Modern Farmer 03/27/21 Journal-Courier

MODERN FARMER Greenhouses growing in ed programs ... page 2

A special section of the Journal-Courier | Saturday, March 27, 2021 | $1

2 • Saturday, March 27, 2021 • Modern Farmer

Greenhouses growing in ed programs

MODERN FARMER March 27, 2021

By Samantha McDaniel-Ogletree smcdaniel@myjournalcourier.com

While greenhouses have been a part of agriculture for years, more and more school districts are recognizing their importance in agriculture education programs, leading many districts to add greenhouses — or improve existing ones — for their students.

Triopia school district’s agriculture program is getting its first greenhouse, allowing students in the district the opportunity to see what can take place in the world of plants.

The district has a plot of land that is harvested by a company to help the schools’ FFA program raise money, but the greenhouse will provide a new learning experience for those not in FFA and even those at the elementary school level.

Seniors Hannah Cook and Mason Fricke are excited to be some of the first students to work in the greenhouse once it is completed this month.

On the cover: Seniors Hannah Cook and Mason Fricke prepare plants that will be stored and grown inside the Triopia High School greenhouse.

Samantha McDaniel-Ogletree | Journal-Courier

The greenhouse will be tended to by students in the agriculture program and was built mostly by volunteers.

“It’s a lot more hands-on and we’ll get to watch the seeds develop over the next few months,” Fricke said.

Cook, in her second year in the agriculture program, said having the greenhouse already is changing what she is learning in the

program.

“This is my second year and the first time was mostly just book work,” Cook said. “There is a big difference between learning about it and getting to do something that you are learning.”

Triopia agriculture teacher

4 Farmland prices on the rises 6 Electrical safety crucial on farm, in field 8 Push to prevent next meat shortage hits obstacle 9 Growing food, protecting nature don’t have to conflict 12 As cannabis sales boom, industry faces growing issues 13 Relocations curtail ag research, confidence 14 17% of produced food wasted, report estimates 15 Farmers asking for ‘right to repair’ 16 Not just CO2: Rising temps also alter photosynthesis in a changing climate 17

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Modern Farmer • Saturday, March 27, 2021 • 3 mation they are learning in the classroom, Nelson said.

“It is all very student-based,” he said. “I’ll show them how to do something once, but then it’s them doing it. They are taking care of the plants, or making the flyers for the plant sales.”

While there are bookbased classroom components to the program, having the ability to apply the book material to activities in the greenhouse helps students learn, Nelson said.

“They are in a classroom, but then they are actually doing the things we talked about,” he said. “They get to deadhead flowers, do the watering and the business aspects. It’s a different learning and teaching method.”

Having access to a

greenhouse also helps students explore various fields in agriculture and could help them find something they want to do in the future, Nelson said.

“It exposes students to what they can do,” he said.

For Fricke, who plans to pursue a career in agriculture, having access to a greenhouse is providing him with groundwork for future classes, he said.

“I’m getting actual experience,” he said. “I get to learn things before I go to college and into a career. I’ll know some of what I’m supposed to see.”

The greenhouses also make things more exciting for the students.

“It’s way more exciting than if I just lecture,” Nelson said.

Samantha McDaniel-Ogletree | Journal-Courier

Triopia school district has built a greenhouse to provide some additional hands-on learning opportunties for its agriculture program.

Brianna Harmon said the students soon will be growing plants in the greenhouse.

“There’s a lot more to growing plants than what you learn in a book,” Harmon said. “A lot of these students are doers.

They like to get their hands dirty.”

It even will help with younger students, even though they won’t be working directly in the greenhouse and actively growing plants, she said, adding that teachers can tour the greenhouse with younger students as part of lessons on how plant production works and where food comes from.

Franklin schools also is in the early stages of building a new green-

house.

The high school’s agriculture program has had a greenhouse for decades, but it hasn’t been updated often.

Agriculture teacher

Brent Nelson said a new greenhouse will be built during the summer to provide a better learning experience for students.

“We’ve had one (greenhouse) that is more than

30 years old,” Nelson said. “With the new technology, the greenhouse will be more modern.”

Having access to a greenhouse often helps students retain the infor-

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4 • Saturday, March 27, 2021 • Modern Farmer

Farmland prices on the rises

By Darren Iozia

darren.iozia@myjournalcourier.com

Working with farmers regarding farmland transactions — both sellers and buyers — during the sale is in the blood of the Worrell family, something that has been passed down for generations.

With a steady ebb and flow market since farmland values peaked in 2014, Luke Worrell — managing broker for Worrell Land Services — is seeing elements align for strong land values over the next year and even into 2022, bringing back some of the golden times of farmland sales.

“I think it has legs and

this market is still developing,” Worrell said.

Over a decade ago land values were starting to rise around 2008 lending itself to 5% to 10% in annual increases, yielding some great profits.

“Ag was enjoying some of its golden years,” Worrell said.

The trend continued for several years eventually tapering off around 2014, but never really experienced a drastic drop, rather, land maintained its value with some decreases 2015 through 2018.

“Land is a safe and tangible asset,” he said, adding that when the commodity prices in soy beans and grain dropped

it put “some cold water on everything” as to why it tapered off in 2014.

As the clocked turned over on New Year’s Eve leaving 2020 in the mirror, and with the COVID-19 pandemic slowing down the economy, Worrell is already seeing macroeconomics shine with 2021’s first quarter trumping yields from last year.

With commodity prices in a good spot, interest rates and global demands increase, Worrell said that these elements are a great sign of what’s to come.

“The table is set for a really big 2021,” he said.

