UNFI Picks Up Living Greens Farm Products in Midwest Expansion

I|mage from: Living Green Farms

Living Greens Farm (LGF), the largest vertical, indoor aeroponic farm in the US that provides year-round fresh salads, salad kits, microgreens and herbs, announced the addition of significant new retail distribution of its products in the upper Midwest to independent, specialty, and co-op retailers.

Starting February 2021, LGF’s full line of products featuring ready-to-eat bagged salad products (Caesar Salad Kit, Southwest Salad Kit, Harvest Salad Kit, Chopped Romaine, and Chopped Butter Lettuce) will be carried by UNFI Produce Prescott (formerly Alberts Fresh Produce). UNFI Produce Prescott is a division of UNFI, which distributes food products to thousands of stores nationwide. Their focus is on independent, specialty and co-op retailers.

UNFI has eight warehouses nationwide. LGF’s products will be carried by their upper Midwest location, located just across the river from the Twin Cities in Prescott, WI. This distribution center services hundreds of retailers throughout Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, North Dakota, South Dakota, Missouri, Iowa and Nebraska. UNFI is the first national Certified Organic distributor, something they take a lot of pride in. Their produce and floral businesses are rooted in local farms and seasonal import growers.

LGF’s proprietary vertical indoor farming method yields the highest quality and freshest produce available. This is because there are no pesticides or chemicals used in the growing process. And because LGF’s growing, cleaning and bagging process significantly reduces handling and time to the retail shelf, consumers enjoy the freshest product on the market. These benefits continue to attract new users and new retail distribution as UNFI Produce Prescott is the second UNFI location to carry LGF. In December, UNFI’s Hopkins, MN location began offering LGF products.

For more information on why Living Greens Farm products are the cleanest, freshest and healthiest farm salads and greens available, go to www.livinggreensfarm.com.

Forget Politics, Danny Ayalon Wants to Effect Change on The Ground

Having transitioned from politics to agriculture, Danny Ayalon shares how vertical farming, which provides fresh fruits and vegetables all year round, and lab-grown meat can rehabilitate the environment and dramatically reduce household expenditures.

Image from: Yehoshua Yosef

The coronavirus pandemic has drawn attention to humankind's carbon footprint. More than ever before we ask ourselves, how can we become more sustainable? Can we prevent pollution? How can we minimize waste? What about lowering emission levels? Will there be enough food for everyone in the future?

Danny Ayalon, a former ambassador and foreign policy adviser to three prime ministers-turned entrepreneur,  believes that the answer to many of the world's problems lies in modern agriculture. 

Having transitioned from politics to agriculture, he works with Future Crops, an Amsterdam-based company focused on vertical farming – the practice of growing crops in vertically stacked layers that often incorporates controlled-environment agriculture, which aims to optimize plant growth – and MeaTech, a company that creates lab-grown meat.

"Ever since the coronavirus came into our lives, we realized that man is not in charge of the universe," Ayalon told Israel Hayom. 

"Our control over the forces of nature, of Earth, of our future is more limited than we had thought. And when we are no longer in charge of the world, only three things guarantee our lives here: food, water, and energy security. Food, water, and energy are three resources that can be depleted and therefore literally cast a cloud on our world. 

"Experts have come to a conclusion that one of the most important fields to focus on is agriculture, and indeed we are currently witnessing the most significant agricultural revolution ever since the first agricultural revolution that took place about 10,00 years ago."

Q: Back then, in the first agricultural revolution, there was a need for a lot of land. 

"But today we have technology. The name of the game is to reach maximum output with minimum input in the smallest space possible. This is the holy grail of the new revolution. And that is how technology enters the picture. To grow fruits, vegetables and spices today requires lots of space. The technology we developed at Future Crops allows us to minimize the space, increase production and redefine the food supply chain."

Q: How exactly? 

"We have a nine-story hangar in Amsterdam to grow crops like coriander, basil, dill, and parsley. It has LED lights, and each plant gets exactly the amount of light it needs. We are the plant psychologists, [we] listen to all its needs and do everything to make sure the plant grows in the most optimal way. 

Image from: Future Crops

"If it lacks something, it immediately receives water. Everything is done without a human's touch. We use algorithms and big data in collaboration with world-class researchers from the Weizmann Institute. It is essentially the application of vertical farming, growing various crops in vertically stacked layers,  in enclosed structures, on soil platforms. 

"For example, if it takes a month to grow lettuce in an open field, in a vertical farm, it takes two weeks, half that time. There's also a significant reduction in water consumption, and no pesticides or sprays are used at all. Also, the produce is available in all seasons; it does not depend on the temperature. Whoever likes mangos and strawberries, for example, will be able to enjoy them all year round."

Q: So if produce is grown faster and within a smaller space, is it going to cost less?

"The prices might be a bit higher today because this technology and the various infrastructures require an economic return of the initial investment in them. With time, the process will become more efficient, and the investments will be repaid, so in the end, the prices that the consumer will need to pay will be lower than today. 

"Let me give you a simple example. Do you know how much a kilogram [2.2 pounds] of basil costs in Europe today? €90 ($108). In Israel, the price is €20 ($24). In the [United Arab] Emirates, where almost everything connected to food is imported – the prices go accordingly as well. Once you have more innovative vertical farms, consumers will pay much less."

Q: Should we expect vertical farm skyscrapers to pop up all over? 

"I'm not sure that we will need skyscrapers, as with time the facilities will become smaller. Imagine that in every supermarket there will be a vertical produce stand with all the vegetables and spices, and later also fruits which you pick on the spot, without the need to move the produce from place to place. That is why vertical farming is also called urban farming, meaning there is no need for fields; you can grow [produce] on the rooftop. No resource limits you."

Q: What about the taste? 

