Currently browsing posts about: USDA

USDA has finally proposed new rules to try to make the current poultry farming system a bit more fair to the people who actually raise the chickens.

Under the current system, the big poultry producers get the benefits while the chicken farmers take all the risks.  The companies supply the chicks; the farmers pay for the houses, equipment, and management—and take on immense debt to do so.

They are paid according to a tournament system.  Farmers who produce the most amount of chicken using the least amount of feed are paid the most; others get less.  But the farmers do not control the quality of the chicks they receive.  They also sell to only one buyer, a system with its own name, monopsony.

John Oliver did a synopsis of the tournaent system in 2015.

Hence the new rule: Transparency in Poultry Grower Contracting and Tournaments.  This does not get rid of the tournament system, unfortunately, but it does require poultry companies to disclose key information to growers about realistic outcomes before making important contracting decisions such as capital investments, and about key inputs.

The point is to enable growers to understand the terms of their contracts so as to have a better chance to compete.

• USDA is seeking comments on this proposed rule and also on additional steps it could take to enhance fairness and address concerns about the tournament system.  Poultry Growing Tournament Systems: Fairness and Related Concerns is available for comment until Sept. 6, 2022, at www.regulations.gov.
• For more information, see Agricultural Competition: A Plan in Support of Fair and Competitive Markets.

Also see:

• Government Accountability Project whistleblower complaints against the tournament system
• Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future — Letter to State Attorneys General on Protecting Contract Chicken Farmers from Unfair Business Practices.
• Survey Results: Marylanders Support a Fair Poultry Industry and Stronger Government Oversight
• Civil Eats op-ed on ending the tournament system

According to Politico, advocates for a fairer system are complaining that the largest poultry companies are pressuring farmers to oppose the USDA’s proposed rule and providing them with form letters to send in.

The USDA acknowledged these complaints when it announced an extension of the public comment period.

USDA is taking these steps to help ensure the integrity of the Federal rulemaking process and to ensure all parties have the opportunity to fully comment.

“There is fear throughout the meat and poultry industry as we saw earlier this year at two separate Congressional hearings where witnesses did not testify due to concerns of retaliation,” Vilsack said. “But it is still critical that we hear the full story, so we are highlighting the option for comments to be provided anonymously.”

Politico says that as of Aug. 18, the USDA had received at least 350 public comments.  According to its analysis, at least 200 of public comments support the rule, though some supporters have significant reservations and are imploring USDA to go further.

At the request of Congress, the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) has just released “Added Sugars in School Meals and Competitive Foods.”  The report itself is at this link.

The idea was to find out whether schools were meeting the 10% standard: meals and snacks were not to exceed 10% of calories from added sugars.

Note: the 10% is meant to be a ceiling, not a floor.

The report’s Key Findings

• Practically all—92%—of school breakfasts had 10% or more of calories from added sugars.
• The majority of schools—69%—served lunches with 10% percent or more calories from added sugars.
• The main source of added sugars in school meals is flavored (e.g., chocolate) fat-free milk; this contributed 29% of the added sugars in breakfasts and 47% in lunches.
• Of the 10 most popular a la carte food items available at breakfast, 6 exceeded the 10% maximum for added sugars.
• Of the 10 most popular a la carte food items available at lunch, four exceeded the 10% maximum.

Mind you, this says nothing about sweet snacks and candy used as rewards, treats, snacks, or celebrations in classrooms.

But if you want to know why nutritionists like me would like to see chocolate milk mostly kept out of schools, here’s why.

You would think the beleaguered FDA would have better things to do.

It sent out a press release announcing new “Feed Your Mind” materials to increase public and professional understanding of GMOs, in partnershipwith USDA and EPA.

My first question: Who paid for this?

The answer:

Funding for the “Feed Your Mind” initiative was provided by Congress in the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2017 to conduct “consumer outreach and education regarding agricultural biotechnology and biotechnology derived food products and animal feed, including through publication and distribution of science-based educational information on the environmental, nutritional, food safety, economic, and humanitarian impacts of such biotechnology, food products, and feed.”  More funds were provided through 2018 and 2019 Appropriations bills.

How’s that for effective lobbying by the food biotechnology industry!

Why do I think this is pro-GMO propaganda?