Although it’s too early in the year to determine average sales, to date

Darren Iozia | Journal-Courier

Luke Worrell, managing broker, accredited land consultant and accredited farm manager at Worrell Land Services, is seeing the table being set for a strong year in farmland sales and is already seeing higher returns in corn and bean sales.

there have been two auctions that received

$13,200 per acre and a second receiving $14,200

per acre — both within one week — compared to last year’s $11,000 to $12,000 average per acre for Class A farmland.

“We have already dwarfed gains from 2020,” he said, adding that they didn’t see many land transactions.

During a recent seminar, Worrell said that the industry is already seeing land values for Class A farmland being up nearly 5% from 2019 and 1.5% for Class B farmland. With 2021 in its beginning quarter, already there is significant strength with industry professionals expecting to see a higher jump than the 5% from 2020.

With the purchase of Class A farmland comes the ability to have tillable land, bringing with it cash for corn and beans — something that Worrell is also seeing an increase in.

Prices of cash corn and See PRICES | Page 7

Modern Farmer • Saturday, March 27, 2021 • 5

6 • Saturday, March 27, 2021 • Modern Farmer

Electrical safety crucial on farm, in field

By Rochelle Eiselt rochelle.eiselt@myjournalcourier.com

When farming out in the field, safety is important and farmers may not realize the electrical dangers surrounding them.

Ann Augspurger, communications director at Safe Electricity, said farmers should plan out routes ahead of time to make sure they have proper clearance. Farmers should make sure everyone that is on or enters the farm, is trained about the electrical hazards.

Electric hazards such as power lines, can fade into the background of the landscape sometimes, she said. That is why it’s important to train others such as family members and seasonal workers on electrical hazards to help prevent accidents and injuries.

Safety should be first

On OnUs Us!

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and it’s important to remind workers to fold or unfold extensions well into the field and not close to the field’s edge where power lines are typically located.

“Sometimes there can be a perfect or imperfect storm of things that could lead up to a situation where the path to ground electricity could change paths, which could be extremely dangerous,” Augspurger said.

Farmers should also use a spotter when working in the vicinity of power lines.

A spotter can direct you away from powerlines or poles if you’re getting too close.

In a scenario where a farmer’s truck or cab gets caught in a power line, it is suggested not to exit the equipment.

Safe Electricity’s campaign on awareness of electrical dangers for

You Can Count On Us farmers was inspired by one farmer named Cody Conrady.

Conrady was an assistant manager for an ag

fertilizer company. The company was understaffed that day, and he jumped in the truck to get ahead of the sprayer.

Once the sprayer was in position, he hopped out to fill the tank with fertilizer.

From there, he and his coworker that were inside the cab were unaware that the sprayer boom had either made contact or gotten too close to a power line.

Conrady suffered from the accident after 7,400 volts of electricity traveled through the boom and electrified the equipment and ground where he was standing.

The unyielding stray voltage considered Conrady’s body as part of its electrical path to ground.

Conrady survived the incident and has gone through rehabilitation and many surgeries since the incident.

“Anything with extensions can be dangerous if you’re not aware of your surroundings,” Augspurger said.

Equipment can become entangled with the power line itself. In the situation where you’re caught in a hazardous electrical danger, you should call 911.

“The most important thing to do and safest thing to do is to stay right where you are and call 911,” Augspurger said.

“Unless you’re in intimate danger like if your equipment becomes on fire, stay where you are and call 911, and wait for the electric utility to come and de-energize the power and tell you that is safe to get out.”

Josie Rudolphi, assistant professor at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and U of I extension specialist on agriculture safety, said if you are a farmer

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working out in the dark, you should be working in the middle of the field, not around the perimeter.

“Make sure all your lights are working well, making sure you can see everything in the field,” Rudolphi said.

She also said farmers should make sure they have fire extinguishers. In some cases, having a couple fire extinguishers, one in the cab and one outside the cab, adding that the fire extinguishers should be rated 4 for electrical fires.

The best thing to do in a situation being in a cab that’s on fire is to make a clean to jump and have both feet land together and get away from the equipment as far as possible.

“We want to make sure we are jumping away from the equipment,” Rudolphi said.

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Modern Farmer • Saturday, March 27, 2021 • 7

Prices From page 4

beans have already shown profit increases from last fall to today’s date. August of last year both beans and corn at the Franklin elevator were $3.26 for corn and $9.20 for beans. Just seven months later, cash bids are at $5.61 (72% increase) for corn and $14.08 (53% increase) for beans.

With the excitement

of a great year ahead, also understanding that things can happen like a pandemic, Worrell and the team are also happy to work with clients that are either selling or buying farmland, needing land appraisals, real estate sales and auctions to land management.

“A lot of the time it’s helping a family situation which is really rewarding,” Worrell said of working with people that are settling estates or when farmland switches generations.

Allan Worrell (right), founder of Worrell Land Services, consults with one of the company’s appraiser trainees, Bill Pherigo, regarding an appraisal assignment.

Photos provided

Luke Worrell (left), managing broker at Worrell Land Services, works with a client out in the field. Worrell and his team help clients sell and buy farmland across west-central Illinois and sees a positive trend in sales for the coming year.

Auctioneer Darrell Moore works with Worrell Land Services when auctioning farmland.

8 • Saturday, March 27, 2021 • Modern Farmer

Push to prevent next meat shortage hits obstacle Associated Press

Sudden meat shortages last year because of the coronavirus led to millions of dollars in federal grants to help small meat processors expand so the nation could lessen its reliance on giant slaughterhouses to supply grocery stores and restaurants.

