Food policy experts Sarah Hackney and Jamie Fanous have advice for those who feel overwhelmed or unsure about how to make a difference. Hackney is the coalition director at the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) in Washington, D.C., where she works with grassroots organizations to advocate for federal policy reform to advance the sustainability of agriculture, food systems, natural resources and rural communities. Fanous is the policy director at one of these organizations, a California-based nonprofit called Community Alliance with Family Farmers (CAFF). Together, Hackney and Fanous offer guidance on simple steps that we can all take to create positive change around us, in ways both big and small.

Join CSA programs and support food cooperatives 

Besides doing the research to elect officials who advocate on behalf of these priorities, the best thing we can do to support farmers year-round is to be just as conscientious about how we vote with our dollars. “Sign up for a CSA, go to the farmers market or co-op, purchase your produce from farmers directly. Go the extra mile to do that,” says Fanous. “If you’re going to a big box store, the produce is probably not from a small-scale farmer or a local farmer, so it’s really not supporting local economies. Joining a CSA program is a great way to build a relationship with your farmer and know where your food is coming from.”

Educate yourself and amplify your actions

For those looking to engage more deeply in food policy advocacy, Hackney and Fanous recommend tuning into social media platforms and newsletters from a mixture of national agricultural organizations, such as NSAC, and local ones, such as CAFF. 

“NSAC is one of the best places to get into the nerdy details of food and agriculture policy,” says Hackney. “We have a very active blog and a weekly e-newsletter where we highlight big food and ag policy news from D.C., along with free analysis you won’t find anywhere else.”

When it comes to understanding issues closer to home, Hackney says, “There are over 150 member organizations within NSAC, most of whom are state or regionally focused, and all of whom work in relationship with farmers and eaters in their communities. Almost all of them have active websites and social media accounts and some specifically have farmer- and consumer-led volunteer teams that help review and develop policy ideas both at the local and national level.” She recommends checking out the membership lists of a coalition such as NSAC or one of its peers, such as the HEAL Food Alliance, to see if there’s an active member organization in your state or region. 

Call Congress

Once you start following political and agricultural news, you may come across the occasional public request for citizens like yourself to contact local representatives in Congress to advocate for or against certain bills. 

“We share calls to action at key junctures in the policy process when there are opportunities for folks to make their voices heard directly with lawmakers,” says Hackney. “It’s absolutely possible for individual calls, emails and messages to make a difference: Lawmakers track and monitor who’s reaching out to them on issues that matter locally. When it comes to shifting food and farm policy toward more sustainable, equitable outcomes in our communities, we need those voices. We’re up against entrenched, well-resourced corporate interests and lobbying firms, and one of our best tools to push back is our willingness to speak up as voters, eaters and community leaders.”

“If organizations like CAFF or others ask—make the phone call. It makes a big difference,” says Fanous. “We very rarely ask people to make calls to their members, but when we do, it’s serious and we need that support. If you can’t make the call, repost the request on social media to give it more life.” 

Vote every chance you get

Besides the four-year presidential election cycle, there are congressional elections every two years, as well as annual state and local elections. Register with Vote.org to receive notifications about upcoming elections so that you never miss a chance to vote. 

“The coming 2024 election cycle may shape the fate and contents of the still-to-be-reauthorized farm bill,” says Hackney. The so-called “farm bill” should be passed by Congress every five years and pertains to much more than just farming. This package of legislation defines our food system, determining what we eat by how we use land, water and other natural resources. 

“Congress didn’t reauthorize the 2018 Farm Bill on time last year, instead opting to extend the old bill,” explains Hackney. “If Congress doesn’t complete the reauthorization process on the bill before the fall, that could shift farm bill passage timing into 2025, which means potentially new and different lawmakers sitting on the committees that draft the bill and new lawmakers in leadership positions to drive the process. While the farm bill is intended to represent the needs and issues of farmers and communities and families nationwide, the representatives and senators who sit on the House and Senate agriculture committees, who themselves only represent a slice of the country’s landscape and electorate, get to do the lion’s share of shaping that bill.”

If you’re not sure whether to vote yes or no for a particular bill, Hackney has advice: “If there’s a bill that focuses on an issue you care about, you can look up its authors and cosponsors—these are the lawmakers willing to go on the record with their support for a bill.” Keep an eye out for the names of politicians who are familiar to you and try to determine if their values align with yours, then use their judgment to guide your own. 

“For example, at NSAC, we’ve been organizing for several years around the Agriculture Resilience Act. It’s a bill that would address climate change by reshaping much of the US Department of Agriculture’s programming toward climate change action,” says Hackney. “It would increase resources and support for practices on farms that build diversity of crops and livestock, integrate perennial crops, keep the soil covered and integrate livestock into the landscape—all highly effective climate and agriculture solutions that can reduce emissions and build resiliency. Lawmakers who’ve endorsed this bill are essentially telling us: I support tackling the climate crisis by finding solutions through sustainable agriculture and food systems. You can find a bill’s cosponsors by using free, publicly available websites like congress.gov or govtrack.us.”

Diversify your approach 

“If we could fix our food and farm system by simply voting with our forks or making one quick call to Congress or growing our own food, we’d be there already,” says Hackney. “The truth is it takes action on multiple fronts—especially if we want to get to the root causes of the problems in our food and farm system. That means both doing what we can with our individual food choices—within our means and our communities—to support food and farm businesses operating on values of sustainability and equity and choosing to engage politically to improve food and farm policy.”

The post How to Be a Food Policy Advocate in Your Community  appeared first on Modern Farmer.

French farmers, for instance, managed to persuade their nation’s leaders to ban food imports treated with the insecticide thiacloprid, dedicate €150 million (US$163 million) annually to support livestock producers and provide European-wide definitions for what constitutes lab-grown meat. German farmers also saw movement in their favor from their lawmakers on fuel subsidies. When protests reached Brussels—where the European Parliament was in session—European Union policy makers announced plans to cushion the blow from Ukraine grain imports and address bureaucratic red tape. 

Thus far, the protests offer some takeaways for American food and farm activists. 

Specifically, not only can public disruption trigger real change, but there is room to push back against the disastrous free trade policies that have wreaked havoc on farm economies on both sides of the Atlantic. Reducing tariffs and weakening price support policies to align with World Trade Organization (WTO) policy prescriptions, as well as those found in other free trade deals, such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), has made food producers increasingly subject to price volatility. Such regional and international free trade policies took policy-making power away from national governments, transfering that power to unelected bureaucrats who thought food should be treated like any other commodity. 

US farmers and their allies should pay attention, think how to make protest part of our ongoing Farm Bill debate and take some power back when it comes to making policy.

In Europe, the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP)—similar to the Farm Bill in the United States—governs most facets of the continent’s agricultural system, including financial assistance, environmental policy and the regulation of exports and imports. Beginning in 1962 with France, Germany, Luxembourg, Belgium, Italy and the Netherlands, the arrangement has grown along with the European Union to cover all of the organization’s 27 member states.

