Another head is already coming.

For a year and seven months, Lopez performed procedures like this for 10 hours a day, five to six days a week. It’s what he was trained for as a consumer safety inspector at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS).

“I would have my fingers start to lock up because I was gripping my knives too hard,” Lopez said. “Even though we kept ourselves at a high standard of being clean, I felt dirty, so I didn’t like to eat. It’s hard to stay hydrated, because if I had to take a drink, I had to take off my gloves, and I don’t have a lot of time to do that.”

At larger processing facilities, Lopez—who left his position in April—would help inspect thousands of animals a day for issues ranging from fecal matter to pathogens. The fast operation rates posed a challenge but were manageable, he said.

“I would say I had enough time,” Lopez said. “Did I have as much time as I wanted? No, absolutely not.”

Many swine and poultry plants across the U.S. are now increasing rates of processing and inspecting animals—or line speeds. The change is part of what government officials call a “modernized” inspection system, which also shifts carcass sorting duties from federal inspectors to company employees.

In March, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins announced plans to extend modernization waivers and to make faster line speeds a federal standard under President Trump’s second administration.

The move could permanently change the level of oversight FSIS inspectors have on the lines.

The USDA has said increasing line speeds will help companies meet growing demand without “excessive government interference,” according to a March release. Pork and poultry industry groups backed the announcement almost immediately, and one company official told Investigate Midwest that privatizing certain responsibilities allows for more in-house accountability during inspections.

Paula Soldner, national joint council chairperson of a FSIS inspectors’ union. (Photo courtesy of Paula Soldner)

However, critics of the change argue that federal inspectors play an essential role as independent watchdogs in privately run plants, and increasing line speeds with less federal oversight poses a significant risk to consumers, workers and animals.

“To put it simply, the plant will control every aspect of it with minimal oversight,” said Paula Soldner, national joint council chairperson of a FSIS inspectors’ union.

Shifts to modernization began in 1997 as FSIS permitted faster line speeds and fewer federal inspectors at a handful of swine and poultry slaughterhouses nationwide. In 2014, a new program began permitting poultry plants to modernize voluntarily, and an opt-in system for swine plants followed in 2019.

As of August, 168 poultry plants and 18 swine establishments have converted to modernized models. Waivers for two poultry facilities and four pork plants are currently pending.

At modernized poultry plants, line speed caps have risen from 140 to 175 birds per minute, and their swine counterparts face no line speed limits. All these establishments rely on their own employees to sort carcasses—the process of analyzing meat and trimming off defects—while government inspectors remain hands-off at the ends of the lines.

Though FSIS insists the modernized system keeps federal inspectors in charge, just with fewer physical responsibilities, The Washington Post reported in 2019 that inspection duties are shifting to private companies under modernization—if not on paper, then in practice.

At Wayne-Sanderson Farms, the nation’s third-largest poultry producer with over 26,000 employees, modernization efforts have led to a handoff of inspection responsibilities, according to Juan DeVillena, senior vice president of quality assurance and food safety. He confirmed company personnel have taken over initial inspection tasks and are now in charge of ensuring quality, while federal inspectors continue to oversee food safety.

“FSIS is food safety inspection, and they were getting into areas that did not belong to them,” DeVillena said. “What FSIS did is they just switched their focus to what they should have always done, which is food safety, and put the quality oversight back into our operations.”

In a statement to Investigate Midwest, a USDA spokesperson maintained that modernization is backed by “science and common sense.”

“These reforms allow for greater efficiency while strengthening U.S. food production, reducing costs for producers and consumers, and supporting a more resilient supply chain,” the government spokesperson wrote.

‘Some of Them Can Be Sneaky’: Inspectors Warn of Food Safety Risks

Christopher Lopez, former FSIS consumer safety inspector. (Photo courtesy of Christopher Lopez)

There, company personnel sorted the carcasses, and as a federal inspector, Lopez observed their actions and screened every bird at the end of the line.

There were benefits to this hands-off role, he said, like being able to “sit there and actually look at product and not have to focus on sharpening our knives.” That’s part of how FSIS framed the change in its modernization policy: By removing inspectors from hands-on duties, the agency said they could devote more time to evaluating carcasses online and completing offline verification tasks “that are more effective in ensuring food safety.”

“Extensive research has confirmed that modernized systems uphold the highest food safety standards,” the USDA spokesperson wrote to Investigate Midwest.

But under the poultry modernization program, only one federal inspector is stationed on each processing line, responsible for reviewing all carcasses sorted by plant employees. And problems arose for Lopez when the workers he oversaw consistently outnumbered him five to one.

“Yes, we’re there, and we have the potential to see everything that’s going on, but in reality, it doesn’t always work out that way,” Lopez said. “You can’t look at five people and watch everything that they’re doing as well as pay attention to what you’re inspecting.”

To Lopez, the success of a plant’s modernization depends on staffing levels. If line speeds increase, so should the number of plant workers and federal inspectors to maintain food safety standards, he said.

A USDA spokesperson did not address questions from Investigate Midwest about how the agency enforces federal staffing standards at traditional plants, and how these regulations differ at modernized plants.

Soldner, of the FSIS inspectors’ union, has visited several modernized slaughterhouses over the past few years. She said she noticed no glaring food safety concerns because all the facilities were “adequately staffed.”

But even sufficient staffing may not be enough. According to Lopez, FSIS requires its inspectors to undergo “intensive” training prior to certification, where food safety is highlighted as the top priority. At the modernized plants where Lopez worked, he said private employees tasked with carcass sorting went through similar training, though he believes it was not nearly as rigorous.

FSIS does not mandate any standardized training for company sorters. The agency instead encourages companies to conduct independent training based on federal guidelines for both pork and poultry, which are derived from FSIS inspector training protocols.

At Wayne-Sanderson Farms, DeVillena said privately hired sorters undergo annual recertifications using an internal training manual developed from federal guidelines. The training includes classroom lectures, on-the-job training, follow-up sessions, and continuous monitoring.

“I honestly don’t know the frequency in which the FSIS inspectors get trained, but I can tell you that for our group, it’s more strict because we own that process,” DeVillena said. “We gotta be able to defend it and validate it.”

But Wayne-Sanderson’s approach is not industry standard—or federally mandated. Critics say that flexibility is the problem. Without enforceable, uniform training requirements, each company can decide how thoroughly its workers are prepared to identify contamination and disease.

In public comments on the 2019 swine modernization policy, several advocacy groups urged FSIS to establish official training for company sorters. Even industry members requested that the agency improve existing training guidelines.

FSIS responded that its current guide was sufficient, and it would not be “prescribing specific sorter training or certification.” When Investigate Midwest asked why, the agency did not respond.

Adequate training only goes so far, Lopez said. In his experience, even if carcass sorters were well trained, their priorities as private personnel may have leaned toward keeping the lines moving.

“Some of them can be sneaky about what they do,” Lopez said. In instances where he flagged a carcass for contamination but didn’t immediately take control of it, he said employees would sometimes make the contamination “mysteriously disappear” or mix the carcass in with others. “They might do it in the name of efficiency, but not necessarily in the name of food safety,” he added.

In response to Lopez’s experiences at modernized plants, DeVillena said the structure of modernized inspection systems at Wayne-Sanderson Farms makes it “impossible” to hide defects.

“Even if we wanted to do that, which we don’t want to, there’s no way for us to do that,” DeVillena said.

Juan DeVillena, senior vice president of quality assurance and food safety for Wayne-Sanderson Farms. (Photo courtesy of Juan DeVillena)

DeVillena described two levels of FSIS oversight at his company: a carcass inspector stationed at the end of the line to catch external contamination like fecal matter, and a verification inspector who examines 10 carcasses in detail each hour, including internal checks, to make sure company employees do their jobs effectively. He emphasized that the latter inspector can open the carcasses, examine every surface, and is not directly supervising the sorters’ work—but still has full access to verify product safety.

However, other inspectors have described experiences similar to those of Lopez. In April 2020, Jill Mauer, a federal consumer safety inspector, filed a declaration as part of a 2019 lawsuit against the USDA over its swine modernization policy. In it, Mauer said she’d been working at a modernized pork plant in Austin, Minnesota, for 23 years prior.

“I have witnessed slaughterhouse employees attempt to sneak defective carcasses past me,” her declaration stated. Diseased animals and defects like “toenails, hair, and abscesses are routinely allowed for human consumption” at the facility, Mauer wrote.

Part of the problem, she said, was the short inspection time. At the modernized plant in Minnesota, “inspectors have about two seconds per pig to identify pathology and fecal contamination,” Mauer stated. Investigate Midwest reached out to her for comment, but she declined to speak on the record.

Soldner, who worked as a FSIS inspector for 32 years prior to her full-time role at the inspectors’ union, said this window wasn’t nearly enough time for federal inspectors to spot hazards—even if private employees had already reviewed the carcasses.

The shrinking role of inspectors on pork and poultry lines reflect a fundamental shift in oversight, she said.

“When I came in in 1987, we regulated the industry,” Soldner told Investigate Midwest. “Now, industry regulates what FSIS inspectors have the ability to do.”

Industry Groups Defend Modernization 

In a statement to Investigate Midwest, Tom Super, the council’s senior vice president of public affairs, emphasized that modernization in poultry processing applies only to the speed of evisceration lines—the “highly automated” areas that involve organ removal, carcass cleaning, and inspection.

“Food safety outcomes are not determined by the speed of the evisceration line,” Super wrote. Instead, he said, they depend on maintaining strict protocols, using science-backed safety measures and ensuring consistent oversight.

Investigate Midwest reached out to several other modernized swine and poultry companies for comment about faster line speeds and the reorganization of federal inspectors. None responded to multiple requests for comment.

For years, industry groups have lobbied for faster line speeds, records show.

In 2017, the National Chicken Council petitioned the government to permit faster line speeds in young chicken slaughterhouses. Shortly after, multiple trade associations and corporations shared nearly identical letters of support.

In the letters, industry groups—including the Ohio Poultry Association, the Indiana State Poultry Association, Wayne-Sanderson Farms (then Wayne Farms), and House of Raeford Farms—celebrated the petition as a step forward in “promoting and enhancing FSIS inspection procedures” and “increasing industry efficiency.”

Industry members wrote that they believe modernization would maintain food safety, citing a 2017 federal report that found no increase in salmonella contamination at modernized poultry plants.

“The data also demonstrated that inspectors are performing four times more off-line food safety verification tasks” in modernized plants than in their traditional counterparts, the letters stated.

In one letter, House of Raeford Farms—one of the top poultry producers nationwide—highlighted the “competitive disadvantage” of line speed caps. Plants in other countries like Canada operate at higher line speeds, the company wrote, so eliminating domestic line speed limits would “put U.S. producers on more equal footing.”

FSIS ultimately denied the National Chicken Council’s petition in January 2018, but said it intended to allow faster line speeds at young chicken plants that follow certain criteria “in the near future.” A month later, the agency published that criteria, permitting certain facilities to increase line speeds.

Now, under Trump’s second administration, faster line speeds are on track to become the new federal standard for both pork and poultry.

For plants with high daily outputs, Lopez, the former FSIS inspector, said that faster lines and shifting federal oversight could lead to food safety risks. But he sees potential in modernized systems, he said, especially at facilities that maintain sufficient staff and don’t overwhelm them with thousands of animals a day.

“I think that some of the medium-sized establishments really could benefit from it,” Lopez said. “The large establishments just kind of take advantage of it.”

Is Speed or Staffing to Blame for Increased Worker Injury? 

Two government-commissioned studies published in January found that 81 percent of workers at evaluated poultry facilities and 46 percent of workers at evaluated swine plants were at high risk of musculoskeletal disorders (MSD) like carpal tunnel syndrome.

Many workers and advocates say faster line speeds increase risk of injury. Jose Oliva—campaigns director at HEAL Food Alliance, a coalition of food and farm system workers—called the change a “total travesty” for plant employees. Prior to HEAL, Oliva served as director of the Food Chain Workers Alliance, which represents hundreds of thousands of workers in the food system.

“Even though you are wearing protective equipment, that does not give you 100 percent protection,” Oliva said. “If (workers are) injured or cut themselves, if the injury is not too deep, they just continue to work. The line just keeps moving.”

A policy brief from Johns Hopkins University supports this conclusion, according to Patti Truant Anderson, the brief’s author.

“What we found in our review of literature was that there’s strong evidence that line speeds are associated with higher worker perceptions of injury risk, so they feel like it’s more unsafe when they’re made to work at these higher line speeds,” said Anderson, who is policy director at the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future. Her analysis also found that line speeds are associated with “lower worker well-being and higher injury risk from repetitive tasks,” she said.

Several reports by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, a federal watchdog agency, highlight these concerns. The assessments, published between 2005 and 2017, repeatedly note stakeholder concerns about worker safety with faster line speeds. When asked if GAO is investigating modernization in light of Rollins’ recent announcement, public affairs specialist Jasmine Berry Franklin told Investigate Midwest the agency has “nothing currently in the works.”

