Dollar Stores Are Taking Over the Grocery Business, and It’s Bad News for Public Health and Local Economies

BY CLAIRE KELLOWAY

Posted on: December 17, 2018  

Today, there are more dollar stores in the United States than all Walmarts and Starbucks combined. These low-priced “small-box” retailers, like Dollar General, offer little to no fresh food—yet they feed more Americans than either Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods, and are gaining on the country’s largest food retailers.

Detailing the explosion of dollar stores in rural and low-income areas, the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) recently released a report that shows how these retailers exacerbate economic and public health disparities. The report makes the case that dollar stores undercut small rural grocers and hurt struggling urban neighborhoods by staving off full-service markets.

ILSR also argues that the proliferation of dollar stores is the latest outgrowth of an increasingly concentrated grocery sector, where the top four chains—Walmart, Kroger, Ahold-Delhaize, and Albertsons—sell 44 percent of all groceries, and Walmart alone commands a quarter of the market. These dominant chain stores have decimated independent retailers and divested from rural and low-income areas, as well as communities of color.

A Dollar General in Morgantown, West Virginia. (Photo credit: Taber Andrew Bain)

“Earlier trends in big box store [growth] are making this opening for dollar stores to enter,” says Marie Donahue, one of the report’s authors. “We’re seeing a widening gap of inequality that’s a result of wealth being extracted from communities and into corporate headquarters… Dollar stores are really concentrating in communities hit hardest by the consequences of economic concentration.”

“Before this report, I had no idea that dollar stores were proliferating in this way,” says Dr. Kristine Madsen, Faculty Director of the Berkeley Food Institute. But, she adds, “it doesn’t surprise me that these incredibly cheap stores may be the only choice for people [who] may be choosing between medicine and rent and food.”

Dollar General did not respond to a request to comment for this article.

Profiting Off Customers in “Food Deserts”

Two companies, Dollar Tree (which acquired Family Dollar in 2015) and Dollar General, have expanded their footprint from just under 20,000 stores in 2010 to nearly 30,000 stores in 2018, with plans to open yet another 20,000 stores in the near future. Dollar General alone opens roughly three stores a day.

Most of these new stores are in urban and rural neighborhoods where residents don’t often have access to fresh fruits and vegetables. In 2015, in fact, Dollar Tree and Dollar General represented two-thirds of all new stores in “food deserts,” defined by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) as low-income areas where a third or more of residents live far from a full-service grocery store. Dollar General predominantly targets rural areas, though it s beginning to compete with Family Dollar, which is ubiquitous in urban food deserts.

Profiting off these left-behind places is baked into dollar stores’ business plan. In 2016, low-income shoppers represented 21 percent of Dollar General’s customers but 43 percent of their sales. Dollar General executives publicly described households making under $35,000 and reliant on government assistance as their “Best Friends Forever.” When discussing growing rural-urban inequality, Dollar General’s CEO said “the economy is continuing to create more of our core customer,” i.e., more struggling rural families.

Undercutting Independent Grocery Stores

Some, including dollar-store executives themselves, argue that a low-cost retailer seeking to go where no one else will benefits underserved communities. But ILSR argues that dollar stores are not a true solution to hunger or food insecurity. Furthermore, the group says, they do nothing to promote food sovereignty, or people’s right to control the production and distribution of their own food.

Inside a Dollar General store in Eldred, Pennsylvania. (Photo credit: Random Retail)

“To the extent that dollar stores are filling, in some ways, a need in communities, I think that is true in the short term,” says Donahue. “But really our research is demonstrating … those foods aren’t as good quality as full-service grocers or independent local stores, which may be able to connect to local farmers and the larger food system.”

Dollar stores sell predominantly shelf-stable and packaged foods. Four-hundred-and-fifty Dollar General locations are experimenting with an expanded refrigerator section to respond to a demand for more fresh fruits and vegetables. But, to date, the fresh and frozen offerings that do exist in these stores consist of processed meats, dairy products, and frozen meals. In other words, customers don’t have the same wide selection as they do in a traditional full-service grocery store.

“Grocery stores have more variety and a higher quantity of healthy foods than do dollar stores,” says Dr. David Procter, director of the Rural Grocery Initiative, a program of Kansas State University’s Center for Engagement and Community Development.

Despite their reputation, dollar stores don’t provide the best deals either. They often sell products in smaller quantities to keep a low price tag and draw in cash-strapped buyers. But when comparing per-ounce prices to a traditional grocery store, dollar store customers tend to pay more. Reporting by The Guardian found that the prorated cost of dollar store milk cartons comes to $8 per gallon, for example.

Dollar store customers do, however, find genuine value in things like greeting cards, pasta, coat hangers, and other everyday home goods. But this very cost-cutting is what makes dollar stores uniquely brutal competitors for smaller independent grocers.

“There’s very little money made on all kinds of segments of the [independent] grocery store, but where [grocers] do make their most money … is in paper goods and dry goods,” explains Procter. “That is really the heart of Dollar General … and it’s cutting into the largest profit area of the grocery store, that’s the real challenge.”

By sucking away this source of revenue, dollar stores tend to drive out the few independent grocers that remain, especially in rural areas. ILSR’s report found that “it’s typical for sales [at local grocery stores] to drop by about 30 percent after a Dollar General opens.”

Additionally, a survey by the Rural Grocery Initiative found that competition from large chain stores is the single largest challenge facing independent rural grocers. In the ’90s, Walmart was their main challenger; now Dollar General is moving in where even Walmart wouldn’t go, pushing out more local businesses.

The Benefit of—and Fight for—Small, Local Stores

Residents lose more than fresh foods when their local grocery store disappears. They lose jobs, local investment, and a voice in their food choices.

According to federal data, small independent grocers employ nearly twice as many people per store when compared to dollar stores. “When you have a hometown grocer owned by people who are committed to that community, not only are all the decisions made locally, but all of the profits stay in that town,” says Procter. “Some of the money that’s being generated in Dollar General stores is going to their headquarters in Tennessee, and the decisions about whether or not that [store] stays open or what they offer is being made by out-of-state corporate decision makers.”

A Dollar Tree store in Cheshire, Conn. (Photo credit: Mike Mozart)

In addition to undercutting existing stores, the proliferation of dollar stores can shut out new entrants. This is a particular concern in low-income urban areas and communities of color. ILSR’s report features the case of Tulsa, Oklahoma, where there’s a 14-year life expectancy gap between residents in the predominantly Black north Tulsa neighborhood and residents in the predominantly white south Tulsa neighborhood. ILSR found that dollar stores have “concentrated in [Tulsa] census tracts with more African American residents,” and community members are not happy about it.

“I don’t think it’s an accident they proliferate in low socio-economic and African American communities,” Tulsa City Councilor Vanessa Hall-Harper told ILSR. “That proliferation makes it more difficult for the full-service, healthy stores to set up shop and operate successfully.”

However, Tulsa’s story also provides a glimpse of hope into what some communities can do to halt the invasion of dollar stores. Hall-Harper worked to pass zoning ordinances that would limit dollar store development and encourage full-service grocers to set up shop. She rallied residents to protest the opening of a new Dollar General and join city council meetings to show support for a temporary dollar store moratorium. City council passed the moratorium and the zoning changes seven months later. North Tulsa will soon have a new grocery store, operated by Honor Capital, a veteran-owned company that has a food-access mission. Rural communities in Kansas have similarly organized and leveraged city council to halt a proposed Dollar General.

“It’s great to see a community really fight for this ordinance and show up to public meetings and hearings and challenge those traditional systems that would have just approved development for more dollar stores in the area,” says Donahue.

Top photo: Outside a Dollar General in Fort Hancock, Texas. (Photo credit: Thomas Hawk)

Despite Small Wins, the New Farm Bill is a Failure of Imagination

BY DAN IMHOFF
Posted on: December 13, 2018  

The $867 billion 2018 Farm Bill the House and Senate passed this week is a hot mess. The Washington Post editorial board described it as “a bad outcome—that could have been worse.” And they’re right. Unfortunately, we’re all going to be affected by it.

Congress passes a farm bill around every five years. It’s an encyclopedic set of rules that doles out nearly a trillion dollars every 10 years for farm subsidies and crop insurance, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and on-farm conservation programs.

To be fair, the farm bill is a mirror of our political process. As such, it is a lopsided mix of some good policy and a lot of bad. I’ll get into the good (and mixed) news in more detail below, but for now let’s just say that progressives can be happy that programs to combat hunger, expand local and organic food production, train beginning farmers, and protect the land were all successfully championed this time around.

Still, the revised farm bill will ensure that citizens continue to pay for their food at least three times: 1) at the checkout stand; 2) in environmental cleanup and medical costs related to the consequences of industrial agriculture; and 3) as taxpayers who fund subsidies to a small group of commodity farmers deemed too big to fail.