CAP policies began to change in the 1990s to promote “efficiency.” Several policies were eliminated, including export subsidies, production quotas in dairy and price supports that were coupled to farmer income. While US President Ronald Reagan railed against “government cheese” to point out the assumed wasteful nature of US agricultural policy in the 1980s, in Europe, “wine lakes” and “butter mountains” were made into campaign slogans to cut public assistance for farmers. 

And cuts took place: From 1980 to 2021, the total EU budget dedicated to agriculture went to below 25 percent from more than 60 percent. 

The drop in production is coupled with declining rates of farmers themselves. In France, there were 389,000 farmers in 2020—almost 800,000 fewer than in 1980. Poland has lost 13% of its producers since 2010. Overall, throughout Europe from 2005 to 2020, the continent has seen 37 percent of its farms go out of business. During that same time, production has grown, as only farms of more than 200 hectares (approximately 400 acres) have increased in number. 

Matters are much the same in the US. According to the recently released 2022 Census of Agriculture, the largest four percent of US farms (2,000 or more acres) control 61 percent of all farmland. In 1987, that figure was 15 percent. Similarly, in 2015, 51 percent of the value of US farm production came from farms with at least $1 million in sales, compared to 31 percent in 1991. From 1997 to 2022, more than 340,000 farms, or 15 percent of operations, went out of business.

Protesting farmers with their tractors rally in front of the Greek parliament in Athens on Feb. 21, 2024. (Photo: Giannis Papanikos / Shutterstock)

In Europe, the ever-dwindling financial support for farmers is made contingent on meeting various environmental and labor standards. Put simply, for assistance, farmers must do more to receive less. Aiding, not curtailing ongoing consolidation, 20 percent of Europe’s farmers—particularly large-scale operators in terms of land and production—receive 80 percent of all payments. 

Adding insult to injury, EU authorities allowed the import of cheap Ukrainian grain to assist that country in its ongoing war with Russia. This, as supply chain disruptions from that conflict drove up the prices that European farmers pay for inputs such as gas and fertilizer. EU policymakers also are negotiating a contentious free trade deal with the South American regional trade bloc, Mercosul, which would invite agricultural export giants Argentina and Brazil to potentially undercut European producers. 

US farmers suffer in a similar policy environment as their European counterparts. The 1996 Farm Bill made periodic, ad hoc direct payments the primary way the US government provided financial assistance for producers. Gone, but years later reintroduced in a significantly weakened form, were non-recourse loans that assured farmers a decent income if market prices dipped below a certain threshold. With such loans, decent incomes can be guaranteed without forcing farmers to increase production potentially in environmentally harmful ways as governments purchase products off the market to stock reserves. 

To take on the harmful cuts that free trade policy promotion made a reality in the farm policy, US farmers and their allies could find inspiration from what is taking place in Europe, perhaps going to DC to make their voices heard. 

In fact, US farmers in the past did so. When free trade was in its infancy back in 1979, thousands of farmers drove their tractors to DC to demand policy changes to address rising foreclosures and increases in input costs. These actions inspired the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) to bring activists together in DC last year but mainly to make climate policy part of the Farm Bill. 

Now, with the Farm Bill debate continuing at least through September of this year, pricing policy reforms could take center stage. Some farm groups, such as the National Family Farm Coalition (NFFC) with its dozens of member organizations, have made pricing policy reform central to their Farm Bill platform. In demanding parity pricing, policy instruments such as non-recourse loans could be improved to assure farmers decent prices and dissuade them from increasing production to make ends meet. Addressing concentration is also part of the NFFC’s demands, with particular attention to an increased role for the government to finance land access programs and enforce antitrust laws.

Do such proposals challenge free trade? Yes, they do. And as European farmers have shown, protest can yield results. By adding some popular mobilization into the mix of our ongoing Farm Bill debate, maybe with the occasional rotten egg or manure load, farmers and their allies could push our lawmakers to make real changes for the benefit of our food and farm system. Let’s not just stand by as the people who grow our food endure yet more financial hardship.

Anthony Pahnke is the vice-president of the Family Farm Defenders and an associate professor of international relations at San Francisco State University; anthonypahnke@sfsu.edu. 

The post Opinion: European Farmers Are Standing Up to Free Trade—Will US Farmers? appeared first on Modern Farmer.

The number of farms themselves has also declined from 2017 to 2022, down roughly 142,000 to 1.9 million farms. The last time the country saw numbers this small was 1850. However, the size of the average farm has increased, up five percent. 

Farmland now makes up roughly 39 percent of the country, and it has been dropping for decades. Presenting this data Tuesday afternoon, Vilsack says the trend is worrying. The survey, he says, is “a wakeup call” that is “asking us the critical question of whether we as a country are OK with losing that many farms.” Vilsack also notes that the majority of American farmers currently rely on a second off-farm income to supplement their farming income. Vilsack supports diversifying farmers’ income streams to create a “different model” of farming and help prevent the loss of more farmland. “I sincerely hope that we take this information very seriously,” says Vilsak. “It need not be that every five years we report fewer farms and less farmland. It doesn’t have to be.”

The census collects and details all sorts of information about American agriculture, in order to paint a picture of the industry as a whole. Here are three of our top takeaways from the data. 

Income is going up

Farms and ranches produced $543 billion worth of agricultural products in 2022, up from $389 billion in 2017. As well, the average farm income has gone up, weighing in at $79,790. A little less than half of farms (43 percent) reported positive net cash income in 2022. 

Those numbers could be a sign of the overall inflation in food prices and general cost of living increases since 2017. It could also be a reflection of the overall consolidation of farms—fewer farms, especially smaller farms, mean larger operations are left with less competition. The data shows that there was an increase in farms that had three or more producers between 2017 and 2022 and a decrease in the number of farms with one or two producers.

There are more new farmers, but not necessarily young ones

The average age of the American farmer rose to 58.1 years old in 2022, up 0.6 years from 2017. This is in line with a longer-term trend of an increased average farming age. But as the average farmer gets older, this census also recorded that nearly one-third of all producers are “new” or “beginning”—meaning they’ve been in the business for 10 years or less.

However, newer doesn’t mean younger. The average age of a new farmer was 47.1 years old. This could be in part due to the financial access barriers of getting into farming without a secondary income or fiscal stability. 

You can read more about how young farmers are pushing for access to farmland here. 

More farms have internet access

The 2022 census reports that 79 percent of farms now have internet access, which is up from 75 percent in 2017. Access to the web is important for farmers to stay competitive and be able to use modern, up-to-date equipment. This is especially true as precision agriculture technology continues to find its place on farms. The 2018 Farm Bill included investments into rural broadband, and the current version of the bill is set to expire in September of 2024.

To read more about the fight to get internet access to more rural areas of the country, check out our feature “We’re Cut Off.”

