That’s how Bradley Aiken of Portland, OR began his response to our call for reader questions about where their food comes from. “My weekly visits to the local farmers’ markets still find an overabundance and reliance on plastic pint containers of berries, single-use plastic bags,and straws! I thought we were done with straws, really?”

Bradley’s lament probably feels familiar to most sustainability-minded consumers. Plastic is truly everywhere. Over just a few decades, it’s become an inescapable part of modern life, permeating nearly every aspect of our lives, from the food we eat (usually wrapped and bagged in plastic and often containing it) to the clothes we wear (60 percent of which are made from plastic) to the microplastics hiding just about everywhere, from clouds to human placentas to the Earth’s most remote corners.

“Plastic packaging is definitely a major source of plastic pollution, and it can seem totally overwhelming to folks when they go out to get food, especially since the great majority of our food is wrapped in plastic,” says Erica Cirino, communications manager for the advocacy group Plastic Pollution Coalition and author of Thicker Than Water: The Quest for Solutions to the Plastic Crisis. “It’s estimated that more than 40 percent of all plastic produced is single-use plastic packaging, which is an astounding amount.”

Hey plastic, don’t touch my cheese

Before the advent of plastic packaging, food was packed in a variety of materials, from natural substances such as gourds and leaves to, most recently, glass bottles and jars, metal cans and tins and paper products. Today, plastic encases a large and growing percentage of our food: A recent survey of Canadian grocery stores found that 71 percent of all produce was packaged in plastic and that baby food had the highest share of plastic packaging, at 76 percent.

There are a few reasons why so much of our food is packaged in plastic. Perhaps most importantly, it’s cheaper to manufacture and transport than alternatives. And as the world grapples with an urgent energy transition, fossil fuel companies jittery about the prospect of decreasing demand for oil are looking to plastics as their next major profit driver—and are on track to triple global plastic production by 2060.

Plastic also gives the impression of cleanliness and sterility, and it has long been thought to extend the shelf life of food, a notion that industry groups tend to emphasize but that recent studies have called into question. “It’s a seemingly hygienic coating for foods to be mass produced, shipped around the world and then end up in the supermarket and eventually in your refrigerator,” says Cirino. “It’s just a very disconnected way of interacting with our foods.” 

Worse, she points out, are the health risks of widespread exposure to plastics. Made up of polymers and a dizzying array of chemical additives such as stabilizers, plasticizers, flame retardants and pigments, plastic’s impacts on the human body represent an active area of research. It’s known that many chemicals in plastics, including phthalates and bisphenols, can transfer and leach harmful chemicals that can cause an array of health issues, such as hormone disruption, cancer, diabetes and reproductive disorders. Less well understood are the effects of microplastics, which we can ingest through food and inhale at a rate of about 16 tiny pieces per hour, according to one study. 

“It’s a shame that we’re putting it around our food because we’re exposing ourselves, almost inadvertently, to these toxins,” says Cirino. “All these plastics have different chemical risks associated with them. None of them are good.”

Out of sight, out of mind 

How did we get here? Quite conveniently, as it turns out. Before the advent of plastics in the 20th century, people produced a fraction of the waste they do today; materials were usually repaired, reused or repurposed. It wasn’t until the post-World War II boom that a culture of disposability began to take hold, as new plastics technology allowed cheap packaging to enter the mainstream, finding a market of consumers increasingly motivated by convenience. 

It took some getting used to; historian Susan Strasser recalls how, at first, many consumers washed and saved the tins from disposable TV dinners because they were so unaccustomed to throwing things away after a single use. And it was a transition explicitly driven by the industry. “The future of plastics is in the trash can,” declared Lloyd Stouffer, editor of Modern Packaging Inc., in 1956. By 1963, Stouffer was congratulating plastics industry representatives on their progress. “You are filling the trash cans, the rubbish dumps and the incinerators with literally billions of plastics bottles, plastics jugs, plastics tubes, blisters and skin packs, plastics bags and films and sheet packages—and now, even plastics cans,” he said. “The happy day has arrived when nobody any longer considers the plastics package too good to throw away.” 

Photo: Shutterstock

From the outset, industry groups pushed back against regulation and worked to redirect responsibility onto consumers, coining the term “litterbugs” and promoting recycling as the antidote to the rising tide of plastic waste. As a result, global plastic pollution, estimated at around 400 million tonnes per year, became everybody’s problem but theirs. 

“The whole idea of disposability is based on this idea that you can make something and not have to clear up after yourself,” says Oliver Franklin-Wallis, an investigative journalist and author of Wasteland: The Secret World of Waste and the Urgent Search for a Cleaner Future. “You go back to the very earliest days of the plastics industry and they have always treated waste as an externality. And when I say that, it means it’s a cost borne by other people … If you are a plastics company, we as the taxpayer, we as society, clean up for you, which means that you get privatized profits and socialized consequences.”

The narrative that puts recycling forward as the solution is a comforting one for consumers. But the reality is much more complicated. For certain plastics, namely PET (as in beverage bottles) and HDPE (as in milk cartons), “we have relatively good end-of-life solutions,” says Franklin-Wallis—although “they’re not always done very effectively, particularly in the [United] States.” But the plastic picture is brimming with films and wraps and other forms that aren’t recyclable under current circumstances, and in general, much less plastic is recycled than any of us would like to believe. (In 2021, the US had a plastic recycling rate of less than six percent, according to one report.)

Logan Harvey, senior general manager of Recology Sonoma Marin, gestures toward bales of plastic at a new recycling facility in Santa Rosa, CA. (Photo: Rose Garrett/Modern Farmer)

One culprit is a confusing labeling system that makes consumers think that things are recyclable when they’re not, leading to optimistic but misguided “wishcycling.” “The plastics industry has known for decades that [the labeling system] doesn’t work. It doesn’t help consumers. What it does is make consumers feel less guilty about buying things,” says Franklin-Wallis. “There’s lots of evidence to show that if you tell people that something is recyclable, they’ll feel less guilty in buying it and therefore they’ll buy more of it.” (Here’s a handy guide to those labels; only numbers 1 and 2 are widely recyclable.)

Less is more

Recycling correctly is one action consumers can take, but while it may feel good, it won’t solve the essential problem of too much plastic material clogging waterways, accumulating in soil and threatening human health. “People are recycling, and they are attempting to do what they were told was the right thing,” says Cirino. But, she says, increasing awareness of the inadequacy of recycling has begun to change people’s attitudes, leading them to seek out solutions such as reuse and refill.