The National Chicken Council, however, points to results from the January study on poultry workers, which suggest no associations between evisceration line speeds and MSD risk. The identical study on swine workers found conflicting evidence: Faster evisceration lines were linked to an increase in MSD risk at one facility, and a decrease at another.

In the statement to Investigate Midwest, the USDA spokesperson cited the same studies, concluding “no direct link between line speeds and workplace injuries.” The agency’s March 17 announcement to formalize faster line speeds also halted any further collection of worker safety data from modernized plants, calling the information “redundant.”

According to Carisa Harris—principal investigator of both studies and director of the Northern California Center of Occupational and Environmental Health—evisceration line speeds aren’t the main determinant of worker safety.

Instead, she said, the critical metric is piece rate: The number of animal parts handled per minute by each individual worker. While evisceration line speeds measure the speed at which the lines move in one stage of processing, piece rate takes into account both line speeds and staffing levels to determine the individual workload of each employee throughout the entire process.

Both studies found a correlation between MSD risk and piece rate.

“There’s been so much attention on evisceration line speed, and our hope is that the conversation changes because that’s not the variable that’s going to help protect workers,” Harris said. “If we can talk about piece rate by area or by job, that would be a much more productive conversation to have.”

The two studies weren’t without limitations. One, as Harris called it, was “healthy worker survivor bias”—the tendency for results to reflect only workers healthy enough to continue on.

“Those who left employment due to work-related pain or the inability to keep up with the high pace of work were underrepresented,” the poultry report stated. The swine study echoed this limitation.

Debbie Berkowitz, who served as chief of staff at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration from 2009 to 2014, said she believes evaluated plants may have also added staff during the study period to reduce individual workloads while under observation.

“Because (the plants) knew they were being studied, they added workers to jobs, which meant that nobody was working harder and faster in the key jobs that they studied,” Berkowitz told Investigate Midwest.

The USDA spokesperson did not respond to a question about this phenomenon, but Harris acknowledged it was a concern—that plants may have temporarily improved working conditions during the study. However, she said her team regularly interviewed workers to assess whether the conditions they experienced during the studies matched their usual work environments. According to Harris, “very few” reported any differences.

Lori Stevermer, a Minnesota pork producer and immediate past president of the National Pork Producers Council, reiterated that “increased line speeds are not a leading factor in worker safety” in a statement to Investigate Midwest.

Super, of the National Chicken Council, said unsafe line speeds would be counterproductive for the industry itself.

“If line speeds are set too fast, then tasks will not be performed properly and the result will be a costly de-valuing of the final poultry products,” Super wrote in the statement. “No benefit exists for plant management to operate production lines at speeds that are unsafe, and will not permit all work to be performed at high levels of skill and competence.”

Where Efficiency Meets Animal Welfare 

However, protocol can go awry for a variety of reasons, ranging from worker error to machinery malfunction. And animal welfare advocates allege that it has, especially at modernized swine and poultry plants with increasing line speeds and shifting federal oversight.

Delcianna Winders, director of the Animal Law and Policy Institute at the Vermont Law and Graduate School. (Photo courtesy of Delcianna Winders)

Delcianna Winders, director of the Animal Law and Policy Institute at the Vermont Law and Graduate School, said that faster line speeds result in more inhumane practices.

“Animals who are not keeping pace with the line are handled violently by workers who are just trying to keep up,” Winders told Investigate Midwest. This involves “increased dragging of animals, hitting of animals, and excessive electroshocking” leading up to slaughter, she said.

Concerns like these helped fuel a 2019 lawsuit filed by Winders and a group of animal welfare organizations, challenging the USDA’s swine modernization program. The lawsuit alleged, among other claims, that increasing line speeds and shifting responsibility from federal inspectors to slaughterhouse employees jeopardize humane handling.

“Even downed pigs—animals too sick or injured to walk—were handled in this way, because, according to a supervisor, they ‘don’t have time’ to handle them more humanely,” the lawsuit stated.

As part of the court case, advocates and inspectors submitted a series of declarations about personal experiences with modernization. One testimony came from Mauer, the consumer safety inspector who raised food safety concerns about her modernized pork plant in Austin, Minnesota.

Mauer wrote that on multiple occasions, she noticed pig carcasses with water-filled lungs from the scald tank—a stage in the slaughter process where animals should be dead.

“While there are a few reasons why tank water in the lungs may occur, tank water in hogs’ lungs is an indication that pigs were possibly still breathing at the time they entered the scalding tank,” her declaration stated.

Improper execution at slaughterhouses isn’t a new complaint. In 2013, the Washington Post reported that nearly 1 million birds were boiled alive in U.S. poultry plants every year, based on USDA data. This was in part due to rapid line speeds, which can result in unsuccessful slaughter prior to scald tank immersion, the article found.

But Super, of the National Chicken Council, maintained that modernization only changes the speeds of post-mortem evisceration lines. Leading up to and during slaughter, Super said, chicken processors consider animal welfare “the top priority,” and they “strictly adhere” to federal guidelines for humane handling.

Advocates remain critical. Michael Windsor—senior corporate engagement director at The Humane League, a nonprofit working to end farmed animal abuse—told Investigate Midwest in a statement that faster line speeds in any stage of processing add pressure to the entire system.

“Any increase in line speeds—pre- or post-mortem—create a dangerous ripple effect that increases suffering for animals and hazards for workers,” Windsor stated.

He added that consumers likely have a “limited sense” of what goes on behind closed doors at modernized plants.

“When people think about food safety or animal welfare, they don’t necessarily picture the exhausted workers racing to keep pace with hundreds of birds per minute or the animals being improperly stunned and boiled alive,” Windsor wrote. “This lack of awareness isn’t accidental. The meat industry operates in secrecy, and USDA policies—like allowing company employees to replace federal inspectors—only deepen the opacity.”

Four years after the 2019 lawsuit, the judge dismissed the case and upheld the federal swine modernization program. In a December 2023 ruling, the court found that FSIS had adequately considered humane handling impacts, which was all the law required.

Winders said she believes courts generally defer to the judgment of administration agencies like the USDA.

“It’s very hard to prevail against an agency because everything is going to be interpreted in their favor,” she said.

Winders and her team stand firm on one claim, arguing modernization reduces federal oversight and endangers animal welfare. They’ve appealed the ruling, and an oral argument is approaching in the next few months. With formal laws on the horizon, Winders said issues surrounding modernization are only growing more critical — not just due to risks to animals, but also to workers and consumers.

“It’s hard to disentangle the animal welfare concerns and human safety concerns,” she told Investigate Midwest. “They’re really intertwined.”

This article originally appeared at Investigate Midwest, and is reprinted with permission. 

The post Faster Lines, Less Oversight at Pork and Poultry Plants appeared first on Civil Eats.

In the process, his operation became a model for treating animals and the land well while building financial, community, and environmental resilience across America’s rural landscape. Along the way, he hasn’t shied away from positioning his approach as a means to take back power from global meatpackers and end harms caused by industrial food production.

It’s the kind of farming—and thinking—that Robert F. Kennedy Jr., now the Secretary of Health and Human Services, has long celebrated as a health and environmental advocate.

So while Harris, who wears a tan cowboy hat and speaks with a soothing Southern drawl, says he’s generally “apolitical,” lately, he’s been engaging in D.C. discourse. That’s because he is “shocked and pleased at how much attention my kind of farming is getting.”

While Kennedy was still running his own campaign for president last year, his running mate, Nicole Shanahan, visited White Oak Pastures. A year later, with Kennedy a member of President Trump’s cabinet, Harris received an invitation to the White House for the release of the administration’s first Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission report.

“I’m not saying I was the only farmer there, but I was the only one there that looked like a farmer,” he said. On Instagram, White Oak Pastures posted a photo of Harris in his cowboy hat with his two daughters at the event, plus a photo of Trump and Kennedy. Comments on the photos were heated.

As everyone awaits the official release of the second MAHA Commission report, expected in early September, those remarks point to a divide that exists among farmers who typically agree on things like increasing organic matter, reducing pesticide use, and diversifying crops.

Like Harris, some farmers are thrilled to hear Kennedy using the word “regenerative” in the halls of power and calling out corporate influence on the food system, and are optimistic that real change is coming. Others question whether Kennedy will walk the walk, given his place in the Trump administration, which has been rolling back environmental protections, supporting increased taxpayer funding for chemical-dependent, commodity agriculture, and cutting support for the small, regenerative farms that the MAHA movement claims to support.

They also say the administration’s aggressive pushback on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives is hurting the young farmers who disproportionately run regenerative farms. The now-delayed (and recently leaked) second report from RFK’s MAHA Commission seems to confirm those concerns.

“We have had a major setback,” said Kate Mendenhall, an Iowa farmer who is also the director of the Organic Farmers Association, describing what organic and regenerative farmers have experienced since the Trump administration took over.

Mendenhall said many farmers fell behind this season because of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) funding freezes and are now reluctant to expand or invest in new practices. Many have also lost technical support due to program cancellations and staff reductions.

“I don’t think we can see the full impact now, but maybe next season we’ll see what comes forward or what we’re lacking this fall and winter,” she said. “I’m really delighted to see more conversation around helping people get access to more healthy food. We need that. And we also need to help farmers with the infrastructure steps they need to make it happen.”

Will Harris of White Oak Pastures.

A Resounding Message from MAHA

“Now all this MAHA talk makes me think that maybe, again, I might be an early innovator,” he said. “And I like that better.”

In other words, Kennedy’s attention feels like overdue recognition for some farmers who have been on the agricultural fringe for a long time.

While the Biden administration made some of the largest investments in history in paying farmers to implement conservation practices, rebuilding regional meat processing infrastructure, and shoring up the local supply chains that small, regenerative farms sell into, it also maintained the overall status quo and didn’t talk about transformation as loudly or as often as Kennedy does.

Harris said he heard talk of those investments but never saw impacts on the ground. What he remembers about the Climate-Smart Commodities Program, a signature initiative of Biden’s USDA, is not that it sent millions of dollars to small, regenerative farms through organizations like Pasa and Working Landscapes North Carolina, but that it directed huge sums of money to Tyson and other commodity ag giants.

Now, the thing that stands out to him about the current USDA is not that its actions seem to place the administration firmly on the side of Big Ag, but that Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins has repeatedly showcased her working relationship with Kennedy.

“I haven’t seen many programs implemented so far, but it’s still very early on,” Harris said. “I might get disappointed again, but the promise is better than it’s ever been in my lifetime.”

Steve Groff is similarly optimistic.

“The MAHA movement is a dream come true for me, because before I even heard the term, I was doing it,” said Groff, a third-generation farmer in southern Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, where he farms 200 acres with his son. “We need to eat less junk food and more healthy food, and I think every American agrees that there’s just too much chronic disease. Something’s going on here. We have an opportunity here that is just unbelievable.”

Groff plants hemp on most of his land; he used to process the crop into CBD oil but is now getting into fiber production for textiles and building materials. He also grows heirloom tomatoes, squash, and pumpkins that he sells to Whole Foods. His farm is certified regenerative by Regenified, which requires farmers to implement certain soil health practices but is not organic, since it does allow the use of pesticides and synthetic fertilizers.

To that end, his fields have been 100 percent no-till since 1996, and he regularly plants cover crops. Because of his attention to soil health and ecosystems, he said, he’s been able to reduce the amount of chemical herbicides and fertilizers he uses over time.

“It’s mimicking nature as much as we can to grow food,” he said. (No-till farming and using cover crops also often rely heavily on pesticides, especially glyphosate, which many in the MAHA movement are opposed to and Kennedy has been critical of in the past.)

Groff said he’s always been a conservative but that he didn’t always fully trust Trump. When Trump joined forces with Kennedy, however, that started to change.

As an example of how farmers might begin to shift to more regenerative practices, he offers the example of how farmers in Maryland and Pennsylvania in the 1980s were initially resistant to no-till farming and planting cover crops, but increasingly adopted both as awareness grew about how the practices could reduce pollution into the Chesapeake Bay.

“In my area right here, 70 percent of the land is no-till and cover crops. Now, they don’t do it for the Chesapeake Bay, they do it because it’s a better way to farm,” he said. “And the same practices that we started to do for the sake of the Bay now are the same practices to grow healthier food.”

USDA Cuts to Funding

At TendWell Farm in western North Carolina, farmer Steven Beltram grows leafy greens, tomatoes, peppers, and other vegetables across several hundred acres to sell to grocery stores and other commercial distributors.  Not only is the farm certified organic, it’s Real Organic Project certified, adding an extra layer of regenerative cred.

“We really focus on trying to build and restore and make the soil better year over year,” Beltram said.

Hit hard by Hurricane Helene last year, TendWell was grateful to be participating in a USDA initiative called the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Program that offered funding to move fresh produce from small farms directly into food banks.