Granted, many of those farmers are caught in a vicious cycle. Most live in areas where the only market and infrastructure support commodity crops, and yet those crops don’t support a resilient farm system. One-half of agricultural counties in the United States were designated as disaster areas from 2012 to 2016. Current subsidies are supposed to provide a safety net to even out the financial ups and downs of crop production and help farmers stay afloat in a competitive global economy.

Instead, over the last half century they’ve created an expensive and polluting engine of overproduction, which drives down prices, saturates markets, and shifts the burden of recouping costs to taxpayers who subsidize farmers’ insurance policies and other relief.

The 2018 Farm Bill will strengthen crop insurance subsidies that guarantee farm income even across swaths of the U.S. where soybean, corn and wheat growers will benefit from more generous terms on government loans. Small dairy farmers, who are regularly swamped by a flood of cheap milk from mega-dairies, will also gain protection.

Perhaps the biggest boon for commodity producers is the opening of eligibility loopholes. By blurring the definitions of what constitutes a “family farm,” the new bill will allow these farms to balloon in size and exponentially dip into the public trough. Current household limits for the two largest subsidy programs are set at $125,000 per year per operator and $250,000 for a married couple. (Household operations with an adjusted gross income under $900,000, and $1,800,000 for couples, are eligible.)

The revised law will now permit children and their spouses to also be seen as “actively engaged” in farming and therefore eligible for subsidies. It doesn’t end there. Nephews, nieces, cousins, and other extended family members can be daisy-chained to receive benefits as long as they can demonstrate participation in farm management even if they don’t set foot on the farm. This was justified in the name of supporting a new generation of family farmers. It seems more designed to help the big operations get bigger.

Swaddling struggling commodity farmers in a lavish safety net might be acceptable if we were also building a nationwide foundation of stewardship and vibrant local food production. But most of the nation’s ever-increasing harvests of corn (farmers grew a near-record 14.6 bushels in 2018) and soybeans (farmers grew a record 4.5 billion bushels in 2018) aren’t even eaten directly by humans. They’re fed to cattle, hogs, and poultry or transformed into processed food ingredients and biofuels.

More than 20 percent of our agricultural output is exported. The real winners are the grain traders, meat packers, ethanol distributors, agrochemical corporations, equipment manufacturers, financiers, and insurers whose lobbyists write the farm bills and who benefit from low commodity prices and capital-intensive farming methods. There is a waste crisis as well: 40 percent of the food produced never reaches an eater’s plate; much of it ends up in landfills.

It is important to note that these increases in farm supports are the product of a compromise reached through negotiation. The bills passed separately by the House and Senate earlier this year were so different that they went into a process known as conferencing, wherein majority and minority leaders in both Agriculture Committees attempt to make a deal.

The House Bill included much-discussed work and job training requirements for some SNAP recipients. In the name of promoting “independence” this would have placed additional hoops in the path of over a million underemployed Americans seeking hunger relief—for questionable budget savings. This issue may not be settled, however. U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Sonny Purdue has drafted a rule intended to crack down on recipients who currently have work requirement waivers. The House Bill also included riders that would have exempted pesticides from clean water violations and eased restrictions on logging in federal lands under the guise of reducing fuel loads. Democrats declared victory after these crucial elements were dropped in the conference process.

In the end, one wonders whether these were ever serious expectations or just part of a shrewd Republican strategy. More importantly, why did the Democrats not wait until January to conference the bill when the newly elected House may have offered an opportunity for much needed reforms?

There are a few gains to so-called “small but mighty” programs. Efforts to expand composting operations and reduce food waste in 10 states, along with the establishment of a food loss and waste reduction liaison were funded at $25 million per year through 2023. Industrial hemp will now be recognized by the USDA as a legitimate commodity crop, and may offer an additional cash crop to rotate in with commodity crops. (That may also provide some temporary relief in the form of hemp-derived, non-psychoactive cannabidiol, or CBD, for citizens frustrated by the lack of forward thinking in the bill otherwise.)

Permanent mandatory funding was also granted for local food initiatives, beginner farmer support, and organic research. Given the value that these programs generate and proven track records, however, their funding should have not only been guaranteed but increased ten-fold.

Conservation spending—which goes to help farmers use practices that reduce air and water pollution, improve the soil, and sequester carbon—was renewed at 2018 levels. There will be an increase of 3 million acres in the Conservation Reserve Program, which pays landowners not to farm on land and to protect on-farm habitat. CRP payments will be reduced to 80 percent of a county’s average rental acreage, however, making it a less attractive option than rolling the dice with crop insurance.

The innovative Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP) survived the House bill’s attempt to absorb it into the Environmental Quality Incentives Program but saw its budget nearly cut in half. The CSP, as it is known, rewards farmers for a range of stewardship activities rather than per acre output of corn, soybeans, etc. CSP pays farmers to reduce their use of chemicals, grow cover crops, optimize their use of energy, protect wildlife habitat, and diversify their operations. This is exactly the type of farming we need more than ever, as the climate warms and becomes less predictable and nitrogen levels in our waterways and oceans have reached crisis level.

Federal money spent on conservation programs are arguably the most justifiable investments the government makes in our rural landscapes. In the absence of policies that encourage supply management, crop subsidies and crop insurance payments encourage the overproduction of commodities by taking the risks out of planting. The consequences of low prices and intensive farming practices then become the responsibility of the taxpayers.

When global markets are flooded with cheap commodities, it’s often the small holder farmers in nations without subsidies who are most affected. Conservation programs should be designed to support landowners for efforts the market does not: building resilience with perennial habitats that can harbor fish and wildlife, filtering runoff, limiting storm damage, and removing carbon from the atmosphere by storing it deep within the soil.

Some policymakers have declared the preservation of conservation budgets at the current spending levels as a key victory. But in the larger scheme of things, citizens were still done a great disservice. Conservation programs were slashed by $6 billion during the 2014 Farm Bill and should have been restored to those former spending levels at a minimum.

That funding could be directed to drastically increase our use of cover crops such as rye and legumes, which provide non-chemical nutrients and build organic matter and protect bare soil on farms and rangelands. On-farm energy use could be aggressively reduced. Research into soil building, no-till and organic farming, and rangeland management must be significantly scaled up. Animals could be removed from massive feeding operations and re-integrated in lesser numbers in managed pasture rotations. This effort will require a whole new generation of training and infrastructure, including hundreds of regional processing facilities.

Farmers could massively expand habitat in and around farmlands by taking marginal lands and former field borders and drained wetlands out of production and planting deep rooted perennials to create a bank of underground carbon. There are historical examples of such bold action in response to crisis. In 1935, for example, the government launched the Plains Shelterbelt Project, with the goal of planting a 100-mile wide swath of trees from North Dakota to Texas to provide a line of defense against wind erosion and the Dust Bowl.

The farm bill is our chance to invest in agriculture that is ecologically and economically sustainable. When it comes to food and agriculture policy, we reap what we sow.

Adelaide Puts Food, Not Developments at the Top of the City-Fringe Menu

By national rural and regional correspondent Dominique Schwartz

Updated Sun at 4:37am

PHOTO: Scott Samwell's family farm is one of Australia's biggest brussels sprouts producers. (ABC News: David Sciasci)

Scott Samwell lives on brussels sprouts.

His Adelaide Hills family is one of Australia's biggest growers of the vegetable and the only producer of the kale-brussels sprout hybrid, the kalette.

Restaurant dishes such as twice-cooked brussels sprouts sautéed with bacon and sprinkled with parmesan have made the once-maligned vegetable hugely popular.

But the family is not able to expand its Mt Barker farm to keep up with demand because they would literally run into a brick wall.

"When we first came out to Bald Hills Road we were the only property out here, the only house out here," Scott's uncle Leigh Samwell said.

Thirty years on, "there are houses everywhere".

PHOTO: Housing encroaches on farming property at Mount Barker in South Australia. (ABC News: David Sciasci)

Mount Barker is one of Australia's fastest-growing urban centres.

Just half an hour's drive from Adelaide by freeway, the once rural hamlet is now a satellite town of more than 35,000 people and is projected to grow 60 per cent within the next two decades.

Developers have offered the Samwells eye-watering sums of money for their land, but they have resisted selling.

And even if they wanted to cash in, from April next year they will not be allowed to sell to make way for housing.

South Australia appreciates the value of good food and wine

So much so, its city fringe farm land is being legally protected.

PHOTO: A bird's-eye view of a lettuce crop on the fringes of Adelaide. (ABC News: David Sciasci)

Agriculture is the state's economic driver and a lot of it happens around the fertile fringe of Adelaide.

Two years ago, the then-state Labor government introduced Environment and Food Production Areas (EFPA) to restrict urban sprawl across a massive 8,000 square kilometres of land.

It's illegal to subdivide rural land for residential housing within these protected areas.

The ban takes full effect in April 2019, and has the backing of the current Liberal government.

The Barossa Valley and McLaren Vale already have tough development restrictions in place.

PHOTO: The shaded areas show the Environment and Food Production Areas which restrict the development of new housing.(ABC News )

"It's about protecting some of our best lands for food production," South Australian Primary Industries Minister Tim Whetstone said.