Reusable takeout container systems have proliferated in recent years. Some areas have refill stores, where customers can bring their own bottles to stock up on bulk supplies such as dish soap and browse low-waste products such as metal straws and stainless steel bento boxes. But while consumer changes are an important part of the picture, individuals didn’t start the problem, and they won’t be able to fix it on their own. Effective regulation is key to stopping, as Modern Farmer reader Bradley put it, “plastic armageddon.”

“When you talk to people in the plastics industry, they will act as if consumers want this stuff. But actually consumers are never really given a choice,” says Franklin-Wallis. “If you give consumers the choice to choose more sustainable options, they almost always do that. They want to be able to recycle, they want [to] reuse, they don’t want to do things that are damaging for the planet. So, the challenge is forcing industry to [give people the option].”

Examples of effective legislation include bottle return schemes in countries such as Norway and Germany, which have 95- to 99-percent recycling rates for plastic bottles, and “extended producer responsibility” (EPR) laws, which shift some of the burden onto manufacturers, incentivizing things such as reducing packaging or investing in plastic recovery projects. “The solutions are out there and they’re scaled right now,” says Franklin-Wallis. “Quite often, the issue is either apathy or corporate opposition, and we need to kind of bust through both of those things.”

Throwaway culture is cheap, easy and convenient. Changing our consumer habits and challenging the interests of a powerful global industry is difficult. “There are no easy solutions,” says Franklin-Wallis. “There are only choices.” One choice that’s worth making, however small the impact? Buy less stuff—a lot less, if you’re able—and make do with what you already have. 

Click here to read our guide on how you can help reduce plastic waste, from things to do at home to how to support community and policy-level solutions.

***

Thanks to Bradley Aiken for submitting his question for our “Digging In” series. Got a question about where your food comes from? Let us know what you’d like us to investigate next by filling out this form.

The post Digging In: Food’s Big, Plastic Problem appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Many people are eager to do their part, and individual actions, taken as a whole, can make a big difference. At the same time, it’s important to remember that individual responsibility alone cannot solve the plastic crisis. Government regulation that holds manufacturers and polluters responsible is key to addressing the issue. 

So, what can you do? 

Recycle right

Recycling won’t stop the tide of new plastic being produced, but it can make a dent in how much virgin plastic goes straight into the landfill. Make sure you’re up to speed on which items are recyclable in your area, and keep in mind that your waste doesn’t disappear into thin air the moment it goes into the bin. 

“Human hands touch everything,” says Logan Harvey, senior general manager of Recology Sonoma Marin, which recently debuted a new recycling facility in Santa Rosa, CA. Despite employing a plethora of the newest technology to sort mixed recycling, human sorters manually review all the materials, sometimes dealing with non-recyclable items that range from head-scratching (an elliptical machine) to disgusting (used diapers) to downright dangerous (hypodermic needles). Recycling guidelines aren’t merely abstract recommendations; rinse and dry items and pay attention to your municipal guidelines.

Reduce, reuse and refill

You’ve heard it before, now hear it again: Reducing consumption of plastic and learning to reuse items before or instead of throwing them away are among the most important things you can do at the individual level. 

“It’s really the reuse, refill models that are most effective,” says Erica Cirino, communications manager for the advocacy group Plastic Pollution Coalition and author of Thicker Than Water: The Quest for Solutions to the Plastic Crisis. “There are more and more refill shops, which are basically markets where you can get food and other home products, from washing machine powder to dish soap and toothpaste, without all the plastic packaging, by being able to fill up your own containers and bring them home.”

Reuse and refill map created by Plastic Free Future.

Short of that, Cirino advises looking for places where you can buy food that’s simply unwrapped, such as farmers markets and grocery stores that carry products loose or wrapped in paper. “Look for better options until more of these truly zero-waste shops can emerge,” she says. 

Get inspired 

Social media zero-waste influencers can perpetuate unrealistic standards for how little waste normal people with busy lives can realistically achieve. However, there are hundreds of clever ideas online to minimize waste or give items new life through repairing, crafting, decorating, gardening and reorganizing. To find ideas, search for keywords like “zero waste” and “plastic free” on your social media platform of choice to find accounts dedicated to creative ways to reduce and reuse. 

 

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A post shared by Emma // Zero Waste Living for all (@thesimpleenvironmentalist)

Join forces

As awareness of the plastic issue has grown, so have the ranks of nonprofit organizations dedicated to addressing the problem through education and action. Some, such as  the Surfrider Foundation, The 5 Gyres Institute and Plastic Oceans, are dedicated to ocean plastics; others, such as Break Free From Plastic and the Plastic Pollution Coalition, envision a global movement to stop plastic pollution. These types of organizations often have the most up-to-date information about campaigns and opportunities to act; they’ll also gladly accept monetary donations to support their work.

There may also be local groups and initiatives to get to know in your community, which can be the most immediate and actionable way to get involved. “Being active in your local policy-making efforts and being aware of what’s happening in your own community is the most important place to start,” says Cirino.

Support legislation

Local and state-level laws such as plastic straw and plastic bag bans have proliferated over the last decade. Such bans are largely effective, with some exceptions, but they are a piecemeal solution to a much larger problem. 

In Canada, a national ban on single-use plastics, instituted in 2021, was recently overturned, granting a win to plastics manufacturers. The federal government has since appealed the decision, and the ban remains in place while the appeal works its way through the courts this year. 

Although previous iterations haven’t had success, US lawmakers recently introduced sweeping legislation that would address the issue at the federal level. The Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act of 2023 “is largely considered to be the most comprehensive attempt to address plastic pollution in US history,” says Cirino. “It’s not perfect, but it would better protect communities that are already harmed by plastic pollution, hopefully address recycling issues and also shift the burden of plastic pollution off of municipalities and taxpayers onto the actual producers of plastic pollution.”

To support the legislation, you can contact your congressperson and let them know what you think about the issue. You can also submit a form letter here.  

Educate yourself and others 

The issue of plastic waste can feel scary, complicated and overwhelming. There’s no simple solution, and no single person can solve it alone. Educating yourself, and sharing what you know with your friends and family is a great first step to raising awareness. 