The contract was for about $5,000 a week, a significant amount for a business of their size. It was especially beneficial, he said, because unlike with grocers who demand a certain amount of kale or lettuce regardless of how the crops turn out, TendWell could send the food banks surplus produce, thereby reducing waste.

“That was a good thing for us, and that was a good thing for our neighbors,” he said. “Giving out local produce to the community—I can’t see how anyone could be opposed to that.”

But in March, the USDA canceled $1 billion that had been allocated to the program and another similar program that connected small farms to schools, ending that source of income for TendWell. At the time, Rollins said repeatedly that she was ending it because it was a COVID-era program and states still had plenty of money left to spend.

At the same time, Rollins’ USDA has also cancelled 2025 funding for the Patrick Leahy Farm to School Program, ended the Regional Food Business Centers program, and revised the Climate-Smart Commodities Program in a way that meant many small, regenerative farms and the organizations that support them have borne the brunt of the impacts.

“It’s interesting to see that the USDA is cutting funding for programs like [Local Food Purchase Assistance] while they’re increasing payments for commodity crop production, and of course all that commodity crop production is based on the use of glyphosate,” Beltram said, referencing the $67 billion bump that commodity growers got in the recent One Big Beautiful Bill. “It really feels like a divided administration. The USDA is for the most part implementing practices that are the exact opposite of the goals of the MAHA movement.”

At the Organic Farmers Association, Mendenhall said she also sees staffing cuts at the Natural Resources Conservation Services (NRCS) as potentially undermining MAHA agricultural goals, since NRCS employees in local offices can act as guides for farmers looking to improve their grazing practices to produce grass-fed beef or to get the help they need to reduce chemical use.

“They’ve lost a lot of local technical expertise at NRCS in particular,” she said.

At the same time, cuts to other programs mean agriculture support organizations that provide similar help have also let staff go. “That type of technical assistance that farmers rely on when they’re scaling up or expanding markets has also been lost,” she said.

What Mendenhall would like to see in the MAHA policy recommendations is a reinvestment in helping farmers scale up organic production and enter new markets like school food, hospitals, and the institutional markets that open new doors to wholesale.

“That is the avenue forward, and that’s a great way to increase consumption of organic food, but farmers can’t just do it,” she said. “They need support in order to scale up, and then they’ll be able to continue to do it, but we have to invest in the supply chain issues that are creating a barrier for them to doing that on their own.”

USDA Ends Support for Young Regenerative Farmers

Customers at the farmers’ market have already reported they were losing benefits that allow them to buy more healthy food from local farms using their Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, Nelson said. She’s also seen a lot of her farmer friends lose jobs with support organizations, including at Pasa and at the National Young Farmers Coalition (NYFC), where she is an associate field director.

“It’s so powerful to know that you can grow food and preserve a future, so that keeps me going all the time, but I do have worries,” she said. “I really want to have hope that the administration will show how they can support smaller farms. It has been interesting to watch freezes happen and unfreezes happen and nothing feels totally certain or set in stone. Every day is wildly different.”

Things have been particularly fraught for young farmers who don’t fit the stereotype of the brawny white male American farmer. In its latest survey, in 2022, NYFC received responses from more than 10,000 young farmers across the country.

“Through that data, we learned that there are way more farmers of color who are young and way more queer farmers that the USDA data doesn’t reflect,” Nelson said. Eighty-six percent of the young farmers surveyed classified their approach as regenerative farming.

Biden’s USDA encouraged organizations and farmers applying for grants to emphasize whether they were a part of or serving underserved groups, such as BIPOC, women, or LGBTQ farmers. Now, as the USDA goes through grant contracts rooting out DEI initiatives, those farmers and organizations are the ones seeing their grant contracts cancelled.

To push back on that issue, NYFC launched a social media campaign last month dubbed #WeAreAmericanFarmers, calling on USDA to honor its contracts, given Rollins’ repeated statements around supporting American farmers.

“This campaign is to underscore farmers who are immigrants, farmers who are not white, farmers who are queer are all American farmers as well,” Nelson said. “It’s a call for representation and to call out that kind of dangerous language around who gets access to USDA resources or not and who feels like they belong.”

Pesticides, Climate Change, and Ecosystems: MAHA vs. EPA and USDA

“We’re definitely experiencing a change in climate here, and it’s making it more challenging to farm, even aside from just a massive disaster that takes out all the infrastructure,” said TendWell Farm’s Beltram, who still hasn’t received disaster assistance after Hurricane Helene destroyed roads, tractors, box trucks, and more at multiple farm locations and left his team to spend the entire winter cleaning debris out of fields.

On the environmental side, the MAHA movement behind Kennedy has been more vocal about its desire to see more regulation of pesticides linked to health and environmental harm, especially glyphosate, atrazine, and neonicotinoids. Prior to his appointment, Kennedy railed against agricultural chemicals.

However, at a press conference during the recent Great American Farmers’ Market, in response to a question about whether the second MAHA report would include recommendations to restrict the use of some chemicals, he deferred to Rollins.

“There is no question that the use of crop protection tools remains one of the most important tools, if not the most important, to our farmers to thrive and to remain prosperous,” Rollins said, adding that Kennedy has met with 130 farmer and rancher groups. “I’ve also heard him say, ‘We can’t compromise our farmers and their ability to feed and fuel and clothe the world.’ I feel very confident that his and our commitment to make sure farmers are at the table remains paramount, and that the report will reflect that.” Asked to weigh in, Kennedy said he had nothing to add.

Recently, a legislative rider has also gained steam among Republicans in Congress that would help shield Bayer and other pesticide companies from lawsuits claiming their products cause health harms.

White Oak Pasture’s Harris has spoken out about this kind of “pesticide immunity” bill, a version of which passed this year in his state of Georgia. While he acknowledges some worry about the impacts of climate change, he’s especially concerned about the ecosystem collapse caused by pesticide use and other factors.

“I think one of the things we got wrong is this thing of killing the pest,” he said. “I believe that every creature—plant, animal, or microbe—that lives in and is indigenous to an ecosystem has a role in that ecosystem,” he said. “I think we’re not smart enough to know what it is [for every creature]. And the fact that we have driven and are driving so many species of plants and animals and microbes into extinction or near extinction is worrying to me.”

Does he think, then, that a successful MAHA policy plan for regenerative agriculture needs to address that fact? “Absolutely,” he said. Like many others, he’s waiting to see what happens next.

Politico just published a draft version of the MAHA Commission’s policy recommendations, which are currently being reviewed by the White House and could change significantly before being finalized.

The last section of the report is titled “Soil Health and Stewardship of the Land.”  But not one of the four bullet points in the section includes concrete policy steps or positions.

For now, it seems as though not even the MAHA Commission will provide clarity any time soon about the administration’s plans for regenerative farming.

“We don’t know what the program is yet,” Harris said. “Powerful people have been instructed to come up with a program, so that’s promising.”

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https://civileats.com/2025/08/18/refugee-farm-programs-harmed-by-federal-cuts/ https://civileats.com/2025/08/18/refugee-farm-programs-harmed-by-federal-cuts/#respond Mon, 18 Aug 2025 08:01:59 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=68127 “This land was barren, a playground for jackrabbits and tumbleweeds,” said Khatiwoda, a seasoned farmer with earth-worn hands. “Now, the farm is a living place.” Khatiwoda is part of the Sacramento region’s Nepali-speaking Bhutanese community. After emigrating to the U.S. from a refugee camp in Nepal, he worked as a medical interpreter, often translating for […]

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On a cool morning in early June, Ram Khatiwoda, the farm coordinator at the New Roots farm in West Sacramento, California, took a visitor through the garden plots on a strip of land sandwiched between a quiet residential street and the Sacramento River. Fat onion bulbs peeked through the soil, and the scent of strawberries drifted on the air. Gardeners mended trellises, weeded rows of okra, and washed and packed produce to send to a local farmers market.

“This land was barren, a playground for jackrabbits and tumbleweeds,” said Khatiwoda, a seasoned farmer with earth-worn hands. “Now, the farm is a living place.”

Khatiwoda is part of the Sacramento region’s Nepali-speaking Bhutanese community. After emigrating to the U.S. from a refugee camp in Nepal, he worked as a medical interpreter, often translating for immigrants whose ailments, he said, stemmed in part from poor diets. Resolved to grow their own food, Khatiwoda and other refugees in Sacramento founded the 5-acre farm in 2016 with support from the International Rescue Committee (IRC), a refugee resettlement organization.

Since then, the New Roots farm has evolved to serve refugees from around the world. The farm helps people form friendships, Khatiwoda said, while also giving them the chance to grow fruits, vegetables, and herbs for their families and for sale at farm stands, markets, and grocery stores.

“It gave us a way to involve the elderly population and children,” Khatiwoda said, “and to translate our time into food that contributes to the health and well-being of the greater community.”

This farm is just one of many that serve refugees. Over the past three decades, around 50 of them have sprung up across the country, according to Hugh Joseph, founder of the nation’s first refugee incubator farm, the New Entry Sustainable Farming Project, based in Beverly, Massachusetts.

“It gave us a way to involve the elderly population and children, and to translate our time into food that contributes to the health and well-being of the greater community.”

IRC’s New Roots program operates 13 farms in nine states. Last year, those farms enabled more than 1,700 people to grow $3.3 million worth of fruits and vegetables, with roughly $500,000 in produce distributed to low-income community members, according to an IRC impact report.

But refugee incubator farms face daunting challenges. The Trump administration’s termination of refugee resettlement support and its cancellation of many U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) grants for small farmers jeopardize the primary funding sources for most of the farms. The grants pay for staff. They also pay for infrastructure—like a greenhouse at the West Sacramento farm that has enabled farmers to grow crops from seeds they’ve saved, minimizing planting costs, as well as a walk-in cooler that helps the farm send more produce to local markets.

The elimination of federal grants could “threaten the survival of a very large number of the incubators,” said Joseph, who is also director of the Institute for Social and Economic Development Solutions, which helps refugee incubator farms with education and career training, also funded by grants.

Many farms have already been forced to lay off staff this year and scale down their programs. At one farm, gardeners no longer have the transportation assistance some relied on to get from their homes to the site. At another, farmers worry they may lose the staff who helped them sell to markets. Khatiwoda, for years a constant presence at New Roots, had his hours reduced from full time to part time, as did three other IRC staff at the West Sacramento farm.

“It’s not a good time,” he said.

Ram Khatiwoda holds freshly picked strawberries at New Roots farm, where refugees grow fruit, vegetables, and herbs. (Photo credit: Caleb Hampton)

Funding Cuts From All Sides

In May, Catholic Charities, which together with the nonprofit Cultivate Kansas City has run a refugee incubator farm in that city for 17 years, announced it will end its staffing and financial support for the program in October. The decision came after the Trump administration eliminated funding for refugee resettlement services provided by Catholic Charities, forcing the charity network to lay off many of its Migration and Refugee Services staff nationwide.

Catholic Charities also cited the abrupt revocation of a USDA grant as a factor in its decision. The $250,000 grant aimed to expand sales opportunities for refugee and immigrant farmers in Kansas City by piloting winter farmers’ markets, fostering new partnerships, and training farmers to develop value-added products by processing and packaging the food they grow.

“This grant was determined to be out of alignment with priorities regarding diversity, equity, and inclusion,” a USDA spokesperson said in a statement.

Cultivate Kansas City will continue running the farm (also called New Roots, though not affiliated with IRC), but it will likely be forced to scale down the program, especially the market access component long provided by Catholic Charities staff, who connected refugees with opportunities to sell their produce at farmers’ markets and through community-supported agriculture (CSA).

The news left farmers in the program “extremely concerned that they will not be able to sell the produce they’re growing,” Cultivate KC Executive Director Brien Darby said. “There’s clearly some trust that’s been broken.”

In Anchorage, Alaska, the Fresh International Gardens cooperative and the Grow North incubator farm, both run by a Catholic Social Services program called Refugee Assistance and Immigration Services (RAIS), have also been affected. This year, a $300,000 USDA grant was not renewed, and the termination of refugee resettlement funds caused key vacancies at the farm programs.

In recent years, the garden co-op and incubator farm have served refugees from Ukraine and the Democratic Republic of Congo, as well as Afghans who worked with the U.S. military before fleeing Afghanistan in 2021. “We have experienced drastic funding cuts that have resulted in staff losses,” said Keenan Plate, refugee enterprise and agriculture program director at RAIS. “We anticipate lower revenue this year because we have less staff.”

“We have experienced drastic funding cuts that have resulted in staff losses. We anticipate lower revenue this year because we have less staff.”

The Trump administration’s termination of USDA programs such as Local Food Purchase Assistance, which gave food banks money to buy fresh produce from local farms, and its indefinite pause of the similar farm to school program, has impacted many small farms, including refugee incubator farms. The two grant programs were “instrumental in supporting the farmers we work with,” said Jennifer Hashley, director of the New Entry project in Beverly.