I started with the Discussion Guide for Health Educators.  It has just a few questions and answers.  For example:

Q.  Are GMO’s safe to eat?

A.  Yes…they are just as safe to eat as non-GMO foods.

Q.  Is here a link between GMOs and cancer?

A.  No.  GMO crops are not changed in ways that would increase the risk of cancer for humans or animals.

I don’t think these answers are necessarily wrong.  They just don’t tell the whole story.

These materials have nothing to say about:

• Consolidation in the biotechnology industry
• Corporate control of commodity agriculture
• Glyphosate, the herbicide used with GMOs and considered carcinogenic by international health agencies and US courts
• How GMO crops have taken over, driving out everyone else
• How pesticides used on GMO crops contaminate organic production
• The ways GMO companies harrass independent farmers by enforcing intellectual property rights
• How the Farm Bill subsidizes GMO corn and soybeans, causing them to be overproduced and corn to be used for ethanol
• Congress’s absurd Bioengineered labeling, widely ignored.
• The consequent lack of transparency in the supermarket

No wonder so many people look for Non-GMO labels on food products.

Take a look at these materials and judge for yourself (I particularly recommend the video for consumers).  It and the rest are quite short.

• A video and infographic for consumers:
  • Video: “GMOs, Farm to Table”
  • Infographic: “Where Can You Find GMOs?”
• A video and discussion guide for health educators:
  • Video: “GMOs and Food Safety: A Guide for Health Educators”
  • Discussion Guide: “A Question of GMOs”
• A video and factsheet developed in partnership with the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics for registered dietitians (RDs)/registered dietitian nutritionists (RDNs) and nutrition and dietetics technicians, registered (NDTRs). Interested RDs/RDNs and NDTRs can earn free continuing education units through the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics’ EatRight® Store.
  • Video: “Understanding GMOs”
  • Factsheet: “Understanding GMOs”

For More Information

• Feed Your Mind – Agricultural Biotechnology Initiative
• Resources for Healthcare Professionals
• FDA Releases New “Feed Your Mind” Consumer Education Materials (September 2020)

Last week, the USDA announced its new Framework for Shoring Up the Food Supply Chain and Transforming the Food System to Be Fairer, More Competitive, More Resilient.

The Framework document is long and hard to read.  Here’s a summary:

Framework goals:

• Building a more resilient food supply chain that provides more and better market options for consumers and producers while reducing carbon pollution
• Creating a fairer food system that combats market dominance and helps producers and consumers gain more power in the marketplace by creating new, more and better local market options
• Making nutritious food more accessible and affordable for consumers
• Emphasizing equity

Framework actions: where the money goes:

Food production

• $300 million for an Organic Transition Initiative
• $75 million for urban agriculture

Food processing

• $100 million for the Food Supply Chain Loan Guarantee Program
• $375 million to expand independent meat and poultry processing
• 25 million for Meat and Poultry Processing Capacity Technical Assistance
• $275 million for credit access for processors
•  $100 million to support processing worker training and safety
• $200 million for Food Safety Certification for Specialty Crops
• $600 million to support food supply chain infrastructure

Food distribution and aggregation

• $400 million for regional food business centers
• $60 million to leverage commodity purchases through Farm-to-School
• $90 million to prevent and reduce food loss and waste

Food markets & Consumers

• $155 million for food access in underserved communities (Healthy Food Financing Initiative)
• $50 million for the Senior Farmers Market Nutrition Program
• $40 million for the GusNIP [Gus Schumacher] Produce Prescriptions Program.
• $25 million for SNAP technology improvements
• $100 million to create a Healthy Food Incentive Fund for schools

Civil Eats has an interview with Secretary Vilsack about all this.  Its point:

While it’s billed as a “transformation,” the framework does not change the foundational structures or practices of the American food system. It does, however, emphasize regionalism, support for organic and urban farming, and nutrition in new ways. That’s a significant shift for the agency, which has historically prioritized efficiency over all else.

The White House was also at work last week.  It released an Action Plan on Global Water Security.

Summary: FACT SHEET: Vice President Harris Announces Action Plan on Global Water Security and Highlights the Administration’s Work to Build Drought Resilience.

Strategies (Pillars):

• Pillar 1: Advancing U.S. leadership in the global effort to achieve universal and equitable access to sustainable, climate-resilient, safe, and effectively managed WASH services without increasing greenhouse gas emissions.
• Pillar 2: Promoting sustainable management and protection of water resources and associated ecosystems to support economic growth, build resilience, mitigate the risk of instability or conflict, and increase cooperation.
• Pillar 3: Ensuring that multilateral action mobilizes cooperation and promotes water security.