There exist many books and documentaries on the issue of plastic waste. One of our staff picks is Wasteland: The Secret World of Waste and the Urgent Search for a Cleaner Future (2023). Written by journalist Oliver Franklin-Wallis, the book tours readers through the history of waste and recycling and explores where our waste—from plastic and paper to food waste, sewage, nuclear waste and more—really ends up and what it means for our future. 

***

We want to know: What products, tactics and strategies are you using to cut down on your plastic waste? What resources are most helpful? Tell us in the comments—we’d like to publish a story with reader recommendations!

The post What You Can Do About The Overwhelming Problem of Plastic Packaging appeared first on Modern Farmer.

That’s what Bobbie Kramer, a veterinarian near Portland, Oregon, was wondering when she responded to our recent call for reader questions about where their food comes from. 

“As a meat eater, I enjoy the flavor and texture of lamb. But I’d love to try mutton. I know that in other parts of the world, lamb and mutton are more economical and popular to raise than cattle,” she writes. “I’ve traveled a fair bit (Australia, New Zealand, Europe and Great Britain) and have friends from parts of the world where small ruminants such as sheep and goats are raised for meat and fiber. My good friend from South Africa tells me how she and her husband miss cooking with mutton, which they find more flavorful and satisfying than lamb. What happens to the mutton-aged sheep here?”

It’s true that it’s difficult, if not impossible, to find mutton—defined as meat from a sheep over two years old—in American grocery stores. “Mutton is not an accessible protein option in the US,” says Megan Wortman, executive director of the American Lamb Board, an industry group aimed at expanding the market for domestic sheep products. If you’re looking to get your hands on some mutton, “you’d have to go through a specialty butcher shop or directly to a special-order processor,” she says.  

Mutton has less tender flesh and a stronger flavor than lamb, which comes from sheep that are less than a year old. (Meat from sheep aged one to two years is generally called “yearling” in the US, and “hogget” elsewhere around the world.) That stronger flavor lends itself to curries, stews and “value-added” products such as spiced sausages, says Wortman, “so most of our mutton goes into value-added products or into specialty ethnic markets at this point.” 

Some mutton is exported to Mexico, where it’s braised low and slow, barbacoa-style. Mutton is also often sold at butcher shops that serve communities that have brought a taste for the meat with them from elsewhere, such as new immigrants from Africa, Central America and the Middle East. (Wortman notes that the majority of US lamb and mutton is halal processed.) And in western Kentucky, a tradition of barbecued mutton still holds, although no one is quite sure why.

“There are consumer segments that would raise their hand and say ‘yes, I would prefer a stronger flavor,’ but we just don’t market it in mainstream grocery stories,” says Wortman. “There’s definitely a general hesitation that the minute you label it ‘mutton’ the average consumer has negative connotations with that product.”

So, how did mutton, a widely consumed protein around the world, come to be unmarketable to most Americans?

Sheep were first brought to the southwestern US by Spanish conquistadors in the 16th century, and flocks grew with the influx of European settlers, who utilized sheep locally for their wool and meat. With rising demand for wool in the 19th century, sheep farming became more industrialized, but the primary focus was on the wool, not the meat. Simply put, mutton was a byproduct of wool production.

Mutton was slaughtered, sold and canned locally, but no large-scale infrastructure arose to source and process sheep meat. “The simplest story is that no commercial meat industry developed around mutton,” says Roger Horowitz, a historian and author of Putting Meat on the American Table. “It seems to me that it was very rural in character.” He points to a can of roast mutton in his collection, dating from the 1890s, as emblematic of the time: It advertised that its contents were both slaughtered and canned “on the range” in Fort McKavett, Texas.

A man shearing a sheep at the San Emigdio Ranch in Kern County, CA in 1890. (Carleton E. Watkins/Library of Congress)

That’s not to say that mutton wasn’t consumed at the dinner table. Mutton chops were featured in cookbooks and restaurant menus from the late 19th and early 20th century, as the population grew and urbanized and demand for protein rose. Lamb was a seasonal product served at Christmas, and for a time, sheep meat was seen as a food for the upper classes. Even first-class passengers on the RMS Titanic were served grilled mutton—for luncheon and breakfast. 

Sheep numbers in the US peaked in 1884 at 51 million head. But with the advent of synthetic fibers in the 20th century, wool production began to flag, and sheep numbers—and the availability of mutton—declined. (In 2016, there were five million head of sheep in the US.) Lamb consumption began to dwindle, too: Americans consumed five pounds of lamb per person in 1912. Today, that number is about a pound per person annually. 

Pork, Horowitz notes, was more convenient. “Everybody had pigs, and pigs are a lot better to raise for meat because they eat anything.” And when it came to grazing animals, cows just made more sense: They provide far more meat per animal, and demand for beef was—and remains—high.

This woman does not want to cook mutton. (Photo: Ethan/Flickr)

By the end of World War II, mutton had come to symbolize everything that Americans wanted to leave behind. Men returned from the war swearing they’d never eat another bite of mutton after stomaching tinned army rations that included the notoriously unappetizing “Mutton Stew with Vegetables.” Women were enjoying new appliances that allowed them a modicum of freedom from household chores. Modernity and convenience were all the rage, and mutton, which requires dry aging and long, slow cooking times to become tender, was neither modern nor convenient. If mutton ever really had a heyday, by midcentury, it was over. 

“I joke sometimes that I do lamb by day and sheep by night,” says Cody Heimke, who, in addition to managing the Niman Ranch lamb program, raises a heritage breed of Shropshire sheep on his property in south central Wisconsin. The flock of about 50 head are raised primarily for breeding, but Shropshires were at one time the most popular sheep in the world, primarily because of the quality of their mutton. “[The] breed of sheep doesn’t really matter when it comes to the flavor of lamb, but it does when it comes to the taste of mutton,” he says. 

Heimke does “a little bit” of direct lamb and mutton sales when he has sheep to harvest, selling middle cuts to a restaurant in Madison, and utilizing the rest for sausages in varieties such as Bavarian-style, Merguez and spicy Berbere. He acknowledges that there isn’t a lot of demand for mutton. “I got a call this year, somebody looking for mutton, which is rare. I don’t usually get those calls.”

His advice for would-be mutton eaters? “Find somebody at a local farmers market that’s selling lamb. You really gotta find somebody that’s raising sheep and doing direct marketing, and ask them if they’re doing any mutton.”