Like shortages of protective clothing for health care workers, hospital equipment and even toilet paper, the reality of empty meat counters was a shock to many Americans unaccustomed to scarcities.

But where most other supply gaps are being addressed by changing how the U.S. acquires key

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items, the money flowing to small slaughterhouses shows no sign of solving the meat problem.

The meat industry has been consolidating for decades, and 80% or more of meat is slaughtered by just a few companies, whose operations were crippled last year when the virus began spreading among workers.

“Even a significant increase in processing capacity in those small and mid-size processors, that’s a small amount in the grand scheme of things,” Iowa Agriculture Secretary Mike Naig said.

“Yes, it provided some relief but no, it’s not at the level that will rival the big processors.”

Charlie Neibergall | AP

Sudden meat shortages last year because of the coronavirus led to millions of dollars in federal grants to help small meat processors expand so the nation could lessen its reliance on giant slaughterhouses to supply grocery stores and restaurants.

Or as Terry Houser, a meat processing expert, put it, “Small plants cannot replace the big plants when they go down.”

The problem illustrates the difficulty of creating more sources of supply in an industry that is trending in the opposite direction.

There’s little doubt the grants will help small processors and in turn pro-

vide sorely needed rural jobs, but the economics of meat now centers on large, highly efficient slaughterhouses, not smaller plants whose numbers have been decreasing sharply.

The number of smaller operations that meet local demand plunged by 42% to 1,910 between 1990 and 2016, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

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When the coronavirus sickened thousands of workers at the big slaughterhouses, forcing some to close temporarily, output dropped to 60% of normal.

Many producers suddenly had nowhere to take their animals for slaughter, and the small processors who remained, who mostly provide meat for local groceries and farmers markets, couldn’t take up the slack.

At least 16 states used some of the billions of dollars in federal COVID-relief aid to provide grants to small meat processors, enabling them to replace equipment and expand.

Most of the money went to small town businesses, which have withered as larger plants opened that could daily process thousands of cattle and up to 20,000 hogs. Small processors typically slaughter only 10 or 20 animals a week.

When the larger plants began closing last spring, some hog farmers ended up killing and burying thousands of animals.

Jeff Hodges, who owns a small processor, said he was overwhelmed with business last spring and is still scheduling a year into the future as demand for locally raised meat remains strong.

“At first it was a giant nightmare,” Hodges said.

“Now you’re used to the norm of your being maxed out and you pray everybody shows up for work.”

Hodges has received a $33,000 grant to buy a splitting saw, grinder and other equipment, but he’d need to spend closer to $750,000 to substantially increase production.

That’s a big investment for a business he bought in the mid-1990s for $90,000.

The key to lessening dependence on the big processors is to make larger grants and loans available to mid-sized processors, said Rebecca Thistlethwaite, a rancher and director of Niche Meat Processor Assistance Network. That’s an expensive proposition, with such plants costing $20 million or so.

Even if the government offers more money, expansion in an industry with low profit margins could be slow, she said.

“A lot of people think that by changing policy, all of a sudden a bunch of new entrepreneurs are going to come into the space, and that’s not going to happen,” she said. “You don’t have a bunch of people sitting on a bunch of money who are saying, ‘Oh, I just can’t wait to start a meat processing plant.”’

Some farmers say their chance of building their specialty cattle operation could depend on small processors expanding.

With processors already booking out into next year, farmers must schedule space for cattle that aren’t born yet.

“That’s hard because animals grow at different rates, just like people,” Jalane Vaughn said. “To try to gauge when something is going to be 1,200 pounds or the optimal weight for harvest has been a struggle.”

Jerilyn Hergenreder said she hopes the government’s sudden interest in building up small processors makes a difference.

“I’m happy for the small processors that they have become relevant again and they’re definitely trying to handle the demand,” Hergenreder said.

Modern Farmer • Saturday, March 27, 2021 • 9

Growing food, protecting nature don’t have to conflict

By Thomas Hertel The Conversation

Growing food in a sustainable, environmentally friendly way – while also producing enough of it – is among the most important challenges facing the U.S. and the world today.

The ongoing pandemic has reminded us that food security can’t be taken for granted. Putting affordable food on the table requires both innovative producers and well-functioning markets and global supply chains. With disruptions to the system, prices rise, food is scarce – and people go hungry.

But feeding the world’s 7.8 billion people sustainably – including 332 million Americans – presents significant environmental challenges. Farming uses 70% of the world’s fresh water.

Fertilizers pollute water with nitrates and phosphates, sparking algal blooms and creating dead zones like the one that forms every summer in the Gulf of Mexico.

Clear-cutting land for farms and ranches is the main driver of deforestation.

Overall, the planet loses about 48,000 square miles of forest each year. Without habitat, wildlife disappears.

Farming also produces roughly one-quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions.

All of these challenges make balancing food production with environmental security a crucial issue for the Biden administration, which is working to address both a hunger crisis and an environmental crisis in the U.S. DIFFERENT PATHWAYS As an economist studying food systems, I’m keenly aware that trying to provide affordable food and a thriving agricultural sector while also preserving the environment

can result in many tradeoffs. Consider the different strategies that the U.S. and Northern Europe have pursued: The U.S. prioritizes increased agricultural output, while the EU emphasizes environmental services from farming.

Over the past 70 years, the U.S. has increased crop production with ever more sophisticated seed technologies and highly mechanized farming methods that employ far fewer workers. These new technologies have contributed to farm productivity growth which has, in turn, allowed U.S. farm output to rise without significant growth in the aggregate economic index of agricultural input use.

This approach contrasts sharply with northern Europe’s strategy, which emphasizes using less land and other inputs in order to protect the environment.