New Entry, founded in 1998, receives about 70 percent of its funding from federal grants, Hashley said, most of which pays for staffing. “We have to have a minimum number of staff to operate,” she said. Without new funding streams, she added, the farm “could be in trouble for the future.”

Aside from grants already terminated by the Trump administration, a major concern for refugee incubator farms is that the USDA has not requested applications for dozens of other grants—including some for beginning farmers and farmers from underserved populations—for the coming fiscal year. “Those are the bread-and-butter support for a lot of the refugee incubators,” Joseph said.

Typically, the application window would have opened several months ago. The Office of Refugee Resettlement has similarly not sent out application requests for an agriculture grant that provides $100,000 per year to many of the incubator farms. As the September deadline for the federal agencies to award grants draws nearer, program directors worry those funds have vanished, too.

“It’s a tense time,” said Plate, the RAIS director in Anchorage. The government’s slashing of agriculture grants and support for refugees, he said, has left all refugee farm programs “wondering how they can continue.”

Program directors said they are working to diversify their funding sources, primarily by pursuing state grants and philanthropic donations. However, federal grants are typically larger and can last multiple years, Hashley said, so they are “difficult to replace easily or quickly.”

As this article goes to publication, many of the federal grants that refugee incubator farms rely on remain under review amid an ongoing purge of federal initiatives that serve marginalized populations. “USDA continues to weed out DEI from our programs as we continue our review of the entire department,” the agency said last month in a press release. A USDA spokesperson said in a statement that the department was “working diligently to ensure all funds can be obligated by the end of the fiscal year.”

Do Refugees Compromise Resources?

The Trump administration has framed its suspension of refugee admissions and support services as an effort to preserve scarce resources for U.S. citizens. “The United States lacks the ability to absorb large numbers of migrants, and in particular, refugees, into its communities in a manner that does not compromise the availability of resources for Americans,” President Donald Trump said in his January executive order suspending refugee admissions.

However, those running the refugee incubator farms see them as an example of refugees’ entrepreneurial spirit and their positive contributions to their communities.

In 2010, refugees from Burundi helped start the Global Greens program, administered by Lutheran Services in Iowa. The goal was to provide an outlet for refugees unable to meet the physical demands of meatpacking plants, where many Burundians who resettled in Iowa found work.

“It gives them something really positive to do,” said Firmin Ntakimazi, community resource navigator at Global Greens, which is based in Des Moines. (The program relies on federal grants—and, so far, has not been significantly impacted.)

“These farmers are very important to the community. They’re part of the future generation of farmers in this country, and they should be recognized as such.”

Today, Global Greens operates a community gardening program with around 300 participants, as well as a four-year training program that has enabled more than a dozen graduates to begin farming for a living. Ntakimazi, who helped start the farm, said people drive from across the country to fill vans with Global Greens’ cassava leaves and African eggplant, which stock home freezers and specialty grocery stores from New York to Arizona—enriching and enlivening restaurant and home cooking alike.

In West Sacramento, refugees turned a dusty lot into “an oasis,” Khatiwoda said, providing fresh produce to local schools and grocery stores, as well as to community members through farmers’ markets and a CSA box. Last year, more than half the fruits and vegetables sold through New Roots’ programs across the country were bought by low-income residents using food benefits.

In Kansas City, each of the metropolitan area’s 23 farmers’ markets has at least one farmer who either participates in or graduated from the local refugee incubator farm.

To a person, program directors interviewed for this article said that if funding cuts force these farms to scale back further or to shut down altogether, refugees won’t be the only ones affected.

“These farmers are very important to the community,” Hashley said. “They’re part of the future generation of farmers in this country, and they should be recognized as such.”

This story was updated to correct the location of the New Entry Sustainable Farming Project, which is headquartered in Beverly, Massachusetts.

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]]> https://civileats.com/2025/08/18/refugee-farm-programs-harmed-by-federal-cuts/feed/ 0 https://civileats.com/2025/08/13/louisiana-shrimpers-fight-to-save-their-industry/ https://civileats.com/2025/08/13/louisiana-shrimpers-fight-to-save-their-industry/#comments Wed, 13 Aug 2025 08:01:09 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=67338 Louisiana Shrimpers Fight to Save Their Industry Cheap imported shrimp, environmental degradation, and rising fuel costs are collapsing the seafood economy in the Mississippi Delta. Locals say government intervention and consumer support could change that. Enter keywords

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Louisiana Shrimpers Fight to Save Their Industry

Cheap imported shrimp, environmental degradation, and rising fuel costs are collapsing the seafood economy in the Mississippi Delta. Locals say government intervention and consumer support could change that.

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]]> https://civileats.com/2025/08/13/louisiana-shrimpers-fight-to-save-their-industry/feed/ 3 https://civileats.com/2025/08/12/the-maha-movements-climate-conundrum/ https://civileats.com/2025/08/12/the-maha-movements-climate-conundrum/#respond Tue, 12 Aug 2025 08:01:10 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=66534 This is the first in a series of articles examining the promises and policies of the MAHA movement. “The health and the vibrancy of American farms is critical to the success of the MAHA movement,” Kennedy said during his opening remarks. “We have the best farmers in the world in our country. We have people […]

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]]> This is the first in a series of articles examining the promises and policies of the MAHA movement.

At a Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) roundtable in Washington, D.C. in July, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins sat down to speak with invited farmers about the topic at hand: soil health.

“The health and the vibrancy of American farms is critical to the success of the MAHA movement,” Kennedy said during his opening remarks. “We have the best farmers in the world in our country. We have people who are developing innovative techniques for restoring the soil, for restoring the microbiome, for producing the healthiest food in the world, and one of the purposes of this meeting is to get that message out to the rest of America: that there’s hope.”

Elisa Lane is one of those innovators. Lane owns Two Boots Farm in Northern Maryland, where she tends to a 200-tree pawpaw orchard, grows vegetable seedlings for home gardeners in the spring, and harvests endless varieties of flowers that get arranged into farmers’ market and bridal bouquets. She does it all without pesticides or tilling, while building soil fertility with a variety of cover crops and compost.

But on a sweltering day a week before the roundtable, with a heat advisory in effect, one thing she was thinking about—for the first time—was crop insurance.

Over the last decade, she explained while hanging freshly harvested garlic in her barn, it’s been getting hotter. Her crew starts at 5 a.m. some days to get field work done before the unbearable heat sets in. Summers are drier. The weather varies more wildly. When storms hit, they seem more intense than in the past.

A worker at Two Boots Farms hand-weeds a pesticide-free field during a heat advisory. Behind her is the solar array that was delayed due to the USDA funding freeze. (Photo credit: Lisa Held)

“They come on so fast and so quick. I just remember that happening in the last three years or so,” she said. “That causes power outages, which is something I’m so nervous about. If we have a cooler worth of stuff, it could all spoil.” The thing that scares her the most, though, is the prospect of losing entire crops, which is what happened recently on two nearby farms during hailstorms.

It’s not just hail. In recent years, Hurricane Helene damaged or destroyed crops on close to 5 million acres of North Carolina farmland. Farmers in Vermont lost vegetable crops worth millions of dollars to unprecedented flooding. In the West, some farms couldn’t plant crops due to historic drought conditions; others lost crops and livestock herds to wildfires.

While it’s difficult to attribute any single weather event to climate change, the evidence is clear that more frequent and intense extreme-weather events are making it increasingly challenging for farmers to grow healthy food regardless of their ability to innovate, complicating the MAHA movement’s goals.

The last report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) offered two big takeaways, said Rachel Bezner Kerr, the lead author of a chapter about climate impacts on food, fiber, and ecosystems. Overall agricultural productivity has been reduced from what it would have been with less or no global warming, and more robust evidence now shows extreme weather events are diminishing food security and nutrition.

“Going forward, unless we’re able to significantly reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, those impacts are going to be quite severe,” Kerr said.

Elisa Lane in her pawpaw orchard. “I’ve heard people say that farmers are on the frontlines of climate change,” she said. “Someone smarter than me said that, but it’s true.” (Photo credit: Lisa Held)

However, in Washington, D.C., the Trump administration’s actions are likely to increase U.S. emissions. During the first week of his presidency, Trump signed executive orders withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreement, rolling back electric vehicle subsidies, and directing his agencies to increase the production of fossil fuels.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has since proposed removing all limits on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and overturning the finding that allows the agency to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has canceled programs and contracts that pay farmers to use climate-friendly practices and has stripped the word “climate” from its vocabulary. Trump’s sweeping tax legislation, which Republicans in Congress named the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” also dismantles Biden-era climate actions and boosts the fossil-fuel industry.

Trump has promised that the administration is fully invested in Kennedy’s MAHA movement goals to reduce chronic disease by, among other actions, getting Americans to eat more fresh, healthy, whole foods.

But in response to questions from Civil Eats, White House spokesperson Kush Desai said the administration is not concerned by the fact that climate change is compromising the country’s ability to produce that food.

“When nearly 70 percent of American children’s caloric intake comes from ultra-processed foods—contributing to obesity, diabetes, and other chronic conditions—the Make America Healthy Again movement has more pressing short term priorities to address than vague climate change concerns about agricultural yields and nutrient density,” he said in an email.

As a result, it’s unlikely that the second MAHA report—which will be submitted to the White House this week and is aimed at helping Americans eat healthier—will include climate policy directives, even if experts say they should undoubtedly be included.

“If you’re thinking about the importance of things like fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds . . . very important foods that prevent diseases in our diet, then you need to think about, ‘How do we address climate change so that food production, both quality and quantity, remains stable?’” said Samuel Myers, the director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Planetary Health. “That also will help with prices for Americans and protecting pollinator populations in the U.S. and abroad.”

Quantity and Quality of Food Impacted

Myers has worked on multiple research studies assessing how rising emissions impact both how much food we can grow and the quality of that food. At first, as levels of carbon dioxide rise, a phenomenon called “CO2 fertilization” takes place, he explained, which can cause small gains in crop yields. But those gains tend to max out around 10 percent. And since that rising CO2 level is, at the same time, contributing to more heat and extreme weather, he added that the tradeoff isn’t worth it.

At this point, the data from around the world is clear. “We can say decisively that productivity is lower than what it would be if there was no climate change,” said Kerr.

“Going forward, unless we’re able to significantly reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, impacts on food security and nutrition are going to be quite severe.”


New research published in June identified yet another consequence of those reduced yields. As yields decline, farmers clear more land to grow food. As a result, more than 200 million acres of cropland in use today can be attributed to climate-change-driven yield loss. And as more land is cleared for farming, emissions increase, since forested land sequesters much more carbon.

“With a warming climate, we’re seeing a decrease in the productivity of our croplands around the world, and then as a result of that, in order to have the same amount of production, we are having to clear a lot more land, which then has an impact on the climate,” said Paul West, a senior scientist at Project Drawdown, who was an author on the paper. “So it ends up creating a vicious cycle.”

Myers’ research has also shown that the food that is being grown is not as healthy as it once was: Rising concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere affect plant growth in a way that reduces the nutrient content of many important crops.

“We’ve found that crops grown at CO2 concentrations we expect to see by the middle of the century have reduced levels of things like iron and zinc and protein, which are super important from a health standpoint,” he said. “And then we find that potentially hundreds of millions of people get pushed into micronutrient deficiencies because of just the CO2 effect alone.”

“If you’re thinking about the importance of things like fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds, very important foods that prevent diseases in our diet, then you need to think about, ‘How do we address climate change so that food production, both quality and quantity, remains stable?’”



In the U.S., that’s unlikely to happen, because our diets are more diverse compared to those of low-income countries that rely heavily on staple food crops. But Myers said climate change also threatens a wide range of foods that provide Americans with important nutrients. For example, the size and distribution of fisheries are changing, and it’s getting harder to raise livestock in certain places as heat and drought conditions increase.

Myers also worked on another study that found many scientific and policy reports underestimate how much food security is likely to be threatened in coming years because they often leave out other factors that intersect with climate change.

Over the last 10,000 years, he said, agriculture was optimized to conditions that were almost entirely stable. Now, everything about growing a crop—from temperature and water supply to pollination and pest pressure—is up in the air.

“We’re changing those biophysical conditions at the fastest rate in the history of our species,” he said. “It’s the climate that we’re changing, but it’s also biodiversity loss and pollution and changes in access to water. It’s not just climate change, it’s everything change.”

In addition to backtracking on a transition away from fossil fuels, President Trump’s EPA is rolling back numerous regulations intended to prevent pollution and safeguard biodiversity.

Forced by Climate to Cut Back on Healthy Crops

The increased prevalence of extreme weather is also causing farmers to make decisions that result in fewer healthy foods ending up on American plates. On the western side of the Colorado Rockies, in a special microclimate that makes it possible to grow fruit in an area that doesn’t normally allow it, Steve Ela grows peaches, pears, apples, plums, sweet cherries, heirloom tomatoes, and rhubarb on land that has been certified organic for more than 20 years.