For his part, Heimke says he enjoys mutton in sausage form. Last year, one of his wholesale clients was looking for ground lamb, but he didn’t have any in stock. “I’m like, ‘Well, what about ground mutton?’ And we [sold] one-pounders of ground mutton,” he says. “I tasted that before I sold any of it, and it was as good or better than any ground lamb I’ve ever had.” 

Have you ever eaten mutton? Do you want to try mutton—or not? Tell us what you think in the comments below. 

Thanks to Bobbie Kramer for submitting her question for our “Digging In” series. Got a question about where your food comes from? Let us know what you’d like us to investigate next by filling out this form.

The post Digging In: Why Don’t Americans Eat Mutton? appeared first on Modern Farmer.

“Back then, gosh, it was amazing to see the fish when the fish ran during the fall,” says Hockaday, a traditional fisherman and council member of the Karuk Tribe. “The salmon were huge.” On average, he says, you could catch fish ranging from 40 to 50 pounds—although members of his grandparents’ generation were known to catch 100-pound Chinook salmon at Ishi Pishi Falls, the tribe’s sacred fishing grounds. “Nowadays, our average is anywhere from 15 to maybe 25 pounds. We catch a 30-pounder and that’s a hog, that’s a big fish.”

A slow-motion disaster for tribes, commercial fishermen and conservationists, the decline of California’s once-abundant salmon population has been unfolding for decades. The crisis has its roots in decisions about the state’s water use made a century ago and, like so many stories of water wars in the West, it has pitted stakeholders against one another in a seemingly zero-sum contest over a dwindling natural resource. 

The outlook is grim, but there are bright spots. As a future of increasingly hot and dry weather hangs over the state, can change come quickly enough to save the imperiled salmon from extinction?

Salmon are the epitome of endurance and resilience. Spawned in cold, high-elevation mountain streams, they navigate downriver as juveniles, fattening up as they make their way to coastal estuaries, where they undergo a remarkable transformation from freshwater to saltwater fish before entering the ocean. Depending on the species, they can spend years maturing at sea, where commercial fishermen vie for the valuable catch. Then, governed by an unshakeable biological imperative, they reverse the journey, this time propelling themselves against the current to return to their spawning grounds, where they’ll lay their eggs and then die, their nutrients enriching the river ecosystem. 

Or, at least, that’s what salmon have historically done. But ever since white settlers made their way westward, a barrage of man-made challenges has disrupted the salmon’s natural journey. In the late 1840s came the gold miners, whose use of hydraulic mining clogged waterways with sediment. Then, a growing population began to reshape the state’s water systems, building channels and levees to control where water flowed. In the 20th century, ambitious dam projects rose up to store and divert water for cities and farming, cutting salmon off from hundreds of miles of upriver habitat. 

“In a way, it’s amazing we have as many salmon around as we do,” says Peter Moyle, associate director of the Center for Watershed Sciences at the University of California, Davis and a distinguished professor emeritus in the university’s Department of Wildlife, Fish and Conservation Biology. He estimates that, prior to the Gold Rush, there were one million to two million salmon a year coming up through the Central Valley alone, and another half a million or more in other rivers. But a confluence of factors, including water diversions that erased more than 90 percent of the state’s wetlands and large dams that blocked 70 percent of salmon’s historic spawning grounds, have decimated the wild salmon population.

A mature Chinook salmon. (Photo: Ryan Hagerty/USFWS)

Today, the state’s salmon fishery is reliant on hatcheries that produce millions of fish and release them into the wild. “What we see today, the reason we have as much salmon as we do today, is hatcheries. But the hatchery fish are in decline,” says Moyle. “They keep producing more hatchery fish, and the numbers keep going down, partly because hatchery fish are poorly adapted for life in the wild.” 

Warming waters present another threat, and one that increases in severity during drought, when surface water supplies falter. Warm freshwater can contribute to the proliferation of algal blooms and harmful bacteria, and temperatures above 70 degrees Fahrenheit can be lethal to salmon; ocean acidification and marine heatwaves also imperil the fish. That’s bad news for California, where, despite a winter of heavy rainfalls that refilled reservoirs and lifted the state out of a severe multi-year drought, human-caused climate change continues to accelerate the frequency and severity of extreme heat events and drought conditions.

And those recurrent drought conditions have forced salmon, and the people who rely on them, closer to a breaking point. 

This spring, for just the second time in history, the ocean commercial and recreational salmon fishing season was canceled, impacting a swath of the West Coast, from northern Oregon to the border with Mexico. The decision came after last year’s Sacramento River fall-run Chinook, the principal salmon stock harvested in California’s fisheries, returned to the Central Valley at near-record low numbers—estimated at just 169,767 adults.

“Those numbers were abysmal,” says Glen Spain, executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations. “What happens three years ago determines how many adults come back this year, so what we’re seeing was the worst part of the [2020] drought, which essentially dried up the rivers or created hot water conditions, and that just killed lots of eggs and lots of young salmon before they could even get to the ocean.” 

Without the salmon season, many fishermen are losing their livelihoods. “There are over 1,000 boats out there with permits, and they’re basically in dry dock,” he says, noting that the closure could extend beyond this season, and up to another two years, creating uncertainty in an already challenging industry.

“It used to be that we could rely on a salmon season to buffer us from potentially a slow crab season,” says Dick Ogg, a commercial fisherman who operates out of Bodega Bay. “But with the seasons being compressed and getting smaller and smaller, and opportunities becoming less and less … the impact is significant.” 

Fishing boats in Bodega Bay, CA. (Photo: Shutterstock)

In addition to salmon, Ogg holds permits to fish for black cod, albacore, Dungeness crab and rockfish. The days when a fisherman could rely on just the salmon fishery are “almost a thing of the past,” he says, but the cost of diversifying with multiple permits can become a barrier,  especially for new fishermen entering the business. “The cost of each permit, the cost of owning your own vessel, the insurance that’s required, the slip fees that you have to pay, the taxes that you have to take care of, the crew that you need to maintain … it just is devastating.”

In April, California Governor Gavin Newsom submitted a request to the US Secretary of Commerce asking for a Federal Fishery Disaster Declaration, which would provide relief for businesses and fishermen impacted by the closure of the salmon season. In the meantime, Spain says, “There is the edge of desperation in a lot of our communities.”

