Fix SNAP, don’t break it
The Atlantic
Many studies have shown that people on food stamps are more likely to be obese, even when controlling for income, because participants tend to consume more soda and junk food. But the answer might not be cutting people off from aid. The White House Budget has proposed decreasing funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) by 29 percent, arguing that many of the 44 million Americans who used the program last year program should rejoin the workforce and stop using food stamps as a crutch. Yet academics like Cindy Leung, a nutrition researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, says SNAP is “our first line of defense against hunger.” She says the service could be improved by offering monetary incentives to buy fruits and vegetables, disincentives for buying soda, and improving the availability of healthy options in blighted neighborhoods. According to her research, white people, who tend to live in areas with better grocery stores, were more likely to use their SNAP benefits to buy produce than blacks, who are more likely to live in food deserts. In other words, with education and resources, people on SNAP will make wise food choices.
The hunt is on for soil microbes
Ensia
“By some estimates, fewer than 1 percent of all bacteria species have been identified, and bacteria are only one type of microbe,” says Ensia. But the tiny creatures that live in the dirt are believed by many researchers to be the “backbone” of life, vital to nutrient cycling and capturing carbon from the atmosphere. Now, scientists around the world are trying to catalog soil microbes before climate change and environmental distress eradicate them. Initiatives like the open-source Earth Microbiome Project, which has recruited more than 1,000 scientists to gather microbes from some of the harshest environments on the planet, say these bacteria could be key to breaking down toxic plastics, creating better biofuels and sustaining healthy farm soils in a hotter, drier future.
A West Coast tribe fights suicide with salmon
Los Angeles Times
“The Yurok people live in a stark land of salmon runs and steep, misty mountains, where giant salamanders hide under rotting logs and Bigfoot is said to prey after dusk,” says the Times. Located at the border of Oregon and California, the tribe also suffers from 80 percent unemployment, rampant diabetes, and a plague of meth and heroin. When seven people committed suicide over an 18-month period, Yurok leaders started to look to the Klamath River for help. Once a vital source of fish, the river had been siphoned off by farmers, dams and utility companies for decades, nearly destroying the spring salmon run. Yurok elders believed that the loss of salmon and other fish hadn’t just hurt the tribe’s diet, but had ruined its sense of purpose. As a spirit says in Yurok folklore, “If you don’t take care of the river and there are no fish, there is no reason for your people to live on this Earth.” The Yurok have spent years fighting to dismantle the dams, and last spring California Gov. Jerry Brown and former Interior Secretary Sally Jewell signed an agreement with the tribe to do that by 2020.
Money grows from walls — of lettuce
Fast Company
The vertical-farming startup Plenty may have cracked how to make money with indoor agriculture. A lot of earlier indoor farming companies went out of business because of high labor costs and the price of LED lighting, which has dropped dramatically. But Plenty is raising heirloom crops, like sorrel and Siberian kale, for less money and with a lower carbon footprint than outdoor farms. While Aerofarms, an indoor farm that relies on horizontal beds, “claims to grow 130 times more produce than conventional farming in a given area,” the vertical plan lets Plenty grow up to 350 times more than conventional farming,” says Fast Company. The plants are rooted in “soil” made of plastic water bottles and irrigated using gravity, which means fewer people are needed. All of this occurs in a warehouse close to San Francisco, so the harvest can easily make it to market. The company, which has $26 million in funding so far, hopes to launch farms near every major city around the world.
Chinese farms ease away from the chemicals and ramp up the tech
Bloomberg
Once devoted to massive fertilizer and pesticide use, China is increasingly shifting toward more sustainable forms of farming as it tries to feed its 1.9 billion people. “The nation is spending billions on water systems, seeds, robots and data science to roll back some of the ravages of industry and develop sustainable, high-yield farms,” says Bloomberg. Even as China continues to buy up arable land in Africa and other parts of the world, it’s encouraging farmers at home to use soil sensors that feed information straight to their smartphones, drones that can better control chemical applications, and climate-controlled shipping containers, where growers plant vegetables. The government also has started encouraging the country to eat less meat — a status symbol in a culture long dogged by poverty, but one that takes a heavy toll on natural resources.
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