Welcome to FERN’s Friday Feed (#FFF), where we share the stories from this week that made us stop and think.
Politico
From wildfires and hurricanes to drenching rain and a “bomb cyclone,” 2019 was a terrible year for agriculture. “But the Agriculture Department is doing little to help farmers adapt to what experts predict is the new norm: increasingly extreme weather across much of the U.S.,” writes Helena Bottemiller Evich. “The department, which has a hand in just about every aspect of the industry, from doling out loans to subsidizing crop insurance, spends just 0.3 percent of its $144 billion budget helping farmers adapt to climate change.”
Workers recruited from the Pacific Islands accuse Iowa pork plant of mistreatment
The New York Times
At first, the promise of good pay at a Seaboard Triumph Foods pork plant in Iowa seemed like a dream come true to Micronesians hoping to provide a better life for their families. But their journey to the United States “became a tangled migration saga of what the workers called mistreatment and broken promises,” writes Jack Healy. “The workers say their pay was siphoned off to repay their $1,800 plane tickets. They say a recruiter for the pork plant seized their passports and threatened to have the workers deported if they got sick or missed shifts.”
The Yazoo Pumps, a study in futility
Southerly
Epic flooding in the southern Mississippi delta, one of the poorest regions in the country, has renewed the focus on an 80-year-old flood-control project that was never finished. “Even if the Yazoo Pumps are revived, it could be decades before work begins again; there is currently a nearly $100 billion backlog in Army Corps infrastructure projects,” writes Boyce Upholt. “People on both sides of the argument told me they figure the pumps, in the end, might never be built.”
At food festivals, chefs are offered exposure but not much money
Los Angeles Times
“Food festivals are more popular and more elaborate than ever, but what’s not apparent to ticket buyers is that their growth has often been at the expense of the restaurants and chefs they’re supposed to promote,” writes Hanna Raskin. “Little-known chefs stand to be financially and philosophically crushed by the industry expectation that they cook at food festivals for little or no money.”
The multicultural tales behind four iconic American foods
The Washington Post
Tim Carman and Shelly Tan explore how four quintessentially American dishes tell stories of immigration, industrialization, and economic mobility. The hulking size of meatballs, served alongside spaghetti, “were a sign of immigrant success as much as a signal of one’s appetite.” When canning allowed the preservation of tomatoes and green chiles, chile con queso could become a year-round staple. Gumbo and the California roll round out the set.