“We all know why this is happening … but what we don’t know is how to get around it, at a family-by-family and port-by-port level,” says Spain. “And the sad thing is this was once a billion-dollar fishery.”

The formidable challenges facing California’s salmon population are prompting efforts to get creative with everything from building a controversial “fishway” around the Yuba River’s Daguerre Point Dam to exploring the reintroduction of fish transplanted to New Zealand more than a century ago, as the Winnemem Wintu Tribe has proposed.

In the Central Valley, one project has a particularly grand vision for transforming water management systems to support native fish. Called the Nigiri Project for its fish-on-rice concept, it’s a collaboration between researchers and farmers that floods rice fields in the winter, helping to break down rice straw while offering juvenile salmon and waterfowl conditions that mimic the bug-rich floodplain ecosystems to which they’re adapted. 

It’s a win-win that researcher Jacob Katz hopes proves that a paradigm shift is possible. “We actually have the capacity to manage the Sacramento Valley in a way that is good for both fish and for farms,” says Katz, a senior scientist at California Trout, a nonprofit aimed at restoring waterways and wild fish. “One of the major reasons we’ve so diminished our fisheries resources is not necessarily an inevitable consequence of development but a specific and direct consequence of the way in which we developed.” 

Juvenile Chinook salmon. (Photo: USFWS/Flickr)

Levees that block rivers from adjoining wetlands have benefits, such as flood protection and creating farmland, but they also cut fish off from essential food sources in floodplain wetlands, turning rivers into food deserts. The Nigiri Project, along with a related initiative that drains food-rich fields back into rivers, provides a blueprint for what Katz hopes could be a large-scale reimagining of the system. It’s ambitious, but Katz says that, “if you look at the science, we have no right to expect a population-level recovery of salmon if we aren’t actually changing the real world at landscape scale. To have a postage stamp here and a postage stamp there, why would we expect that to lead to population recovery? That’s not how it works.”

But rethinking the levee model to provide food for salmon would address just one of the two biggest problems facing the fish, says Katz. The other is the large-scale dam infrastructure that blocks salmon’s upstream migration. “The fact that we have essentially dammed all of the [Sacramento] Valley’s rivers, cutting off that critical cold water refuge, is ultimately a death sentence, an extinction sentence, for our salmon if something isn’t done.”

While most dams are built for a 50-year lifespan, the average age of California’s nearly 1,500 dams is 70 years old, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers, which gave the state’s dams a grade of C- in its most recent infrastructure report card. But that wasn’t what prompted the Klamath River tribal communities to launch a campaign to remove the four aging dams sitting upriver from them.

In 2002, upwards of 70,000 Chinook salmon died as part of a massive fish kill caused by low flows on the Klamath, the result of low flows caused by water diversions by farmers and ranchers upstream. “Tens of thousands of adult salmon died before spawning and just littered the banks of the river,” says Craig Tucker, a natural resource policy consultant for the Karuk Tribe. “And for tribal communities, that was sort of the breaking point.”

What followed was a grassroots effort by tribes and other advocacy groups to remove the dams, as well as to broker a water-sharing deal between the tribes and Klamath Basin irrigators that required an act of Congress to pass. Ultimately, the arduous, multi-decade campaign was successful: Demolition recently began on the first dam, and the remaining dams are set to come out by the end of 2024 in what’s been billed as the largest dam removal project in history.

Klamath Basin tribes and allies staging a dam-removal rally in 2006. (Photo: Patrick McCully/Flickr)

“These should be easy,” says Tucker of the tortured process. “The Klamath River dams are what we call ‘deadbeat dams.’ They don’t pay their own way, there’s no flood control, no irrigation diversions, they’re not making a lot of money for anybody. They have this devastating impact on fisheries and water quality. It should be a no-brainer. And it’s taken us 20 years to get to dam removal.” 

As most of the state’s dams are approaching or past their engineered life spans, Tucker says we’ve reached a critical inflection point for the future of salmon. “Now is that moment of reckoning: Are we going to have wild salmon or not? If we’re going to have wild salmon, we have to remove some dams.”

The situation reflects the complexity of a system that aims to control and deliver a limited resource—water—that just happens to also be the foundation of life on earth. For farmers, water is necessary for growing crops. For fishermen, it’s essential for supporting fish. And for the Karuk and other tribes, those fish form the basis of their entire cultural identity. “It’s not just a fish, it’s a way of life,” says Kenneth Brink, another Karuk council member and traditional fisherman. “It’s our ceremonies. It’s our cross on top of our church. Some people just look at fish as a food. Some people look at it as money. We look at it as a way of life.”

It remains to be seen whether that way of life—and the fish on which it relies—can continue. But for the people who are fighting for salmon’s survival, the only option is to carry on.

This story is part of State of Abundance, a five-part series about California agriculture and climate change. See the full series here.

The post California’s Salmon Are Teetering on the Brink appeared first on Modern Farmer.

The number of veterinarians focusing on large animals has been slowly and steadily decreasing for years, dropped from nearly 6,000 in 1990 to fewer than 4,500 in 2007. Today, the percentage of veterinarians working exclusively or predominantly with “food animals”, i.e. cows, poultry and swine, makes up only 7.5 percent of the veterinary workforce, and the majority of these vets are over age 50, meaning they’ll be aging out of the workforce with far fewer young vets to replace them.

The number of vets focused on livestock dropped from nearly 6,000 in 1990 to fewer than 4,500 in 2007.

David Kirkpatrick of the American Veterinary Medical Association points to a societal shift behind the numbers. “Back in the day, veterinarians pretty much treated horses; they were the modes of transportation, the labor, they served in wars. Then the focus switched to livestock as people began demanding more protein. Then as people started moving to cities, as suburbs grew, and the Lassies of the world came around, people’s affinity towards animals as pets grew. So the focus of students who are interested in veterinary medicine has shifted.”

“There are fewer and fewer veterinary students who are interested,” says Dr. Bill Morrissey, a large animal veterinarian who runs Farm Animal Veterinary Services in Woodstock, Illinois. “They can see the writing on the wall.”