The post Three Takeaways from the USDA Census of Agriculture appeared first on Modern Farmer.

At the grocery store, this variety was simply labeled as aguacate local (local avocado), but it is commonly called aguacate mantequilla (butter avocado). It was significantly cheaper than the Hass avocados being sold; one local avocado that I purchased cost $25 pesos, which is roughly $1.25.

I was enthralled. Why wasn’t anyone else going crazy about these avocados? I could easily see one of these being sold in the U.S. for $15—and people would buy it. We go crazy for avocados in the United States; consumers here are happy to spend big bucks on avocado toast, guacamole, avocado sushi rolls and more.

However, we can’t get these avocados in the United States due to trade restrictions set forth more than 25 years ago. Since 1997, Michoacán, located in west-central Mexico touching the Pacific Ocean, has been the only Mexican state approved to export avocados to the United States. 

Why is this so? Growers in Michoacán are part of a certification program in which they are able to confirm that their fruit is free from certain pests such as avocado seed weevils or fruit flies, and their orchards are also subject to compliance checks by inspectors from the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS). Lucero Hernández, a public affairs specialist from APHIS, explained that its system “uses multiple, overlapping measures that work together to adequately mitigate pest risk on imported commodities. For this commodity, some of these measures include trapping and surveying for pests, orchard sanitation, cleaning of the fruit at packing houses and inspections.” Avocado shipments from Michoacán must also meet additional requirements, including orchard certification and registration, packinghouse certification and registration and US port-of-arrival phytosanitary inspection. 

The USDA keeps the Agricultural Commodity Import Requirements (ACIR) database with information on global crops and commodities. If something is not listed or is listed as “inadmissible” in the ACIR, it is prohibited entry into the United States. 

Photography by Shutterstock

Michoacán is certified through this program, and 80 percent of all avocados produced in this state, a value of $3.2 billion, are exported to the US. But most other Mexican states aren’t part of this program, so we don’t get to import their avocados—at least, not yet. 

In 2021, news broke in the avocado industry when Jalisco, the state directly north of Michoacán, was the second Mexican state to be approved to export avocados to the US after reaching a similar agreement. There are 31 states in Mexico, and Nayarit and Mexico State are currently being considered to be approved for avocado export as well—but not yet the home of the giant butter avocados, Yucatán state. 

Mexico is the United States’s largest agricultural trading partner. Thanks to Mexico, the US can have crops, such as pineapple and papaya, that don’t thrive in our region. Berries, lettuce, tomatoes and cucumbers can certainly be grown here, but in colder seasons, these items are often imported from Mexico, with the US bringing in $38.7 billion worth of agricultural goods in 2021.

But even with all of that produce coming into the country each year, American consumers are missing out on more than just avocados. Juana Torres Zaragoza, a Mexican home cook, was born in Michoacán and currently lives in Mexico City. She has spent time in California, and she sees considerable differences with particular ingredients. Zaragoza noticed that, “chiles have many different names and flavors; also they are spicier in Mexico, and there is more variety. There is also no corn for pozole or huitlacoche. To cook mole, there is only one option for mole in paste form, which is of low quality, forcing you to use chiles to make a better mole yourself.” 

As a result, this also influences the final flavor. “Since the chiles are different, the food has a different seasoning, and there are fewer options for seasoning,” says Zaragoza. 

Magdalena Morales is a culinary school graduate who was born and raised in the US, spending a majority of her life in Illinois. She would travel to Guadalajara and Pajacuarán every summer as a child, and she always loved cooking Mexican cuisine. “I have modified a few recipes due to just wanting to have that taste of home,” she says. “Once I moved away from home and was able to go to Mexico less, I noticed some of the chiles I grew up using were becoming hard to find. While I could still find some of those staple items I loved, they seemed to lack quality. I started to substitute for what I did have available,and, for the most part, not much changed. But even the subtle changes differed from my memories of my favorite dishes.”

This had an impact on what she chose to cook. “I think eventually, I started cooking less Mexican food since I could not find the ingredients I was looking for.”

Professional Mexican chefs working in the United States have an advantage over home cooks—they are often able to connect directly with producers in Mexico or request special orders through produce and food vendors. Chef Iliana de la Vega is from Mexico City and now lives in Austin, Texas, where she owns and operates El Naranjo. She sources hard-to-find items directly from Mexico. “Fresh huitlacoche, I get that from Mexico. It’s not available in stores, it’s more for restaurants.” 

But if specialty ingredients are harder to find, some chefs have opted for substitutes, with promising results. José Cepeda, executive chef at Quixote in San Diego, says that finding substitutions can become “essential.” Instead of some specialty chiles, Cepeda uses similar flavors such as chile cascabel, chile costeño or chile puya. He does not have access to green ayocote beans, but he substituted this with edamame beans and reported that the result was actually really good. Instead of the famous Oaxacan/Puebla goat meat used for mole de caderas, he uses organic, grass-fed, high-quality lamb meat. 

“Despite challenges, I try to find the bright side of using alternative ingredients. I find that using local ingredients mixed with traditional touches sometimes creates something new and cool for Quixote customers. I think this is a great way to preserve the tradition and create a cultural impact,” says Cepeda. 

In October 2023, a group of 20 producers from Tamaulipas joined a trade mission and export seminar in McAllen, Texas, with the intention of finding new markets for their products, including chili peppers, tomatoes, sesame oil, citrus, aloe, mezcal, garlic and honey. The producers received training on the processes for exporting their products to the United States, and they also participated in meetings with potential buyers.

Chef de la Vega also sees this increase of new trade channels firsthand. “We are getting more and more Mexican ingredients every day. For the restaurant, 90 percent to 95 percent of the ingredients we use are Mexican.” 

The post Why We Can’t Get Mexico’s Butter Avocados in the US appeared first on Modern Farmer.

But a closer look at our food system reveals many challenges. Its foundation relies on resource-intensive commodity crop production, which needs the majority of fertile lands to feed animals kept in confined spaces. It is heavily dependent on government subsidies, with large-scale farms scooping up more than 90 percent of subsidies, despite making up only three percent of the farms in the country. Our food system depends on cheap labor that consists predominantly of migrant workers, of which half are estimated to be undocumented. The societal cost, meaning the hidden costs associated with poor labor conditions such as child labor or unlivable wages, of our food supply chains is estimated at around $100 billion. 

More than 70 percent of North America’s biodiversity-rich prairies have been replaced with wheat, soy, corn, alfalfa and canola, primarily used as livestock feed and biofuel. These crops are also the largest consumer of increasingly scarce river water in the Western United States. Agricultural run-off, including soil erosion, nutrient loss from fertilizers and animal manure, bacteria from animal manure and pesticides are the largest stressors to water quality of America’s streams and rivers. It’s estimated that the unaccounted cost of the food system on the environment and biodiversity is nearly $900 billion per year. 

