time for more research into how often whales enter prime fishing areas.

And in 2023, a federal appeals court side with the lobster industry, ordering the National Marine Fishers Series to re-work the most recent federal regulations to protect the right whales.

Grundy and other whale conservationists believe that the recent decisions are harmful for the species. “This six-year delay prioritizes the profits of the American lobster fishery over the protection of critically endangered North Atlantic right whales,” Grundy tells Food Tank.

But Maine’s community of lobster fishers are encouraged.

“It gives us time to take a breath,” Steve Train, a commercial lobster fisher from Long Island, Maine, tells Food Tank. “Some people think it might be the end of it all, but I think most people see a little light now that we can work under.”

According to Maine Lobster, Maine’s 5,000 self employed lobster fishers contribute an estimated US$1.5 billion to the state’s economy. Thus the proposed protection regulations could have devastating ripple effects for Maine’s lobster fishers, and the global lobster industry.

“In the last 25 years, there has been one documented entanglement of a North Atlantic right whale in Maine fishing gear,” Train says. “There have been zero documented fatalities of right whales in Maine lobster gear in the history of the fishery.”

According to Train, conservationists’ criticisms of Maine’s lobster industry are primarily rooted in their utilization of a co-occurrence model. This model calculates the likelihood of whale entanglements in Maine based on quantity of gear and probability, rather than historical entanglement data.

“Because we have the most gear and the most vertical lines, we strike red on the co-occurrence model and the more data we give them the higher we spike, even though they don’t have data on the whales and even though we’ve never killed one,” says Train.

Currently, conservationists and Maine lobster fishers both plan to use the next six years to gather additional data and bolster their respective arguments in time for the next regulatory debate.

For conservationist groups like the Center of Biological Diversity, this means the ongoing pursuit of research, public education, and advocacy for a federal mandate that compels a shift from traditional fishing gear to pop-up or on-demand gear in trap fisheries.

“This alternative fishing gear removes the need for persistent vertical lines connecting traps to surface buoys, allowing marine animals to move freely,” Grundy tells Food Tank. “It’s the only way to allow fishing to continue while eliminating the risk of entanglement.”

As the Maine lobster industry looks ahead to the next six years, Train believes further research and scientific evidence will demonstrate that they are not the source of the problem. In 2020, Maine lobster fishers adopted purple lines to mark their traps, hoping to prove that Maine is not responsible for whale deaths. In the spring of 2022, federal regulations went into effect requiring color-coded rope sections by state—purple for Maine, yellow for New Hampshire, red for Massachusetts, and silver gray for Rhode Island.

“We have done so much to maintain this resource for years to be sustainable,” says Train. “Nobody has ever doubted our practice or tactics, so to have some of these other organizations come in and attack our sustainability criteria because of something else has been a [challenge].”

This article was written Liza Greene.

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.

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Colorado Governor Jared Polis’s recent State Budget Proposal includes investment in the state’s agriculture industry. The Proposal increases funding for the Colorado Department of Agriculture, allocating US$450,000 towards some of their most influential projects and programs, including the Agricultural Workforce Development Program (AWDP).

The budget’s release follows the recently signed House Bill 23-1094 to extend AWDP in Colorado. The program, established in 2018, trains interns for Colorado farmers, ranchers, and agricultural businesses and aims to build a well-trained workforce for the state’s agricultural industry. The House Bill extends the program, which was about to expire, for another five years. It also lengthens the duration of internships from six months to one year, giving apprentices experience across all seasons.

AWDP was established to encourage more young people to pursue careers in farming. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), farmers in the U.S. are getting older, with the average age of food producers over 57 years of age.

“There aren’t enough younger people deciding to choose careers in agriculture,” Colorado State Senator Dylan Roberts tells Food Tank. Roberts says that a career in the sector is becoming less financially viable for young people.

Research from the University of Colorado shows that farms are declining in number and increasing in size across the United States. And the USDA reports that there were 200,000 fewer farms in 2022 than in 2007. This shift away from family-operated farms poses challenges for young people, particularly those with high student loan debt, to establish a livelihood in rural areas, according to a report for the Colorado Rural Health Center.

“The concept around the Agricultural Workforce Development Program was to create an entryway into agriculture for young and beginning farmers and ranchers” Kate Greenberg, Colorado’s Commissioner of Agriculture, tells Food Tank.

AWDP provides financial incentives to farms, ranches, and agricultural businesses to hire interns and provide them with the hands-on training needed to begin a career in agriculture. According to Greenberg, the program allows beginning farmers to gain experience in the field without needing to have the capital to purchase land.

“We know that access to land and capital are the top barriers young farmers face, but that also includes education, training, and workforce development,” says Greenberg.

Since the start of the program, AWDP has funded over 50 apprenticeships on Colorado farms and ranches, according to Greenberg.

“That’s 50 young people who have had that paid, hands-on experience and are being brought into agriculture in a way that they weren’t able to before because of the program,” Greenberg tells Food Tank.

According to Greenberg and Roberts, AWDP is part of a bigger strategy tackling issues around access to land, capital, and education. The Colorado Department of Agriculture initiated the NextGen Ag Leadership Grant Program, which was also included in Governor Polis’ Proposal, in the fall of 2022. The program aims to provide grants to agricultural organizations and educational institutions that support developmental opportunities for the next generation of agriculturalists.

The agency also launched a US$20 million revolving loan fund to help finance land access for beginning farmers and ranchers. They have helped more than 80 individuals access land and expand their businesses within the first year of the program, according to Greenberg.

AWDP and the Department of Agriculture’s other initiatives specially aim to support Colorado youth as farming practices change in the face of the climate crisis.

“Stewardship, succession, profitability, and resilience all go hand and hand,” Greenberg tells Food Tank. “We know young people are going to be dealing with challenges we can’t define yet because of the rate of change and variability with climate change.”

According to Roberts, AWDP also benefits farmers and ranchers as the interns are able to contribute new knowledge and strategies for climate mitigation and adaptation practices on farms.

“It gives me hope that the future generation in agriculture is much more environmentally minded and much more willing to try new things that will help with water efficiency, drought resilience, and soil health,” says Roberts. “This internship program is one of the ways that’s helping promote that in the agriculture industry.”

According to Roberts, 90 percent of the interns who have participated in AWDP now have intentions to continue with a career in agriculture.

This article was written Liza Greene.

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 Colorado Department of Agriculture

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