Dr. Morrissey says small animal veterinary work is a much easier sell than farm animal work, where wages are usually less and there’s more physical hardship and travel. At a small animal practice, he says, “you can work inside and you can actually have a real life. Rarely are you working in a barn where you’ve got flies crawling in your ear, or when it’s 20 degrees below zero and you’ve got icicles growing on your nose. And a dog bite or a cat scratch are not nearly as bad as a 2,800 pound bull who wants to clean your clock.”

But although the number of veterinary students interested in farm work is declining, a surprising new study by the AVMA shows that, contrary to popular belief, there’s an excess capacity of veterinary labor, even among food-animal veterinarians. “It’s not so much that there are too many veterinarians per se, as there is a certain capacity of their services that is not being used,” says Kirkpatrick, who says that geographic distribution – not enough vets in the right places, and too many vets in the wrong places – may leave some vets underemployed.

‘A dog bite or a cat scratch are not nearly as bad as a 2,800 pound bull who wants to clean your clock.’

Dr. Morrissey says that his Farm Animal Veterinary Services went from a relatively thriving 2.5 person practice two years ago to a one person practice today. Although his practice treats everything from cows and camels to alpacas, llamas, pigs and goats (and even the occasional yak), there’s just not as much work as there once was. “There are fewer and fewer large livestock producers and as they’ve gotten larger they do more work in-house, which is considerably cheaper than what the cost would be for a veterinary professional.” And as demand for veterinary services wanes, rural veterinarians are more likely to travel longer distances to reach their clients. “I may drive 400 miles a day to get to all my stops,” he says. In short, there’s not enough work, not enough money and not enough veterinarians in the right areas, creating what Dr. Morrissey calls “a perfect storm” for large animal vets.

“I was one of those kids that always wanted to be a veterinarian,” says Dr. Lisa Tokach, who works primarily with swine at the Abilene Animal Hospital in Abilene, Kansas. She says that although her work is vastly different from romanticized views of country vets, it’s still a rewarding career. “I read the James Herriot books as a kid and I love them and I reread them to my kids, but that’s not the reality of how it is today.”

Dr. Tokach urges veterinary students who feel an affinity for farm animal work to pursue it, even if they don’t have a farm background. But she says that veterinary students need to know what food-animal work is all about. “It takes somebody who not only has a love of agriculture and production, but who realizes that it’s a business.” Cost, scalability, and food safety all contribute to the complex issues around caring for animals destined to be dinner. “Having a pet dog is not a business. It doesn’t mean that there’s not emotion involved and that we don’t love the animals, but it is a business.”

For both Tokach and Morrissey, working with other humans is often the best part of their jobs. “Farmers are a unique group of people,” says Tokach. “They’re smart people, they’re creative, they’re good problem solvers. I learn just as much from them if not more than what they learn from me.” Morrissey says that because farm vets don’t operate on the tight timetable of a domestic pet practice, he has time to get to know his clients. “The majority of my clients call me by my first name because we’re friends, and they care about me on a personal as well as professional level.”

Amid the shifting industry landscape, there are some things about being a farm vet that just never change. “I get to deliver that special calf through a hard birth, or help with the cow that’s down with milk fever,” says Morrissey. “It’s that immediate ‘bam!’ … you did something really good.”

Morrissey says he wanted to be a veterinarian since he was six years old. And although he previously worked in a small animal clinic, a chance ride-along with a farm vet changed his life. “I knew from the instant I got in that truck that that was where I wanted to be.”

(Photo: Veterinarian technician Roisin Schanahan, of Ireland, examines a new born foal. Credit: Reuters.)

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Monsanto’s glyphosate patent expired in 2000, and since then dozens of glyphosate formulations have flooded the market, each differentiated by a host of brand names that represent their products with all the subtlety of a monster truck rally.

In a world where things like climate change and herbicide-resistance are taking power from farmers and into the unpredictable hands of the elements, the sense of control – or illusion of control – can mean a lot.

As with the original Roundup, a burly wild west ethos predominates with names like Ranger, Rascal, Rattler, Honcho and Rodeo. Just what do cowboys have to do with killing plants? “They both evoke nature and a kind of ‘do-what-it-takes’ mentality, masculine strength, and determination pitted against nature and outlaws of all kind,” says Laurel Sutton, Principal at Catchword Branding, who points out in the “lawless West” it was the lone rangers (so to speak) who brought order and justice to the land. Sure enough, if you add other herbicides besides glyphosate into the equation, you find the names Lasso, Bronco and Lariat to boot.

Still shopping for the perfect herbicide name? Try out the law and order angle of Prosecutor and JuryR or the military tinges of Prowl, Stealth and Stinger. And let’s not forget the strange romance of being swept away by Buccaneer, Silhouette, Tango and Escort, which are more reminiscent of Harlequin titles (or condoms) than weed killers.

Why all the brawn and bluster? “Names like these that use metaphors or evocative language are a good way to get at unpleasant concepts like killing and death in a less offensive way,” says Sutton. “They definitely convey an independent American feeling – they’re tough, but not in a bloody or violent way.”

[mf_list_sidebar layout=”basic” bordertop=”yes” title=”17 Crazy Herbicide Names” separator=”no”][mf_list_sidebar_item number=”1″]Roundup[/mf_list_sidebar_item][mf_list_sidebar_item number=”2″]Ranger[/mf_list_sidebar_item][mf_list_sidebar_item number=”3″]Rascal[/mf_list_sidebar_item][mf_list_sidebar_item number=”4″]Rattler[/mf_list_sidebar_item][mf_list_sidebar_item number=”5″]Honcho[/mf_list_sidebar_item][mf_list_sidebar_item number=”6″]Rodeo[/mf_list_sidebar_item][mf_list_sidebar_item number=”7″]Escort[/mf_list_sidebar_item][mf_list_sidebar_item number=”8″]Bronco[/mf_list_sidebar_item][mf_list_sidebar_item number=”9″]Lariat[/mf_list_sidebar_item][mf_list_sidebar_item number=”10″]Prosecutor[/mf_list_sidebar_item][mf_list_sidebar_item number=”11″]JuryR[/mf_list_sidebar_item][mf_list_sidebar_item number=”12″]Prowl[/mf_list_sidebar_item][mf_list_sidebar_item number=”13″]Stealth[/mf_list_sidebar_item][mf_list_sidebar_item number=”14″]Stinger[/mf_list_sidebar_item][mf_list_sidebar_item number=”15″]Buccaneer[/mf_list_sidebar_item][mf_list_sidebar_item number=”16″]Tango[/mf_list_sidebar_item][mf_list_sidebar_item number=”17″]Silhouette[/mf_list_sidebar_item] [/mf_list_sidebar]

These herbicides may serve to reinforce the image that farmers, like rangers and prosecutors, are professional tough guys willing to do what it takes to keep their crops safe. Substitute “crop” for “daughter” or “wife”, and you’ve got the plotline of a dozen action movies in the last few years alone.