"Ours is a fresher and tastier product. I ought to give credit to the Weizmann Institute here. The challenge for them wasn't the quality of the vitamins but the taste, and they managed to achieve a great taste. In the Netherlands, Future Crops already sells parsley, and it tastes outstanding."

Q: Regular parsley lasts for about two weeks in the fridge. What about Future Crops parsley? 

"Our parsley has a two-month shelf life, and it does not oxidize within a week or two."

Q: If every country will be self-reliant in terms of agriculture, do you think it will affect relations between countries? 

"Economies will become self-sufficient eventually, which will ensure security with far fewer conflicts. There is less and less water in the Middle East, which might someday lead to tensions. We hope technology will reduce the tensions between countries, and territory will be less critical. Our world faces crucial challenges. Food and water security have the potential to either divide or bring us together and ensure our long-term existence. 

"By the way, in every developed Western country, like the United States, Australia, and also in Europe, issues of food security, climate, and greenhouse emissions are on the top of the political agenda. We are not talking about it [in Israel,] as security and foreign affairs take the central stage, but Israel does have a lot to offer here."

Q: Do we have the potential to become the Silicon Valley of advanced agriculture? 

"Israel takes tremendous pride in its actions that help save the world. Will we become the Silicon Valley of agriculture? There is no doubt about it. We can already see foreign investors who come here to look for opportunities, including my business partner Lior Maimon, co-founder and CEO of Silver Road Capital, and Steven Levin, one of the leaders of the US food industry. Silver Road Capital is a holdings and financial advisory firm with a broad portfolio of high-tech companies, as well as agricultural and food technologies, and represents international companies and funds in investments in Israel and the world. 

"Future Crops's goal is to raise 35 million shekels on the Israeli stock exchange to invest in enlarging the existing facilities and [set up] other production lines and facilities in Europe and other continents. We cooperate with the Albert Heijn supermarket chain [in the Netherlands] and a leading food chain in France."

Q: Vertical farming is estimated at $3 billion. Google and Amazon have invested hundreds of millions in the field as well. What is their goal? 

"A simple answer would be profit. A longer answer is that they [large corporations] understand that food has the highest demand. People cannot live without food and water, and Google and Amazon understand that potential."

Q: US President Joe Biden took office with the largest team of climate experts ever. That ought to give the field momentum. 

"Green energy and vertical farming will get a considerable boost. Climate change and green energy are well-rooted in the Democratic Party's ideology. 

"It is also possible that large companies entered the agriculture fields precisely because of the Biden administration; they are worried about their future. They are afraid of a certain dismantling, so focusing on secondary fields is part of a security scenario for them."

Q: Biden also wants to address greenhouse emissions, which are the result of the food production industry, mainly meat. Are Amazon and Google's food counterparts - McDonald's and Burger King - looking for meat substitutes?

"Firstly, cultured [lab-grown] meat does not require grazing land, cows do not need to be fed, and so much land can instead be turned into forests that support the environment. This is an optimistic industry that leaves us with a better world. 

"As for the meat alternatives market, there are two major companies in the US that produce plant-based protein, Beyond Meat, and Impossible Foods. 

"Impossible's burgers are already at Burger King, McDonald's has partnered up with Beyond Meat, and last November, it announced that it would create its own plant-based burger. 

"The problem is that pea protein [used in plant-based burgers,] does not have all the amino acids that animal protein contains. Also, they need to add additives to supplement for taste and smell.

"At MeaTech, where I'm a director, we are on our way to producing animal meat, cultured meat, real stakes: we take a cow's own stem cell from which meat can be produced in almost unlimited quantities. We also use 3D digital printing technology. And we also created a thin layer of meat, carpaccio. Needless to say, no cow was harmed in the process."

Image from: MeaTech

Q: Why do you use 3D printers? 

"Because there is no need for a human being's involvement. It is relevant now during the coronavirus pandemic when the food supply chain is disrupted. With such printers, your production can continue without delays, whenever you want. 

Also, it is theoretically possible to provide food for space flights. Astronauts who go out into space will not have to take food with them; rather, they will be able to produce it on the spot.

"People understand that crises like the coronavirus can disrupt the supply chain and are looking for alternatives. A 3D printer allows restaurants, supermarkets, and butcher shops to have meat without relying on the supply chain."

Q: The death rate from obesity is higher than the death rate from hunger. How will cultured meat affect these statistics? 

"It is possible to create meat with much less fat and more protein in each portion and add various nutrients in the future to strengthen the immune system and prevent disease. This, of course, requires a lot of research and approvals. Just like there's talk about customized medicine, so it will be possible to produce food that suits a person's genetic structure and body in the most optimal way."

Q: Will the cost of this meat also be optimal? 

"They will cost more in the beginning compared to regular meat because there are initial costs that have to be repaid. When it becomes a mass production, prices will drop over time."

Q: With your vast experience in politics, what do you think of Israeli politics these days? Do you ever consider a political comeback? 

"No election campaign goes by without someone making me an offer [to return to politics] but I'm not interested. Unfortunately, the Israeli government, and all governments in the Western world, have not been able to run their countries properly in recent years.

"For example, more of the government's national taks are transitioning to the private market or the third sector. We see that associations [are the ones] who take care of the needy, establish settlements in the Negev and in the Galilee, bring immigrants to Israel and provide Israelis with information. All these things should be done by the government.

"The Israeli government lacks vision, ideologies, every matter is personal and is charged with negative sentiments. If I do return one day, it will only happen after we change the government system which will take its power from small [political] parties.

"In my opinion, we need to transition to a regional choice, by district. This will result in higher quality politicians. How so? Because whoever wants to be elected will need to run and convince the people who live in his area and district, and they are the ones who know his activities best. Also, closed primaries should be avoided because they make all kinds of deals possible. That needs to change."