Ela is a fourth-generation farmer, and his produce, grown in soil that has more than double the organic matter compared to the local average, is sold at seven Colorado farmers’ markets.

Steve Ela packs apples at Ela Family Farms, where he’s recently taken trees out of production due to concerns about water availability. (Photo credit: Regan Choi)

However, his farm’s viability is entirely dependent on the annual snowpack, which melts into reservoirs that feed his irrigation systems. Several studies have documented declining snowpack in Colorado over the past several decades, caused by rising temperatures and declining precipitation.

There have always been drought cycles, Ela said, but in the past several years, there have been more of them. Last year, after not enough snowpack accumulated, the runoff season was short. When rain didn’t come, he had to start using the reservoir water about three months earlier than normal.

“That reservoir only holds so much water, and if you have to use it for a longer period of time, it’s just like a bank account,” he said. “You can stretch it out, but there’s only X amount there.”

This year, after another dry winter, they’ll run out of water for some of his apple trees in mid-August, with the harvest not happening until October. “If you stretch them, you beat them, you malnourish them, they just don’t come back the same,” he said. “There’s a lasting scar. It’s something that causes damage for multiple years.” After a historic fall freeze a few years ago, for example, his apple and pear trees looked okay, he said, but then he didn’t get a good crop on them for three years.

As a result of his water challenges, he’s started taking acres of trees out of production. It’s the only obvious solution he can see at the moment, he said: If there’s going to be less water available, he’s going to grow less fruit.

“The interaction between MAHA and climate change, it’s an awkward dance,” Ela said. As a dedicated environmentalist, he’s worried about the changing climate. But he also sees the value in the MAHA movement’s message, because “I think we could eat a lot healthier,” he said.

Heirloom tomatoes grown at Ela Family Farms. (Photo credit: Regan Choi)

Can the Soil Save Us?

“Farmers are definitely responding to more extreme weather, and that makes it difficult to plan,” said Kate Mendenhall, an Iowa farmer who also serves as the executive director of the Organic Farmers Association. “We have so much knowledge about climate change and what type of practices help or hurt the planet and make for a more stable growing environment. I think they see and are experiencing the effects of climate change and want to be able to keep farming and have a little bit more stability.”

In fact, a 2022 survey by the Organic Farming Research Foundation found that 80 percent of farmers transitioning to organic practices cited “greater resilience to climate change” as a motivating factor.

“We’ve found that crops grown at CO2 concentrations we expect to see by the middle of the century have reduced levels of things like iron and zinc and protein, which are super important from a health standpoint.”

Kennedy is a longtime critic of pesticide use and promoter of organic practices, and his MAHA movement includes many farmers and consumers who are pushing for more support for organic and regenerative agriculture. These two approaches to agriculture, which intersect and overlap in different ways depending on how they’re practiced, can build healthy soil and biodiversity on farms, creating systems that are both better for the climate and improve the nutrition of the food produced.

But so far, the administration’s actions have done more to hurt organic and regenerative farmers than help them. The USDA retooled the Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities Program in a way that led to thousands of farms around the country losing funding allocated to implement regenerative practices. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins has also canceled more than a billion dollars in funding for local food programs that primarily benefit regenerative and organic farms.

Instead, Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill will send more dollars to conventional, commodity farms that rely on large-scale, chemical-intensive farming practices.

Some farmers are optimistic that the upcoming MAHA report will include policy recommendations related to soil health and regenerative agriculture. However, powerful agricultural lobby groups have been pushing back on that front, especially on any provisions regulating pesticide use, and ultimately Kennedy is not in charge of farm policy. Still, he hinted at his desire to push things in that direction.

As a result of his water challenges, Steve Ela has started taking acres of trees out of production. It’s the only obvious solution he can see at the moment, he said: If there’s going to be less water available, he’s going to grow less fruit.

“We need to give off-ramps to farmers so that they can transition to biodynamic agriculture, regenerative agriculture, and do it in a way that is going to maintain the vibrancy of their farms,” he said at the July roundtable. “We have a president now who is not only absolutely committed to the survival and prosperity of American farmers but is also looking around the corners, who is looking to the future.”

The trouble is, even if farm policy bucks the Big Ag headwinds and takes up the IPPC recommendations to shift to more regenerative, diversified systems, it won’t be enough to guarantee a future filled with healthy food if the administration continues to roll the clock back on overall emissions, Kerr said.

“I think it’s very hard to adapt if we are going over 1.5 [degrees Celsius of warming], and if we are ramping up our greenhouse gas emissions,” she said. “The adaptation strategies that we’ve identified are not adequate in the face of that kind of global warming.”

Elisa Lane, owner of Two Boots Farm, with the solar array that sits behind her fields on the edge of forested acres. Installation of the system was delayed to the USDA funding freeze. (Photo credit: Lisa Held)

At Two Boots Farm, Lane is doing her part on all fronts. In addition to building healthy soil and keeping a biodiverse forest intact on most of her acreage, she recently installed a solar array to shift the farm to renewable energy. The project was delayed significantly when the grant funding she had received from the USDA through a program that helps farmers install solar was frozen. It has since been unfrozen, and she’s now close to getting it up and running.

The system will save her around $500 per month in energy costs, she estimates, but she’s not sure if tax credits she was hoping for were eliminated in the One Big Beautiful Bill. Next on her list is crop insurance, which is difficult for small, diversified farms like hers to qualify and apply for.

In 2022, crop insurance subsidies cost taxpayers a record $19.3 billion, up from an average that stayed under $4 billion in the early aughts.

“The government will hopefully help in one way or another,” Lane said. “They have the ability to help on the front end with resiliency, or they’re going to be helping us on the back end, when everybody’s screwed financially because we’re losing crops.”

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]]> https://civileats.com/2025/08/12/the-maha-movements-climate-conundrum/feed/ 0 https://civileats.com/2025/08/11/civil-eats-welcomes-rebekah-alvey-as-staff-reporter/ https://civileats.com/2025/08/11/civil-eats-welcomes-rebekah-alvey-as-staff-reporter/#respond Mon, 11 Aug 2025 08:01:33 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=66499 Most recently, Alvey reported for Agri-Pulse Communications, producing multiple daily posts about energy and agricultural policy for its Daybreak newsletter, as well as web stories and longer articles. Previously, she worked at E&E News, reporting on energy and environment policies and contributing several stories a week, including both breaking news and analysis. She was also […]

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Rebekah Alvey joins us today as our new staff reporter, covering federal actions for our Food Policy Tracker as well as longer-form stories about the U.S. food system. Based in Washington, D.C., Alvey writes about food policy from inside the halls of power, delving into Congressional hearings, food safety, and nutrition, and much more.

Most recently, Alvey reported for Agri-Pulse Communications, producing multiple daily posts about energy and agricultural policy for its Daybreak newsletter, as well as web stories and longer articles. Previously, she worked at E&E News, reporting on energy and environment policies and contributing several stories a week, including both breaking news and analysis. She was also a main author for Power Switch, E&E’s joint newsletter with Politico.

“I’ve spent the last few years closely covering the ins and outs of Capitol Hill and am excited to bring that policy background to the Food Policy Tracker and continue covering a truly unpredictable and unprecedented political moment,” said Alvey. “As a reporter who started in local news in Kentucky, I aim to keep the community and human impact of all these policies top of mind. I’m thrilled to bring both elements of my background to my work at Civil Eats.”

A Kentucky native, Alvey attended Western Kentucky University, where she majored in journalism and Arabic. She earned an M.A. in journalism and public affairs at American University in Washington, D.C., and interned at both the Washington Post—where she assisted national editors and reporters with investigative projects—and the Dallas Morning News, where she churned out stories on Texas Congressional representatives and policies affecting Dallas, often making the front page.

“We’re so glad Rebekah Alvey has joined our team. She deftly navigates Capitol Hill, connecting with trusted sources to quickly land insightful, impactful food policy stories,” said Civil Eats’ Editorial Director Margo True. “She brings context and understanding to her news pieces and years of political reporting savvy to our expanding newsroom.”

As an overarching goal, Alvey plans to communicate the impact of food policy to a broad audience. “I deeply resonate with Civil Eats’ mission to provide accessible, thoughtful reporting that connects the entirety of the food system,” she said.

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]]> https://civileats.com/2025/08/11/civil-eats-welcomes-rebekah-alvey-as-staff-reporter/feed/ 0 https://civileats.com/2025/08/04/the-most-important-food-policy-changes-of-2025-so-far/ https://civileats.com/2025/08/04/the-most-important-food-policy-changes-of-2025-so-far/#respond Mon, 04 Aug 2025 08:00:11 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=66453 In that time, we’ve reached thousands of new readers, received dozens of tips, and have broken news on rollbacks to diversity and equity initiatives, the freezing of farm grants, and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and its impact on food and farming. Lawmakers have also sought out the Tracker to share exclusive news, recognizing […]

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Since the launch of our Food Policy Tracker just seven months ago, Civil Eats has published more than 100 posts covering Congress’ actions and the Trump administration’s efforts to transform the federal government.

In that time, we’ve reached thousands of new readers, received dozens of tips, and have broken news on rollbacks to diversity and equity initiatives, the freezing of farm grants, and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and its impact on food and farming. Lawmakers have also sought out the Tracker to share exclusive news, recognizing the value of the platform.

Through on-the-ground reporting by our intrepid Senior Staff Reporter and Contributing Editor Lisa Held, as well as editing and support from the entire team, the Tracker has allowed us to document how funding cuts are hurting farmers, detailing how their contracts to sell crops to local schools or implement climate-smart practices have been canceled.

The Tracker has also followed emerging Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) developments, including the release of a report about childhood chronic disease and obesity, a push to get companies to remove artificial food dyes from their products, and a proposal to define ultra-processed foods.

With immigration playing an outsize role in the nation’s food system, the Tracker is keeping close tabs on changes to the H-2A Guest Worker program and hosts an up-to-date list of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids on farms and other food businesses.

The Tracker was featured by the Institute for Nonprofit News (INN), and we recently hosted a behind-the-scenes online salon, moderated by INN’s Paulina Velasco, to discuss the Tracker, which well over 100 people attended.

You can sign up to receive instant updates or the weekly digest. We’re proud of all we’ve accomplished in this short period, and we have a lot more in store.

For now, we’re sharing some of the most important stories the Food Policy Tracker has followed so far, in chronological order.

Matthew Fitzgerald, a young farmer in Minnesota, poses in his tractor during a spate of federal spending cuts, including to international food aid. (Photo courtesy of Matthew Fitzgerald)

1. Exclusive: DOGE Cancels Contract That Enables Farmer Payments, Despite $0 Savings
February 19, 2025
Civil Eats was the first to report on how the Department of Government Efficiency pulled the plug on a contract that enabled thousands of farmers in multiple states to access previously approved grant funding.

2. USDA Continues to Roll Out Deeper Cuts to Farm Grants: A List
March 11, 2025
As details of the agency’s freeze on grant payments trickled out and farmers struggled to get answers, we began a running list of which programs were frozen, canceled, or still operating.

3. USDA Publicizes Canceling a Grant to an Organization That Trains Young Farmers
March 13, 2025
The Agriculture Secretary posted an Instagram “DOGE update” announcing that USDA had canceled a $397,000 grant in the Bay Area because it aimed “to educate queer, trans, and BIPOC urban farmers.” Civil Eats tracked down the name of the recipient group, and later published an in-depth story about them.

4. Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker Introduces Bill to ‘Honor Farmer Contracts’
March 27, 2025
Booker’s bill, also introduced in the House by Representative Gabe Vasquez (D-Texas), would require the USDA to release frozen grant funds and prohibit the termination of existing contracts.

5. 6 Proposed Farm Bill Changes to Watch
April 10, 2025
A roundup of important bills that touch land access, meat industry concentration, state animal welfare laws, crop insurance, and more.

Members of Together We Will gather outside a USDA research facility in Albany, California, to demonstrate in support of federal workers and against Trump administration cuts to the USDA. (Photo credit: Brian Calvert)

6. USDA Shares (Incomplete) List of Frozen Programs With Congress
April 11, 2025
For the first time, the agency provided details on its review of grant programs with Congress. But Civil Eats reviewed the list and found that, based on our ongoing reporting, several stalled programs were missing.

7. USDA Cancels Climate-Smart Commodities Program, but Some Projects May Continue
April 14, 2025
The agency said it would review existing projects based on new criteria and continue to fund those that qualify under a new name, the Advancing Markets for Producers initiative.

8. Trump Orders Deregulation of the US Fishing Industry
April 18, 2025
The push for deregulation outlined in an executive order came on top of significant cuts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which monitors fish stocks. Civil Eats followed up with a deeper look at what the NOAA cuts might mean for fisheries.

9. Lawmakers Listen to Farmer Concerns During Two-Week Break
April 21, 2025
During the Congressional recess, lawmakers around the country from both parties heard directly from farmers about their worries concerning federal funding freezes and cuts. Civil Eats attended one event and included reporting on others.