Nonetheless, by achieving a comparable rate of agricultural productivity growth (output growth minus the growth rate inputs), Northern Europe has been able to maintain its level of total farm output over the past three decades.

BOOSTING PRICES The U.S. also has a long history of setting aside agricultural land that dates back nearly a century. In response to low prices in the 1920s, farmers had flooded the market with grain, pork and other products, desperately seeking to boost revenues but only pushing prices down further.

Under the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933, the U.S. government paid farmers to reduce their output and limited the supply of land under cultivation to boost farm prices. This strategy is still in use today.

In 1985 the U.S. launched a new program that created real incentives to protect environmentally sensitive land. Farmers who enroll in the Conservation Reserve Program “rent” environmentally valuable tracts to the U.S. Department of Agriculture for 10-15 years. Withdrawing these acres from production provides food and shelter for pollinators and wildlife, reduces erosion and improves water quality.

But this is a voluntary program, so enrollment ebbs and flows in tandem with crop prices. For example, when corn, soy and wheat prices

fell in the late 1980s and early 1990s, enrollment grew.

Then with the commodity price boom of 2007, farmers could make more money from cultivating the land.

Protected acreage dropped more than 40% through 2019, erasing many of the environmental benefits that had been achieved.

Rental rates for agricultural land in the U.S. vary widely, with the most productive lands bringing the highest rent. Current rental rates under the Conservation Reserve Program 2021 range from $243 per acre in Cuming, Nebraska, to just $6 in Sutton, Texas.

The EU also began setting aside farmland to curb

overproduction in 1988.

Now, however, their program focuses heavily on environmental quality. Policy reforms in 2013 required farmers to allocate 5% of their land to protected ecological focus areas. The goal is to generate long-term environmental benefits by prioritizing nature.

This program supports both production and conservation. Within this mix of natural and cultivated lands, wild pollinators benefit both native plants and crops.

Birds, insects and small predators offer natural bio-control of pests. In this way, “rewilded” tracts foster biodiversity while also improving crop yields.

WHO WILL FEED WORLD? What would happen if the U.S., a major exporter of agricultural products, followed the EU model and permanently withdrew land from production to improve environmental quality?

Would such action make food unaffordable for the world’s poorest consumers?

In a study that I conducted in 2020 with colleagues at Purdue and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, we set up a computer model to find out. We wanted to chart what might happen to food prices across the globe through 2050 if the U.S. and other See GROWING | Page 19

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12 • Saturday, March 27, 2021 • Modern Farmer

As cannabis sales boom, industry faces growing issues

By Robert Channick

cultivation centers and nearly 17,000 cannabis workers, two other dispensaries are voting on whether to unionize, and early contract successes may determine the trajectory of the marijuana unionization movement.

“If they’re able to get some significant victories and negotiate some good contracts, they can build momentum, they can point to those as they organize workers at other facilities,” said Martin Malin, co-director of the Institute for Law and the Workplace at Chicago-Kent College of Law. Marijuana sales in Illinois have soared since the state legalized recreational use in January 2020, reaching $1.03 billion last year.

That included $669 million in recreational weed sales and more than $366 million in medical sales, according to the Department of Financial and Professional Regulation, which regulates dispensaries in the state.

The pace has accelerated in 2021, with nearly $232 million in total marijuana sales through February, according to the state.

California was top state for legal marijuana sales last year at $4.1 billion, followed by Colorado at $2.2 billion, according to data posted by each state. But Illinois is gaining ground quickly.

A December report by New Fron-

Chicago Tribune (TNS)

The Illinois weed industry, fresh off surpassing $1 billion in revenue during its first year of recreational marijuana sales, may already be facing its “Norma Rae” moment of union awakening.

Seeking higher pay, career advancement and better protection from the COVID-19 pandemic, cannabis workers from Chicago to Springfield have begun to unionize, planting a seed that could reshape the fast-growing marijuana labor landscape.

“The industry has unfortunately just provided jobs, and not the well-paying careers that we all thought cannabis was going to generate,” said Moises Zavala, director of organizing at Local 881 of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, which is representing cannabis workers in Illinois.

In late February, the 40 employees at Sunnyside in Chicago’s Lakeview neighborhood became the first dispensary workers in Illinois to ratify a union contract. The state’s first cannabis union contract was ratified in December by more than 180 workers at the Cresco Labs cultivation center in Joliet.

While that represents a fraction of the state’s 82 dispensaries, 21

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Richard Vogel | AP

Vendors count their intake of cash at their booth at Kushstock 6.5 festival. As the legal marijuana industry booms, there are growing calls to unionize the industry.

tier Data projects the U.S. cannabis market to double by 2025, reaching $41 billion in annual sales, with Illinois surpassing every state but California to claim an 8% market share.

That growth is not lost on marijuana workers like Jake Lytle, 22, who has been a $16-per-hour product specialist at Windy City Cannabis, a recreational dispensary on Weed Street in Lincoln Park, since it opened in July.

“The marijuana industry has been generating an insane amount of revenue for these corporations,” Lytle said. “We just need workers to actually be involved in the prosperity of this industry.”

Retail marijuana product specialists, also known as budtenders, average $15 an hour nationally, according to a 2020 salary guide

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published by Vangst, a Denver-based cannabis recruiting website. More than 90% of the companies surveyed offered benefits including paid time off, medical insurance, 401(k) plans and stock options. On the rise are “creative perks” such as pet insurance, with more than a fourth of employers offering a cellphone allowance, according to the report.