Warehouse Becoming Vertical Farms — And They’re Feeding New Jersey

Image from: New Jersey 101.5

New Jersey's vertical farms are transforming agriculture by helping farmers meet growing food demand.

New Jersey Agriculture Secretary Doug Fisher said that while conventional farming in outdoor fields remains critical, vertical farming has its advantages because of its efficiency and resistance to pests and thus less need for chemicals.

Vertical farming is the process of growing food vertically in stacked layers indoors under artificial light and temperature, mainly in buildings. These plants receive the same nutrients and all the elements needed to grow plants for food.

Vertical farms are also versatile. Plants may be growing in containers, in old warehouses, in shipping containers, in abandoned buildings.

"That's one of the great advantages — that we can put agriculture in the midst of many landscapes that have lost their vitality," said Fisher.

ResearchandMarkets.com says the U.S. vertical farming market is projected to reach values of around $3 billion by the year 2024.

The one drawback is that its operational and labor costs make it expensive to get up and running.

Image from: AeroFarms

In the past decade, however, vertical farming has become more popular, creating significant crop yields all over the state.

AeroFarms in Newark is the world's largest indoor vertical farm. The farm converted a 75-year-old 70,000-square-foot steel mill into a vertical farming operation. AeroFarms' key products include Dream Greens, its retail brand of baby and micro-greens, available year-round in several ShopRite supermarkets.

Kula Urban Farm in Asbury Park opened in 2014. Vacant lots are transformed into urban farms and there's a hydroponic greenhouse on site. That produce is sold to local restaurants.

Beyond Organic Growers in Freehold uses no pesticides and all seeds and nutrients are organic. There's a minimum of 12,000 plants growing on 144 vertical towers. On its website, it says the greenhouse utilizes a new growing technique called aeroponics, which involves vertical towers where the plant roots hang in the air while a nutrient solution is delivered with a fine mist. It also boasts that by using this method, plants can grow with less land and water while yielding up to 30% more three times faster than traditional soil farming.

Vertical farms in New Jersey help feed local communities. Many are in urban areas and are a form of urban farming.

Fisher predicts that vertical farms will be operational in stores and supermarkets around the state.

"It's continued to expand. There's going to be many, many ways and almost any area in the state has the opportunity to have a vertical farm," Fisher said.

New York Governor Commits To Cannabis Legalization

12/18/2018

Graham Abbott

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo told reporters in a widely anticipated speech on Monday that he would push to legalize adult-use cannabis within a matter of months, The New York Times reports.

The move is expected to generate some $1.7 billion in annual sales and, according to Cuomo, is representative of his administration’s efforts to “advance our justice agenda and particularly address the forms of injustice that for too long have unfairly targeted the African-American and minority communities.”

“The fact is we have had two criminal justice systems: one for the wealthy and the well off, and one for everyone else,” he said.

Shortly after Cuomo’s speech, the Drug Policy Alliance announced via press release:

“Governor Cuomo and the new Democratic majority have a golden opportunity to get legalization done the right way, right away,” said Kassandra Frederique, the DPA’s executive director for the state of New York.

The New York Health Department issued a report earlier this year that suggested the pros of cannabis legalization would outweigh the cons of ongoing prohibition. Since then, officials have further informed their decision via dozens of public listening sessions on the issue.

Gov. Cuomo only recently came around to the idea of legalizing. He openly opposed the state’s hyper-restrictive medical cannabis program when it was established in 2014 and he relied on the tired trope of demonizing cannabis as a “gateway drug” as recently as last year.

Some believe that Cuomo’s shift on the legalization issue was spurred by former opponent in the Democratic gubernatorial primaries and celebrated “Sex and the City” star Cynthia Nixon, who announced her brief candidacyon a platform of ending cannabis prohibition and fixing the New York City subway system.

There are currently 10 states — plus Washington D.C. — that have opted for ending cannabis prohibition and many of them are neighboring New England states.

A Year After Passing “Green Roof” Law, Denver Suddenly the Focus of 20-Year “Cool Roof” Debate

By ANDREW KENNEY | akenney@denverpost.com | The Denver Post

October 27, 2018

RJ Sangosti, The Denver Post

The Flight office building, at 3575 Ringsby Court in Denver, has a green roof in its design on May 9, 2018 in Denver. If a cool roof ordinance was passed for the city, it would replace the green roof law that voters approved last year.

The days of sprawling black roofs in Denver may be ending — but they won’t go quietly.

The Denver City Council will decide Monday whether to create a “cool roof” law for the city. The big hope is that requiring reflective, light-colored roofs on large buildings would lower ambient temperatures, fighting back against the city’s heat-island effect.

“It’s not groundbreaking in Denver, but it’s one of the biggest” of the new cool roof laws, said Kurt Shickman, executive director of the Global Cool Cities Alliance. “They’ll join a small number of big cities.”

The change would affect new construction and reroofing projects for buildings over 25,000 square feet — not your typical home renovations. The new law also would force affected property owners to choose between creating green space, installing solar panels and saving energy.

And, for once, many developers are looking forward to a new rule: It would replace the “green roof” law that voters approved last year, which would have required more costly rooftop gardens. The proposal has the support of green-roof organizer Brandon Rietheimer.

Roofers vs. reformers

But even this smaller change has put the city in the middle of an ongoing debate between roofers and reformers. The council on Monday is likely to hear from industry representatives who say that the cool-roof mandate is an oversimplified approach for a complicated problem.

“Mandating a single component of a roofing assembly is just not what is good design practice,” said Ellen Thorp, associate executive director of the EPDM Roofing Association, which represents manufacturers of EPDM, a rubber membrane for roofs.

The trade association argued in a letter that cool roofs can cause two major problems in colder climates like Denver’s. First, they can purportedly accumulate moisture. Second, they are meant to retain less heat, which means heating bills can be higher.