10. FDA Plans to Eliminate Artificial Food Dyes By End of 2026
April 22, 2025
Commissioner Marty Makary and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said food companies are eager to work with them on removing petroleum-based dyes from foods.

Agroecology Commons, a nonprofit farming collective based in El Sobrante, California, was among many groups whose grants were canceled by the USDA. (Photo credit: Riley Ramirez)

11. Exclusive: Representative Chellie Pingree Introduces Agriculture Resilience Act
April 22, 2025
The organic farmer from Maine said the bill will help farms survive, and will significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions from farming at a time when Republicans are actively fighting climate action.

12. Federal Agents Detain Workers at a Vermont Dairy Farm
April 24, 2025
Back in April, when the Trump administration’s approach to immigrant farmworkers was still unclear, this raid marked the first signal that the food system would not be spared as the Department of Homeland Security stepped up its mass deportation campaign.

13. USDA Scraps Rules That Would Have Stopped Sale of Salmonella-Tainted Chicken
April 25, 2025
The framework proposed under President Biden was called “one of the greatest advances in food safety in a generation.”

14. 5 Takeaways from the First 100 Days of Tracking the Trump Administration on Food and Farming
April 30, 2025
From funding freezes to climate rollbacks, a review of some of the biggest stories from the first 100 days of the second Trump administration.

15. USDA Hangs Massive Banners of Trump and Lincoln
May 15, 2025
Trump has repeatedly compared himself to Lincoln, who signed legislation creating the USDA in 1862. Our photos of the USDA’s new display were some of the first posted by a news organization.

U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks alongside President Donald Trump during a press conference in May, in Washington, D.C. (Photo credit: Andrew Harnik, Getty Images)

16. EPA Defunds Research Into PFAS Contamination on Farms
May 19, 2025
University teams studying how “forever chemicals” contaminate soil and groundwater, including projects focused on farms, lost millions in grant funding.

17. USDA Introduces Policy Agenda Focused on Small Farms
May 20, 2025
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins rolled out a 10-point plan that included environmental deregulation and prioritizing local farmers in food procurement policies, despite the fact that the USDA had withdrawn and canceled more than $1 billion for such funding earlier in the year.

18. MAHA Report Focuses on Ultra-processed Foods, Goes Light on Pesticide Risks
May 22, 2025
RFK Jr. and other members of the cabinet emphasized feeding kids “whole foods produced by American farmers,” but their actions to date may be making that harder.

19. USDA Drops Rules Requiring Farmers to Record Their Use of the Most Toxic Pesticides
June 3, 2025
Pesticide watchdog groups said the regulations should be strengthened, not thrown out.

20. Agriculture Appropriations Bill Could Gut Landmark Farmer Protections
June 9, 2025
Republicans included provisions in the bill to prevent the implementation and enforcement of the Packers and Stockyards rules, completed under Biden.

Federal immigration agents face off against protestors in Camarillo, California, during a raid in July. (Photo credit: Brian Calvert)

21. ICE Raids Target Workers on Farms and in Food Production: A Running List
June 11, 2025
Immigration enforcement actions at workplaces increased significantly as federal agencies attempted to meet new White House goals of 3,000 arrests per day. We are keeping a record of those actions here, as they happen.

22. USDA Cancels Additional Grants Funding Land Access and Training for Young Farmers
June 24, 2025
The future of other awards in the Increasing Land, Capital, and Market Access Program remains unclear.

23. Department of Labor Suspends Protections for H-2A Guest Workers and Announces Plan to Bring in More
June 25, 2025
The administration said a new office will speed up farmer applications, but worker groups said that means protections for guest workers are needed more than ever.

24. Federal Agents Detain Farmworkers in Large-Scale Raids at Two Southern California Farms
July 10, 2025
Civil Eats reported from the scene, where officers pointed guns, threw smoke canisters, and shot rubber bullets at protestors.

25. USDA Cancels More Support for Regional Food Systems
July 15, 2025
The agency eliminated the Regional Food Business Centers, which help small farms and other food businesses build local infrastructure. Civil Eats reported on the centers’ work earlier this year.

The post The Most Important Food Policy Changes of 2025 So Far appeared first on Civil Eats.

]]> https://civileats.com/2025/08/04/the-most-important-food-policy-changes-of-2025-so-far/feed/ 0 https://civileats.com/2025/07/30/op-ed-we-need-a-food-bill-of-rights/ https://civileats.com/2025/07/30/op-ed-we-need-a-food-bill-of-rights/#comments Wed, 30 Jul 2025 08:00:42 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=66391 And yet in Oklahoma, where my roots run deep, too many people are hungry, with 15.4 percent of residents facing food insecurity compared with a national average of 12.2 percent. The state’s food landscape is marked by widespread food insecurity, limited grocery stores—especially in rural and low-income communities—and a growing dependence on dollar stores and […]

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Oklahoma sits at the center of the U.S. wheat belt, exporting grain across the world and supplying flour that fills pantries nationwide. It is a major pork producer and also part of America’s cattle corridor, ranking second in cow-calf operations that support the country’s beef supply. The state grows significant amounts of corn, soybeans, and sorghum as well. In short, Oklahoma is a powerhouse of food production.

And yet in Oklahoma, where my roots run deep, too many people are hungry, with 15.4 percent of residents facing food insecurity compared with a national average of 12.2 percent. The state’s food landscape is marked by widespread food insecurity, limited grocery stores—especially in rural and low-income communities—and a growing dependence on dollar stores and food banks. Access to healthy food remains underfunded and undervalued.

Despite the fact that Oklahoma consistently ranks among the top 10 states for food insecurity, the political will to invest in equitable food systems is on life support. While Oklahoma lawmakers have enacted stricter regulations and oversight for the cannabis industry in recent years, they have not shown the same urgency or coordinated investment when it comes to strengthening the state’s food system. For example, for every food-related legislative bill, there are five for cannabis.

Tambra Stevenson at Oklahoma’s state capitol, in Oklahoma City. 
(Photo credit: Photo_by_Wheelz)

By contrast, in my current home of Washington, D.C.—a 68-square-mile district without vast swaths of farmland or a state department of agriculture—only 10.6 percent of District residents face food insecurity.

In D.C., food justice has a seat at the policy table through ever-growing, supportive infrastructure, including the D.C. Food Policy Council, which adopted the “right to food” as a policy priority around 2022.

Additionally, residents fight for their food rights. In 2024, for instance, they pushed back against Mayor Muriel Bowser’s decision to withhold a 10 percent Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefit increase approved by the D.C. Council, the legislative branch of D.C.’s local government. Under mounting pressure—including public demonstrations and potential lawsuits by Legal Aid D.C.—the mayor reversed course and agreed to implement the benefit boost.

Oklahoma and D.C. offer a tale of two plates: one undernourished by misguided politics but piled high with possibility, the other well fed through civic engagement and equitable governance (though there is, of course, room for improvement). The difference between the two isn’t land or resources—it’s participation, the heart of democracy.

I believe we need to equalize these two plates by pushing for food democracy in places where it has eroded. All people, not just corporations or disconnected policymakers, should have the power and agency to shape what’s grown, what’s eaten, and how we are nourished. We, the people, need to reclaim our food freedom and build food systems rooted in local economics, health, sustainability, justice, and belonging.

Crumbling Community Power in the Heartland

I was born and raised in Oklahoma, in the heartland of the U.S., to a family with deep agricultural roots. After emancipation from slavery in Texas, my great-great-grandfather Jiles Burkhalter and his wife Delia Lola “Delie” owned  one of 13,209 farms operated by African Americans in Oklahoma. With more than 800 acres in McIntosh County, the Burkhalters grew food and raised cattle for themselves and the community, according to my 98-year-old grandmother, Ruby (Burkhalter) Tolliver, a retired nurse in Oklahoma City.

In the 1960s, however, the U.S. government authorized the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to construct Lake Eufaula, one of the largest man-made lakes in the country, in the southeastern part of the state. The project flooded over 105,000 acres, displacing thousands of Indigenous and African American families including my own, stripping them not only of acreage but also of agency.

“All people, not just corporations or disconnected policymakers, should have the power and agency to shape what’s grown, what’s eaten, and how we are nourished.”

Big agriculture and corporate lobbyists filled the vacuum, pushing policies that prioritized profit over people. Over time, as community institutions lost funding , so too did the platforms for everyday people to shape their food future—replaced instead by a top-down system that rewarded consolidation and disconnection. In the city of Checotah, where my cousin Leonard Hill sells the produce he grows at a nearby farm, only 1,212 out of 12,650 residents voted in the May 2025 elections. That’s less than 9 percent. That’s not apathy; it’s a sign that people don’t feel they have power. In some D.C. wards, more than 30 percent of residents show up to the polls.

Because of its diminished civic infrastructure and a supermajority of lawmakers aligned with corporate interests, Oklahoma is ground zero for Project 2025—a test site for policies that aim to shrink the public safety net, dismantle food programs, and silence local voices. What’s happening here isn’t accidental; it’s strategic. Oklahoma serves as the canary in the coal mine—a warning sign for the nation. While places like D.C. retain its SNAP increase due to organized networks of nonprofits, activists, and local leaders who push back, Oklahoma lacks the protective layers like the civic networks that once thrived.

The state’s rapid policy shifts are not just harming its own people—they’re laying the groundwork for what could happen across the country if communities don’t organize, speak up, and reclaim power over their food and futures.

Without a sustained structure for public governance, there’s no consistent forum to bring people together to coordinate strategies—and Oklahoma communities have little defense against threats to local and regional food systems. The unchallenged arrival of big box retailers like Walmart, for instance, has led to the closure of local grocers and reduced community control over the food system.

Inside the greenhouse at 3L Farms, Rentiesville, Oklahoma. (Photo credit: Leonard Hill)

In the absence of citizen-powered safeguards, Oklahoma is particularly vulnerable to state and federal threats to food security. In June, Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt was among the 13 Republican governors who opted out of participating in the federal summer nutrition program.

This, in a state where one in four children are hungry. In addition to missing out on $120 per child during the summer, leaving our kids without vital nutrition, the local food retailers that accept SNAP/EBT suffer—because every SNAP dollar spent can generate nearly $2 in local economic activity.

The federal government’s cuts to social safety nets over the last six months have left Oklahoma especially at risk as well. In February, the Trump administration weakened local food supply chains by cutting the USDA’s Regional Food System Partnerships program, which connected farmers to schools and food banks.

Then, on July 4th, Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, substantially cutting funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and other nutrition programs that feed and educate our communities in need. Also this month, the administration terminated the Regional Food Business Centers program, leaving farmers without the critical infrastructure they need to grow and distribute food locally.

In states with stronger food democracy, where food policy councils, local leadership, and civic engagement are in place, communities are better equipped to resist and adapt to these cuts. But in Oklahoma, where civic infrastructure has been deliberately weakened, these changes will hit hard.

Despite the many challenges, Oklahoma is full of food freedom fighters—farmers, tribal leaders, and advocates—who are building pathways to reclaim power from the soil up. My cousin Leonard is one of them.

In Rentiesville, Leonard runs a teaching operation called 3L Farms, named after him, his wife Latitia, and their daughter Londyn, where he grows tomatoes, okra, peppers, squash, and cucumbers along with sunflowers and zinnias.

“Oklahoma is ground zero for Project 2025—a test site for policies that aim to shrink the public safety net, dismantle food programs, and silence local voices.”

Oklahoma is home to more than 18,200 Native-run farms. In partnership with Creek and Cherokee Nations, Leonard supplies farm-fresh produce to food banks and schools across the state, helping to fill the gaps left by state and federal retrenchment.

A father himself, Leonard built relationships with the local Heart Start programs and schools to deliver vegetables to families. And he’s transforming an old school into a community food hub for youth to grow, cook, and preserve what they harvest. His vision includes partnering with healthcare providers for food-as-medicine initiatives by providing them with local produce.

But producers and providers like Leonard, who are building power from the ground up, are the underdogs—and they can’t transform the system by themselves. They need the support of the people, partners, press, and policymakers to scale their impact and sustain their efforts. Still, they are showing that food democracy is not only possible—it’s already in motion. It just needs more hands and hearts behind it.

Leonard Hill of 3L Farms with Rachel Kretchmar of OKC Food Hub at the Oklahoma Local Agriculture Collaborative Conference in January. (Photo credit: Leonard Hill)

Food Democracy in D.C.

While Congress sets the broad rules of the game, passing legislation like the Farm Bill, it is local food policy councils that give everyday people a structured, sustained voice in shaping food policy that reflects community needs.

As a former member of the D.C. Food Policy Council, I saw firsthand the benefit of centering community voices in making food-system decisions. During my nine years on the council, I co-chaired the Nutrition and Health Working Group (now called the Health and Nutrition Education working group), where we worked to ensure the nutrition and healthcare sectors were fully recognized as part of the local food economy.

