Currently browsing posts about: Agriculture

OOPS: A reader alerted me that all links have been taken down by the new administration.

In his last weeks in office, former President Biden issued a Fact Sheet on the food system investments achieved by his administration. A reader, Ethan Wolf, sent in a link from the Wayback Machine. Fact Sheet on the food system investments achieved by his administration

The Fact Sheet divides the achievements into several categories.

• Building new markets and income for farmers and ranchers
• Modernizing the middle of the agriculture and food supply chain: food processing, aggregation, and distribution
• Creating more fair and competitive markets
• Improving food access, nutrition security and health
• Enchancing food safety
• Supporting breakthrough agricultural rewearch and innovation

To highlight just one—food safety:

• USDA issued a rule to classify raw poultry products contaminated with specific Salmonella levels and serotypes as adulterated.
• USDA also finalized a rule declaring Salmonella an adulterant in raw breaded stuffed chicken products exceeding 1 colony-forming unit per gram.
• FDA launched the “Closer to Zero” initiative (C2Z), which sets forth a science-based approach to continually reducing exposure to lead, arsenic, cadmium, and mercury to the lowest levels possible in foods eaten by babies and young children.
• FDA has issued numerous action levels for toxic elements: draft levels for lead in juices; final levels for lead in foods intended for babies and young children; and a final level for arsenic in apple juice. 
• FDA revoked authorizations for the uses of brominated vegetable oil (BVO) in food because of the potential for adverse health effects in humans.
• FDA also revised its regulations and revoked prior-sanctioned uses of partially hydrogenated oils (PHOs) because studies consistently link consumption of PHOs (industrially produced trans fat) with heart disease. 
• Before the end of the term, FDA also plans to revoke the authorization of Red No. 3, a red dye used in certain medications and various foods and beverages, including candies, cakes, frostings, and frozen desserts, due to studies showing that the dye caused cancer [it did this].

Perhaps coincidentally, Lisa Held at Civil Eats published How Four Years of Biden Reshaped Food and Farming: From day one, the administration prioritized climate, “nutrition security,” infrastructure investments, and reducing food system consolidation. Here’s what the president and his team actually did.

Her categories are somewhat different:

• Taking on Consolidation and Corporate Power, and Supporting Farmer Livelihood
• Tackling the Climate Crisis
• Regulating Pesticides and Other Chemicals
• Focusing on Food Safety
• Linking Hunger, Nutrition, and Health
• Supporting Food and Farm Workers
• Advancing Equity

Here’s my excerpted summary of her analysis of Taking on Corporate Power.

Here’s the announcement:

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) today launched its 2024 Statistical Yearbook, offering an in-depth overview of the most significant trends shaping global agrifood systems. This year’s edition highlights critical challenges, including increased temperatures over land, the ongoing global struggle with food insecurity alongside increasing obesity rates, and the environmental pressures faced by agricultural production….

The 2024 Statistical Yearbook is also available in a digital, interactive format and comes with a companion pocketbook, offering a clear reference to key data on agriculture, food security, and sustainability. It is part of FAO’s ongoing effort to improve data accessibility, complementing the FAOSTAT platform, which hosts the world’s largest collection of free agricultural statistics, covering over 245 countries and territories.

It’s got great graphics.  One example:

A few highlights:

• The value of global agriculture: $3.8 trillion in 2022.
• Proportion of global workforce employed in agriculture: a decrease from 40% in 2000 to 26% in 2022.
• Hunger remains persistent: In 2023, between 713 and 757 million people were undernourished, 152 million more people than in 2019.  Most are in Asia and Africa.
• Obesity is rising: More than 25% of adults in the Americas, Europe and Oceania are obese.
• Meat production increased by 55% from 2000 to 2022, with chicken accounting for the largest share of this rise. 
• Pesticides increased by 70% between 2000 and 2022, with the Americas accounting for half global pesticide use.
• Vegetable oils grew by 133 percent between 2000 and 2021, largely driven by an increase in palm oil production.
• Greenhouse gas emissions from agrifood systems rose 10% between 2000 and 2022, with livestock contributing to around 54% of farmgate emissions.
• Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia are withdrawing each year 9 to almost 40 times their renewable freshwater resources available.