The efforts to truly create sustainable food systems do not go far enough. While they may be well intentioned, government grants and corporate projects aimed at “regenerative” and “climate-smart” agriculture are just tweaks to the system, not reforms to the status quo. Right now, the government needs to agree on priorities for the new Farm Bill. The current bill will expire in September, and we need new legislation that can address the real structural and societal issues in our food supply. 

 We need a radical change in the design of our food system. Following are five steps that can get us there: 

Prioritize food for people instead of animals and fuel 

One out of three calories in the US is wasted. We need to reduce food loss and waste, and repurpose it to feed people. Whatever food waste is left can then be repurposed to feed animals. Fertile agricultural soils should be used to grow diverse, nutritious crops for humans. Leave livestock and bison to graze marginal soils and native grasslands and upcycle food waste and byproducts into animal feed. This reorientation can produce around 10 to 20 grams of protein per person per day, or almost half of the recommended daily need. The farm animals that remain should be treated with respect and be given the best life possible. 

 Prioritize ecological efficiency, not economic efficiency 

The ecological boundaries of natural resources, including soils, should dictate what’s grown, as well as where and how. Considerations such as organic matter and nutritional needs of the soil, local water availability, weather patterns, climate and local biodiversity should direct a farmer’s decisions around what to plant. We need to choose plants that support soil health and local biodiversity and are adaptable to the changing context of climate change—while also being nutritious for people. This will allow us to reduce our dependence on chemical inputs significantly.  

Currently, the Farm Bill works to maximize income from commodity crops and livestock production, with the goal of maximizing economic efficiency. This has led to crop insurance programs and a host of other safety nets, which aim to protect producers from market instability and variations in yields and production. The majority of the financial incentives are for feed and biofuel crops; these programs do not incentivize farmers to prioritize native plants or ecologically beneficial crops or nutritious crops to nourish people, as they can get paid even if crops fail. The Farm Bill needs to take an ecological approach to subsidies and incentives, rather than squeezing economic returns out of a system without considering the long-term impacts.  

Foster local and regionally diverse food networks  

Give farmers access to markets, processing infrastructure, knowledge and grants, whether they be small, young, ethnically diverse or new. Market structures and business models should support fair income and wages for farmers and workers. Existing farmers need support in the transition to a balanced and ethical food system. The Farm Bill should prioritize these farmers when developing grants and subsidies to both attract and retain a diverse workforce.  

Support healthy food for all people 

Food needs to be healthy, nutritious and support dietary guidelines. It should prevent disease, not cause it. Food companies and retail need to offer and incentivize the purchase of healthy, sustainably grown foods. More than 70 percent of packaged foods marketed by leading food companies in the US include unhealthy levels of sugars, fats and salts. Government should shift focus from livestock feed and help producers transition to healthier offerings for human consumers. The Farm Bill is an opportunity to incentivize producers to move towards better, more sustainable offerings. 

There is also an opportunity to expand SNAP and other food assistance programs within the Farm Bill. Programs within SNAP, like the Thrifty Food Plan, help people eat nutritionally balanced meals on a budget. Ensuring these programs are adequately funded and adjusted appropriately around times of inflation would go a long way to helping millions of Americans eat healthier. 

Ensure resources to future-proof food systems    

Re-routing the food system requires significant investments. Governments, banks, universities, food companies, NGOs and think tanks need to shift their focus from improving the economic efficiency of the animal-dominated farm system towards improving systems that embrace a nature-positive production of diverse nutritious foods for people. Funding should be allocated to research, grants, and private- and public-sector initiatives that help to rethink our current system. Rather than offering up small tweaks and changes, such as reducing enteric methane emissions from large herds or precision supply of chemical fertilizer to a corn plant, why not allocate that money to regeneratively grow food that nurtures our soils and people? 

A Farm Bill fit for the future 

We need a sense of urgency from everyone involved to make this happen. It will take funding, which can be reallocated within the Farm Bill to support this shift. Saying it’s too expensive cannot be an argument for inaction if it means we keep producing outside the ecological carrying capacity of our planet and sacrifice the futures of generations to come. Securing a long-term Farm Bill in 2024 that centers around these five steps is our opportunity to reform the system sustainably.   

Sandra Vijn leads Kipster’s recent egg farm start in the United States. For more than two decades, she worked to advance corporate sustainability and sustainable food systems at the Global Reporting Initiative, Dubai Chamber of Commerce’s Centre for Responsible Business, Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy and WWF.  

The post Opinion: Why the Farm Bill Isn’t Prioritizing the Right Things appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Graphic Journalist Nhatt Nichols takes us to West Virginia, where comparable changes to the SNAP program were made back in 2018, to explore the outlook for people facing food insecurity and the communities they call home.

This article first appeared on The Daily Yonder and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

The post How Will New Work Requirements for SNAP Benefits Affect Food Insecurity, Employment? appeared first on Modern Farmer.

COPs are historically where key climate decisions are made, such as the Kyoto Protocol, in which signing parties agreed to decrease greenhouse gas emissions, and the Paris Agreement, which committed parties to the goal of keeping warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

However, current world government actions are not enough to meet the climate goals set by the Paris Agreement, and even promises made at this year’s conference (and in years past) may not be enough to move the world closer to those goals. The climate conferences are not without their share of criticism. This year, the president of COP28, Sultan Al Jaber, has come under fire after claiming there wasn’t sufficient scientific evidence that a phase-out of fossil fuels could help lower global temperatures. Food production accounts for 26 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, and past COP conferences have been accused of greenwashing, in part by offering meat on the menu while talking about reducing global meat consumption. Critics have long accused COP conferences of being all about the talk, with little action. It remains to be seen what, if anything, will actually happen as a result of this year’s discussions. 

This year, at COP28 in Dubai, global food systems and agriculture were discussed more than ever before. Here are the key food and agriculture takeaways from this year’s conference, which wrapped up today.

Takeaway 1: Leaders linked climate and food systems with declaration

More than 130 countries signed the Declaration on Sustainable Agriculture, Resilient Food Systems and Climate Action, also known as the Emirates Declaration. That’s a mouthful, but the declaration appears to have weight behind it. More than $2.5 billion has been put aside for this declaration, including a $200-million fund from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation looking specifically at agricultural research. 

This declaration, first and foremost, emphasizes the importance of including agriculture and food systems solutions to meet climate goals. “We stress that any path to fully achieving the long-term goals of the Paris Agreement must include agriculture and food systems,” says the declaration.

Signees commit to taking action by 2025 to scale up and strengthen mechanisms for resilient food systems, with the goal of reducing environmental impacts and increasing security for those who work in the food system. Signees will review their progress next year, at COP29. Read the full text.

Takeaway 2: The FAO released a roadmap for sustainably feeding the growing population

During COP28, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Commission released a list of recommendations for what needs to change in the global food system to meet climate goals. The goal of this roadmap is to successfully feed the growing world population while staying aligned with emissions targets.