“Some of the best roofs on the market really were not going to be allowed, period,” said Jeff Johnston, president of the Colorado Roofing Association, who says that much of his Steamboat Springs business is still focused on dark roofs.  “Why eliminate it?”

Colorado politics from city hall to the halls of Congress, sent every Thursday.

Attempting to adapt

The reason is simple, according to Katrina Managan, the city staffer who coordinated the roof revision.

“The reason to do them is to adapt to climate change,” she said. Denver could see a full month of 100-degree days in typical years at the end of the century, according to projections from the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization for a “high” warming scenario.

And the impact will be worse in urban areas, where dry, unshaded rooftops and pavement are baked by the sun and heat the air around them. Urban environments can average up to 5 degrees hotter than the surrounding rural areas, and the difference can be much greater at times, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Cool roofs address part of that problem: They reflect the sun’s energy away and stay up to 60 degrees cooler than traditional roofs, the EPA reported.

“It will save Denver a tremendous amount of money. It will create a huge amount of benefit through cooling. And it will set the example,” Shickman said. “It really does add to the argument that says we really should be considering this for almost all of our big American cities.”

City research found that the cool roof mandate would be more effective than the green roof initiative in combating heat, since the green roof requirement only covered parts of rooftops.

RJ Sangosti, The Denver Post

Nikki Smith, of Zeppelin Places, shows off the green roof at the Flight office building, at 3575 Ringsby Court, on May 9, 2018 in Denver.

The bottom line?

Major cities began adopting cool-roof requirements nearly 20 years ago, with northerly Chicago among the first. It’s been joined by Philadelphia, Baltimore, New York City and Los Angeles, among others, according to GCCA. Much of the southern United States is now covered by the requirements, and San Francisco in 2017 adopted the first “green roofs” requirement.

“We’ve been in an epic fight between the industry and those of us on my side who are trying to push this forward,” Shickman said.

Thorp, the EPDM Roofing Association representative, pointed to research to argue that Denver should proceed cautiously. Because cool roofs don’t get as hot, they can accumulate more condensation, which requires specialized designs to combat. And she said that a cooler roof could mean higher heating costs and thus more carbon emissions in colder Denver.

She acknowledged that the law would hurt sales of EPDM: Competing materials are cheaper and more popular for cool roofs. But she said that her clients also make those other materials.

“They’re going to make the sale one way or another,” she said.

Shickman countered that the companies are more heavily invested in EPDM, and therefore have a financial motivation to lobby against cool roofs. Other materials “have been eating the lunch of EPDM,” he said. Thorp declined to disclose sales figures for the companies, but said the organization’s “primary driver” was to give roofers options.

Cool roofs are already popular

A city poll of roofers found that about 70 percent of new roofs in Denver are “cool.”

“What we’re tending to find is most companies now are wanting to go to a light roof,” said Scott Nakayama, director of operations for Denver-based North-West Roofing. “The amount that they’re going to save, as far as heating and cooling bills, tends to stand out.”

His company has been installing about 20 light-colored roofs per year, and hasn’t encountered any of the issues raised by the EPDM Roofing Association, he said. Shickman points to this apparent lack of complaints as evidence that a well-designed cool roof can avoid moisture and other issues.

They do come at a cost premium: Cool roofs can cost about 1.5 percent more than a traditional roof, according to city-commissioned research by Stantec, the engineering company. Thorp said that estimate is too low.

If the law is approved, it could take several years before it starts to have a regional effect, since roofs generally only need replacement every 20 years.

The rest of the details

Under the change, developers of new builders can choose among the following options.

• Install green space on the building or on the ground.

• Pay for green space somewhere else.

• Install renewable energy or a mix of renewable energy and green space.

• Design the building for 12 percent energy savings compared to city standards, or achieve 5 percent savings plus green space.

• Achieve either LEED Gold or Enterprise Green Communities certification for green design.

Existing buildings will have similar types of options, with different details.

Foreign Beef Can Legally be Labeled “Product of U.S.A.” It’s Killing America’s Grass-Fed Industry.

How rampant mislabeling puts America's grass-based cattle producers out of business.

July 16th, 2018
by Joe Fassler

CULTURE ENVIRONMENT FARM POLICY SYSTEMS

Last month, in a petition formally filed with the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), two advocacy groups made a stunning claim: Your American grass-fed beef might actually come from overseas, even if it’s labeled “Product of U.S.A.”

Those two groups—the American Grassfed Association (AGA), which offers the country’s leading “grass-fed” certification, and the Organization for Competitive Markets, a watchdog group that fights corporate consolidation in the food industry—point out that a massive regulatory loophole allows companies to falsely, and yet legally, claim their imported beef comes from our pastures.

The trouble began in 2015, when the Obama administration’s USDA rolled back Country of Origin Labeling (COOL) for beef and pork products, allowing meat to be sold without disclosing its home country on the label. But that decision, which angered many American ranchers, has further muddied the waters in a way no one quite anticipated. Under the current rules, beef and pork products that are shipped to the United States and processed further here, can be labeled “product of U.S.A.,” even if the animal was raised a continent away. That means a steer slaughtered in Uruguay and broken down into steaks at a meatpacking plant in Colorado is technically American meat—even if it isn’t.  

Photograph by simarik (iStock), graphic by NFE

That’s a huge issue for American grass-fed producers, who are now finding themselves undercut by foreign competition. Allen Williams, a 6th-generation rancher and founding partner of Grass Fed Insights, a leading consulting group on grass-fed beef, says U.S. producers owned more than 60 percent of the domestic grass-fed market in 2014. Then came COOL repeal. By 2017, American ranchers’ share had plunged to just 20 to 25 percent, according to an industry analysis by the Stone Barns Center for Agriculture. Today, Williams, who consulted on the Stone Barns report, says American producers claim only about 15 percent of the grass-fed market—and that share is rapidly shrinking.