"Horticulture is worth $22.5 billion and growing [and] peri-urban farms are critically important."

What's the main benefit of farming on the fringe?

In a word, water.

In Mount Barker, the Samwells might not be able to expand, but they do have ready access to three key ingredients often not available to farmers further afield.

• Labour

• Markets

• Recycled household waste water

That last one is especially important in Australia's driest state.

During a drought, the rain may stop and rivers may dry, but people still wash, clean and flush.

Maybe not as much, but enough to guarantee an abundance of irrigation water for the Samwells, who are tapped into Mt Barker's waste water treatment plant.

"We don't want to have to grow in poor soil away from infrastructure, transport and water because it would increase the cost of what is already an expensive operation," Scott Samwell said.

"So preserving what we have got close to cities and regional areas is important."

Fringe farms serve up 80pc of Melbourne's food

Dr Rachel Carey is a research fellow on sustainable food systems at Melbourne University and says we have "overlooked how important cities are for food production".

She said Melbourne's food bowl served up 80 per cent of the vegetables eaten by the city's nearly 5 million residents.

In South Australia, the market gardens and orchards north of Adelaide alone account for one-fifth of the state's horticulture.

PHOTO: The Adelaide Central Market sells fresh fruit and vegetables from the surrounding region. (ABC News: David Sciasci)

"It's really important that all of Australia's states now introduce much stronger protection for farmland on the city fringe," she said.

Dr Carey said city fringe farms would become increasingly important as food supply was affected by climate change.

"We should see them as an insurance policy if you like, as a buffer against the future pressures and also potential shocks that we are likely to face to our food supply," she said.

"We should be planning for at least 50 years and beyond in terms of saying there are areas that will not be touched for the long term, then the other crucial thing, of course, is to hold the line."

Growers divided on food protection zones

"You can almost split my growers into two," Jordan Brooke-Barnett, head of the SA branch of the grower association AusVeg, said.

Mr Brooke-Barnett said some AusVeg members were opposed to the development restrictions imposed by the EFPA.

"[They would] like the opportunity to subdivide land potentially one day to houses and the economic benefits that could potentially bring," he said.

Others who deal with urban encroachment and "fight for the right to have their business exist" supported stronger protection of city fringe farms, according to Mr Brooke-Barnett.

In Queensland, fourth generation vegetable farmer Ray Taylor did move to a regional area, but he was happy to.

His family started farming just 11 kilometres from Brisbane's CBD in 1914, but every generation was pushed further out as the city expanded.

Now, the Taylor's main operation is near Stanthorpe, 225 km south-west of the capital.

"That enables us as a family to go and find a larger parcel of land in another area, so … obviously we can grow the business," he said.

The Taylors grow 25 million vegetables per year, and while they can benefit from the economies of scale space brings, water security is a "massive issue".

PHOTO: Ray Taylor at his farm near Stanthorpe in Queensland, where he has room to expand operations. (ABC News: David Sciasci)

Without rain, the farm's 27 dams were only 20-60 per cent full and the main creeks had not run for 20 months, Mr Taylor said.

"We're down about 30 per cent on [vegetable] production this year due to water scarceness."

The family is planning to sell its last foothold on Brisbane's urban fringe — a 40-acre waterfront property at Redland Bay.

"It's too small … and you can't expand it," Mr Taylor said.

"We're the last ones left there, so all the services have shut up and moved on and we get a lot of pressure from urban sprawl — spray drift, dust, noise — so it's very difficult to operate in that environment."

It is that situation South Australia is trying to avoid, according to the state's Primary Industries Minister who makes no apologies for restricting urban sprawl.

"The government has to draw a line, [it has to] give a secure future to farmers and food production in South Australia, but also certainty to those developers looking to move into peri-urban areas of Adelaide and South Australia," Mr Whetstone said.

SA plans $1 billion horticultural export hub on city fringe

The state is aiming is to ensure it has enough fresh produce not just to survive, but thrive.

Protecting farm land along the city edge is part of a greater plan to turn the Northern Adelaide Plains into an export hub and a global leader in intensive food production.

Work is underway to more than double the amount of treated waste water being piped to growers from Adelaide's Bolivar waste water plant, and to open up new areas within the protected EFPA for irrigation.

The goal is to treble the value of northern Adelaide's annual horticulture production to $1 billion within two decades and the plan has the backing of industry and all levels of government.

Providing certainty around land and water helped boost business confidence and available capital, Mr Whetstone said.

Meet investor Henry Liu

Henry Liu is one person investing heavily in South Australia's food future.

PHOTO: Hydroponic vegetables growing in state-of-the-art, climate-controlled glasshouses. (ABC News: David Scaisci)

Mr Liu had one of the first greenhouses in Virginia north of Adelaide 18 years ago.

Now he has eight hectares of hydroponic vegetables growing in state-of-the-art, climate-controlled glasshouses.

PHOTO: One of Henry Liu's workers picks hydroponically grown tomatoes in a glasshouse at Virginia in South Australia. (ABC News: David Sciasci)

That number will rise to 12 hectares when his new glasshouse starts production early next year.

"The future is great, very bright," Mr Liu said.

Glasshouse crops use 95 per cent less water than those grown in the field and carbon dioxide can be captured and used to boost plant growth, he said.

"The advantage of glasshouses over field production is that you can control the growing conditions," Mr Liu said.

But they are energy-hungry and solar power is not yet enough to run them.

PHOTO: Henry Liu said when it came to urban farming, the future was "very bright". (ABC News: David Sciasci)

Mr Liu believes hydroponic cropping will increase, but there will always be a place for soil-based growing and that however food is produced, being close to water, markets and labour is reason enough to protect city food bowls.

Dirty Feed, Done Dirt Cheap: Are Consumers Who Shell Out for Organic Meat Eating a Bunch of Bull?

By Brian Barth on August 9, 2018

Illustration by Brian Stauffer

America imports staggering amounts of organic grain from abroad—which allows for sleight of hand during shipping and opens the door to tainted feed. Are consumers who shell out for organic meat eating a bunch of bull?

Many Americans assume that anything labeled “USDA Organic” hails from the USA. And for produce, at least, the assumption typically holds true, with the exception of obvious imports like mangoes or coffee beans or tomatoes in January. But the farther an item is removed from the soil, the greater the possibility it harbors ingredients farmed abroad. One needn’t reach the tail end of the supply chain, where the frozen breakfast burritos dwell, to find foreign inputs. Just consider the steak in your butcher’s case. A cow must jump through multiple hoops before earning USDA certification. While the animal may have grazed on chemical-free Iowa pasture all summer, what did it eat during the off-season and where were the feed’s ingredients grown?

Chances are, not here. Although the United States remains the world’s largest exporter of conventional grain, we now import a hefty chunk of the organic stuff. Roughly 70 percent of our organic soybean supply, and some 40 percent of the organic corn consumed domestically, originates overseas. Between 2013 and 2016 alone, the amount America spent on imported organic soy leapt from $110 million to $250 million, and on imported organic corn from $36 million to $160 million. As a result, the bottom fell out of the U.S. market: Prices for organic soy plummeted from $26 to $18 per bushel, and organic corn from $14 to $7.50 a bushel—less than what it costs most American farmers to produce the crops.

A number of these growers found the sudden spike in imports suspicious. Beyond questions regarding food security and food miles, the glut of foreign grain raised regulatory concerns, especially given the three-year transition period required for organic certification. How could the USDA possibly enforce its strict standards on a rapidly expanding global playing field?

“I knew something was up,” says John Bobbe, executive director of OFARM, a marketing co-op that represents several hundred organic grain growers across 19 states. In May 2016, Bobbe needed to move corn from Illinois farms to an Indiana feed mill, and had a tough time finding anybody to haul the load. Turns out, a much bigger gig was drawing Midwestern truckers: A cargo ship called the Federal Nakagawa had just docked in Burns Harbor, Indiana, with 25 million pounds of feed corn in its hold. “That’s as much as 50 of our farms produce in a year,” explains Bobbe, who doubted the corn was organic when he discovered its country of origin.

Turkey lacks the flat, fertile plains needed to support export-scale corn and soy production. The politically volatile nation also has a history of attempting to export fraudulent organic goods to the European Union, according to a 2016 report from the USDA’s own Foreign Agricultural Service. Yet, that year, we imported $118 million worth of organic corn from Turkey, more than twice the amount the United States purchased from all other countries combined. The amount we spent on organic Turkish soybeans rose 268-fold between 2013 and 2016.

Bobbe soon heard of other ships delivering purportedly organic grain from Turkey to our ports. In September 2016, he turned over the names of the vessels, and one particularly suspicious importer, to the USDA’s National Organic Program (NOP), which is charged with ensuring the integrity of the organic seal. “The NOP told me it was too late to investigate,” he says. “I think it was more like, ‘We don’t want to bother.’”