One of the recommendations in this roadmap was that meat consumption should shift to favor lower-impact animals that still meet nutritional needs. This is in reference to the emissions produced by animal agriculture, which are the food items that have the greatest environmental impact.

Meanwhile, companies and groups such as Tyson Foods, JBS and the North American Meat Institute attended COP28 to make the case that they have a place in the future of food.

Other recommendations include increased adoption of precision agriculture technologies and addressing obstacles to land tenure, with a special focus on women and Indigenous peoples. Read the full roadmap here, or click through this visualization here.

Takeaway 3: Countries made plans to tackle food waste, starting with the US

Announced first at COP28, the USDA has released a draft of the new National Strategy to Reduce US Food Loss and Waste. With an initial investment of $30 million, the strategy sets out four goals for the federal government. 

The goals include  the prevention of the loss of food where possible and preventing the waste of food. The other goals are to increase recycling rates for organic waste and, finally, to support policies that echo these aims. With roughly one third of available food going uneaten globally, a strategy centering food loss and solutions such as composting could make a big difference in the US.

“Food loss and waste poses a real challenge to agriculture, food and the climate. In order to tackle this problem, and in turn build a resilient food system and mitigate climate impacts, we must explore and implement innovative solutions,” said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack in a release.

The policy is a joint effort between the USDA, FDA and EPA, and a 30-day public comment period is now open. You can add your comments on the policy here. 

Takeaway 4: Negotiators had trouble nailing down specifics

Sunday was Food, Agriculture and Water Day at COP28, and negotiators released a draft document, intended to help countries move towards sustainable agriculture and track progress. However, as reported by Indian media outlets, while the document references sustainable agriculture, it doesn’t pin down specific targets for goals related to food, water, health and agriculture. The document also points out that the funding required to adapt these systems “remains insufficient,” but it does not specify how much is actually needed. Other climate agreements have seen a softening in language as well, moving from a “phase out” of fossil fuels, to a “reduction.” 

Speaking at COP over the weekend, Vilsack even said that the final statement from the convention may not mention food or agriculture, as “there wasn’t enough time to negotiate a text.” Vilsack referenced disagreements between nations on how to measure progress of climate goals. 

Vilsack did highlight the US’s contributions to COP’s overall goals, including the investment of close to $20 billion to help agricultural producers reduce emissions and enhance carbon sequestration in their soil. 

Takeaway 5: New partnerships and coalitions emerged

This year’s COP has resulted in the emergence of several new initiatives that will be worth keeping an eye on. One was the International Soil Carbon Industry Alliance, formed among 28 organizations, which will focus on developing our understanding of soil carbon sequestration, a topic that has had an amorphous definition in the carbon credit market. 

Soil naturally stores carbon, making it a valuable resource for fighting climate change. However, the carbon credit market, which allows companies to offset their carbon footprint by purchasing carbon credits that, in theory, protect carbon sinks from being disturbed, lacks consistency and is therefore vulnerable to greenwashing. A better understanding of soil carbon sequestration can lead to best practices for land management and carbon storage. Read our breakdown of some of the obstacles the carbon credit market faces here.

The post Food Was a Focus at COP28. Here’s What You Need to Know appeared first on Modern Farmer.

“They see us as workers that they can exploit, pay a lesser wage to, that they can replace with machines. But we are the people in the first line of this food chain, and we have to be recognized and respected as such,” says Jiménez.

In 2016, Jiménez started Alianza Agricola, an undocumented farmworker-led advocacy organization fighting for farmworker rights in western New York. In 2019, the group helped in the fight to pass the Farm Laborers Fair Labor Practices Act (FLFLPA), a law that grants various labor rights such as collective bargaining, day of rest and overtime pay to farmworkers in the state of New York. It was a huge win, but it’s just the beginning of what’s needed.

Jiménez is not alone in his experience. An estimated 21.5 million people work to grow, harvest, process, pack, transport and sell the food that feeds Americans. Many of them put their well-being at risk to do so. Although undocumented workers face an extra set of challenges, millions of food and farmworkers, regardless of immigration status, are exposed to unsafe working conditions and paid low wages. 

According to the Institute of Health, farmworkers are 35 times more likely to die of heat exposure. They are at risk for injury and illness from heavy machinery or pesticide exposure and in recent years have been disproportionately exposed to wildfire smoke and COVID-19. The vast majority of food and farmworkers are paid low wages, are ineligible for paid sick leave and are not entitled to overtime pay. Advocates say this year’s Farm Bill, a package of legislation passed every five years, presents an opportunity for some of these conditions to change, or at least improve.

The Farm Bill covers programs ranging from crop insurance to conservation incentives to nutrition assistance and more. It is incredibly influential, yet since its inception in 1933, the Farm Bill has failed to include protections for food and farmworkers. Labor rights are technically outside of the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) jurisdiction and covered by the Department of Labor, but their exclusion still reflects how our food system treats its workers, explains Sophie Ackoff, the Farm Bill campaign director at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). 

“Our tax dollars, our programs, are focused on the success of farmers and agribusinesses. And those 21.5 million workers who are doing the bulk of not only the work but the danger of producing food for our country are not in any way protected by the USDA,” says Ackoff.

Jose Oliva, the campaigns director at the HEAL Food Alliance, says the exclusion of workers from the Farm Bill isn’t accidental but rather the result of an exploitative history of agricultural workers—the majority of whom were African American—when the first Farm Bill was written. The bill was written to support farm owners, not workers. Over time, this has turned into support for large agribusinesses, Oliva explains.

“It is essentially a way for the government to ensure that the average farmer is not the recipient of most of the benefits that are built into the farm bill,” he says.

UCS, HEAL Food Alliance and Alianza Agricola, along with other farmworker-led groups, have been advocating for various bills to be included in the upcoming Farm Bill, which was supposed to be renewed in September 2023 but was recently extended to the end of 2024.

Protecting America’s Meatpacking Worker Act

Data from the Occupational Health and Safety Administration has revealed that the meatpacking industry is one of the most dangerous jobs in the food system, recording a disproportionately high number of severe employee injuries. Oliva describes working conditions in the meatpacking industry as horrendous. “These are places where folks are and during the pandemic were forced to work even while everyone else was able to work from home or not work at all,” he says.

Nearly eight percent of all early COVID-19 cases and four percent of early COVID-19 deaths were connected to meatpacking plants. At the same time, the profit margins of the meatpacking industry have grown 300 percent since the start of the pandemic. This bill, introduced by Sen. Cory Booker and Rep. Ro Khanna, would ensure safer line-processing speeds and stricter standards to protect meat and poultry workers from injury. 