Ranchers attribute the decline directly to COOL repeal. The fact that foreign companies can pass their imported beef off as American, they say, has made fair competition impossible.

“The very idea of labeling beef in a grocery store ‘product of U.S.A.,’ when the animal never drew a breath of air on this continent, is just horrible,” says Will Harris, owner of White Oak Pastures, which produces its branded line of grass-fed beef in Bluffton, Georgia. (Harris is also on AGA’s board of directors.) “I don’t begrudge importers or producers from other countries selling to knowing consumers that want to buy that imported product. But I’m appalled at what the deception has done to the economies of our membership. It has moved the needle from grass-fed beef producers being profitable, to being a very break-even—or, if you’re not careful, a losing—proposition.” 

But though pastured beef often isn’t as American as it looks, a question remains: How much does it actually matter? I found myself wondering how much we mean to prioritize domestic purchasing when we spend a little more to buy grass-fed, and whether the product’s country of origin makes a meaningful difference. Are grass-fed steaks from Australia all that different from those raised on a ranch outside Austin, Texas? I wanted to know whether we we should stop handwringing about geography—or if misleading labels somehow betray the grass-fed ethos, and amount to a profound abuse of consumer trust.

Grazed and confused

If Williams is right that only 15 percent of the grass-fed beef is raised domestically, you wouldn’t necessarily know it just by strolling through the grocery store. On a recent trip to Trader Joe’s, I inspected a package of “100 percent grass-fed organic ground beef,” looking for clues about its origins. The casual observer could be forgiven for mistaking that product for American meat. The splashy consumer-facing label features a USDA organic seal, a USDA inspection sticker, and, in smaller print, the phrase “processed in USA” alongside Trader Joe’s corporate address in Monrovia, California. Of course, foreign beef can still be certified USDA organic and all imported meat goes through USDA inspection. But this product features not one but four allusions to the U.S. on its label. The average shopper wouldn’t be crazy to assume it’s coming from here.

Flip the package over, though—to the side few people read up close—and the label tells a different story. In small, no-frills font, below the freeze-by date and above the safe handling instructions, are the words “Product of USA, Australia, and Uruguay.” That phrasing would seem to suggest that Trader Joe’s ground beef is a blend of beef from American, Australian, and Uruguayan cows—an arrangement that might surprise some customers, given what the front of the package says. But even thatreasonable assumption may not be accurate. Trader Joe’s may only be buying Australian and Uruguayan meat that’s then ground at a facility in the U.S.—enough to qualify as American in the eyes of regulators. It isn’t really possible to tell.

Joe Fassler

If Trader Joe’s and other grocery brands were really selling meat from cows raised in this country, you’d think they’d make a bigger deal of it.

Trader Joe’s organic grass-fed ribeye steak also prominently features USDA’s organic and inspection seals on the front—as well as the phrase “Product of USA” in small font on the back, by the nutrition facts. But are the company’s grass-fed ribeyes really produced here? Or are they just processed here? It’s impossible to tell from the label alone, and Trader Joe’s had not responded to my requests for clarification by press time.

The Trader Joe’s scenario is a good example of how products can follow the letter of the labeling law and still be misleading. But other brands have done more to take advantage of this legal ambiguity—and some are downright deceptive.

Bubba Burger

Bubba Foods’ marketing would suggest that its beef is born and raised in the U.S. A look at its affidavit to the USDA suggest otherwise

Bubba Foods, a Jacksonville, Florida-based company whose products are sold by major retailers like Walmart, Kroger, and Wegman’s, puts its American-made claims front and center. The label on the company’s grass-fed ground beef displays a prominent “Product of USA” banner, complete with an American flag—and, if that wasn’t enough, the proud phrase “Born & Raised in the USA.” But paperwork filed with USDA, obtained by the American Grassfed Association and shared with me, suggests the product may not be American at all—at least, not in the conventional sense most shoppers would understand.

Any producer who wants to sell a commercial grass-fed beef product has to file an affidavit with USDA’s Food Standards Inspection Service (FSIS), laying out the agricultural practices it will use and submitting an example of their product label. Bubba’s affidavit includes several details that caught my attention, considering the aggressive nationalism of its label. A nutritional analysis describes the product as “import grass-fed” beef. It also includes an import record from Australia, noting that an “Australian National Vendor Declaration” will certify the product’s grass-feeding regime. The final 20 pages of the document lay out the specifics of Australia’s Pasture-Fed Cattle Assurance Standard, a program that isn’t available in other countries.

Bubba Foods initially assured me the company would answer my questions about the discrepancy, but did not provide more information after multiple follow-ups. At this point, the opacity only furthers my suspicion that the company is passing off its Australian grass-fed beef as a “born and raised” U.S. product—with the U.S. government’s blessing. (Bubba’s affidavit also contains a copy of its product label, which regulators presumably viewed in all its chest-thumping patriotism.) No wonder eaters are confused.

By now, it should be obvious that misleading—and, in some cases, overtly deceptive—labels are out there. But we still haven’t established whether any of this is a meaningful deception, materially speaking. Does anyone really care if their grass-fed beef comes from America or Australia—and, if not, should they?

Eating American

In his work as a consultant, Allen Williams and his clients have spent millions of dollars trying to pin down exactly what compels shoppers to buy grass-fed beef. His findings suggest that (relative) locality is a huge selling point: A desire to support America’s rural economies is one major reason people spend more to buy grass-fed. The preference is so clear that Williams believes virtually all of the products with fine-print “Product of USA” claims are really imported. If Trader Joe’s and other grocery brands were really making the effort to buy meat from cows raised in this country, you’d think they’d make a much bigger deal of it.