Comment: Food systems need immediate transformation to become healthier and more sustainable. 

Ronnie Cummins and André Leu.  The Regenerative Agriculture Solution: A Revolutionary Approach to Building Soil, Creating Climate Resilience, and Supporting Human and Planetary Health.  Chelsea Green, 2024.

I was asked to do a blurb for this one, and did:

This book is a testament to the vision of the late Ronnie Cummins.  His friend, André Leu, memorializes Cummins’ lifelong work with this overview of the demonstrable benefits of regenerative agriculture for everything in the book’s subtitle, and more.  Cummins’ case study on agave illustrates these benefits perfectly, making this book a useful as well as touching tribute.

This short book is a touchingly sentimental project.  It started out as Ronnie Cummins’ account of how to use agave fronds (which otherwise would be wasted), ground to the consistency of cole slaw and then fermented, for sustainable animal feed.

But Cummins died after writing only two chapters.  The publisher thought agave was too narrow a topic to make book length; it advised broadening the scope to regenerative agriculture with agave as a case study.  Leu, an old friend of Cummins’, took this on.

So there are really two books here, on two topics, by two different authors, in two distinct voices.  Even so, it works as a basic introduction to the benefits of regenerative agriculture for sustainability.

I think the agave example would be better as a monograph, but Cummins hadn’t done enough on it.  Too bad.  He was really excited about its possibilities.  Agave stores moisture from air and does not need much water to grow.

So I projected, if you could grow enough plants, in this case billions of agaves and companion trees, grow them large enough, and interplant them on millions and millions of acres of the world’s currently decarbonized and unproductive rangelands, you could conceivably draw down a critical mass of excess carbon from the atmosphere (where too much CO₂ contributes to climate change) and put in into the plants and trees aboveground, and into the soil belowground, where it belongs.  By greening the desert and the drylands you could dramatically increase soil fertility, retain and store rainfall, restore landscapes and biodiversity, reforest semi-desert areas, regenerate rural livelihoods, and eventually restabilize the climate.  I could hardly fall asleep.

This book is Cummins’ living memorial.

USDA has proclaimed August 4 – 10 as National Farmers Market Week.  I love farmers markets and I’m glad USDA is trying to promote them.

USDA publishes a directory of US farmers markets—7,033 listings.

It also lists

• Agrotourism sites (12,763)
• CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture (1,011)
• Food hubs (230)
• On-farm markets 1,937)

Farmers markets have a long history in the U.S.  The National Agricultural Library has a report on them published in 1948.

Its got all kinds of interesting information.

Here’s the most recent information I can find on growth in numbers.

This is progress.  Farmers markets are well worth support.

The Farmers Market Coalition provides resources and toolkits.

It also makes clear why they deserve support.  Famers markets:

• Preserve farmland
• Stimulate local economies
• Increase access to nutritious food
• Support healthy communtiies
• Promote sustainability

Besides, it’s fun to know your farmer, know your food.

Jennifer Grayson.  A Call to Farms: Reconnecting to Nature, Food, and Community in a Modern World.  Countryman Press, 2024.

What a great title! I did a blurb for Jennifer Grayson’s previous book, Unlatched: The Evolution of Breastfeeding and the Making of a Controversy, and was happy to have the chance to blurb this one too, not least because “A Call to Farms” is such a great title.  Grayson, as it happens, is one terrific writer.   

Here’s the new blurb:

In this deeply inspiring book, Jennifer Grayson examines the motives, practices, problems, and successes of a diverse collection of young small-scale farmers growing food sustainably and achieving enormous satisfaction and joy in the process. The farmers described in A Call to Farms, provide abundant reasons for hope in the future of food healthier for people and the planet as well as for its producers.  If you are looking for hope, here it is.

