Welcome to FERN’s Friday Feed (#FFF), where we share the stories from this week that made us stop and think.
At hundreds of farmers markets, food stamp programs are on the lineThe science behind the stench at giant hog farms
The Washington Post and FERN
The collapse of one payment processing company, Novo Dia, means that 1,700 farmers markets across the country may soon be unable to accept SNAP benefits, report Jane Black and Leah Douglas in FERN’s latest story. Novo Dia’s shutdown comes on the heels of a delay in a USDA program that provides free EBT processing equipment to farmers markets, further threatening successful food access programs at markets. Advocates say these obstacles are “devastating” and “a huge step back” for programs that serve low-income farmers market customers.
California’s farmworker shortage sheds light on immigration policy’s consequences
Mother Jones
The shortage of grape pickers in California vineyards, due to a drop in migration and an aging workforce, could be exacerbated by a fear of immigration raids. “[President Trump] has called for a crackdown on immigrants because he says they ‘compete directly against vulnerable American workers,’” writes Maddie Oatman. “But to California’s grape growers, this claim is laughable.” In the first year of Donald Trump’s presidency, the number of arrests of undocumented immigrants without criminal records has more than doubled.
A group of indigenous chefs uses food to confront injustice
Eater
The I-Collective, a group of indigenous activists, is using the native foods of North America to educate people about “the centuries-long history of the United States government sanctioning the taking of Native land and the forced relocation of American Indians, forbidding many from farming, hunting, and practicing their culture in various ways,” writes Suzanne Cope. Their “events aren’t meant to give diners a feel-good meal; they intend to confront the question of what food sovereignty means with every bite, each dish a contribution to the discourse around the table.”
Why America never manages to solve its food-safety problem
The New Republic
The outbreak of E. coli in romaine lettuce earlier this year that killed five people and sickened dozens more in 36 states was just the latest in a seemingly endless run of foodborne illness. Lax regulation, insufficient testing, and bad actors in the food industry are to blame, writes Emily Atkin. “Do you know how many corporate officers have gone to prison for flouting health and safety rules that led to people’s deaths?” asked Darin Detwiler, a professor of food policy at Northeastern University whose 17-month-old son died in an E. coli outbreak in 1993. “Three—and the largest sentence ever handed down was three months.”
Fighting food apartheid at church
Civil Eats
The Black Church Food Security Network connects black East Coast city-dwellers with black farmers in an effort to improve food security and combat food apartheid in communities via a network of churches. “BCFSN operates outside of the charity model,” writes Leilani Clark. “Instead, it calls itself a ‘self-help’ organization, intent on challenging what [reverend and BCFSN founder Heber] Brown describes as ‘the harmful and dehumanizing dynamics of initiatives that make it almost a requirement to be in a posture of subservience and dependence on the benevolence of those who have the resources.’”