Will any of this do real good?  Specific initiatives will benefit from the increased funding.

Transforming the food system?  Not quite yet.

I was interested to see this graph in a recent report, USDA Agricultural Projections to 2031.

What this says is that agricultural imports are soon expected to be greater than agricultural exports.

Within the next year or so, the United States will be a net importer of agricultural products.

As the report puts it:

Agricultural exports are expected to grow at an annual rate averaging 0.8 percent per year from 2021 through 2031. The value of U.S. agricultural imports is projected to increase by an average annual rate of 6 percent over that same period as domestic consumer spending is expected to remain strong over the next decade combined with domestic preferences for an array of agricultural goods that continue
to exceed domestic production.

I think we need to ask what this means for long-term food security in this country.

The next Farm Bill is under discussion.  It ought to deal with the question of how US agriculture can produce more food for people rather than feed for animals and fuel to cars.

I keep remembering a meeting I went to in Washington DC years ago, where a USDA official said that he did not think Americans should waste land for growing food when it could be done so much more cheaply elsewhere.   I hope USDA thinks differently now.

The Government Accountability Office has just issued this report:  Evidence-Based Policy Making: USDA’s Decision to Relocate Research Agencies to Kansas City Was Not Fully Consistent with an Evidence-Based Approach

You may recall that in October 2019, USDA relocated most Economic Research Service staff positions from Washington DC to Kansas City, MO.  At the time, USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue said the move would save taxpayers more than $300 million over ten years.

This defied credulity.  The real reason had to be that politically appointed USDA officials wanted to destroy the ERS.  Its economists produce reports that tell truths inconvenient for political expediency.

An easy way to destroy an agency is to move it half way across the country.  That way three-quarters of the professional staff would quit or retire.

I considered this move a national tragedy, and said so repeatedly.

• September 21, 2018  USDA’s double-speak proposal to “improve” the ERS: brute-force politics
• May 28, 2019 USDA’s destruction of the Economic Research Service: A National Tragedy
• June 18, 2019 The tragic destruction of the Economic Research Service, continued
• July 10, 2019 One more time: the Economic Research Service tragedy  
• August 6, 2019 The true purpose of moving the ERS out of DC: “Drain the Swamp”
• May 28, 2019  USDA’s destruction of the Economic Research Service: A National Tragedy
• June 18, 2019 The tragic destruction of the Economic Research Service, continued
• September 30, 2020 The Counter investigates: the Economic Research Service’s shameful downfall
• February 17, 2021  We now have a chance to repair the damage done to the Economic Research Service

The GAO is more polite than I am.  Here is a summary excerpt from the report’s Highlights.

USDA’s stated objectives for relocation were to improve its ability to attract and retain highly-qualified staff; place its resources closer to stakeholders and consumers; and reduce costs to taxpayers.

However, GAO found that the economic analysis did not fully align with those objectives. ..USDA omitted critical costs and economic effects from its analysis of taxpayer savings, such as costs related to potential attrition or disruption of activities for a period of time, which may have contributed to an unreliable estimate of savings from relocation.

Overall, GAO found that USDA’s development and usage of evidence had significant limitations… As a result of the weaknesses GAO found, USDA leadership may have made a relocation decision that was not the best choice to accomplish its stated objectives.

But it did achieve its unstated objective: to weaken, if not destroy, ERS.   This agency is still publishing reports, but most of them are uncontroversial estimates of food production and use.  Occasionally I see glimmers of the kinds of reports the agency used to produce.  Let’s hope more of them are on their way.

The USDA has produced three reports on the effects of the coronavirus pandemic on consumers.

The Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic led to significant changes in U.S. consumers’ food-spending patterns in early 2020, with a return to pre-pandemic spending patterns that continued through 2021.

While closures of restaurants and nonessential businesses contributed to record unemployment increases during March and April 2020, unemployment fell to below pre-pandemic levels by December 2021.

Although income and employment have improved, some U.S. households continue to face difficulties obtaining adequate food, particularly in the face of increasing food prices.

It has produced data and charts in three areas.

• Food Spending During the Pandemic: 
• Food Prices During the Pandemic
• Food Sufficiency During the Pandemic: The Household Pulse Survey

Here’s one of the charts, this one on prices.

This is the kind of thing the USDA’s Economic Research Service is supposed to be doing.  I’m glad they are back on the job.