We convened public forums, set policy priorities, and developed reports that advised the mayor and the food policy director. We collaborated across agencies to assess the feasibility of these policies—not just in theory, but through real budgets, procurement rules, and program design.

Londyn, daughter of Latitia and Leonard Hill, at her family farm, 3L Farms in Rentiesville, Oklahoma. (Photo credit: Leonard Hill)

As a result, D.C. leads the nation in implementing innovative food-as-medicine programs like Produce Rx and medically tailored meals covered under Medicaid. Providing healthy food prescriptions to low-income residents, these programs reduce diet-related disease, drive revenue to local farmers and food entrepreneurs, and promote equity in how the government buys and distributes food.

Perhaps not surprisingly, these programs are most common in places with strong civic infrastructure and engagement. Yet even in D.C., we face structural limits: lack of statehood, budget autonomy, and full Congressional representation. In 2025, for example, the House of Representatives withheld over $1 billion from the District’s locally approved budget, using essential programs like SNAP as political leverage.

Additionally, we are facing a crisis in food access because of increased food costs, tariffs, and now cuts to federal nutrition programs. The East of the River communities (Wards 7 and 8) in D.C. have long been nutritionally divested, and the closures of Good Food Markets and Harris Teeter grocery stores have only intensified the problem.

While we watch plans move forward for a new football stadium in Ward 7, I challenge our city leaders to protect food democracy and ensure that the economic gains from such developments help fund our basic needs.

The Way Forward: Balancing the Plates

To reduce the discrepancy between food access in places like D.C. and Oklahoma—and to increase civic participation in undernourished communities—we must pursue four key actions.

1. Establish state and local food policy councils to drive food democracy.
Local governments, especially in states like Oklahoma, must prioritize the creation and funding of food policy councils to coordinate action across sectors. These councils serve as vital platforms to engage citizens in shaping policy around healthy food access, economic development, and equity.

2. Create pathways for participation in produce prescription and food-as-medicine programs.
State legislatures and local agencies must open clear pathways for farmers, healthcare providers, food retailers, and community-based organizations to participate in food-as-medicine programs. These initiatives allow low-income patients to receive fresh produce as part of their healthcare while also supporting local farmers and food entrepreneurs.

3. Support cooperative farming and retail networks.
State and local governments can strengthen food sovereignty by investing in cooperative farming networks and grocery co-ops that share risk, knowledge, equipment, and markets. That means also supporting small local farms like 3L Farms. These models support land retention, build resilience, and create alternatives to corporate-dominated supply chains.

4. Enact a Food Bill of Rights to protect the right to food.
Ultimately, we must recognize that food is not just a commodity or cash crop but a human right. A Food Bill of Rights can serve as a framework to guide food policy at every level of government—federal, state, and local.

“Local food policy councils give everyday people a structured, sustained voice in shaping food policy that reflects community needs.”

In 2021, Maine became the first state to enshrine the right to food in its constitution, affirming the prerogative of every person to grow, harvest, and consume food of their own choosing. California, New York, West Virginia, Iowa, and Washington are exploring  similar legislation.

These four rights-based approaches empower communities to hold governments accountable and prioritize access to food, fair wages, and land. Local ordinances can play a role by funding cooperative groceries, expanding access to school meals, and ensuring public lands are used to grow food for communities in need. Let us treat healthy food access as essential infrastructure—just as critical as roads, bridges, and schools.

To my fellow food freedom fighters in Oklahoma, D.C., and everywhere in between: Don’t wait for a seat at the table. Build the table. Host community dinners. Meet with your representatives. Draft legislation. Testify at hearings. Ask how your school board, hospital, or city council is supporting or suppressing food democracy. Petition, protest, and plant seeds—not just kale or okra but of hope, justice, and power.

Across this country, our communities are suffering from food apartheid by policy. And if policy got us here, then policy can get us out—led by the people, for the people, and grounded in democracy. From the red dirt roads of Oklahoma to the halls of Congress, it’s time to balance the plates.

Let’s build a food system—and a nation—where everyone eats with dignity and power.

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]]> https://civileats.com/2025/07/30/op-ed-we-need-a-food-bill-of-rights/feed/ 1 https://civileats.com/2025/07/29/a-california-farming-collective-navigates-the-loss-of-federal-grants/ https://civileats.com/2025/07/29/a-california-farming-collective-navigates-the-loss-of-federal-grants/#comments Tue, 29 Jul 2025 08:00:57 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=66353 August 14, 2025 Update: A federal court judge granted a preliminary injunction in Agroecology Commons’ case against the USDA today, ordering the agency to reinstate the two terminated grant contracts and make payments on those contracts while the case proceeds. The decision applied to four other organizations involved in the lawsuit—Oakville Bluegrass Collective, Providence Farm […]

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]]> August 14, 2025 Update: A federal court judge granted a preliminary injunction in Agroecology Commons’ case against the USDA today, ordering the agency to reinstate the two terminated grant contracts and make payments on those contracts while the case proceeds. The decision applied to four other organizations involved in the lawsuit—Oakville Bluegrass Collective, Providence Farm Collective Corp, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, and the Urban Sustainability Directors Network—which also had their grants reinstated. 

Lesley Swain spent most of her adult life teaching English to middle and high school students in Oakland and Hayward, California. The 51-year-old used to joke with herself that when she retired, she would become a farmer. Then, about two years ago, Swain decided she didn’t want to wait any longer. She quit her job and started looking for agricultural work. But with no farming on her resume, she struggled to find opportunities to gain experience.

Eventually she found Agroecology Commons, a small nonprofit farming collective based in nearby El Sobrante, where she signed up for Bay Area Farmer-to-Farmer Training (BAFFT), a nine-month program for beginning farmers. Swain is now an apprentice with Berkeley Basket, an urban backyard community-supported agriculture project, through a program that Agroecology Commons offered to BAFFT graduates.

“It’s given me a path that is so healthy,” Swain said. “This is what I want to do, and I didn’t know how I was going to do it.”

Agroecology Commons has helped aspiring farmers like Swain since its founding five years ago. But like many organizations, it must now do more with less.

It was among hundreds of programs whose grants have been canceled by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

“We’re hoping that we’re successful in fundraising and campaigning to offset some of the losses,” said Jeneba Kilgore, one of four Agroecology Commons co-directors. “[But] I don’t think we’ll completely recuperate everything that was lost as a result of the federal cuts.”

Agroecology Commons co-director Brooke Porter admires the onions grown on the Agroecology Commons farm. (Photo credit: Riley Ramirez)

Thriving vs. Surviving

Agroecology Commons was formed in 2020 by an eclectic group of Bay Area farmers, educators, artists, and cooperative business owners who were passionate about the intersection of land and liberation. They have spent the last five years creating programs and providing spaces for farmer-to-farmer education and relationship-building for low-income and minority farmers.

The group grows a range of produce, including cherry tomatoes, onions, and beans, on three acres of land tucked into the hillside of a suburban neighborhood. They raise goats and harvest honey. And they run a center dedicated to educating farmers and community members about farming and land stewardship.

In August 2022, the USDA announced plans to allocate up to $300 million in funding to projects that enable underserved producers to access land and technical support. The funding was made available under the Increasing Land, Capital, and Market Access Program (ILCMA), which aimed to help those producers move from “surviving to thriving.”

“It’s a seismic blow, but at least we know and can start the next steps.”

In June 2023, Agroecology Commons was among 50 recipients the USDA selected from across the country. It was awarded a $2.5 million grant to find, buy, and develop land for up to 10 “BIPOC, LGBTQIA, and landless farmers” in the Bay Area. The same year, the Commons was awarded a three-year, $397,000 grant through the Community Food Projects Competitive Grant Program—a small program designed to address food and nutrition security in marginalized communities—also through the USDA.

“The ILCMA grant was revolutionary,” said Kilgore, who, with a background in cooperative business, is the “numbers” person on the team. The first program of its kind in the area, Agroecology Commons “was really going to support so many people that have been historically removed from the land in really harmful ways, and support their future generations.”

Not long after the Trump administration took office, however, the USDA froze the grants—first the Community Food Projects grant, then the ILCMA grant—making the money inaccessible for months.

At last, Agroecology Commons received a termination notice for the Community Food Projects grant on March 7, but has yet to receive an official termination notice for the ILCMA grant. However, Kilgore said the grant has been removed from their Automated Standard Application for Payments (ASAP) portal—the portal used by federal agencies to disburse funds to recipient organizations. In addition, although the organization wasn’t named, the USDA publicized that a $2.5 million grant for a Bay Area ILCMA project was canceled in a June press release.

Since the beginning of this year, the USDA has terminated a number of grants that had been offered to food and farming organizations across the county, canceling billions of dollars in funding. Some programs—such as one that provided funding for governments to purchase local food, and another that supported small farms and food businesses around the country—have been completely canceled. Others, like the Farmers Market Promotion, Community Food Projects Competitive Grant, and the ILCMA program, have not been ended altogether but have had individual contracts canceled.

About 35 percent of the Commons’ work is funded by the state, foundations, individual donors, and earned income. But the remaining 65 percent of the work was made possible by these federal grants.

“It’s a seismic blow, but at least we know and can start the next steps,” Leah Atwood, another Agroecology Commons’ co-director, told Civil Eats in June.

Co-director Leah Atwood feeds Agroecology Commons’ goats a special treat of vegetable scraps and plums. (Photo credit: Riley Ramirez)

Increasing Land Access

Systemic barriers have historically made it harder for marginalized farmers to access the land and resources necessary to build lucrative businesses. Today, 95 percent of producers in the U.S. are white and 64 percent are male, according to the 2022 USDA Census of Agriculture.

“There are a lot of young farmers that don’t have access to land or inherited wealth and are not going to be able to disrupt that 95 percent ownership reality by just trying to go at it by themselves,” Atwood said.

The majority of the ILCMA grant was going to be used to purchase land to establish a commons—a collaborative system where land is owned and managed collectively, rather than by sole owner—for BIPOC, queer, and landless farmers. The grant was also going to fund 60 percent of Agroecology Commons’ staffing capacity for the next three years.

“I wish they would just say that they don’t want to support people of color, and they just want to support white men, because that is what they’re implying.”

The organization planned to purchase land in several counties across Northern California. They had already built a relationship with a real estate agent, Kilgore said, and had a list of sites that they were interested in purchasing, but before the team was able to move forward, the grant was frozen.

“When it came to the ILCMA grant, we were doing all the things that they said,” Kilgore said. “We’re supporting farmers; we’re supporting economic development; we’re supporting people to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps; we are giving people the opportunity to start their own business,” she said. “I wish they would just say that they don’t want to support people of color, and they just want to support white men,” she continued, “because that is what they’re implying.”

Brooke Porter (left) and volunteers Zoe Meraz (right) and Noelle Romero (center) inspect hive frames heavy with honey, making sure that the hives are healthy. (Photo credit: Riley Ramirez)

Training New Farmers

In addition to broadening land access, the Agroecology Commons seeks to pass on agricultural knowledge to those who may have trouble accessing it otherwise. It was using a second pot of federal money, the Community Foods Projects grant, to help fund training programs such as the BAFFT program Swain participated in.

The program not only gives participants the chance to learn, experiment, and practice land stewardship under the guidance of experienced mentors, but also enables them to take online courses from global partners on a range of topics, including social movements in agrarian reform, agroecology, and food sovereignty.

Once they complete the curriculum, new farmers can apprentice at Bay Area farms. Of the 40 BAFFT graduates so far, 17 are currently working as apprentices on 12 different farms, according to Brooke Porter, a co-director of the Commons. To alleviate socioeconomic conditions that might prevent new farmers from being able to gain experience, the Commons makes a point of paying both the apprentices and their mentors.

Oftentimes, opportunities for young farmers to gain essential on-farm skills require them to provide free time and labor, which requires a certain level of privilege, Porter said. Agroecology Commons’ program challenges that status quo, giving disadvantaged farmers the boost they need to get started.

“This is an opportunity to really change the dichotomy of how people typically get to learn on-farm skills,” Porter said.

“This is deeper than what I do for my career. This is ancestral work for me.”

The Berkeley Basket CSA program is currently hosting two of the Commons’ apprentices—Swain and Cielo Flores, 31. Flores, whose family from El Salvador has a deep history in agriculture, said he signed up for the farmer training program because he was interested in learning how to start his own farming project and cooperative. The program and apprenticeship provided him a template for how he could approach his own project.

“I wouldn’t be doing this without their support,” Flores said. “Agroecology Commons is trying to support me in my vision to become a farmer, to become a land steward. This is deeper than what I do for my career. This is ancestral work for me.”

Moretta “Mo” Browne, who joined Berkeley Basket CSA in 2019 and now owns it, is grateful that Agroecology Commons pays both hosts and participants in the apprenticeship program.