Supporting our Farm and Food System Workforce and The Voice for Farm Workers Act 

Introduced by Sen. Alex Padilla, the Supporting our Farm and Food System Workforce and the Voice for Farm Workers Act would give food and farmworkers a dedicated voice within the USDA and strengthen their role and collaboration in decision-making processes. Despite being essential workers, Jiménez says agricultural workers are rarely heard by those in power. He hopes that is starting to change.

“I think it’s time the government put their eyes on who we are and what we’re doing,” says Jiménez.

Protect America’s Children from Toxic Pesticides Act

The United States uses more than a billion pounds of pesticides annually, a third of which are currently banned in the European Union. Each year, pesticide exposure harms as many as 20,000 farmworkers, causing them to suffer more chemical-related injuries and illnesses than any other workforce nationwide. Extreme heat also makes pesticides evaporate faster, a major concern as temperatures continue to rise due to climate change, Ackoff explains. The Protect America’s Children from Toxic Pesticides Act would ban the use of more than 100 toxic pesticides proven to harm both farmworkers and the environment.

Agricultural Worker Justice Act

Agricultural workers are some of the lowest paid workers in the country. In 2020, they earned on average $14.62 per hour, but in many states, the average pay is less than that. For undocumented workers, who make up approximately 50 percent of the farm labor workforce, the pay is even more precarious.

The Agricultural Worker Justice Act, introduced by Sen. Peter Welsch and Rep. Greg Caesar, would ensure that the USDA only purchases food from companies that pay their employees a living wage and would give the federal government tools to regulate and enforce safer working conditions for food and farmworkers.

Across the country, 80 percent of voters support better protections for food and farmworkers. There is immense opportunity to better support the backbone of our $1.053-trillion industry food and agricultural sector, says Ackoff. This year’s Farm Bill is funding-neutral, meaning no additional funding will be added, which could be challenging for the programs mentioned to get adequate funding. But Ackoff is hopeful the one-year extension will give more time to advocate for these changes to be made. Looking beyond 2024, advocates and farmworkers alike continue to fight for long-term change in the food system and to pass bills such as the Fairness for Farm Workers Act, which would update the nation’s 85-year labor laws to ensure farmworkers are paid fairer wages and overtime pay. 

“That would be the most transformative,” says Ackoff.

For Jiménez, the fight for fair working conditions and respect goes beyond himself. Despite the risk, he says he will not stop advocating for what farmworkers—especially undocumented workers—deserve. He wants a better future for his children, one where their worth isn’t undermined by their employer.

“I think that we’re invisible still. And more than anything, we want respect and recognition,” says Jimenez.

The post Farmworker-Led Groups Push For Next Farm Bill to Include Worker Rights and Protections appeared first on Modern Farmer.

“I try to grow to have a little bit more volume than my customers need, because new customers are popping up every couple of weeks,” says Hansen.

Psilocybin is a nascent legal market in Oregon—not even a year old. Psilocybin, however, is a mushroom component that has been regarded for its myriad influences—on spirituality, health, consciousness and more—for thousands of years. Federally, psilocybin is still classified as a Schedule One drug, but across the country, cities, states and communities are navigating what holistic psilocybin access can look like.

Measure 109

Indigenous cultures across the world have long had relationships with psychedelic plants and mushrooms, but legalizing psilocybin access is new to the US. In recent years, Oregon, and then Colorado, have been the only states in the US to legalize and decriminalize psilocybin, but several cities across the country have also passed decriminalization resolutions. Psilocybin was designated as a breakthrough therapy by the Food and Drug Administration for the first time in 2018, for its promising impact on treatment-resistant depression and other mental health conditions.

Tori Armbrust, owner of Satori Farms, was the first manufacturer of psilocybin to get her license in Oregon. This means that she grows mushrooms containing psilocybin—in Oregon, people who grow mushrooms for psilocybin are not called growers or cultivators but manufacturers. She applied for her license when applications opened, in January of 2023. 

In 2020, Oregon voters passed Measure 109, which legalized the facilitated use of psilocybin for the public. Measure 109 made the Oregon Health Authority the governing body that would license and regulate the industry. Over the next two years, rules and regulations were developed for how this should work.

In her application, Armbrust navigated the requirements set by the OHA, including proving Oregon residency, getting a background check, paying the $500 application fee and the $10,000 annual licensing fee, acquiring premises and getting it approved. For growers and service centers, land use is one of the biggest hurdles to overcome.

Armbrust needed to find a space that met the zoning requirements. But even if a building is zoned appropriately, it doesn’t mean the location will work for psilocybin manufacturing, since psilocybin is still considered a Schedule One drug at the federal level. 

“You have to get owner approval and signatures for this use because it is federally illegal,” says Armbrust. “That’s one of the biggest challenges because most commercial owners still carry loans and the loans can be affected if the bank finds out that we’re doing something federally illegal.”

A session room at a service center sponsored by Bendable Therapy. (Photo courtesy of Bendable Therapy)

Armbrust believes that psilocybin can help a wide range of people. But a key concern for her is that it’s not accessible at an affordable price point yet. Hansen of Uptown Fungus shares Armbrust’s concern.

“It’s really difficult for people to afford right now,” says Hansen. “All of the overhead that’s in place for all of the various different companies in the industry means that the end user is paying an awful lot of money to have an experience.” 

A driving goal of Measure 109 was to make psilocybin something that is “a safe, accessible and affordable option” for age-appropriate clients who might benefit from using psilocybin. It’s not there yet. In this first year, the costs are too high for many people.

This is partly because, in Oregon, everyone in the industry becomes certified—manufacturers, testing centers, service centers and facilitators, who are with clients during their experience. Psilocybin itself isn’t expensive, but the licensing fees, taxes and the amount of time each client spends receiving service—a preparation session beforehand, an integration session afterward and several hours for the actual experience (or days, at some service centers)—mean that the costs of experiencing psilocybin at a service center quickly become expensive. Those costs are currently typically between $1,000 and $3,000 but can go as high as $15,000.

“I really try to work with the service centers and ask them number one not to mark up product ever, because I feel like the services are already incredibly expensive,” says Armbrust. “And it’s important for me that everybody can access this.”

Satya Therapeutics in Ashland, Oregon is currently the only business licensed to be both a manufacturer of psilocybin and a service center. Jennifer and Andreas Met operate both halves of their business in separate locations, due to zoning/county restrictions.

“This is a product that has been used for centuries by so many cultures before us,” says Jennifer. “And it can bring hope for individuals that are suffering or want to move forward and want to move forward with something that’s non-toxic and non-addictive.”

In Oregon, the actual facilitated psilocybin experience begins with a preparation session. In this meeting with a facilitator, the client discusses their intentions going into the experience, as well as what to expect. The facilitator stays with the client in the service center and keeps them safe but does not guide the experience of being in an altered state. Afterward, clients attend an integration session, wherein they process the experience with the facilitator.

At Satya Therapeutics, some facilitators will offer their services on a sliding scale. Full-price clients can help offset the cost for others. OHA requires that service centers come up with and document a social equity plan.