Lytle, who lives in the Edgewood neighborhood on Chicago’s North Side, is on the union committee at Windy City. About 30 workers are in the process of voting on whether to unionize through the Des Plaines-based Local 881 UFCW, with the results to be tallied March 22.

In addition to wages, employee concerns include the small size of the facility, the lack of a break room

and insufficient COVID-19 safety protocols.

The dispensary is so small, Lytle said, that staffers have been taking care of walk-in customers on an outside patio to meet social distancing requirements, making for an inhospitable retail environment during a Chicago winter.

Complicating the unionization effort at Windy City Cannabis is an ownership situation that is in limbo. Curaleaf, a publicly traded Massachusetts company and one of the largest cannabis operators in the U.S., bought the dispensary as part of its $830 million acquisition of Chicago-based Grassroots in July, but has yet to receive final approval from Illinois regulators.

Tracy Brady, a spokeswoman for Curaleaf, declined to comment on the union vote at Windy City Cannabis, or the concerns of employees, pending regulatory approval.

Chris Slaby, a spokesman for the Department of Financial and Professional Regulation, did not provide guidance on the status of the Curaleaf licensing approval.

Chicago-based Cresco Labs, one of the largest multistate operators in the cannabis industry, owns 10 retail dispensaries and three cultivation centers in Illinois — the maximum allowed by state law. The publicly traded company finds itself at the center of the fledgling Illinois cannabis union movement.

In January 2020, workers at the Cresco Labs marijuana grow facility in Joliet voted to join the UFCW, See CANNABIS | Page 18

Modern Farmer • Saturday, March 27, 2021 • 13

Relocations curtail ag research, confidence

By Roxana Hegeman Associated Press

More than a year after two U.S. Department of Agriculture research agencies were moved from the nation’s capital to Kansas City, Missouri, forcing a mass exodus of employees who couldn’t or didn’t want to move halfway across the country, they remain critically understaffed and some farmers are less confident in the work they produce.

The decision to move the Economic Research Service and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture in September 2019 was pitched as putting them closer to farmers in the nation’s breadbasket, though much of their work involves advising members of Congress back in Washington. After the relocation was announced, President Donald Trump’s chief of staff at the time, Mick Mulvaney, joked that moving the jobs to Kansas City was also “a wonderful way to stream-

line government.”

Tom Vilsack inherited a demoralized workforce at the two agencies when he took over as secretary of agriculture under President Joe Biden. With 235 vacancies between them, the agencies continued to hire during the pandemic and administration change, but they are putting out work that is smaller in scope and less frequent, causing some farmers to look elsewhere for data they rely on to run their operations.

Among them is Vance Ehmke, who said that since the USDA relocations occurred, he has been paying a lot more attention to private market analysis and what private grain companies are doing. The information feeds his decisions on everything from whether to buy more land or a new tractor to whether to build more grain bins.

“Here, when we need really good, hard information, you are really starting to question groups like USDA,

Orlin Wagner | AP

Adrian Polansky, a farmer and former executive director of the USDA’s Farm Service Agency office in Kansas during the Obama administration, stops for a photo while touring his seed processing plant. More than a year after two U.S. Department of Agriculture research agencies were moved from the nation’s capital to Kansas City, they remain critically understaffed and some farmers are less confident in the work they produce.

which before that had a sterling reputation,” Ehmke said recently. “But out in the country, people are worried about how good the information is now because those groups are operating at half capacity.”

The relocation hollowed out years of specialized expe-

rience and delayed or scuttled some of the agencies’ research and other work.

Hiring at the Kansas City

site remains well below the roughly 550 high-paying jobs local leaders had anticipated.

Farmers rely on the research to make decisions on a wide range of topics, from rural community planning to farming with climate change and volatile weather conditions, said Aaron Lehman, a farmer who is president of the Iowa Farmers Union.

The ERS examines issues including the rural economy, international trade, food safety and programs that provide food assistance to poor Americans. NIFA, meanwhile, provides grants for agricultural research and other farm services.

“It has gone in the wrong direction in general in terms of accuracy now,” said Adrian Polansky, a farmer and former executive director

of the USDA’s Farm Service Agency office in Kansas during the Obama administration. “Whether that was for sure based on that transition or whether it was the leadership in the department in terms of what the political goals may have been, I am not exactly sure. But it seems like there was less reliability.”

Polansky said he looks to commercial sources of agricultural information to corroborate USDA data more often now than he did in the past. He said that even after the agencies fill their openings, it will take time to “become fully impactful” because research is a longterm endeavor.

“When you lose significant staff and significant institutional knowledge, there See RESEARCH | Page 19

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14 • Saturday, March 27, 2021 • Modern Farmer

17% of produced food wasted, report estimates

By Candice Choi Associated Press

Instead of finishing your leftovers, you let them go bad and buy takeout.

It’s a familiar routine for many — and indicative of habits that contribute to a global food waste problem that a new United Nations report says needs to be better measured so that it can be effectively addressed.

The U.N. report estimates 17% of the food produced globally each year is wasted. That amounts to 931 million metric tons (1.03 billion tons) of food.

The waste is far more than previous reports had indicated, though direct

comparisons are difficult because of differing methodologies and the lack of strong data from many countries.

“Improved measurement can lead to improved management,” said Brian Roe, a food waste researcher at Ohio State University who was not involved in the report.

Most of the waste — or 61% — happens in households, while food service accounts for 26% and retailers account for 13%, the U.N. found. The U.N. is pushing to reduce food waste globally, and researchers are also working on an assessment of waste that includes the

food lost before reaching consumers.

The authors note the report seeks to offer a clearer snapshot of the scale of a problem that has been difficult to assess, in hopes of spurring governments to invest in better tracking.