Then, in February of last year, Peter Whoriskey, a reporter at The Washington Post, got in touch. Plying industry informants and Freedom of Information Act requests, Whoriskey managed to unearth shipping documents and other paperwork that laid bare a lucrative laundering scheme. His May 2017 article detailed three shipments of conventional grain that magically turned “organic” as they crossed the sea. All three came through Turkey, but at least two originated in other countries. “Lo and behold, the NOP started looking into it,” recalls Bobbe.

So just how, exactly, does the USDA go about certifying crops grown overseas? In the case of some countries (Canada, Japan, Switzerland, Korea, and the 28 European Union nations), the agency basically takes their word for it, via “equivalency arrangements” that acknowledge a foreign government’s organic standards as equivalent to ours. America has also signed “recognition agreements” with Israel, India, and New Zealand, recognizing certifiers accredited by those governments. Everywhere else, a USDA-accredited certifier must perform the inspection.

You might be surprised to learn that, of the 80 third-party, organic-certification agencies accredited by the USDA, 32 are based in foreign countries. Bobbe believes that’s part of the problem. “There is no way the NOP has the manpower to monitor them,” he insists, pointing out that only six or so auditors, none stationed abroad, are tasked with overseeing all the paperwork submitted by organic certifiers worldwide. He also faults the NOP for failing to inspect inbound cargo. U.S. Customs and Border Protection might, but those agents aren’t trained to scrutinize organic-certification documents. “Your chances of getting caught with a shipload of fake organic grain are next to nil,” Bobbe says. And should you get caught, the maximum fine per violation is $11,000—not much of a deterrent when millions can be made off a single shipment of fake organic corn.

Kelly Damewood, director of policy and government affairs at one of the largest certification agencies in this country, California Certified Organic Farmers (CCOF), agrees that the NOP needs more funding, though she warns against overstating the lapses. “In the rare cases of fraud, it can often be traced back to an uncertified handler,” says Damewood. “Technically, if you are not repacking it, processing it, relabeling it, or turning it into anything else—if you are just a pass-through entity—then you are not required to have certification.” Last September, CCOF started requiring the companies it certifies to complete a new form, verifying that every handler is complying with organic standards.

That same month, following a strongly worded directive from the USDA Office of Inspector General, the NOP issued new guidelines for certifiers aimed at closing loopholes along the supply chain. The agency also stopped a freighter named the Diana Bolten as it arrived in Bellingham, Washington, loaded with “organic” corn for the same importer associated with the Federal Nakagawa. Sources with knowledge of the incident told Bobbe that a portion of the shipment was rejected by the USDA as fraudulent. The USDA declined Modern Farmer’s request for comment on the matter.

Another sign of progress: Last September, Representatives John Faso (R-NY) and Michelle Lujan Grisham (D-NM) introduced the Organic Farmer and Consumer Protection Act, which would authorize $5 million for the NOP to upgrade its enforcement systems and technologies, and mandate ongoing budget increases at a rate that matches the growth of the organic sector. The bill has garnered broad bipartisan support, with a mix of co-sponsors from both parties, including celebrated food-movement champions like Representative Chellie Pingree (D-ME).

“This is the system working more or less as it’s supposed to,” says Mark Lipson, a former organic and sustainable agriculture policy advisor at the USDA. Lipson worries that extrapolating a few specific, if glaring, fraudulent incidents into a systemic indictment of the NOP risks undermining public confidence in the organic label—and would be unjustified. “The Washington Post report demonstrated that the enforcement structure needed to catch up with the growth in the market, but the National Organic Program still works better than a lot of other regulatory divisions,” says Lipson.

Bobbe isn’t so sure. While the amount of certified organic grain flowing in from Turkey has decreased since 2016, to approximately $80 million apiece for soy and corn last year, his network of farmers continues to suffer. One of them, Bob Stuczynski of Amherst, Wisconsin, says, “Organic farmers in America can hardly move their corn unless they want to fire-sale it.” Stuczynski estimates that he’s lost tens of thousands of dollars in revenue over the past couple years. And an OFARM analysis found that imported organic grain cost U.S. farmers a total of $300 million to $400 million from 2015 through 2017.

Bobbe recently attended a conference convened by the European Organic Certifiers Council and the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements in Odessa, Ukraine, across the Black Sea from Turkey—an apropos location. Some of Bobbe’s E.U. counterparts are convinced the Turkish mafia is barging in conventional corn from Ukraine and other Black Sea countries, then shipping it out as organic to Europe and North America. “It’s an international crime syndicate,” he says.

A final piece of the puzzle has even more of a conspiracy-theory ring to it. The nations surrounding the Black Sea, like Kazakhstan and Armenia, generally do not produce corn and soybeans on a significant scale. But there is one giant exception, and its grain exports are booming of late. “Russia!” says Bobbe, his voice dropping to a whisper. “It’s the elephant in the room.”

The Quality Standards for Hydroponic Lettuce

By Tyler Baras

Living Butterhead Lettuce in Retail Clamshell

“Voluntary U.S. grade standards are issued under the authority of the Agricultural Marketing Act of 1946, which provides for the development of official U.S. grades to designate different levels of quality. These grade standards are available for use by producers, suppliers, buyers, and consumers. As in the case of other standards for grades of fresh and processed fruits, vegetables, and specialty crops these standards are designed to facilitate orderly marketing by providing a convenient basis for buying and selling, for establishing quality control programs, and for determining loan values.” (From the United States Standards for Grades of Greenhouse Leaf Lettuce)

Voluntary USDA grade standards designate different levels of quality in agricultural products. The USDA has official standards used to grade a lot of different crops including leafy greens like Greenhouse Leaf Lettuce, Field Grown Leaf Lettuce, Kale, Beet Greens, Collard Greens, Dandelion Greens and Mustard Greens. The standards for butterhead lettuce currently fall under the same standards used for Iceberg lettuce. Although the U.S. Standards for Grades of Lettuce do acknowledge the significant differences between the two types of lettuce, they are still grouped under the same standards. And there is no mention of living lettuce in the U.S. Standards for Grades of Lettuce, while living lettuce is one of the primary crops grown by hydroponic leafy greens growers. If the hydroponic lettuce industry is to grow beyond the premium product niche and enter the ‘real world’ of lettuce production, it would be helpful if hydroponic growers decided upon grading standards appropriate for hydroponically grown lettuce.

When hydroponic lettuce growers try to compete against field growers they almost never win in the battle for price per pound. Field growers can sell heads of lettuce wholesale under $0.75. Large hydroponic lettuce growers (3+ acres) can get their price per head close to $0.90. Field lettuce is generally packed in a 24 count box that will weigh 50+ pounds. The heads are easily 1 to 2 pounds. Hydroponic lettuce is often packed in a 6 or 12 count box and the heads rarely weigh over 10 ounces (0.625 pounds).

While hydroponic crops have a lot of external benefits like water savings and food safety, those benefits are not shown when a hydroponic butterhead is graded with the U.S. Standards for Grades of Lettuce. To preserve the narrative around hydroponic lettuce, it may be necessary to have USDA grading standards specifically for hydroponic lettuce so the crop does not lose some of its value when it enters the larger lettuce market that puts it ‘head-to-head’ with field grown crops.

USDA grade standards are helpful in international trade. The U.S. has one of the biggest lettuce importers on the northern border… Canada! (See Stats). Currently most hydroponic lettuce growers sell to local markets or if they are one of the larger hydroponic lettuce growers they might sell to a grocery store chain or produce broker that distributes their product in multiple states. I have seen living butterhead lettuce from Canada in the U.S. but I’m not aware of any U.S. hydroponic leafy greens growers shipping internationally. I would think that the increased shelf-life of living lettuce would be an advantage in international trade since lettuce is highly perishable.

The Standards for Butterhead Lettuce Quality

What should a USDA Grade A butterhead lettuce look like? How big should it be?

I’ve seen a wide range of targets from growers across the US and internationally. The majority of US hydroponic butterhead growers target a head that is between 5 oz. and 8 oz. (with roots attached). Many aquaponic and indoor vertical farms sell heads closer to 5 ounces. Many of the larger hydroponic lettuce growers (1+ acre greenhouses) target heads between 6-8 ounces. I’ve seen some greenhouse lettuce growers target 10 ounce heads. In Europe, it is common to see butterhead lettuce over 1 pound. In Japan, it is common to see living lettuce sold at less than 5 ounces. The market standards for hydroponic butterhead lettuce minimum weight vary but generally the bottom line is the head should not bobble around when packaged in a clamshell. Most living lettuce labels do not even state a minimum weight, instead the label might have “1 Count” or “1 Head”. Beyond weight there’s the more qualitative traits like leaf texture, leaf color and head formation. Check out these unofficial visual aids provided by the USDA to help grade romaine and lettuce. What would a visual aid for hydroponic butterhead lettuce look like?

Here are some of my favorite butterhead lettuces I’ve grown over the years, which do you think looks most like a ‘standard’ butterhead?

This article is property of Urban Ag News and was written in cooperation with Tyler Baras.