And here is a short excerpt capturing its essence:

A week into my first farm job, I realized it was the most joyful and fulfilling work I had ever experienced.  After two months of being outside all day, nearly every day, I felt the best—both physically and mentally—that I ever had in my life.  But the real transformation occurred as I began to meet and learn bout the new and driven farmers, graziers, and food activists emerging all over the country.  They hadn’t grown up in farming families; they came from backgrounds vastly underrepresented in agriculture; and many of them were far younger than I was, not to mention decades younger than the average American farmer.  I was awestruck by their intention and ingenuity.  They hadn’t turned to this way of life as some back-to-the-land fantasy.  They had chosen sustainable agriculture as a tactile way to effect environmental activism and food justice; for cultural reclamation; to reconnect to nature, food, and community; to live aligned with their values; to do, in the words of one farmer you’ll meet in this book, “something that means something.”

As I said, inspiring.  Get out there and farm!

Science Magazine has this editorial headline: Reverse EU’s growing greenlash**

I’m always interested in the USDA’s charts displaying food and agriculture statistics.  They help to clarify complicated issues.

Agricultural trade is particularly opaque, but here it is at a glance.

First, what the US exports:

Next, what we import:

What so bizarre here is that the categories are the same; we export and import the same kinds of products.

The biggest difference is in horticultural products, which the USDA defines as “plants that are used by people for food, for medicinal purposes, and for aesthetic gratification.”

Horticulture includes “specialty crops,” the USDA’s name for the plant foods humans eat (as opposed to feed for animals)—fruits, vegetables , nuts, and seeds.  To further confuse the matter, the USDA also lumps medicinal herbs, flowers, and Christmas trees in this category.

Never mind.  The bottom line is we import most of our fruits and vegetables.  This is because the US agricultural system focuses on feed for animals and fuel for automobiles.

Overall, here’s what all this does to the balance of trade:

We used to export more food than we imported.  Now, we don’t.

Shouldn’t our food system mainly focus on producing food for people?

Obviously, yes.

The USDA announced the latest data on the US agricultural system in a press release.  It summarizes the highlights:

• Number of farms: 1.9 million (down 7% from 2017)
• Average size: 463 acres (up 5%)
• Total farmland: 880 million acres of farmland (down 2%), accounting for 39% of all U.S. land.
• Revenues: $543 billion (up from $389 billion)
• Net cash income (less expenses): $152 billion.
• Average farm income: $79,790. A total of 43% of farms had positive net cash farm
• Percent farms with net income: 43%
• Farms selling direct to consumers: 116,617 with sales of $3.3 billion (up 16%)
• Farms with sales of $ 1 million or more: 105,384 (6% of all farms); they sell three-fourths of all agricultural products.
• Farms with sales of $50,000 or less: 1.4 million (74% of farms); they sell 2%.
• Percent of farmland used for oilseeds or grains: 32%
• Percent of farmland used for beef cattle: 40%
• Average age of farmers: 58.1 (up 0.6 years)
• Average age of beginning farmers: 47.1

The 2022 census information is so complicated to access that the USDA provides a video on the main site to explain how to use it.   This helps—a lot.

The site for the full report is here.   For the full report itself, go here.

Highlights are here.

Most of the data refer to industrial crops like corn and soybeans: feed for animals, fuel for automobiles.

If you want to know about food for people , you can looik at Table 36. Vegetables, Potatoes, and Melons Harvested for Sale: 2022 and 2017

All of this is in miserable-to-read tables.  Fortunately, The Guardian to the rescue: ‘America is a factory farming nation’: key takeaways from US agriculture census.

It provides illuminting charts based on the data.  For example:

What more to say?  Only that our agricultural system needs a major refocusing on smaller, diverse, regenerative farms producing food, as well as those producing animal feed.  We should not be growing food crops to produce automobile fuel.