Charlie Bradbury runs Grass Run Farms, an American-raised, grass-fed beef brand owned by JBS, the world’s largest multinational meatpacker. He tells me that JBS—which has long sold grass-fed products from Australia and elsewhere, and marketed them as such—acquired Grass Run Farms because so many customers asked for specifically domestic grass-fed beef.

“The fact that the cattle are born and processed in the U.S. is an important reason people buy this product,” he says. “These cattle generally do come from smaller, family-farm operations. They [shoppers] believe the animal welfare is improved [in that context] and so, since our job is to sell beef, we’re trying to produce a system that fits in with those concepts.”

Will Harris offers some insight into why demand for American grass-fed is so strong. Over the years, he’s learned that customers buy White Oaks beef for three primary reasons: environmental sustainability, animal welfare, and to support rural economies, in that order. (Health considerations are a factor, too, but not in the top three.)

Each of these main drivers has a strong local emphasis, he tells me. If someone wants to help improve the environment, they’re likely to want to do so in their own backyard first. Those worried about animal welfare are more likely to feel assured by local products, with a farmer they know by name and a ranch they can visit, than by a product from a continent away. Finally, anyone buying grass-fed to support the local farm economy is certainly going to privilege domestic product. In Harris’s view, it couldn’t be any clearer—when buying grass-fed, Americans explicitly prefer that it be American.

But say you’re the kind of ethically minded meat eater who just wants to do what’s best for the planet in general. Does it really matter whether your burger comes from your local farmers’ market versus a ranch in Australia or Uruguay?

That’s harder to say.

Photograph by dustypixel (iStock), graphic by NFE

“If we are comfortable with the assumption that grass-fed beef is indeed more environmentally friendly than CAFO beef—and this depends quite a bit on your method for calculating environmental costs—then the real environmental impacts of grass-fed beef products have much more to do with how they are produced than where they are shipped from,” Caitlin Peterson, a PhD student in ecology at the University of California, Davis, told me by email. That’s because shipping beef across the ocean in a storage container is an incredibly cheap and efficient transportation method that doesn’t require much energy use or generate much pollution, even if it does rack up so-called “food miles.” Agricultural methods, she says, matter far more in general than transportation distances.

The trouble is that it’s very hard to get information about a given grass-fed producer’s practices. No government I could find legally defines a “grass-fed” standard. (The U.S. did, beginning in 2007—but ultimately revoked its standard in 2016, citing USDA’s inability to properly enforce it.) Though a few respected third-party certifications exist—the American Grassfed Association’s “Certified Grassfed” label is considered the gold standard by producers—ranchers can claim their product is grass-fed without independent verification. To use the term on products sold in the U.S., meat companies must only file an affidavit with USDA explaining how their grass-feeding program will operate. They can use an existing certification, or define their own protocols. As a result, practices vary widely, and quality control is difficult.

“Grass-fed is all over the map,” says Rick Machen, a professor and livestock specialist with Texas A&M University. “It could be a 700-pound calf right off the cow up to a 14-year-old cow that’s lived out its productive life. And within those there are all kinds—some are supplemented, some are 100-percent grass-finished. There’s a wide, wide, wide array of pre-harvest production systems, and technically they’re all within the bounds of what can technically qualify as grass-fed.”

Considering that, it’s hard to compare the environmental impact of domestic versus imported grass-fed beef in general. But if sustainability concerns are a wash, the domestic product really does fare better by one all-important metric: economics.

The price of grass

There’s a reason that imported grass-fed beef has come to dominate the American marketplace. It’s not because it’s a better product, necessarily. It’s simply cheaper.

Take Australia, for instance—the country that by far exports the most grass-fed beef to the U.S.—where virtually all beef production is pasture-based. Since cattle can graze year-round on the country’s naturally lush pastures, it makes far less sense to fatten them on grain. That makes the cost of bringing a steer to weight a much cheaper proposition—especially compares to many regions of the U.S., where grassland must be irrigated, or where cattle must be fed dried forage during the winter.

Though severe drought in Australia has complicated this picture in recent years, bringing the price of imported grass-fed beef closer to its domestic competition, the country has built-in advantages that have allowed it to undercut U.S. producers on price.

But Australia has an additional, and perhaps more significant, advantage. Grass finishing has been the standard for so long that it’s big business, and has been for decades. Cargill and JBS, two of the biggest meatpackers in the world, process a combined 49 percent of the country’s grass-fed beef.

A company like Greeley, Colorado-based JBS, which owns farms, slaughterhouses, and transportation infrastructure on multiple continents, and has accounts with major retailers and foodservice providers, benefits from economies of scale unheard of in U.S. grass-fed beef production. In the U.S., where grass-fed claims just 1.5 percent of the overall market, it’s mostly small producers working with small, independent processors and marketing their products themselves. More than half of America’s grass-fed producers sell twenty or fewer cattle a year, according to the Stone Barns report, and most of them are too small to access the country’s hyperproductive slaughterhouses.

This distinction marks perhaps the fundamental difference between U.S. and imported grass-fed beef. In America, grass-based production is an alternative vision supported by individual innovators and rooted in local economies. In Australia, New Zealand, Uruguay, and other countries, it’s an established industry controlled by powerful global players.

“It’s a commodity product,” says Williams, speaking of imported grass-fed beef. “It’s produced off many different ranches, then harvested by the big packers. They’re the same guys that are the big packers over here in the U.S. It’s all aggregated together and shipped over here.”

If Americans are buying grass-fed as a way to support local foodways and bring dollars back to rural communities—and many of them seem to want to—that’s not happening when they’re fooled into buying imported beef.

For  U.S. ranchers, switching to grass-fed can completely transform the economics of production. Williams says that the average American cattle rancher, someone who sells live animals to the big meatpackers churning out commodity beef, makes only about 14 cents of the retail dollar. “That way,” he tells me, “you’re working on razor-thin margins and any little economic hit can take you out of the game.”

