FERN’s Friday Feed: Is the poke explosion sustainable?
Welcome to FERN’s Friday Feed (#FFF), where we share the stories from this week that made us stop and think.
Longreads
“There are 4.6 million fishing boats on the water worldwide; 3.5 million of them, or 75 percent of the global fleet, are in Asia, and most are searching for tuna,” writes Adam Skolnick. “Nearly 5 million tons of tuna were harvested from the ocean in 2015, and based on recent estimates, nearly one fifth of it comes from fisheries exploited at a level that could cause their stocks to collapse unless something changes. Modern-day poke is synonymous with ahi, the Hawaiian word for tuna, which is why, according to [Jennifer] Bushman, [director of sustainability at the Bay Area seafood chain Pacific Catch] a lot of it cannot be considered environmentally sustainable.”
Will Brexit allow England to rebuild its agriculture sector?
The New Yorker
Free of the EU’s massive farm-subsidy scheme, reformers in Britain — led by Jake Fiennes, the profane, dyslexic brother of actors Joseph and Ralph — are pushing to replace industrial ag with something more natural. Fiennes, writes Sam Knight, “believes that farmers in the twenty-first century must cultivate as much as they can on their land—fungi for the soil, grasses for the pollinators, weeds for the insects, insects for the birds, pasture for the livestock—for the long-term goals of carbon capture and food production. ‘How do we feed the nine billion?’ Fiennes said. ‘We feed them through functioning ecosystems.’”
In Louisiana, a farm pageant tradition perseveres
The New York Times
“This year in Louisiana, more than 120 pageant queens will be crowned in honor of crops and commodities, as they have been for some 70 years,” writes Jeanie Riess. “The queens are young women, ages 17 through 23, who have studied to compete at agricultural festivals for titles including Miss Shrimp and Petroleum, Miss Oyster, Miss Frog Festival, and Queen Cotton.” These pageants and their “antiquated rules are followed strictly even as — especially as — global warming, coastal erosion and foreign competition threaten many of the industries that Louisiana holds dear.”
Eater
As early voting began in Nevada, presidential candidate and billionaire Tom Steyer bankrolled tacos and cookies for anyone who desired them. “While election-day giveaways have proliferated over the past few years, it’s been illegal since 1948 to give out food in exchange for votes whenever a federal candidate is on the ballot,” writes Meghan McCarron. “No signs indicated the trucks were affiliated with the Steyer campaign or that they were giving away free food, but soon after the trucks opened, the billionaire arrived and greeted voters, snapping photos with supporters and ordering a few tacos.”
How to address the finance takeover of agriculture
The Nation
The financial sector has contributed to hollowing out rural communities, writes Nick Shaxson. “Finance isn’t just another economic sector, separate from the rest of the economy — it’s intimately plugged into it … Think of the wealth on Wall Street like the bag of a vacuum cleaner. The bigger the bag gets, the more profit has been sucked out of somewhere else. The rising fortunes and high share prices on the Street for agribusiness firms are essentially the flip side of poverty in places like [rural Iowa].”