“Many countries haven’t yet quantified their food waste, so they don’t understand the scale of the problem,” said Clementine O’Connor, of the U.N. Environment Program and co-author of the report.

Food waste has become a growing concern because of the environmental toll of production, including the land required to raise crops and animals and the

Dave Zajac | Record-Journal (AP)

Students discard food at the end of the lunch period. A United Nations report estimates 17% of the food produced globally each year is wasted.

greenhouse gas emissions produced along the way.

Experts say improved waste tracking is key to finding ways to ease the problem, such as programs to divert inedible scraps to use as animal feed or fertilizer.

The report found food waste in homes isn’t limited to higher income

countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom.

Roe of Ohio State noted that food sometimes is wasted in poor countries without reliable home refrigeration. In richer countries, people might eat out more, meaning food waste is simply shifted from the home to restau-

rants.

Roe said cultural norms and policies also could contribute to waste at home — such as massive packaging, “buy one, get one free” deals, or lack of composting programs.

That’s why broader system changes are key to helping reduce waste in households, said Chris Barrett, an agricultural economist at Cornell University.

For example, Barrett said, people might throw away food because of a date on the product — even though such dates don’t always say when a food is unsafe to eat. “Food waste is a consequence of sensible decisions by people acting on the best information available,” he said.

To clarify the meaning of labeling dates, U.S. regulators have urged food makers to be more consistent in using them. They note that labels like “Sell By”, “Best By” and “”Enjoy By” could cause people to throw out food prematurely, even though some labels are intended only to indicate when quality might decline.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that a family of four wastes about $1,500 in food each year.

But accurately measuring food waste is difficult for a variety of reasons including data availability, said USDA food researcher Jean Buzby, adding that improved measurements are part of a government plan to reduce waste.

Richard Swannell, a co-author of the U.N. report, said food was generally more valued even in richer countries just a few generations ago, since people often couldn’t afford to waste it. Now, he said, awareness about the scale of food waste globally could help shift attitudes back to that era.

“Food is too important to waste,” he said.

Modern Farmer • Saturday, March 27, 2021 • 15

Farmers asking for ‘right to repair’

By Raymon Troncoso Capitol News Illinois

Legislation backed by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group would require farming equipment manufacturers to make software required for repairs available to consumers for purchase.

House Bill 3061, introduced as the Digital Right to Repair Act in February by Democratic Rep. Michelle Mussman of Schaumburg, would mandate that manufacturers, by 2022, provide farmers with the same diagnostic materials available to official repair providers. It would also require the manufacturers to make parts necessary for repair, including software, available for purchase.

The legislation comes after the release of a report by the U.S. PIRG that alleges farmers are unable to sufficiently repair tractors purchased from John Deere and other manufacturers because they withhold the software necessary to do so.

“The Association of Equipment Manufacturers, of which John Deere is a prominent member, promised that by 2021, they would give farmers the necessary tools to fix their machinery. However, Deere has fallen short of that commitment, so farmers – and all Americans, who rely on them to produce food – are worse off,” U.S. PIRG Education Fund Right to Repair Advocate Kevin O’Reilly said in a release announcing the report.

The report says for countless generations farmers have been able to independently repair equipment once purchased from manufacturers, but new developments in technology have shifted the status quo

to disadvantage farmers. Unable to make repairs themselves, farmers are required to take equipment back to the dealership or associated repair facilities, “leading to delays of hours to weeks.”

“Without the software tools needed to diagnose problems, install replacement parts and authorize repairs, the engagement or failure of any sensor or control system forces a farmer to either haul their machine into the nearest dealership or wait for a field technician to arrive to complete the repair,” the report reads.

The report also claims that sensors and controller networks, which have become necessary for tractors and combine harvesters to function, are the highest points of failure on farming machinery as opposed to hardware damage that can be fixed by the farmer.

According to U.S. PIRG, this is intentional to give manufacturers a repair monopoly. Their evidence is the lucrative nature of the repair industry. From 2013 to 2019, John Deere’s annual sales of parts rose to $6.7 billion, a 22 percent increase, while its annual sales of equipment fell by 19 percent to $23.7 billion.

Manufacturers have opposed providing the software on several grounds. They say it could jeopardize

proprietary information and lead to the theft of trade secrets tied to programming. Giving farmers access to repair software could also allow them to make illegal modifications to their equipment, potentially leading to some farmers overriding safety and environmental controls placed in the vehicle software.

The Digital Right to Repair Act, which awaits assignment to a substantial committee in the House, includes a provision that prevents the legislation from being made “to require an original equipment manufacturer to divulge a trade secret… except as necessary to provide documentation, parts, and tools on fair and reasonable terms.”

Farming groups have increased their pressure on manufacturers to concede the right to repair, using the threat of legislation to reach an agreement.

According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the American Farm Bureau Federation voted in 2020 to throw its weight behind right-to-repair legislation if manufacturers didn’t reach an agreement with farmers and independent repair contractors by 2021.

Alongside Illinois and HB 3061, 20 other states are considering bills mandating the right to repair in their legislatures for a total of 32 bills.

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16 • Saturday, March 27, 2021 • Modern Farmer

Not just CO2: Rising temps also alter photosynthesis in a changing climate

By Diana Yates University of Illinois

Agricultural scientists who study climate change often focus on how increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels will affect crop yields. But rising temperatures are likely to complicate the picture, researchers report in a new review of the topic.

Published in the Journal of Experimental Botany, the review explores how higher temperatures influence plant growth and viability despite the greater availability of atmospheric CO2, a key component of photosynthesis. Excessive heat can reduce the efficiency of enzymes that drive

photosynthesis and can hinder plants’ ability to regulate CO2 uptake and water loss, the researchers write.