Photo by gerenme (iStock), graphic by NFE

.But grass-fed producers selling directly via farmers’ markets can keep up to 85 percent of the retail dollar, according to Williams. And ranchers who run branded programs—paying a smaller, custom packer to process their animals, then selling that signature line of beef with the help of various retail partners—can reach thousands of customers while still keeping 25 to 50 percent of the retail dollar.

There are challenges, of course. Greenmarkets are a low-volume business—it’s hard to reach that many customers, even if the margins are significantly higher. And branded programs are a more expensive way to do business, with added costs related to marketing, distribution, and slaughter. Still, the margins improve enough to double or triple the income earned on every animal—giving ranchers a chance to make up for the increased costs of grass-fed production, mitigate their risk, and earn a sustainable living.

But now that the market’s been flooded with cheap imports, America’s grass-based ranchers aren’t thriving the way they’d hoped to. Though retail sales of grass-fed beef have soared—from $17 million in 2012 to more than 16 times that, $272 million, in 2016—American ranchers aren’t the ones reaping the benefit of all that increased demand. Harris and other ranchers attribute this directly to consumer confusion over labels. If we can’t tell the difference between Australian and American grass-fed beef—if both are labeled “Product of USA”—even a locally minded shopper is more likely to go with the cheaper product. The result, for ranchers who have spent heavily to transition or grow their herds, may be economic devastation.

Let’s go back to the petition that the American Grassfed Association filed with USDA for a moment. The organization believes that, if labeling law can be changed, ensuring that only truly American-raised beef is labeled that way, shoppers will start buying domestic grass-fed again, even if it costs more. If the choice between domestic and imported is made more apparent, grass-fed proponents like Carrie Balkcom and Will Harris think American grass-fed beef will have a fightning chance—that our rural communities will finally see the economic benefits of the standard they helped to build.

The fact that USDA is taking public comments on the issue suggests that the agency may be reconsidering things. And that could be a sign that significant change is on the horizon.

“As a U.S. grass-fed beef producer, I believe it is imperative that honest, transparent labeling is required for grass-fed beef sold in America,” writes Kay Allen, a Texas rancher, one of many producers who has commented publicly on the petition. “Not only does honest labeling protect American beef producers economically, it insures that WE, American citizens, control our own food supply.”

For those who want to see rural economies revitalized, the stakes are high. Labeled grass-fed beef is only about a $1 billion market in the U.S., tiny compared to the nation’s $105-billion conventional beef industry. But Williams points out that if the U.S. producers took back only 50 percent of the market—still down from more than 60 percent market share they enjoyed in 2014—it could send hundreds of millions of dollars into local communities each year. That would be a major departure from the current system, where profits from grain-finished domestic and grass-fed imported cattle flow primarily to large corporations.

“Instead of requiring just a handful of mega-feedlots to finish all this beef, we would need tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of smaller farmers and ranchers,” Williams says. “So instead of having one mega business, one major corporation, we’d be allowing thousands of small businesses, vibrant small businesses, to thrive. It would be a major boon not just to ranchers, but to local processors, and cold storage, and everyone who has a finger in this pie. Why would we not want to do that?”

The USDA is currently asking itself that same question. The agency will take public comments until August 17.

Trump’s EPA Chief is Reshaping Food and Farming: What You Need to Know

Trump’s EPA Chief is Reshaping Food and Farming: What You Need to Know

The legendarily anti-EPA Scott Pruitt is trying to undo the agency’s work through rollbacks, inaction, and decimating its workforce.

BY LEAH DOUGLAS  |  ENVIRONMENT, Food Policy, Pesticides
 

02.05.18

Since assuming leadership of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) last February, Scott Pruitt has found himself at odds with environmental organizations, community advocates, farmers, and increasingly lawmakers.

Just last week, Cory Booker (D-NJ) confronted Pruitt in a Senate hearing about his recent efforts to roll back regulations that set a minimum age for farmworkers who handle pesticides. The rules include requirements for a minimum age of 18 for applying pesticides and for buffer zones around pesticide-spraying equipment. Booker said he feared that the rollback would have a “disproportionate impact on low-income folks and minorities.”

Booker’s concerns mirror many aired by others invested in the country’s environmental policies. Pruitt has made wholesale changes to the EPA over the last year, and his impact on food and farming have been no less sparing. His rollbacks of Obama-era regulations on pesticides, water safety, and farm runoff and close alignment with the seed and chemical industry has caused deep concern for both advocates and scientists. And as Pruitt’s EPA marches forward in rolling back or delaying environmental protections, many longtime staffers are opting to leave the agency they’ve supported for decades rather than supporting his agenda.

“This EPA is not interested in protecting people from harmful pesticides,” says Karen Perry Stillerman, a senior analyst at the advocacy group Union of Concerned Scientists. “It’s more interested in bowing to the wishes of Dow [Agrochemical].”

Before his tenure at the EPA, Pruitt infamously sued the agency 14 times. While most of those lawsuits were focused on preventing new regulations to limit carbon and mercury pollution from power plants, his approach to ending regulation has remained constant throughout.

In November 2016, he signed on to a lawsuit against the Waters of the United States rule (WOTUS), which details which bodies of water are regulated under the federal Clean Water Act, and was updated and expanded with the 2015 Clean Water Rule.

As EPA chief, Pruitt has worked quickly to stop implementation of the rule, which many conventional farm and industry groups have opposed, arguing that it is an example of the agency’s overreach. In June, the EPA began its efforts to rescind the rule, and last month the Supreme Court ruled that challenges to WOTUS would be sent back to federal district courts, several of which have issued stays against implementing the rule. Then, Pruitt responded last week by announcing a two-year delay in implementing WOTUS while his EPA works to repeal and replace it.