But while we agree that farmers are badasses, they’re also control-freaks, aware that the slightest detail can affect the year’s crop outcome. Their business is often at the mercy of economic, political and natural forces outside their realm of influence. And in a world where things like climate change and herbicide-resistance are taking power from farmers and into the unpredictable hands of the elements, the sense of control – or illusion of control – can mean a lot. What’s in a name? The ability to turn an anxious farmer into a self-assured head Honcho.

Herbicide names share glaring similarities with SUVs like Explorers, Tundras and Range Rovers. “With both types of brands you want to communicate a sense of being in command, whatever the natural environment,” says Sutton. “They’re designed to appeal to a male audience, and they reflect the theme of independence that Americans are so in love with. They’re all about projecting an image and making reality – like driving a car or putting chemicals on your lawn – sound a whole lot sexier.”

Herbicides, SUVs and action movies may all share the same names because they share the same aspirational DNA. Driving an Explorer or Yukon doesn’t actually make you more adventurous, but it might make you feel like it. And when Arnold strafes the opposition in a movie like Commando, don’t you kind of wish solving all your problems could be that simple? Herbicides like Roundup are named to reflect the same wishful thinking: that we could someday, somehow be totally in control.

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These outlandish-sounding elements form the basis for fertilizer and compost “preparations” that are fundamental to biodynamics, the agricultural philosophy founded by Rudolf Steiner, an esoteric philosopher whose 1924 lectures on agriculture first introduced the concepts of biodynamic farming. Almost a century later, biodynamics has seen increasing interest among small farmers and especially vintners, who say that biodynamic practices result in a better bottle.

It’s also received a corresponding dose of skepticism, with detractors spilling much ink over the peculiarities of biodynamic farming and deploying every synonym for horseshit and hogwash in the book, especially when it comes to Steiner’s often impenetrable philosophical ideas (critics like to point out that Steiner was a self-proclaimed clairvoyant whose theories revolve around comings and goings in an invisible spiritual world.)

Steiner’s recommendations certainly can sound strange, especially in the world of modern industrialized farming. The majority of his nine distinct farm preparations involve fermenting plant matter in some element of an animal body part, from a cow’s gut lining to the bladder of a red deer. In his explanations, Steiner talks of nitrogen and potassium in the same breath as alchemy and streams of cosmic energy, and so far scientific study of biodynamics has little material evidence of its benefits. So why are some farmers and winemakers taking up his biodynamic principles?

Harald Hoven is the director of biodynamic farming at Rudolf Steiner College, a center for Waldorf teacher training in Fair Oaks, California. He says that the basic attraction of biodynamic farming lies in its holistic view of the farm as a complete organism. Farming, he observes, is essentially a process of exploiting the vitality of the soil, and biodynamics seeks to replenish that vitality to maintain balance. “When you look long-range you can see beautiful soil that has been spoiled because that exploitation has gone too far, and there were no measures to bring life back,” says Hoven. “For us the most important aspect is how to stimulate life.”

Harold Hoven at the Rudolf Steiner College.

For Hoven, that means keeping animals and a diversity of plants on the small school farm he’s overseen for 25 years, as well as carefully deploying Steiner’s biodynamic preparations.

Foremost among these are two spray preparations, dubbed 500 and 501. Horn manure, or preparation 500, is composed of cow manure that’s buried inside a cow horn and fermented over the winter season, then dug up and stirred in water in a process of “potentization” before being sprayed on the soil. “We use horn manure to help stimulate processes in the earth, help in humus formation and for better root development and water uptake,” says Hoven. Horn silica, or 501, performs a complementary role: it’s ground quartz crystal that’s buried in a cow horn through the summer, then sprayed on and around growing plants. “The horn silica is used more when plants are getting ready for ripening, and it helps in the process, bringing out the sugars and helping the plants develop their specific flavors,” he says.

‘To our modern way of thinking, this all sounds quite insane.’

In addition to the spray preparations, Steiner recommends six compost preparations that are fermented under- and aboveground, then combined to enrich compost with various properties, from stabilizing nitrogen to stimulating silica to attracting cosmic forces to the soil. These are, in order: yarrow blossoms stuffed into urinary bladders from red deer (502), chamomile blossoms stuffed into small intestines from cattle (503), stinging nettle (504), oak bark placed inside the skull of a domesticated animal (505), dandelion flowers stuffed into the mesentery of a cow (506), and valerian flowers (507).

Sound crazy? Rudolf Steiner himself admitted that these ideas might be hard to swallow. “To our modern way of thinking, this all sounds quite insane,” Steiner stated in his lecture series. “I am well aware of that, but just think of how many things were originally rejected as crazy and after a few years became accepted.”

[mf_image_caption layout=”bottom” offset=”no” img=”https://modernfarmer.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Rudolf_Steiner-IMG_7651.jpg” desc=”A plaque of Rudolf Steiner in Vienna, Austria.” credit=”PictureObelix/WikiCommons”]

So far, biodynamics is a far cry from being widely accepted. There’s been limited scientific study of whether biodynamics has a measurable impact, and some critics say it’s nothing more than sustainable soil management with a side of magical thinking, or, at worst, a cynical marketing ploy.

Proponents of biodynamics say that research methodology may not be able to quantify all the benefits. “The thing is that research that’s going to effectively look at biodynamic agriculture needs to be harmonized with traditional material science research but not to be limited to that,” says Thea Carlson, education program coordinator at the Biodynamics Association. “The way that we measure success of farms is pretty crude right now: it’s how much yield do you get per acre or the bulk volume of crops. Maybe you can look at the nutrient composition but you’re still only looking at macronutrients. Research hasn’t been able to detect the differences that are there.”

‘The most important thing is observation, to really look at the farm and read the plant.’