Congresswoman Chellie Pingree Explains Why Food Is An Important Issue for All Americans

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BY  JESS BARRON  AUGUST 10, 2018

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LIVESTRONG.COM traveled to Washington, D.C., and met with U.S. Congressional leaders and their teams to find out what consumers and citizens need to know about the safety and health of the American food system and what we can do to get involved.

We interviewed Congresswoman Chellie Pingree, a Democrat representing Maine, at the Rayburn House Office Building as part of our Stronger Women interview series.

Pingree is currently the only organic farmer serving in U.S. Congress. She is a leader on food policy, including issues involving local food, food waste and organic agriculture. You can view the legislation sponsored or co-sponsored by Pingree here.

Organic and Local Food Should Not Be Considered a Partisan or Elitist Issue

According to Pingree, agriculture and the food that we put onto our tables should be concerned that bridge the gap between Republicans and Democrats.

“People want healthy food, and they want it at all economic levels and certainly at all ages,” she says. “The truth is today that the majority of parents who choose to buy baby food go with organic. And they do so because a parent of any economic level is worried from the start about what they’re going to put in their kid.”

Pingree points out that this is true whether a person is shopping at Whole Foods or at Walmart.

“Walmart is attempting to be the largest retailer of organic foods in the country right now, and they wouldn’t be going after that market if they didn’t think that everyone at every income level wanted to eat more organic food,” she says.

She explains that locally grown produce is important to Americans as well.

“I’m pretty convinced from the people I talk to that wherever you are economically and wherever you are politically that people want to buy more locally grown produce,” Pingree says. “They love the idea that they would know who the farmer was and they could know where it came from.”

Pingree’s efforts have included making it easier to use SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) benefits to purchase local food.

“I have a bill right now to support more organic research because as our interest has gone up in organic food our supply has declined in this country,” she says. “And we’re actually importing a lot more corn and wheat that is organically grown outside our country than we ever have before because we can’t get them here.”

How Being a Farmer Prepared Her for Serving in Congress

Farming takes a lot of work, and Pingree says she didn’t come to her position with any particular ideology, but rather more of a “commonsense idea of how you get things done.”

According to Pingree, as a member of Congress it’s essential to be persistent and to be comfortable dealing with the public.

“I’ve always had a farm stand, and today I own a restaurant and an inn in addition to the farm, so I’m very comfortable dealing with the public or people’s complaints or the issues. You kind of get a thick skin, and you’re not uncomfortable working hard.”

Concerns About the EPA and USDA

Pingree said she has concerns about the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and about some of the rulings that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has made.

“One of my jobs here in Washington is to be a watchdog, to fight back — whether it’s issues on ruling that they’ve made on chemicals that should have more testing or some of the rules that have come before the USDA where they should be more directive about making sure that a free-range chicken is actually out on the range, pecking in the grass, picking up healthy nutrients in bugs,” explains Pingree.

She serves on two committees — one that has oversight on the EPA and another that oversees the USDA.

“You can follow us at any time. And we are regularly going after them — whether it’s about chemicals like Roundup, which we see too much of today, or some of the rules that govern how we technically administer the organic farming regulations and making sure that they’re strict and that everyone follows the right rules,” she says.

How Can Americans Get Involved Right Now to Improve Our Food Supply?

According to Pingree, consumers and citizens can make a huge difference. One way is voting with our pocketbooks and how we choose to spend our money.

“If you’re buying food from the local farm down the road or you’re joining a CSA, you’re showing that farmer that you care about what they do and sometimes you’re willing to pay a little extra to make sure they can stay in business. And you’re looking them right in the eye and saying: ‘I want you to tell me how this was grown,’” she says.

Pingree points out that contacting your state legislators and members of Congress is incredibly important because they count the emails and phone calls they get on each issue.

“If all we ever hear from is the very well-financed major food lobbyists — and, in fact, there are more lobbyists on the Hill and more money spent on lobbying food, food processing and agriculture than there is in the defense industry, and people don’t often understand that,” she explains. “So we need to hear all your voices on whatever concerns you.”

RELATED: Congresswoman Mia Love Encourages Women to Step Up and Lean In

See more of LIVESTRONG’s Stronger Women interviews.

About the Author

JESS BARRON is Editor-in-Chief and GM for LIVESTRONG.COM, a leading healthy lifestyle website with more than 32 million unique monthly viewers. In addition to LIVESTRONG, her writing has appeared in Entrepreneur, Fortune and MyDomaine. She has been interviewed about her advice for female entrepreneurs by Inc., HuffingtonPost and FabFitFun. Jess has appeared on MSNBC, CNN and ABC News and has been a keynote speaker at Health Further and a panelist at SXSW, Create & Cultivate and Digital Hollywood. Follow Jess on Instagramand Twitter at @jessbeegood!

USDA Invests $21 Million to Encourage Low-Income Families to Buy Healthy Food Options

USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture sent this bulletin at 08/02/2018 02:00 PM EDT

Media contact: Kelly Sprute, 202-744-2574

WASHINGTON, D.C.  August 2, 2018 – The U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) today announced 24 grants totaling $21 million to help Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) participants increase their purchases of fruits and vegetables by providing incentives at the point of purchase. The funding comes from the Food Insecurity Nutrition Incentive (FINI) program, authorized by the 2014 Farm Bill.

“We are encouraging low-income families to choose affordable and healthy food options to feed their families. NIFA has on ongoing commitment to improve the diet and health of all Americans,” said Acting NIFA Director Tom Shanower. "At the same time, the program helps growers take advantage of direct marketing and other opportunities to bolster their sales thereby improving their bottom line."

FINI is a joint program between NIFA and USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service, which oversees SNAP and is responsible for evaluating the impact of the variety of incentive programs that are deployed by FINI grantees. The program brings together stakeholders from different parts of the national food system to improve the nutrition and health status of SNAP households. The FINI program supports a wide range of small pilot projects; multi-year community programs; and multi-year, large-scale initiatives.

Among the grant participants this year, Wholesome Wave Georgia provides fresh local produce to Georgia’s food-insecure families through Georgia Fresh for Less (GF4L) incentive program. GF4L wants to implement an “e-incentive” technology and expand the program into additional sites throughout Georgia.

Another program participant, The Arkansas Coalition for Obesity Prevention will implement a "Double Up Food Bucks (DUFB) program that provides retailers a dollar-for-dollar market match for fresh fruit and vegetable purchases by eligible SNAP participants. Arkansas Coalition for Obesity Prevention wants to create a statewide unified DUFB program of matching markets in every region of the state.  

Grants being announced, by state, include:

FINI Pilot Projects (up to $100,000, not to exceed 1 year):

• Sustainable Molokai, Hawaii, $99,963
• The Land Connection, Illinois, $21,000
• Pillsbury United Communities, Minnesota, $97,231
• South Dakota State University, South Dakota, $82,223
• West Virginia Food & Farm Coalition, Inc., West Virginia, $100,000

More information about these projects is available on the NIFA website.

Multi-year community-based projects (up to $500,000, not to exceed 4 years):

• Arkansas Coalition for Obesity Prevention, Arkansas, $500,000
• International Rescue Committee, Inc., Arizona, $400,000
• LiveWell Colorado, Colorado, $466,951
• DC Central Kitchen Inc., District of Columbia, $500,000
• Wholesome Wave Georgia, Georgia, $442,134
• Presence Chicago Hospitals Network, Illinois, $394,916
• The Experimental Station 6100 Blackstone, Illinois, $413,534
• Chicago Horticultural Society, Illinois, $492,793
• Iowa Healthiest State Initiative, Iowa, $480,044
• Community Food and Agriculture Coalition Inc., Montana, $267,153
• Rural Advancement Foundation International - USA, North Carolina, $363,880

More information about these projects is available on the NIFA website.

Multi-year large-scale projects ($500,000 or greater, not to exceed 4 years):

• Pinnacle Prevention Corp., Arizona, $974,050
• SPUR-San Francisco Bay Area Planning & Urban Research Assc., California, $623,430
• Feeding Florida, Inc., Florida, $3,047,755
• Fair Food Network, Michigan, $1,544,196
• Reinvestment Partners, North Carolina, $1,000,544
• Produce Perks Midwest Inc., Ohio, $2,276,890
• Farm Fresh Rhode Island, Rhode Island, $4,628,765
• Local Environmental Agriculture Project, Virginia, $1,797,548

More information about these projects is available on the NIFA website.

Increasing low-income communities’ abilities to purchase fresh fruits and vegetables not only helps to improve the health of families, but also expands economic opportunities for farmers. FINI provides grants on a competitive basis to projects that help low-income consumers participating in SNAP purchase more fresh fruits and vegetables through cash incentives that increase their purchasing power at locations like farmers markets.

NIFA invests in and advances agricultural research, education, and extension and promotes transformative discoveries that solve societal challenges. NIFA's integrated research, education, and extension programs support the best and brightest scientists and extension personnel whose work results in user-inspired, groundbreaking discoveries that combat childhood obesity, improve and sustain rural economic growth, address water availability issues, increase food production, find new sources of energy, mitigate climate variability, and ensure food safety.