Structural features can make plants more – or less – susceptible to heat stress.

Ecosystem attributes – such as the size and density of plants, the arrangement of leaves on plants or local atmospheric conditions – also influence how heat will affect crop yields.

The review describes the latest scientific efforts to address these challenges.

“It’s important to have an understanding of these issues across scales – from the biochemistry of individual leaves to ecosystem-level influences – in order to really tackle these problems

in an informed way,” said lead author Caitlin Moore, a research fellow at the University of Western Australia and an affiliate research fellow at the Institute for Sustainability, Energy, and Environment at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Moore led the review with Amanda Cavanagh, another UI alumna now at the University of Essex in the U.K. “Historically, there’s been a lot of focus on rising CO2 and the impact that it has on plants,” said co-author Carl Bernacchi, a professor of plant biology and of crop sciences and an affiliate of the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology at the university. “And it is an important factor, because we are changing that carbon dioxide concentration enormously. But it’s a small part of the bigger story.

Once you throw changing temperatures into the mix, it completely messes up our understanding of how plants are going to respond.”

“Take Rubisco, the key enzyme that fixes carbon dioxide into sugars, making life on Earth possible,” Cavanagh said. “Rubisco speeds up as the temperature increases, but it’s also prone to making mistakes.”

Instead of fixing carbon dioxide by binding it to sugars, a key step in photosynthesis, Rubisco sometimes fixes oxygen, initiating a different pathway that wastes a plant’s resources.

Higher temperatures make this more likely, Cavanagh said. At even higher temperatures, the enzyme will begin to lose its structural integrity, making it ineffec-

Above: Caitlin Moore (from left), Carl Bernacchi, Katherine Meacham-Hensold and their colleagues review how rising temperatures affect photosynthesis in plants and how scientists are addressing the challenges. Right: Co-author Amanda Cavanagh studies the molecular biology and physiology of plants.

Photos by Claire Benjamin | RIPE Project

tive.

Excessive heat can also undermine a plant’s reproductive output. Other heat-sensitive enzymes are essential to the light-harvesting machinery of plants or play a role in moving sugars to different plant tissues, allowing the plant to grow and produce grains or fruits.

“If these little molecular machines are pushed out of the temperature range that’s optimal, then they can’t do their job,” Cavanagh said.

When temperatures rise too high, plant leaves open the pores on their surfaces, called stomata, to cool themselves. Stomata also allow plants to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, but when they’re fully open, the leaf can lose too much moisture.

“Temperature affects the atmosphere above the plant,” Moore said. “As the atmosphere heats up, it can

hold additional water, so it’s pulling more water from the plants.”

Scientists at Illinois and elsewhere are looking for ways to enhance crop plants’ resilience in the face of these changes. Moore, whose work focuses on ecosystem-scale factors, said new tools that can help screen plants on a large scale are essential to that effort. For example, satellites that can detect changes in chlorophyll fluorescence in plants can indicate whether a crop is under heat stress. These changes in fluorescence

are detectable before the plant shows any outward sign of heat stress – such as their leaves turning brown.

Developing these tools may enable farmers to respond more quickly to crop stress before too much damage is done.

Cavanagh, who studies the molecular biology and physiology of plants, said some plants are more heat tolerant than others, and scientists are searching their genomes for clues to their success.

“For example, you can See CLIMATE | Page 18

Modern Farmer • Saturday, March 27, 2021 • 17

Brain patterns predict behavior of honey bees

By Diana Yates University of Illinois

An unusual study that involved bar coding and tracking the behavior of thousands of individual honey bees in six queenless bee hives and analyzing gene expression in their brains offers new insights into how gene regulation contributes to social behavior.

The study, reported in the journal eLife, reveals that the activity profile of regulator genes known as transcription factors in the brain strongly correlates with the behavior of honey bees, the researchers said.

A single transcription factor can induce – or reduce – the expression of dozens of other genes.

“If the queen in a colony dies and the workers fail to rear a replacement queen, some worker bees activate their ovaries and begin to lay eggs,” said Beryl Jones, a former graduate student at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who led the study with entomology professor Gene Robinson, the director of the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology at UI; and Sriram Chandrasekaran, a professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Michigan.

Jones is a postdoctoral researcher at Princeton University.

“This is an example of ‘behavioral plasticity,’ the ability to change behavior in response to the environment,” Jones said.

“We know that behavioral plasticity is influenced by the activity of genes in the brain, but we do not know how genes in the brain

work together to regulate these behavioral differences.”

“We wanted to compare egg-laying and foraging behaviors because they are quintessential examples of selfish and cooperative behaviors,” Robinson said.

Under typical conditions, queens lay eggs and workers forage. Studies that focus on differences in the brains and behavior of queens and foragers must contend with the fact that queens are fed and nurtured differently during development than worker bees, making any differences in gene regulation difficult to interpret. By studying queenless colonies, the researchers were able to analyze only worker bees and could therefore

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Researchers bar-coded and tracked thousands of individual honey bees for the study.

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“Another challenge in studying how genes influence behavior is that behavior varies over time and also between individuals,” Robinson said. “Hence, we automatically tracked the behavior of thousands of

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individual bees, 24/7, using small bar codes and computer vision to generate an unusually large dataset to help answer our questions.”

The scientists used computational algorithms to look for patterns of brain

gene activity in the bees.

They found consistent differences in gene regulation between bees that devoted themselves to foraging and those primarily focused on egg-laying. These patterns of transcription-factor regulation were so distinct that the researchers could use them to predict whether individual bees were foragers or egg-layers.