“You have to, as a facilitator, as a service center, be putting money aside for social equity,” says Jennifer. 

A session room at a service center sponsored by Bendable Therapy. (Photo courtesy of Bendable Therapy)

Decriminalization

The strictly facilitated model is not the only way to envision psilocybin access; community-based ceremony, the ability to experience psilocybin around members of your own community, is preferable to many groups and cultures. Some advocates say that legalization without decriminalization makes community-based sharing less accessible.

In tandem with Measure 109, Oregon also passed Measure 110 to decriminalize psilocybin. Decriminalization is different than legalization—decriminalization means that the act is still illegal but that a person would not be prosecuted for it. Oregon and Colorado both passed legalization and decriminalization bills, but Oregon’s decriminalization bill is more restrictive—it decriminalized the possession of small amounts of psilocybin. 

“I think the most important thing that happened in Oregon, that kind of took some of the grassroots, people-oriented, community-based healing out of the equation was that it’s still a felony to grow mushrooms,” says Larry Norris, Ph.D., co-founder and board member for Decriminalize Nature. “And it’s still a felony to pick a mushroom out of the ground.”

It’s also a criminal offense to share psilocybin in Oregon. Colorado, which is still in the planning phase, decriminalized cultivation and sharing.

“[Oregon] had really a lot of restrictions in the decriminalization bill,” says Norris. “So, it really kind of forces people into the 109 process, which is pretty expensive.”

Decriminalize Nature started in 2018 with a group of people in Oakland. They were able to get before the city council and help introduce a resolution to decriminalize four categories of plants and mushrooms, including mushrooms containing psilocybin. Today, there are Decriminalize Nature chapters across the country, working at the city level to remove the criminal penalties associated with psilocybin. Psilocybin, and other natural substances, often get pigeonholed by certain words such as medicinal or recreational. But Norris recommends a more holistic lens and an emphasis on helping people rather than profiteering. 

“It kind of really grew pretty quickly,” says Norris. “I think a lot of people were excited. They really wanted to have a conversation about nature and our relationship with nature.”

Don’t say medicinal

When Oregon’s Measure 109 was initially introduced, there was a lot of talk about how research has shown the many mental health benefits of a psilocybin experience. But you do not need a prescription to access psilocybin services—the experience is open to anyone who pays the fees and meets the criteria set by OHA. Service center clients are required to sign an acknowledgment that they recognize they are not receiving medical or clinical services. And as a federally designated Schedule One drug, psilocybin services are not covered by insurance.

“We were sold Measure 109 as psilocybin-assisted therapy,” says Ryan Reid, co-founder of Bendable Therapy and president of Drop Thesis, the latter of which is a service center. But now service centers must be careful how they frame it.

What this means is that it can be confusing for Oregonians to understand if and how a psilocybin experience could benefit them. This is the need that Bendable Therapy addresses. Bendable Therapy is a navigation center, screening people and matching them with facilitators and service centers that can help meet their needs through psilocybin, if appropriate. 

A service center sponsored by Bendable Therapy. (Photo courtesy of Bendable Therapy)

Licensed service centers and facilitators can’t advertise psilocybin as a medical or clinical treatment. Bendable Therapy coordinators, by contrast, aren’t licensed facilitators and therefore can provide education and explanation. “That’s another benefit of these coordination services, is they get to actually educate and be the voice on what this is and isn’t,” says Reid.

Colorado plans to start accepting license applications for psilocybin manufacturing and administration in late 2024. Representatives from the state have been in close contact with those involved in Oregon’s rollout to learn what works well and what could be different. Other states are likely to follow suit—Massachusetts voters may see a psilocybin measure on their ballots soon. While the legal frameworks are not homogenous, more communities in the country are asking how to make psilocybin-containing mushrooms, which have been growing naturally in the environment for the longest time, accessible to more people without risk of penalty.

At Bendable Therapy, they attract people who are on an existing mental health path, says Reid. Their clients have been working on a condition such as PTSD or depression and are now feeling stuck. Along with their health provider, they want to try psilocybin as a way to get unstuck. 

“It is such a good tool in support of the existing mental health system,” says Reid. “I’m excited about that.”

The post Manufacturing Psilocybin isn’t Difficult. Building a Legal Industry Is. appeared first on Modern Farmer.

“I stood a chance of losing my livestock,” Johnson wrote in a 1999 affidavit to receive part of a $2.3 billion federal settlement between Black farmers and the USDA.

Johnson, 81, who lives near Lexington, Mississippi, was among thousands deemed to not qualify for settlement money, his family said. 

Against all odds, their family farm has persisted, part of the just 1 percent of remaining Black-owned farms in the United States. In an age of mechanized and industrialized agriculture, they face many challenges in operating a sustainable cattle farm—and there’s federal assistance to help with that. 

But last month, Johnson’s children learned their application for federal conservation funding was turned down. They had sought up to $30,000 to dig a well and add cross fencing that would have allowed them to do rotational cattle grazing, which protects the soil from erosion.

“It was like ‘here again, another generation’,” said Charlene Gatson, 50, Johnson’s daughter. ”It was like history repeating itself.”

The Biden administration has called such USDA conservation programs a “linchpin” in the nation’s climate strategy, yet they remain vastly underfunded. 

Just three out of 10 landowner applications for the two main programs, the Environmental Quality and Incentives Program (EQIP) and the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP), were approved between 2018 and 2022. The majority of landowners are told to try again without advice on how to improve their odds. 

Albert Johnson Jr. walks among the cattle on his family farm near Lexington, Mississippi, on Nov. 9, 2023. (Credit: Imani Khayyam for the Ag & Water Desk)

“These are farmers and landowners who want to do conservation on their farm. They want to do something we all seem to support—which is conserving natural resources,” said Jonathan Coppess, an associate professor and director of the Gardner Agriculture Policy Program at the University of Illinois. 

Farmers want to improve the environment. Hundreds of thousands of them are applying. “And then you don’t get funding for no other reason than that funding is not sufficient in the program. The level of frustration and anger is pretty real,” said Coppess. 

Although the Inflation Reduction Act provided $18 billion more for these in-demand conservation programs, some members of Congress want to claw back that money to pay for the 2023 Farm Bill. 

High demand, not enough money 

The flagship program of the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) is the program the Johnsons applied for—EQIP—which reimburses agricultural and forestry producers 50 percent to 90 percent of the cost for fixing specific conservation problems and delivering environmental benefits, such as improving water or air quality, enriching soil or protecting against drought.  

Between fiscal 2018 and fiscal 2022, the NRCS allocated $6.2 billion for EQIP, but that only covered 31 percent of the nearly 600,000 applications submitted during that five-year period, according to Investigate Midwest’s analysis of application and funding data the USDA provided The Gazette as part of a Freedom of Information Act request. 

