Farmworkers gather in New York to chart future of policy and organizing goals
Farmworkers and labor organizers from across North America will convene in New York City this weekend for a “people’s tribunal,” where they plan to produce a list of overarching priorities that will guide their organizing efforts going forward. (No paywall)
Today’s quick hits, March 28, 2024
Climate-smart rice: Long-grain white rice and brown rice from Wisconsin’s Great River Milling are the first consumer products created under the USDA’s Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities program. (Wisconsin Public Radio) Standards for food as medicine: The Food is Medicine Coalition, an …
Report: California paraquat use concentrated in poor, Latino communities
Between 2017 and 2021, 5.3 million pounds of the herbicide paraquat were sprayed on California fields, with 66 percent of it in five Central Valley counties whose residents are predominantly poor and Latino, according to a new Environmental Working Group analysis.
Today’s quick hits, March 27, 2024
Bridge collapse shuts port: The Port of Baltimore, a significant shipping point for U.S. sugar imports, suspended traffic Tuesday after a container ship slammed into and collapsed the Francis Scott Key Bridge, shutting the main channel leading into the Chesapeake Bay. (Agri-Pulse) PFAS …
Pennsylvania dairies put the notion of climate-smart milk to the test
The U.S. dairy industry is aiming to go greenhouse gas neutral by 2050. Researchers have many ideas to help get them there — from feed additives that minimize methane-filled cow burps to new timing for fertilizer applications. But there’s little data on how well many of these strategies work on actual dairies with varying environmental conditions. (No paywall)
Bird flu found in dairy cows in Texas and Kansas
The USDA announced Monday that unpasteurized milk samples from sick cattle at two dairy farms in Kansas and one in Texas, as well as an oropharyngeal swab from another dairy in Texas, tested positive for Highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI).
Today’s quick hits, March 26, 2024
EU shelves climate program: A major European Union plan to fight climate change and better protect nature was indefinitely postponed Monday, underscoring how farmers’ protests sweeping the continent influence politics ahead of the June EU parliamentary elections. (Associated Press) Prop 12 …
California’s water board hit with civil rights complaint over tainted water
A coalition of public interest groups filed a civil rights complaint against California’s top water board last week, accusing the agency of perpetuating environmental racism along the state’s Central Coast. According to the complaint, the region’s agricultural industry has contaminated Latino farmworkers’ drinking water with dangerous levels of nitrates, and the State Water Resources Control Board is partly to blame.
Today’s quick hits, March 25, 2024
Ag-cancer link in Iowa?: Oncologists and public health researchers say it’s time to look more closely at what role the agriculture industry plays in Iowa having the fastest-growing rate of new cancers in the nation and the second-highest cancer rate overall. (The Gazette) Onion ban: India has …
Study: Climate change will drive up food costs, threatening political stability
Global warming may drive up food inflation by as much as 3.2 percentage points a year, based on temperature increases projected for 2035, according to a paper published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment on Thursday. Warming is also projected to cause an overall rise in inflation of up to 1.2 percent annually during that period.
Today’s quick hits, March 22, 2024
Disappearing water: Alfalfa crops and other agricultural activities are sapping the ancient Mexican oasis of Cuatro Cienegas, the most important wetland in the Chihuahuan Desert. (Reuters) Italy wants more farmers: A new law, designed to increase the number of young farmers in the country, …
School meals participation declined in 2022-23 school year
The number of students eating meals at school declined in 42 states and the District of Columbia during the first year since the expiration of pandemic-era waivers that allowed all students, regardless of family income, to eat for free. But eight states — all of which continued to serve meals for free to all, or used the Community Eligibility Provision to offer free meals at a significant number of schools — bucked the trend and reported increases in participation, according to a new report from the Food Research & Action Center.
Ice cover on the upper Mississippi was fleeting this winter. Is this our future?
The above-average temperatures across the upper Midwest, driven in part by the El Niño climate pattern and in part by human-caused climate change, made for less than one month of safe ice on the Mississippi River this winter, scientists estimate. (No paywall)
Today’s quick hits, March 21, 2024
California water cuts: The state has agreed to make long-term cuts to the amount of Colorado River water it uses, according to a proposed plan for managing the river released earlier this month by California, Nevada, and Arizona. (Maven’s Notebook) Mystery PFAS: A new study of food …
Agriculture continues to grow in tribal nations
Agriculture in Indian Country was a nearly $6.5 billion industry in 2022, according to the most recent Census of Agriculture, up from $3.5 billion just five years earlier. Cattle ranching was the most common form of agriculture production, occurring on 39 percent of farms operated by Native Americans, said Erin Parker, executive director of the Indigenous Food and Agriculture Initiative at the University of Arkansas School of Law, speaking during the second-annual State of Native Agriculture Address.
Fungicides are leading culprit in new Dirty Dozen report
Four of the five most frequently detected chemicals on fruit and vegetables in the Environmental Working Group's annual Dirty Dozen list are fungicides linked to endocrine disruption and reproductive system damage in humans.
Today’s quick hits, March 20, 2024
Ag labor abuse in Southeast: In 2023, investigators with the Wage and Hour Division’s Southeast Region identified violations in 90 percent of their approximately 240 completed investigations of agricultural employers. (DOL) France snubs Ukraine: France has joined Poland in calling for further …
Stabenow: Farm and food coalition is key to passing farm bill
The only way to pass a farm bill this year is to assemble a farm and food coalition of rural and urban lawmakers, said Senate Agriculture chairwoman Debbie Stabenow at a farm conference on Monday. "We need to be strengthening all parts of the farm bill," rather than trying to raid SNAP and climate funds to pay for larger crop subsidy outlays, she said.
Despite its hopes, China will remain a food importer, analysts say
President Xi Jinping has made food security a national priority since becoming China's leader a decade ago, with a multi-prong drive for self-sufficiency in food. It is "an improbable, if not impossible, goal," say analysts from the Brookings Institution and the Center for Strategic and International Studies in a brief.