To learn more about NIFA’s impact on agricultural science, visit www.nifa.usda.gov/impacts, sign up for email updates or follow us on Twitter @USDA_NIFA, #NIFAimpacts.

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USDA is an equal opportunity lender, provider, and employer.

NIFA invests in and advances agricultural research, education, and extension, and promotes  transformative discoveries that solve societal challenges

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.

From Farm to Fork: The Regulatory Status of Non-GMO Plant Innovations Under Current EU Law

A new article on the latest plant breeding methods will be published on the next issue of BIO-SCIENCE LAW REVIEW.

The existing EU regulatory framework, when considered holistically, provides efficient guarantees that every stage of the agri-food supply chain, from lab to fork, is subject to constraints and obligations dictated by harmonized legislation, each providing various degrees of scrutiny, risk management and control, sanctions and remedial action.

Comparisons between the existing non-GMO legal framework with the GMO legislation or with any other authorization regime based on a full pre-market risk assessment are, by definition, of little practical relevance, since such regimes aim to address potentially serious risks, which, as the SAM Note clarifies, have not been identified in the case of Non-GMO NBT Products.

In the absence of any such concrete, identifiable risk induced by (the use of NBTs for) Non-GMO NBT Products and in view of their non-distinguishability from CBT products, the protection of human/animal/plant health and the environment should thus be considered to be adequately ensured and Non-GMO NBT Products should not be treated differently from products resulting from CBT.

The opposite conclusion would not only raise serious concerns under the SPS Agreement but would essentially also mean that all non-GMO plant products on the market today must be considered inadequately regulated. Just as Advocate-General Bobek concluded in his Opinion in Case C–528/16,133 with regard to mutagenesis, that ‘one could hardly assume that a reasonable legislator could ever wish to state, en bloc and for the future, that something is safe to such a degree that it does not need regulating at all’, one can neither assume that all NBT-products should en bloc be considered to only yield products suspect of causing unacceptable risks.

Against that backdrop, it is submitted that both the precautionary principle and the specific safeguard clauses in horizontal and sectoral legislation can justify and sufficiently guarantee the adoption of stricter risk management measures if a previously unidentified risk arises.”

• Download the full article

Innovation And Design In Vertical Agriculture And Sustainable Urban Ecosystems

Innovation And Design In Vertical Agriculture And Sustainable Urban Ecosystems

A workshop sponsored by The U.S. Department of Agriculture & The U.S. Department of Energy - June 27 – 28, 2018 - Washington D.C.

“While admission is free, you must RSVP by June 17 to attend. To RSVP, please go online to: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/innovation-design-vertical-agriculture-and-sustainable-urban-ecosystems-tickets-44896966034 .”

An Opportunity for Innovation

As the global population grows, so too does food demand as well as constraints on land and natural resources. By the year 2050, the world’s population will approach 10 billion people, and at least 2 out of 3 people will live in urban centers.

With this increased urbanization comes the unique opportunity to develop engineering and agricultural innovations within urban systems that sustainably stimulate growth to help meet future needs.

Vertical agriculture operations could augment production while offering lower emissions, higher-nutrient produce, and reduced water usage and runoff. And placing vertical farms in the context of a renewable urban ecosystem - where one industry’s waste is another’s raw material - could stimulate sustainable economic growth.

At this free workshop, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Department of Energy, representatives from the public and private sectors will identify and discuss challenges, opportunities and possibilities associated with vertical agriculture and sustainable urban ecosystems. Information on featured speakers can be found on the back page of this brochure.

The public may attend all morning programs, but your RSVP is required. For additional information or to RSVP, please contact Sarah Federman at Sarah.Federman@osec.usda.gov or David Babson at David.Babson@osec.usda.gov.

(Agenda and Federal Registration links below)

Featured Speakers Include:

Featured Speakers, left to right: Dr. Sabine O’Hara, Dr. Dickson Despommier,Dr. Raymond Wheeler, Dr. Weslynne Ashton, Nate Storey,  Nick Starling.

Dr. Sabine O’Hara, Dean of the College of Agriculture, Urban Sustainability and Environmental Sciences (CAUSES) of the University of the District of Columbia (UDC). As Dean of CAUSES, she is responsible for academic, research and community outreach programs, and is leading the UDC’s efforts to build a cutting-edge model for Urban Agriculture and Urban Sustainability that improves the quality of life and economic opportunity for urban populations. Sabine is a respected author, researcher and higher education executive, and is well known for her expertise in sustainable economic development, global education and executive leadership.

Dr. Dickson Despommier, microbiologist, ecologist, and Emeritus Professor of Public and Environmental Health at Columbia University. Despommier is widely considered to be the originator of the modern concept of vertical farming.

Dr. Raymond Wheeler, Plant Physiologist, NASA – As the lead for Advanced Life Support Research activities at the Kennedy Space Center, Wheeler has been studying ways to grow safe, fresh food crops efficiently off the Earth. Astronauts on the International Space Station recently harvested and ate a variety of red romane lettuce that they activated and grew in a plant growth system called “Veggie.”

Dr. Weslynne Ashton, Associate Professor of Environmental Management and Sustainability, Illinois Institute of Technology Stuart School of Business. Ashton’s research focuses on industrial ecology, optimizing resource flows in socio-ecological systems, and developing entrepreneurial solutions to social and environmental challenges. She currently leads projects examining urban food system sustainability with Plant Chicago and the Chicago Food Policy Action Council.

Nate Storey, Chief Science Officer, Plenty, Inc. - Plenty is building a global network of field-scale indoor farms to transform produce from a boring commodity to a delicious movement for all. Located near communities around the world, Plenty farms will utilize cutting-edge growing technologies and proven plant science to deliver industry-leading yields of locally-grown, backyard-fresh produce. By shaving thousands of miles and weeks off the journey from farm to table, Plenty will transition agriculture to a reliable, predictable, and resource-efficient model.

Nick Starling is the chairman of Skyscraper Farm, LLC.  Nick has been researching vertical farming since 2011. During this time, he has discovered a variety of improvements needed to feed the world while dramatically reducing water usage and eliminating agricultural runoff.

Agenda

Thomas Jefferson Auditorium, USDA South Building,

1398 Independence Ave. SW, Washington DC

June 27th

8:45 a.m. –   Open Session: Welcome

9:30 a.m. –   Envisioning Incentivizing Sustainable Urban Ecosystems:

       Sabine O’Hara, Univ. of the District of Columbia

10:00 a.m. – Envisioning Vertical Agriculture: Dickson Despommier,

       Columbia University

10:30 a.m. – Vertical Agriculture in Practice: Nate Storey, Chief Science Officer, Plenty Inc.

11:00 am – 3x5s, State of the Practice: lightning talks

12:00 p.m. –                           Break & Lunch

12:45 p.m. – Breakout sessions (attendance by invitation only)

• Pest and Pathogen Management
• Plant Selection and Breeding
• Systems Engineering
• Sustainability and Community Services
• Sustainability and Ecosystem Services
• Economics

4:30 p.m. – Wrap Up

June 28th

8:30 a.m. –   Rapporteur from 06/27 breakouts

9:30 a.m. –   Open Session: Welcome

10:00 a.m. – Expanding Applications for Controlled Agriculture:

       Raymond Wheeler, NASA

10:30 a.m. – Economics and Scalability of Vertical Farms: Nick Starling, Skyscraper Farm LLC

11:00 a.m. – Industrial Ecology for Sustainable Urban Ecosystems:

       Weslynne Ashton, Illinois Institute of Technology

11:30 a.m. – Open Session: Closing Remarks

12:00 a.m. –                           Break & Lunch

12:45 p.m. – Breakout sessions (attendance by invitation only)

• Pest and Pathogen Management
• Plant Selection and Breeding
• Systems Engineering
• Sustainability and Community Services
• Sustainability and Ecosystem Services
• Economics

4:30 p.m. – Wrap Up

Register Now:  https://www.eventbrite.com/e/innovation-design-vertical-agriculture-and-sustainable-urban-ecosystems-tickets-44896967037

Jury Hits Pork Giant For $50M For Hog Operation's Nuisance

Jury Hits Pork Giant For $50M For Hog Operation's Nuisance

May 1, 2018

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By EMERY P. DALESIO, AP Business Writer

RALEIGH, N.C. — A federal jury on Thursday awarded more than $50 million in damages to neighbors of an industrial hog operation found responsible for intense smells, noise and other disturbances so bad people couldn't enjoy their rural homes. 

Jurors on Thursday awarded the 10 neighbors of a 15,000-head swine operation a total of $750,000 in compensation, plus $50 million in damages designed to punish the corporation that owns the animals.

Lawyers didn't sue the Bladen County farm's owner, instead targeting Murphy-Brown LLC, the hog-production division of Virginia-based Smithfield Foods. The Chinese-owned company uses strict contracts to dictate how farm operators raise livestock that Smithfield owns.