The Conservation Stewardship Program, created in the 2008 Farm Bill, provides annual payments to producers willing to improve conservation over a five-year period. The NRCS awarded $2.1 billion from fiscal 2018 through fiscal 2022, which covered just 28 percent of applications nationwide. 

“EQIP and CSP are working lands programs so they are doing conservation on land that is continuing to produce crops,” Coppess said. 

Programs face criticism, but remain the main federally supported solution 

Modern agriculture takes a toll on soil and water. Programs like EQIP and CSP are intended to mitigate the damage. A 2020 NRCS report showed EQIP conservation from 2014-2018 increased soil and carbon retained in farm fields as well as provided wildlife habitat. 

“Practices funded through EQIP to address forest health and watershed protection on non-industrial private forest land also sequester carbon,” the report found.

The most popular requests for EQIP and CSP funds vary by state. In Iowa and Wisconsin, where corn and soybeans grow, cover crops were by far the most-funded EQIP practice from 2017 through 2020, according to an analysis from the Environmental Working Group. But in Mississippi, with a more diverse farming mix including poultry, livestock and cotton, the EQIP practices that got the most funding were for fencing, grade stabilization structures and irrigation. 

Some environmental groups have criticized EQIP for earmarking 50 percent of all funding for livestock practices, Coppess said. Although the U.S. has the world’s largest fed-cattle industry and livestock make up half or more of some states’ ag exports, what if your state isn’t big into pork or beef? Does that mean you get less money? There also are fears it will encourage more large-scale animal production, which can produce large amounts of waste that threatens water sources. 

The NRCS allocates money to each state for EQIP and CSP contracts. States then distribute the cash to counties or manage the funds at the state level. 

To decide how to spend the limited pot of money for conservation programming, local NRCS officials rank applications on a handful of factors, including how much the practice or activity costs, the magnitude of environmental benefits that could be achieved and how well the practice or activity proposed fits with “national priority resource concerns,” the NRCS reported. 

“The ranking process was developed to try to be fair to everyone,” said Scott Cagle, assistant state conservationist for partnerships with the Iowa NRCS. But there are winners and losers and some producers drop out if they don’t get funded right away, Cagle said. 

“We run into instances where producers signed up, the process takes too long sometimes and they give up,” he said. 

Outreach to Black landowners, others who are underserved

The Johnson family is raising cattle on about 15 of the 200 acres they own near Lexington, Mississippi. During long spells without rain, the grass dries up and the Johnsons have to buy hay. Then the pond dries up and they have to use a hose from the house to water the cows, Gatson said. 

Albert Johnson Sr. sits on a feed pail in the pasture of his family farm near Lexington, Mississippi, on Nov. 9, 2023. In October, he learned his children were denied funding through the federal Environmental Quality and Incentives Program because there isn’t enough money. (Credit: Imani Khayyam for the Ag & Water Desk)

If they got EQIP money, they would install cross fencing that would allow them to move cattle around, so plants can regrow between grazings and better protect the soil from erosion. A new well to provide reliable water would cost as much as $20,000. 

“We need funding just for the cows to survive,” Gatson said. 

The Mississippi NRCS suggested in a Oct. 6 denial letter that the Johnsons “defer” their EQIP application, which puts it back in the pile for the next funding cycle. But Gatson wants to know why their project didn’t rank higher so she can improve the application for next time. 

“Could you tell us why some were funded and some were not?” she asked. 

NRCS offices across the country have been trying to staff up to provide faster distribution of funds and more help for applicants. A workload analysis for Mississippi NRCS says they need another 55 to 60 employees to meet the need there. 

Mississippi conservation officials have been expanding outreach to small producers, including those who haven’t traditionally gotten funding.

“If you look at Mississippi, it has the highest percentage of Black landowners in the nation and that’s around 10 percent,” said James Cummins, executive director of Wildlife Mississippi, a nonprofit that works toward habitat restoration and conservation policy in the state. “We want to see a percentage (of new conservation money) going to help historically underserved producers to help them maintain their family’s land and improve their natural resources.” 

Mississippi, a state where agriculture is the No. 1 industry, submitted a whopping 10 percent of all EQIP and CSP applications from fiscal 2018 through fiscal 2022. But despite having the highest number of applications in both programs, only 14 percent of its CSP applications were approved, making it the state with the lowest approval rate relative to its application volume. In the case of EQIP, the state had an approval rate of just 21 percent.

Charlene Gatson, seen Nov. 9, 2023, on her family’s farm near Lexington, Mississippi, was frustrated when her family’s application to the federal Environmental Quality and Incentives Program was denied because the program doesn’t have enough money. (Credit: Imani Khayyam for the Ag & Water Desk)

Noemy Serrano is assistant policy director at Michael Fields Agricultural Institute who also works for Wisconsin Women in Conservation, which helps women farmers figure out conservation programs like NRCS. She said recently a farmer who’d received EQIP funding before was confused about whether she could apply again. 

“That speaks to the details,” Serrano said. “Even folks that have already applied and been funded through the program sometimes don’t fully understand how it works and how to move forward with it.” 

According to USDA data, Wisconsin funded 37 percent of EQIP applications and 35 percent of CSP applications received in fiscal year 2022. 

In a perfect world, the NRCS would work with each farmer to make their application more likely to be funded, advocates said.  

But because the NRCS staff are so busy, “instead of going out and adding different projects to these applications…they’re not adding that on, because it means more work,” said Sara George, who grows specialty crops near Pepin, Wisconsin. 

Cash infusion in jeopardy

Conservation advocates hope a federal cash infusion will reduce the backlog of unfunded projects. 

The Inflation Reduction Act, signed by President Joe Biden in August 2022, provides $8.45 billion more for EQIP and $3.25 billion more for CSP starting this year and building through fiscal 2026. This could potentially fund hundreds of thousands more applications. There’s another $300 million to quantify greenhouse gas sequestration. 

Herman Johnson carries feed to cattle on his family farm near Lexington, Mississippi, on Nov. 9, 2023. (Credit: Imani Khayyam for the Ag & Water Desk)

“We know nationwide that IRA funds will increase” in 2024, said Jamie Alderks, assistant state conservationist for financial assistance programs with the Illinois NRCS. “IRA funds will assist in meeting some of the unmet demand.”

But Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives want to repurpose that IRA conservation money to help pay for the Farm Bill, which expired in October without being renewed. House Agriculture Chairman Glenn Thompson suggested cutting $50 billion, mostly to climate change and public nutrition programs, to pay for other agriculture programs, such as crop insurance, The Hill reported. 

In an Oct. 23 letter published by Politico, 24 Democrats on the House Agriculture Committee pushed back against the idea: “Moving the IRA funds from conservation would be denying farmers the support they need and want.”

Brittney J. Miller of the Gazette contributed to this story, which is a product of the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an independent reporting network based at the University of Missouri in partnership with Report for America, with major funding from the Walton Family Foundation.

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