Pruitt rejected the EPA’s own scientists’ recommendation to ban the insecticide chlorpyrifos after years of internal and external research on the pesticide’s potentially harmful health effects. The chemical was banned in 2000 for household use, but is still used in some commercial farming. A New York Times investigation found that new EPA staff appointed by Trump had pushed career employees to shift the agency’s position on the chemical, and in early February Pruitt noted he would also urge the federal Marine Fisheries Service to also reconsider its findings that chlorpyrifos threatens fish species. A number of states have sued the agency in an effort to force it to implement the ban; California has also moved to ban the chemical’s use in the state in hopes of skirting the EPA’s inaction.

Pruitt has defended his deregulatory efforts, saying they’re in the interest of “cooperative federalism.” In his view, this type of deregulation empowers the states to take on more regulatory responsibility, while preventing the overreach of federal agencies.

Among Advocates, Anger at Changes and the Status Quo

Many agriculture and environment advocates don’t think Pruitt’s deregulatory efforts will improve the working relationship between the federal government and the states. John O’Grady, president of the American Federation of Government Employees National Council #238, which represents over 1,000 EPA employees, says “we’ve been doing cooperative federalism for years.” But “this administration is kind of twisting it” to justify incorporating direct input from more corporations, and to defund environmental regulatory work that has been happening in the states, he says.

Pruitt has supported Trump’s budget proposals, which would cut 20 percent of the funding states rely on for staffing and environmental program work, such as one program established in 2009 to restore and clean up contamination—from agriculture and other sources—in the Chesapeake Bay. More environmental regulations have been targeted for rollback than in any other sector.

And despite his stated interest in diffuse governance, Pruitt is reportedly keeping a tight rein on the EPA’s ongoing work. Michele Merkel, co-director of Food & Water Watch’s Food & Water Justice program and Tarah Heinzen, a staff attorney of the program, note that since many top positions at EPA remain unfilled, much of the agency’s business is flowing through Pruitt himself. Heinzen says that, consequently, there is “far less autonomy at the regional level,” and that state agencies are finding it challenging “to even gather information.”

Conventional agriculture groups, however, are mostly in agreement with the newly defined priorities of Pruitt’s EPA. When Pruitt addressed meetings of the American Farm Bureau Federation and the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association in early 2017, he was reportedly given standing ovations. Others say it is still too early to tell whether the changing priorities of this EPA will dramatically affect the relationship between the EPA and farmers.

On the one hand, the biggest players in the “[agriculture] industry have always had the EPA pretty captured,” says Merkel. Indeed, EPA’s regulatory trends have shown a shift toward more self-regulation in the agribusiness sector. There has also been a decline in the number of inspections and enforcement actions by the agency against concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) since the final years of the Obama administration.

And while many farmers have traditionally had an antagonistic relationship with the agency, Tom Driscoll of the National Farmers Union says the idea that farmers have a “knee-jerk distrust of EPA is a bit overstated.” He adds that the farmers he works with are “invested in a clean and healthy environment” and many farmers are still hoping to work with the EPA toward better conservation practices.

Plummeting Morale Inside the Agency

Between April and December, 770 employees left the EPA, many taking buyouts and early retirements. O’Grady says that some of these departures could be unrelated to the political environment. But, he says, some could be “related to people being disgusted with the program that this [administration] is putting in place.” Regardless of their reasons for leaving, many are not being replaced—barely one-third of the 624 EPA positions that require Congressional confirmation have been filled, with another third sitting vacant with no nominees.

Other EPA employees have gone to the media or other forums to speak out against the current administration—but not without consequence. Several employees who’ve spoken out publicly against the recent actions of the EPA have had their emails scrutinized. Many reports suggest that the internal staff morale is low. While the administration fears information leaks, many employees fear the agency will retaliate without proof if they are suspected of leaking information.

Pruitt has repeatedly condemned the EPA under Obama for treating states and industry as “adversaries,” preferring to see them as “partners.” That philosophy has translated into bringing many former industry representatives in to fill major EPA roles.

A November 2017 Center for Public Integrity investigation into 46 political appointees at the EPA found that the majority had worked for an either an organization with a history of climate change denial or an industry commonly regulated by the agency. The appointees include a former senior director of the American Chemistry Council (whose members include Dow, Monsanto, and Bayer), former senior counsel at the American Petroleum Institute, and former legislative affairs director for the National Association of Chemical Distributors.

And the appointees go beyond the agriculture and energy industries. In May, Pruitt appointed his friend and personal banker Albert Kelly, to lead the new Superfund Task Force. Just two weeks prior, Kelly had been fined by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation for financial misdeeds that resulted in his being banned from rejoining the banking industry by the FDIC.

Pruitt has also reportedly spent much more of his time in meetings with industry reps than environmental organizations or citizen groups. A trove of documents detailing his schedule during his first three months at the helm of the agency show dozens of meetings with or travel to events sponsored by General Motors, Shell Oil executives, CropLife America, the National Association of Manufacturers, the Cement Association, and the National Mining Association. Meanwhile, between March and September, Pruitt met with just five environmental groups.

Some of Pruitt’s deregulatory actions, particularly those targeted at Obama-era executive orders, could only last for a short while if they were soon overturned by a new administration. But others, like unwinding WOTUS, would take years of litigation and rulemaking to get back to where the Obama administration left off.

And staff at EPA could also prove hard to replace. John O’Grady points out that the agency has shrunk from 18,000 employees in 1999 to around 14,500 today, and he predicts the Trump administration will cut several thousand more jobs. After all the cuts, “there’s still the same amount of work,” he says. The staff that remain at EPA “are dedicated, they’re trying to get the work done.” But as morale falls, many are burning out. And those who stay must face an agency that seeks to unwind decades of its own efforts to fight climate change, regulate harmful chemicals, and protect the country’s waterways.

Top photo CC-licensed by Gage Skidmore.