The decision is the first in dozens of lawsuits filed by more than 500 neighbors complaining about hog operations.

Jurors decided that "the defendant owed them (neighbors) a standard of care in terms of trying to minimize the odors and other undesirable fallout from their processes," said Wake Forest University law professor Sidney Shapiro, who has followed the cases. "Apparently, the jury decided they (Smithfield) knew about and disregarded all this fallout, even though they could do something positive to reduce it."

Rural residents have complained about smells, clouds of flies and excessive spraying for decades. But local and state politicians have either supported or backed down in the face of a politically powerful industry.

North Carolina legislators last year changed state law to make it much more difficult to replicate the string of nuisance lawsuits targeting hog operations like the one decided Thursday.

Rep. Jimmy Dixon, R-Duplin, a recipient of campaign contributions from hog farmers, pushed to make the law retroactive, which would have limited damages in these cases as well. But that part of the proposal was voted down when other lawmakers questioned its constitutionality.

Smithfield Foods said it would appeal the decision.

"The lawsuits are a serious threat to a major industry, to North Carolina's entire economy and to the jobs and livelihoods of tens of thousands of North Carolinians," Senior Vice President Keira Lombardo said in a statement.

Smithfield Foods hasn't changed the locally dominant method of hog waste disposal since intensive hog operations multiplied in North Carolina in the 1980s and 1990s. The practice involves housing thousands of hogs together, flushing their waste into holding pits, allowing bacteria to break down the material, then spraying the effluent onto fields with agricultural spray guns.

Neighbors say the spraying sends the smells and animal waste airborne, allowing it to drift into their homes and sometimes coat outdoor surfaces on their properties.

"We are pleased with the verdict. These cases are about North Carolina family property rights and a clean environment," said Mona Lisa Wallace, a Salisbury attorney whose firm teamed with two Texas-based firms to prepare the series of trials covering similar ground. "We are now preparing for the next, which is scheduled for the end of May."

This case, presenting with the plaintiffs and the specific farm, was chosen by suing attorneys. Although the size of the jury award is large, the result of the next trial could be more telling since the parties were chosen by Smithfield's attorneys, said Drew Kershen, an emeritus law professor at the University of Oklahoma and a past president of the American Agricultural Law Association.

"If you got a second test case, chosen by the defense attorney, which turns out to have damages like this, then you would really have to say, 'My goodness, these are really significant claims against the industry in North Carolina,'" he said.

Follow Emery P. Dalesio on Twitter at http://twitter.com/emerydalesio. His work can be found at https://apnews.com/search/emery%20dalesio

All US fruit Detained Upon Arrival In China For Seven Days

All US fruit Detained Upon Arrival In China For Seven Days

Pesticide Residue Testing

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Effective immediately, China's Customs has been instructed to detain and inspect all US fruit shipments for seven days upon arrival into China for pesticide residue testing. A shipment of Washington apples in ShenZheng port was rejected on Saturday and sent back to the US.

Previously only 30% of American shipment where tested at random, now this number has been increased to 100%. Other countries of which currently all 100% of shipments are inspected are Peru and Australia, due to past quarantine issues.

According to Chinese importers, China Customs has strengthened the visual inspection of all US fruit to find traces of for example bugs or rot. If traces are found, the shipments will be held for lab tests. In case these tests are proven positive, the shipment will be returned to the US or destroyed. 

Lab tests may take between 2 days up to 2 weeks.

“The majority of Chinese buyers are taking a ‘wait and see’ position at the moment,” says an industry source. “They are concerned about China rejecting shipments that do pass the pesticide residue tests.” China Customers has limited cooler space and products may be stored outside in unrefrigerated conditions. This could result in deterioration and product being lost. Many sea and air shipments are at risk with a seven-day retention.

Impact on California cherry season

This new regulation could have a significant impact on the California cherry season that starts next week and relies heavily on exports to China. It may even impact the Washington cherry season that starts up in a few weeks. “I think the situation may depress domestic cherry markets, including an influx of more Washington cherries into Canada,” a cherry grower-shipper said. “Canadian export prices should strengthen, but the US market will be hurt.”

Trade meetings

The industry source added that the same situation happened with the Philippines a few years ago as a result of tensions between China and the Philippines over the South China Sea. Tomorrow, US-China trade talks are taking place in Beijing and Dalian Yidu Group, one of the biggest importers in China, is hopeful the situation will diffuse after Tuesday’s meetings. “Hopefully, the State Fruit Commissions will also be able to play a role in solving the problem.”

CIQ used to directly operate under The General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection, and Quarantine (AQSIQ). In March earlier this year, China’s National People’s Congress dismantled AQSIQ as part of the most comprehensive government restructure in nearly 50 years. Any new protocols seem to be on hold indefinitely, or until the establishment of a State Market Regulatory Administration (SMRA). The SMRA will eventually adopt the tasks and responsibilities of the AQSIQ. For now, China Customs is in charge of fruit and vegetable imports and inspections.

Publication date: 4/30/2018
Author: Marieke Hemmes
Copyright: www.freshplaza.com

Report Back From EcoFarm on Eliminating Hunger

Report Back From EcoFarm on Eliminating Hunger

By Peter Ruddock

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In his keynote speech at EcoFarm 2018, John Ikerd proposed that “Eliminating hunger is the first requisite of agricultural sustainability.” John told us, as he has written before, that “Thus far, the sustainable agriculture movement has put far more emphasis on the second requisite for sustainability than on the first—on developing an ecologically sound, economically viable approach to farming.” And he backed this up with what may be a startling statistic to some: “In 1968, when CBS-TV aired its classic documentary, “Hunger in America,” an estimated 5% of the people in the U.S. were hungry, which was considered a national emergency. Nearly fifty years later, in 2015, more than 12% of Americans were “food insecure” and more than 16% of American children lived in food insecure homes.” The world, he reminded us, grows plenty of food and yet a large portion of its inhabitants go hungry, or live in fear of doing so, regularly.

John’s fellow keynote speaker, Doria Robinson localized the issue for us. Doria told us about the work that she and her colleagues at Urban Tilth are doing in Richmond, growing food for their community, including that community in decision making, production and more. They are building a resilient community, one that attempts to feed it members, rather than growing for a market, which would default to feed the population who could afford it, while leaving those who could not out. This is a very different goal than business as usual, which posits that if we produce enough everyone will somehow get fed, and never seems to deliver. Not only does Urban Tilth switch the paradigm, growing first for their community, but they honor the second requisite, in caring for the earth and food in the process, knowing that the earth and food will then care for them.

After a short break, Hank Herrera and I joined John Ikerd and Doria Robinson for a workshop, which would take the conversation one level deeper. John talked with us about ideas for local distribution, about “community food utilities”, which would be built upon the notion of feeding the community, rather than filling commodity markets. Hank told us not only about the work that New Hope Farms has been doing in Western Contra Costa County raising food and selling it locally, but also, along with Doria, about the ideas that they have been looking to implement, creating a network of farms, processors, distributors and stores which work together to implement the idea that feeding the community comes first, anticipating the ideas that John had described. My own contributions included the idea of local investment, particularly through Slow Money, with whom I work, to get those who can afford to fund this work, generally through low-interest, high-impact loans, to also become a positive force in creating this local, healthy, resilient community, by making sure that their money circulated in their community, enriching it, rather than departing for unknown shareholders far away.

This being EcoFarm, a lively discussion followed, with an engaged crowd asking questions, contributing their own ideas, examples and, perhaps most especially, enthusiasm to the issue. It is energizing to see so many attendees at EcoFarm want to wrap their arms around the First Requisite and so increase the priority of Eliminating Hunger among those of ecological farming.

By Peter Ruddock

Listen to John and Doria's workshop recording when you purchase the 2018 Workshop Audio Recordings.

Watch their keynote presentation on YouTube.

What Does The New Regenerative Organic Certification Mean For The Future of Good Food?

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What Does The New Regenerative Organic Certification Mean For The Future of Good Food?

Several new labels introduced last week seek to move beyond USDA organic. Can they shore up sustainable practices, or will they sow consumer confusion?

BY ARIANA REGUZZONI   |  03.12.18

Organic is not enough. Or that’s the thinking behind the new Regenerative Organic Certification(ROC) that was officially launched at the Natural Products Expo West trade show last week. The Regenerative Organic Alliance, a coalition of organizations and businesses led by the Rodale Institute, Patagonia, and Dr. Bronner’s, has joined the seemingly unstoppable engine propelling sustainable agriculture beyond the term “organic,” or, as some believe, bringing it back to its original meaning.

“[The USDA] Organic [label] is super important—thank goodness it was put into play,” says Birgit Cameron, senior director of Patagonia Provisions, an arm of Patagonia that aims to solve environmental issues by supporting climate-friendly food producers. “The ROC is absolutely never meant to replace it, but rather to keep it strong to the original intention.”