“I already wanted to be a part of it, but the fact that they were able to compensate folks really feels like they understand how exploitative this work can be,” they said. Additionally, getting paid to be a mentor only sweetens the deal. “Being able to live out your dream of being a farmer shouldn’t come at the cost of having a roof over your head or putting food on the table,” they said.

In addition to the apprenticeship opportunity, the Commons offers its El Sobrante incubator farm as a space where BAFFT program graduates can start their own farm projects and continue gaining hands-on training. The 3-acre plot has shared infrastructure, a tool-lending library, and tractors, helping eliminate the structural barriers to successful farming.

Among vegetables like tomatoes and onions, Agroecology Commons grows an array of native flowers on the farm. (Photo credit: Riley Ramirez)

Equity and Climate Efforts

In March, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins announced in a video on Instagram that the USDA had canceled the Agroecology Commons’ Community Food Projects grant. She stated that the termination was because the grant aimed “to educate queer, trans, and BIPOC urban farmers and consumers about food justice and values aligned markets.”

“We knew a lot of our language has the DEI buzzwords that they’re looking for and the climate focus that they have been targeting, so [the termination] didn’t come out of thin air,” Atwood said.

Only about $32,000 of the grant remains. As a result, the organization has had to pause some projects, such as the creation of financial literacy and cooperative business-planning workbooks. It also cut back on the number of apprenticeship hours it can offer. Last year, Porter said, the Commons offered apprentices the option to do 250- or 500-hour apprenticeships, but this year, it could only offer the lesser of the two.
“It is a much different learning experience, obviously,” she said.

As for the ILCMA grant, it wasn’t until June that Agroecology Commons became aware that it too was likely designated for cuts. A USDA press release announcing the cuts cited a $2.5 million grant “for expanding equitable access to land, capital, and market opportunities for underserved producers in the Bay Area” as an example of one of the terminated programs.

“Putting American Farmers First means cutting the millions of dollars that are being wasted on woke DEI propaganda,” Rollins said in the press release. “Under President Trump’s leadership, I am putting an end to the waste, fraud, and abuse that has diverted resources from American farmers and restoring sanity and fiscal stewardship to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.”

When asked in an email for further details regarding the grant cancellations, the USDA press office declined to comment.

While Agroecology Commons has yet to receive an official termination letter for the ILCMA grant, Kilgore said it is hard to move forward when they don’t know what might happen next. The organization has had to pause progress on its land commons project and shift its plans to bring on four more full-time employees to only two part-time staff.

Because of the financial constraints that have resulted from the grant terminations, the Commons has had to cut another program, Farmer Wellness Days, which has provided more than 145 farmers with acupuncture, massages, or chiropractic work.

“Try to imagine building something and choreographing planning on quicksand,” Atwood said. “It’s so much of an energy drain trying to figure out how to accommodate that.”

Former street dog Guistino, also known as “Goose,” spends his days adventuring around the Agroecology Commons. (Photo credit: Riley Ramirez)

Pressing Forward

Despite this, the organization has not given up. In June, Agroecology Commons joined five other groups to sue the USDA over the termination of the Community Food Projects grant. Their legal team later amended the complaint to add the ILCMA grant, after becoming aware of its likely cancellation.

The plaintiffs filed a motion for preliminary injunction on June 26, asking the court to stop the USDA’s behavior from continuing and for relief for the plaintiff grantees, according to FarmSTAND, a food-system-focused legal advocacy organization.

David Muraskin, managing director of litigation at FarmSTAND and one of the attorneys representing the case, said with the brief in support of the motion complete, the court can now issue an order. They hope a ruling will be made within a few weeks, he said, but it could also take months. And if the case moves to the appeals court, it could take a year at minimum.

While federal funding cuts have forced Agroecology Commons to scale down some of its initiatives, state funding has enabled the group to expand another one of its programs, which provides young farmers with financial resources to start their own farming operations.

The seed grant program—which addresses resource inequity among beginning farmers—has typically offered $1,000 to $5,000 grants to BAFFT graduates and the apprentice program’s hosts. This year, however, the organization will be able to offer eligible farmers up to $50,000 in seed grants after the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) awarded the program $784,000.

Prior to receiving the CDFA grant, 26 seed grants had been given out, totaling nearly $69,000, Porter said. This year $400,000 will be distributed to people in the Bay Area, who, like Lesley Swain, are pursuing their farming dreams.

Agroecology Commons may be able to help fewer new farmers, but they’re still offering a vital source of support, and they aren’t giving up.

“We’re not retracting any of our goals,” Atwood said. “We are continuing to be outspoken that we do believe that this type of work needs to center BIPOC, queer, and landless farmers.”

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]]> https://civileats.com/2025/07/29/a-california-farming-collective-navigates-the-loss-of-federal-grants/feed/ 1 https://civileats.com/2025/07/28/could-child-care-centers-strengthen-local-food-systems/ https://civileats.com/2025/07/28/could-child-care-centers-strengthen-local-food-systems/#respond Mon, 28 Jul 2025 08:00:20 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=66072 Last year, federal stabilization grants provided to the child care sector during the pandemic ended, leaving many centers in “survival mode,” says Bloom, a local foods extension specialist who is diligently working to build relationships between child care facilities and small farmers. Through her research, Bloom, herself a mom, hopes to improve food access for […]

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Ever since the pandemic, the child care sector has grappled with tight budgets, staffing shortages, and low wages. Dara Bloom, an associate professor at North Carolina State University, has watched over the years as many of these centers have struggled to serve fresh fruits and vegetables to kids, especially when inflation and food prices soared.

Last year, federal stabilization grants provided to the child care sector during the pandemic ended, leaving many centers in “survival mode,” says Bloom, a local foods extension specialist who is diligently working to build relationships between child care facilities and small farmers. Through her research, Bloom, herself a mom, hopes to improve food access for underserved communities and economic opportunities for small farmers. She says the child care sector can play a key role—if given the chance.

“Those early [childhood] stages are so important, especially in terms of health and nutrition. It’s a chance to set children’s taste preferences early.”

Child care centers were set to receive a helping hand this year, after the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) expanded the Local Food for Schools (LFS) program last October to include child care sites. Under the Biden administration, the program earmarked $188.6 million for fresh, local produce for child care facilities already participating in the Child and Adult Care Food Program, which reimburses the centers for providing healthful meals and snacks.

Participating sites range from home-based ones serving up to 15 kids to large private daycare providers and programs connected to public school systems, such as Head Start and Early Head Start.

The additional LFS funding would have been a game-changer for the child care industry, Bloom says. But five months after the USDA expanded the LFS program to child care, the Trump administration terminated the program. The decision sparked extensive media coverage of the impact on schools and food banks, but child care didn’t receive much attention—because it had yet to receive any funding.

However, child care, an often-overlooked sector, could become a larger part of local food systems, Bloom says. Through a farm to early care and education (ECE) program at the Center for Environmental Farming Systems, where Bloom also serves as assistant director, she tests and evaluates local food supply chains for child care that help create better markets for farmers.

The center then creates resources to help others replicate these systems in their own communities—for example, a step-by-step local food-buying guide for child care that offers guidance on understanding ingredient seasonality, where to find farmers, and how to order and incorporate local farm food on menus.

Civil Eats recently spoke to Bloom about her research, healthy eating habits for children, and how the child care sector can support small and midsize farms.

Dara Bloom visits Locklear Farms in Pembroke, North Carolina, which sells produce to a group of child care facilities as part of a farm-to-ECE program. (Photo credit: Bhavisha Gulabrai)

What are some of the ingredients of a resilient local food system?

In North Carolina, one of the things that has helped our local food system and issues of accessibility is a strong food hub network. If you look at our food system over the years, as things got bigger, we lost some local and regional food system infrastructure.

Food hubs are produce distributors, and a lot of them, especially in North Carolina, are nonprofits, and so they have a social mission. This includes working with small-to-midsize farmers who often need training to produce for a wholesale market, in terms of scale and [compliance with] food safety requirements. Many of our food hubs are selling to schools, and we’ve worked with them to increase purchasing for child care centers. That middle infrastructure along the supply chain really helps.

What role can child care sites play in our food system?

We know from the research how important early childhood is developmentally, in terms of education and emotional, social, behavioral learning. Those early stages are also important in terms of health and nutrition. It’s a chance to set children’s taste preferences early.

Research shows it can take anywhere from eight to 15 exposures to new types of fruits and vegetables for kids to develop those preferences. And if you are a low-income family, it’s hard to put food on the plate that you know your kid isn’t going to eat, eight to 15 times.

You want to give your kid something they’re going to eat, that is going to fill them up, and that they’ll love, especially if you’re on a tight budget and maybe have to say no to a lot of things. So, there is this opportunity in child care to do what maybe some low-income families wouldn’t be able to do, which is to increase that exposure.

Children learn about fresh fruit and vegetables with hands-on activities like making spinach smoothies and art projects. (Photo credit: Marcello Cappellazzi)

What challenges do child care providers face in buying and serving local food?

Over the years, there has been a shift to purchasing more processed foods or relying on canned or frozen foods, especially produce. There can be a lot of work to help those [child care] buyers look at their menus, understand seasonality, and find recipes to try new local products. They also need to figure out how to have the staff time, the skill set, and the equipment that’s needed to process local food, especially fresh fruits and vegetables.

Post-COVID, they’re struggling with staffing. We’ve heard stories about child care programs that will lose their cook and so they’ve got teachers or the director coming in to cook meals. I’ve seen reports that staff wages are so low that they’re often on public assistance themselves.

Finding local farmers and knowing how to approach them or work with them is also a challenge, since that takes extra time, which centers often just don’t have. Space and storage are another piece. I’ve visited some child care centers with kitchens that are smaller than my home kitchen, and they might be preparing a breakfast, snack, lunch, and maybe even an afternoon snack for 150 kids. In that situation, it helps to have pre-chopped fruits and vegetables.

Much of your work is focused on farm-to-ECE programs. What are they and how would the Local Food for Schools funding have impacted farm-to-ECE initiatives?

We see farm-to-ECE programs as having three components. One is local food procurement: sourcing from farmers and getting local food on the plate for meals and snacks. Two is experiential learning in the garden. And three is food-based learning, exposing kids to cooking in the classroom. There’s something about that experiential piece of being in the garden and experiencing the food in the classroom setting and learning about it. Then it’s on the plate, they’ve had those repeated exposures and are more likely to eat it.

When we started doing this work, we heard from a teacher at a child care center who said that parents would ask, “What’s going on? I didn’t think my kid would eat this [vegetable].” They’re so surprised when those behaviors carry over at home. We had a parent who said they went to the supermarket, and their kid was yelling, “I want broccoli!”

Our hope with the funding was to reach new child care programs and expand farm-to-ECE programming to reach more children and families.

Obviously, the funding never began, but farmers could have benefited, too. What can you say about the loss of that money for farmers?

This was an opportunity to introduce farmers to a new market, create interest, and train technical assistance providers at the county level. This assistance could help farmers with barriers to selling to the school system, such as the Good Agricultural Products certification, which can be hard for smaller-scale farmers because of the cost and paperwork.

“The child care market can be a great starting point for farmers who are interested in shifting toward wholesale.”

Also, the school system can be so large that farmers don’t have enough volume for it. Child care is not the largest market, but it can be a great outlet for a smaller scale farm that’s not going to be able to meet the demands of a larger market like the school system.

Child care can also be a great starting point, almost like a steppingstone, for farmers who are interested in shifting toward wholesale. The child care market gives them the chance to work with an institutional buyer while they build their own infrastructure, with the hope that maybe they’ll be able to scale up someday to serve that larger market.

How were you and other food-system players preparing for the funding?

The funding could only be spent on local food, so it had to go directly to farmers—which was a great benefit for farmers, but it didn’t cover any overhead, like administrative fees, for non-farmers. It was hard to find an organization with the capacity to handle that much funding without being able to hire someone or pay for someone’s time to manage the funds, distribution, and record-keeping that would come with it.

We worked with the North Carolina Department of Agriculture to do outreach to partners we thought could distribute the funds. We worked closely with Working Landscapes, which is a food hub that was taking a leadership role in organizing other food hubs around the state. They felt strongly enough that it fit their mission and would be such a benefit to themselves and other food hubs that they were willing to be the fiscal sponsor.

Where will you go from here?

Moving forward, we’ll continue supporting our partners with the resources we have, and then in the future we’re trying to have a plan so that if there is ever funding available, we will know how to best implement it in a way that supports all stakeholders.

We’re trying to continue supporting child care centers, farmers, and food hubs, and we’re hoping to organize regional meetups over the summer. We’re still trying to bring those partners—food hubs and child care centers—to the table. We are creating resource documents from our research, like a local food buying guide for child care centers.

The possibility to work on the program is still there. But sometimes it feels like a lot to ask of child care providers. If they’re struggling to get by, it can be hard to take this extra time and energy and find the funds to do this. But we also know that child care programs are dedicated to the health of the children they serve.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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