For farmers who use biodynamic preparations, it can be hard to explain just why the practice works for them, especially if they don’t want to engage with all of Steiner’s philosophies. Liz Milazzo is the field production manager at the Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems at the University of California, Santa Cruz, which runs one of the oldest organic farms in the state. She says she uses the fermented nettle tea and horsetail preparation as a mild fungicide, but has not launched into full-fledged biodynamics. “I find it quite challenging to translate the descriptions of plant qualities and energies with scientific basis,” she admits, but says she appreciates biodynamics as a system that looks holistically and ecologically at what’s happening on the farm.

Carlson says that biodynamics has a history of people who are practicing it struggling to figure out how to talk about it. “It’s certainly hard for some people to do, but we’re finding more ways to talk about biodynamics in ways that are approachable for people who aren’t steeped in Steiner’s work.”

Hoven says that farmers who may be leery of biodynamics should test it out for themselves and place trust in their own observational skills. “When you make compost, put the preparations in one and not the other and compare. Don’t try to convert the whole farm to biodynamics but spray somewhere where you have a problem, and look at it then. The most important thing is observation, to really look at the farm and read the plant. Farmers tend to do that anyway.”

The post Mystic Liver: Inside the World of Biodynamic Farming appeared first on Modern Farmer.

These burglars weren’t after ammonium nitrate, the volatile chemical that can quickly turn explosive in the wrong hands (like that of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh). They were siphoning anhydrous ammonia, another nitrogen fertilizer with a nefarious side gig: it’s a prime ingredient in illicit methamphetamine manufacturing.

According to John Donnelly, resident agent in charge of the DEA office in Fresno, anhydrous ammonia is used in a meth-making process called the Birch reduction or the “Nazi cook” (in honor of the meth distributed to German soldiers by Nazi leaders during World War II).

“In the early to mid-90s, the anhydrous method began to appear in the Midwest. I’ve heard it was Kansas, I’ve heard it was Missouri, everyone claims their state was the first,” says Donnelly.

Thieves siphoned the dangerous liquid gas from nurse tanks left on farmer’s fields and used ephedrine from over-the-counter cold medicine to synthesize the drug. “They’d take the ephedrine from cold tablets, crush them up and separate out the binding agent. Then they’d add the anhydrous ammonia and a couple other ingredients. This method was so volatile that it will just react with itself with no heat source needed.” That reactivity is also the reason clandestine meth labs notoriously go boom.

White cylindrical tanks holding anhydrous ammonia can be spotted in fields all over the country. The fertilizer is loved as an efficient and cost-effective way to implant nitrogen into the soil, but it’s loathed for being one of the nastiest treatments on the farm. Chemically, it’s the same ammonia used in cleaners around the house, minus the water (thus, it is “anhydrous”). The vapor is corrosive to human skin and aggressively seeks out water wherever it can find it, which means that anhydrous leaks can result in horrific injuries to the eyes, throat, sinuses, and lungs.

The vapor is corrosive to human skin and aggressively seeks out water wherever it can find it, which means that anhydrous leaks can result in horrific injuries to the eyes, throat, sinuses, and lungs.

To remain in liquid form it must be stored under high pressure and released under tightly controlled circumstances. But while farmers and distributors resort to goggles, rubber gloves and respirators when handling the chemical, thieves on the hunt for anhydrous often use no protection and rudimentary equipment.

“It’s the craziest thing,” says Tommy Farmer, director of the Tennessee Methamphetamine Task Force. “We’ll see them standing over it, no protection, in shorts and flip-flops, cutting the line off and draining it into a bucket with exposed hands and no protection. We’re expecting to go down there and find them dead.”

Often the thieves use bicycle tubes or hoses to siphon the chemical into makeshift containers. Rick Smith of Riley Brothers Farm in Adams, Tenn. says that since they found a tank with a garden hose attached to it with duct tape, they’ve taken precautions. “We leave the tanks where they can’t be seen from the road, like behind a tobacco barn, or we try to take them back to the station that refills them at night.”

Smith says they’ve haven’t had as many problems with anhydrous thieves as they used to, but others are still dealing with frequent theft.

Keith Everhart, general manager at Laughery Valley AG Co-op in Osgood, Ind., says that they catch three or four people stealing anhydrous every couple months. “We see it quite a bit,” he says, but thinks most of the theft goes unnoticed. “They only steal about three to four gallons at a time, and the gauges on the tanks really won’t pick that up.” Everhart says that motion-activated lights don’t deter the thieves, and he’s hesitant to use the valve locks that police recommend. “The problem is if they break in there and mess around too much then you’ve got a 1,000 gallon tank venting liquid gas. You’ve got to evacuate people. If they want it bad enough they’re going to try to get in there somehow.”

Even though Everhart says the problem has been going on for a long time, the danger still keeps him up at night. “You’re wondering, one of these nights when they do it, are they going to forget to shut the valve off? It’s scary sometimes.”

Anhydrous theft peaked in the early nineties, when ephedrine was still readily available in pharmacies. Since then, farmers say it’s leveled off a bit. Legislation restricting the sale of over-the-counter cold medicine containing ephedrine and better security on farms has contributed to make the birch reduction less popular among meth cooks. A newer method, called “one pot” or “shake and bake,” has become the go-to for meth cooks. It’s easy enough to make in the back seat of a moving car and uses ammonium nitrate from cold packs in place of anhydrous ammonia.

Even if anhydrous theft is waning, the repercussions of illicit meth labs continue to affect farmers. Disused sheds and other structures on farmers’ property are vulnerable to being used as temporary labs, and the toxic byproducts of meth manufacture can be dumped on and around fields. The Pennsylvania Farm Bureau advises that farmers maintain locks on all sheds and barns and keep an eye open for suspicious vehicles, tracks, or trash that could signal meth manufacture, such as laboratory glassware, Sudafed boxes, and 2-liter plastic bottles containing residue. Farmers should call law enforcement immediately if they encounter evidence of meth manufacture on or near their property, and should never confront suspected meth cooks themselves.

Farmer says that if there’s one thing the meth epidemic has taught him, it’s that farmers have to stay vigilant. “I couldn’t have imagined when I was a kid running around on a farm, that anhydrous ammonia would be used to make drugs,” he says. “Times have changed. Where we’re at as a society has changed. When I was growing up we didn’t lock our front door. Those days are over.”

(Photo: Bill Whittaker/Wikimedia Commons)

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