Like other newly proposed certifications—including the “The Real Organic Project,” which was also announced last week—one of the Alliance’s primary goals is to require growers to focus on soil health and carbon sequestration. But, as Cameron explains, it is also an attempt to be a “north star” for the industry as a certification that encompasses the health of the planet, animal welfare, and social fairness.

As producers move up through its tier system (bronze, silver, and gold) they will eventually set an even “higher bar” than any other labels offered right now. According to Jeff Moyer, executive director of the Rodale Institute, this built-in incentive to constantly improve on-farm practices is something the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) organic requirements lack.

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“When you play with the federal government, you have to give up some things,” Moyer says. “Organic is a fairly static standard … once you become certified you’re in the club and there’s no incentive to move beyond that.”

Mechanics of a New Regenerative Label

There are still nuances that need to be worked out, but, as it stands now, USDA organic certification (or an international equivalent) is a baseline requirement for ROC certification—a company or farm must at least be USDA Organic certified to earn the ROC label. However, the Alliance—instead of the USDA—will oversee ROC certification. ROC-certified producers must also meet the requirements of one of the existing certifications for animal welfare and social fairness, such as Animal-Welfare Approved or Fair Trade Certified.

And the Alliance’s goal is that ROC will be enforced through the same third-party certifier with whom producers are already working, such as Oregon Tilth or CCOF. Proponents say that requirements will be regularly reevaluated and updated as new practices emerge, and that in this way, it will be a living document.

USDA organic requirements are also meant to be updated through the National Organic Standards Boards (NOSB), a group of farmers, industry reps, and scientists that meets twice yearly in a public setting to discuss and vote on recommendations for the National Organic Program.

The Alliance is part of a growing group of activists and producers disillusioned with the NOSB’s decisions last year to allow soil-free crops–such as those grown using hydroponics–to qualify as certified organic and the withdrawal of a rule that required improvements in animal welfare.

Many view the co-opting of the word “organic” by large corporations and mono-crop farms as more evidence of the label’s erosion. They also worry about the influx of fraudulent organic food being imported into the country. And the fact that the current USDA and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have both moved away from many of the values embraced by the organic movement in the last year seems to be spurring this new movement along.

The groups behind these labels are also slowly introducing the term “regenerative” to the mainstream. While there is not yet one official definition of the term, Kevin Boyer, project director at the newly established Regenerative Agriculture Foundation, an education and grant-making organization, summed regenerative ag up as “any system of agriculture that continuously improves the cycles on which it relies, including the human community, the biological community, and the economic community.”

Boyer says he knows of at least four other regenerative labels that are currently in the works, but ROC is the farthest along. (Not all will use organic certification as a baseline.) This influx of new standards contributes to the urgency the Alliance feels to get out in front of the crowd.

“The more popular it gets, the more vulnerable it is to having someone who is not part of the regenerative agriculture community come in and use it,” says Boyer.

Last year, the Alliance held a public comment period facilitated by NSF International, a certifier with whom they have an established relationship. The certification has also gone through two revisions so far, but the Alliance deliberately chose not to pass it through a large committee of reviewers. Instead, they want to “put a stake in the ground” now by presenting it to the public.

Despite goals that are broadly supported by many people in the sustainable agriculture community, ROC has garnered skepticism among those who believe it is working in a vacuum and further confusing a marketplace where consumers are already overwhelmed by an abundance of third-party labels such as Non-GMO and Rainforest Alliance Certified.

“I think ROC did a really beautiful job in addressing all the things that regenerative agriculture is supposed to care about, but it has to be a conversation with the whole community and built in a way that truly promotes the inclusion the movement has had since the very beginning,” says Boyer.

Adding Confusion in a Crowded Marketplace?

Bob Scowcroft, the retired executive director of the Organic Farming Research Foundation and a 35-year activist and leader in the organic farming movement, also has concerns about splintering support for organic food. At the Ecological Farming Conference in January, he was dismayed to hear a panel of ROC underwriters tell an audience of successful organic farmers, some of whom undoubtedly spent thousands of dollars on USDA organic certification, that it wasn’t enough.

“I try to remind people … organic is only 4.8 percent of the food economy,” he says. “Ninety-five percent of the economy is still sprayed [with synthetic pesticides] or [made up of] CAFOs, so we’re going to shred each other? We can only afford to do that when organic is 45 percent of the economy.”

Scowcroft welcomes a “certain amount of agitation” within the umbrella of sustainable agriculture and believes that everything can be improved, but he says adding yet another label into the mix—especially one that is wrapped up in a strong marketing platform instead of extensive research—might not make any significant improvements.

“Regenerative agriculture is probably the 262nd term for organic. We really don’t want to do this again,” said Scowcroft.

Rather, he would like to see more energy and faith put into the systems that are already established. He points to the increased awareness within the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service about cover crops and soil runoff as evidence of the shared value for some “regenerative” requirements. And he supports more research on soil fertility, carbon sequestration, crop rotation, and perennial grasses.

As Scowcroft sees it, the finish line of the “30-year march” toward a better food system isn’t even close to being crossed, but there are many important placeholders that have already been set. Programs like the Organic Agriculture Research and Extension Initiative and Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education grants have ushered in tremendous positive changes, he says, asking why anyone would want to give up on a system that is still malleable and able to get even stronger.

“The model is already there to bring that language to the National Organic Standard Board to further the conversation on eventual improvement,” Scowcroft says. “There shouldn’t be anything stopping anybody from doing that.”

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Photo courtesy of Lee Health.

For other good food advocates, however, the NOSB’s recent decision not to ban hydroponic operations from organic certification was just the latest example of the fact that the board itself is now composed of a number of representatives of large corporations that would like to see the standards further watered down.

“Some folks fought so long and hard to get [federal organic standards] only to see these things trying to displace them,” says Boyer. “I credit the organic movement for creating an atmosphere that even allows this conversation. But, especially here in California, you don’t have to drive very far to see an organic farm that is not fulfilling the ideal organic vision.”

Some ranchers, like Julie Morris of Morris Grassfed Beef in California’s San Benito County, say the organic label has never worked for her family’s operation. Unlike ROC, Morris says the original organic standards were written for fruit and vegetable growers and did not take adequately into account livestock practices. Morris Grassfed’s pastures are certified organic, but their beef is not because they work with smaller butchers who can’t always afford certification.

On the other hand, Morris is excited about the coming wave of regenerative standards because, she believes it will consider more of the practices she and her husband already use on their land, with their animals and their employees. For years they have been “first-person certified”—a term Morris uses to describe how they earn customers’ loyalty by showing them first-hand how they run their ranch. But, as more people seek out these kinds of products she says those direct connections don’t always happen.

“Consumers want to know that we nurture the earth, raise our animals humanely, and pay our workers fairly,” she said. “We will now have a chance to share that and be transparent.”

In the meantime, the Alliance hopes that farmers will also choose to get on board because of the potential market pull and the additional premium they could receive for something with the ROC stamp. As Cameron explains, the Alliance is counting on the fact that a significant portion of consumers is already searching for something that exceeds organic.

At this point, however, any premiums are speculative. The Alliance is still in the process of deciding whether the label will be consumer-facing or will just come into play in business-to-business interactions. Patagonia, for example, could say they will only buy cotton from farms that are regenerative organic certified, which would be a boon to the farmers, but not much of a step toward educating the public.

“[Producers] may or may not advertise to consumers,” says Moyer. “If the market says ‘this is confusing me,’ they might not.”

Like Morris, Loren Poncia, rancher, and owner of Stemple Creek Ranch in Marin County, California, is intrigued by the possibility that this one certification could help consolidate several of the certifications he already earns. And since his pastures are already certified organic and part of the Global Animal Partnership, Stemple Creek might be a prime contender for ROC. But it will also depend on how laborious the certification process is. It’s a challenge, Poncia says, to manage the ranch, the business, and also keep up with all the certifications.

“Unless customers are coming to me and asking, ‘Are you certified by this?’ it’s probably not going to motivate me to get another certification,” he says.

Another sticking point for some people is the question of specific practices versus outcomes. Right now, ROC, like other certifications, is primarily practice-based rather than measuring specific data-driven outcomes. At first, glance, focusing on practices might help regulate the methods (i.e., inputs, tillage, irrigation) a farmer or rancher might employ and get them to their goal more quickly. But Boyer from the Regenerative Agriculture Foundation argues that the opposite tends to happen. He says that a practice-based standard restricts farmers by telling them what they can and cannot do instead of fostering innovation.

“A lot of people are good at ticking the boxes, but nothing new comes out of that,” Boyer says. “That doesn’t grow the movement.”

On the other hand, an outcomes-based standard encourages farmers to “employ their creativity.” It makes loopholes less appealing because there is more freedom for farmers to utilize practices that are specific to their operations and, therefore, more successful.

One thing that everyone agrees on is that the Alliance has more work to do. The next step is to run pilot programs with interested farmers—many of whom are already on their way to reaching the standards.

Top photo courtesy of The Rodale Institute.  

Agroecology, FARMING, Food Policy, Labeling