FERN’s Friday Feed: Using the land to heal farmers
Welcome to FERN’s Friday Feed (#FFF), where we share the stories from this week that made us stop and think.
A new approach to mental health in farm country
FERN and The Guardian
“Kaila Anderson stands in front of some photos in the farmhouse where she grew up, near the tiny town of Sabetha, in the northeast corner of Kansas. Outside, frozen February fields of wheat, hay and corn stubble repeat across the rolling hills. This agrarian landscape inspired a breakthrough she made four years ago that now promises to help farmers struggling with their mental health,” writes Dean Kuipers. “A licensed social worker, Anderson knows firsthand that farmers have a high propensity for depression and one of the highest rates of suicide of any occupation, often attributed to the demanding and precarious nature of the job. Yet she has found that crisis-line staffers, doctors and therapists in farm country often don’t have the cultural training to recognize the signs of emotional stress unique to farmers. She wanted to explore an emerging idea in psychology that farmer stress is deeply intertwined with the land. But, as a therapist, she needed a tool that could make this connection clear to farmers themselves. And then she saw it, right here on the wall of her childhood home: an aerial photograph of her own family’s farm — the house, the old barn, the windbreak of redcedar trees, and these same fields in summer green.”
The era of the American middle-class restaurant chain is fading
The New York Times
“Once rapidly growing commercial marvels, casual dining chains — sit-down restaurants where middle-class families can walk in without a reservation, order from another human and share a meal — have been in decline for most of the 21st century. Last year, TGI Fridays and Red Lobster both filed for bankruptcy. Outback and Applebee’s have closed dozens of locations. Pizza Hut locations with actual dining rooms are vanishingly rare, with hundreds closing since 2019,” writes Meghan McCarron. “The diminishing of these spaces, along with the rise of more atomized eating habits like delivery apps and drive-throughs, signals the decline of a cherished ritual in American life: dining out with friends and family, and the human connection it brings.”
Hurricane Helene laid bare the problems of seed-saving
The Guardian
“Freezing seeds is a double-edged sword. The ability to store large seed collections with a few hundred dollars worth of plug-in technology has created a preservation problem. Or perhaps the problem is preservation itself,” writes Chris Smith. The ‘Red Queen’s hypothesis’ in evolutionary biology argues that species must be constantly evolving and adapting just to maintain their place in the ecosystem. A world without freezers would force seeds to be grown and saved regularly. But preservation can be a trap, both for the seeds frozen in time and the seed keepers who preserve them. Hurricane Helene reinforced another hard truth: a freezer full of seeds is the literal version of putting all your eggs in one basket. Dr Jim Veteto, living in Celo, North Carolina, manages the Southern Seed Legacy Project and recorded oral histories of people like Rodger Winn. His barn collapsed during Helene, burying his entire seed collection of hundreds of rare seed varieties collected from Appalachian and Cherokee seed keepers … Amazingly, the seeds appear to have survived.”
The luxury tuna industry is killing the Mediterranean
The Dial
“Every year, some 35,000 tons of prized bluefin tuna are harvested in the Mediterranean. Some of these fish are caught in large nets, called purse seines, and dragged for thousands of miles to giant cages, where they are fattened up like geese for foie gras. For every kilogram of weight that a caged bluefin tuna gains, it consumes approximately 15 kg of small, oily fish,” write Julia Amberger, Nanni Fontana, Marzio Mian, and Nicola Scevola. “The fattened fish — now weighing, in total, between 45,000 and 50,000 tons — are then shipped across the world. This farming has consequences on the rest of the ecosystem. Some 134,000 tons of frozen pelagic fish — such as sardines, anchovies, mackerel, sprats and herring — are thawed and tossed into European tuna cages every year. That means a major food resource is being sacrificed to profit the few: Instead of being used to fatten tuna intended for luxury restaurants, these fish could provide 670 million meals (assuming 150 g of edible fish per portion).”
California’s plan to bring back the grizzly bear
Taste
“Grizzly bears once roamed California in large numbers, with populations reaching up to 10,000. But in the early twentieth century they were driven to extinction in the state, leaving a critical ecological gap. Now, over a century later, efforts are underway to reintroduce the bears. Building on decades of research and advocacy, the California Grizzly Alliance is set to release a groundbreaking feasibility study this spring that explores the potential for grizzly recovery in California.”