The analysis revealed that a small number of egg-laying worker bees also engaged in foraging. These “generalist” bees had an intermediate gene-expression profile between the foraging specialists and the egg-laying specialists.

“We identified 15 transcription factors that best explained the behavioral differences in the bees,”

Jones said. The findings suggest that changes in the activity of a small number of influential transcription factors can lead to strikingly different behavior, she said.

“Some of the transcription factors we identified as important for honey bee behavior were previously identified as influencing the evolution of social behavior in other species,” Robinson said. “This suggests our findings will aid in understanding how social behavior evolved and is regulated in multiple species, including, perhaps, humans.”

The National Institute of General Medical Sciences, the Christopher Foundation and the Illinois Sociogenomics Initiative supported this research.

18 • Saturday, March 27, 2021 • Modern Farmer

Climate From page 16

look at wild Australian relatives of rice that are growing in much harsher climates than most paddy rices,” she said. “And you see that their enzymes are primed to work more efficiently at hotter temperatures.”

One goal is to transfer heat-tolerant genes to cultivated rice varieties that are more susceptible to heat stress.

Other strategies include engineering structures that pump more CO2 to the site of carbon fixation to improve Rubisco efficiency; altering the light-gathering properties of leaves at the tops and bottoms of plants to even out distribution of sunlight and maintain mois-

ture levels; and changing the density of stomata to improve their control of CO2 influx and moisture loss.

Collaboration between scientists focused on different scales of ecosystem and plant function – from the atmospheric to the molecular – is essential to the success of efforts to build resilience in crop plants, the researchers said.

“The world is getting hotter at a shocking rate,” Cavanagh said. “And we know from global models that each increase in gross temperature degree Celsius can cause 3% to 7% losses in yield of our four main crops. So, it’s not something we can ignore.

“What makes me optimistic is the realization that so much work is going into globally solving this problem,” she said.

Cannabis From page 12 two weeks after recreational weed sales were legalized in Illinois, ratifying the state’s first union cannabis contract less than a year later.

Employees at the Sunnyside dispensary in Lakeview, which is also owned by Cresco, voted to join the union in June and ratified their contract Feb. 26. Terms of the deal include built-in wage increases, more vacation time, reduced health care costs and a 40% discount on Cresco-brand cannabis products.

“We have a successful contract with our employees in Joliet and now in Lakeview, but it’s a focus of ours to make sure our employees know they can work directly with us, and we can work together to have a positive outcome,” Cresco spokes-

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man Jason Erkes said.

Erkes said the first vote in Joliet last year “got our attention,” and the company “stepped back and prioritized” employees, focusing on competitive wages, benefits and the work environment. Cresco set a new $15 an hour minimum wage across the company, implemented employee wellness days and developed the “Cresco Cares” program to ensure employees were compensated for time off during the pandemic.

At Cresco’s 215,000-square-foot cultivation center in downstate Lincoln, the largest grow facility in the state, workers rejected joining the union in January by a 24 to 9 vote.

There are 236 employees at the plant, but most were not involved in the vote because they are agricultural workers and ineligible to unionize under federal law.

“The outcome of the Lincoln election shows that our focus on our people is making a difference,” Erkes said.

“It’s being heard.”

Zavala said the union movement lost steam in

Lincoln after Cresco “did a number on employees” by prolonging the organizing process for six months.

“That’s just too long of a process and it wears people out,” Zavala said. “But that doesn’t take away that those employees still need the protection.”

Employees at the Ascend dispensary in Springfield are also voting on whether to unionize through the UFCW. Their ballots were mailed out Tuesday, with an April 20 vote count, Zavala said. A Massachusetts-based multistate cannabis operator, Ascend Wellness Holdings has three retail locations in downstate Illinois, with a fourth set to open in the second quarter near St. Louis.

The UFCW, which has 1.3 million members, primarily represents grocery store and meatpacking workers.

It has become an early force in unionizing the cannabis industry, representing tens of thousands of workers across multiple states.

The UFCW has been organizing cannabis workers across the country since 2011, making inroads at

medical marijuana dispensaries in California and a handful of other mostly western states. It expanded its reach after Colorado and Washington approved recreational marijuana sales in 2012, opening the floodgates to a broader retail industry.

Weed is legal in 36 states, including 15 that allow recreational use. The industry supports about 321,000 full-time equivalent jobs nationally as of January, up 32% year-over-year, according to the 2021 Leafly Jobs Report.

The number of cannabis employees nearly doubled in Illinois last year, reaching more than 16,800, according to the report, which was produced by cannabis website Leafly and Whitney Economics. That would put current union membership at about 1% of the state’s cannabis workers.

Union members across all industries accounted for 14.3% of wage and salary workers in Illinois last year, up from an all-time low of 13.6% in 2019, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

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Modern Farmer • Saturday, March 27, 2021 • 19

Growing From page 9 rich economies followed Northern European conservation strategies. Our analysis focused on the world’s most food-insecure region, sub-Saharan Africa.

We discovered that altering food production in this way would raise food prices in that region by about 6%. However, this upward price trend could be reversed by investing in local agriculture and new technologies to increase productivity in Africa.

In short, our research suggested that conserving the environment in the U.S. doesn’t have to cause food insecurity in other countries.

US IMPLICATIONS Many experts on hunger and agriculture agree that to feed a growing global population, world food output must increase substantially in the next several decades. At the same time, it’s clear that agriculture’s environ-

mental impacts need to shrink in order to protect the natural environment.

In my view, meeting these twin goals will require renewed government investments in research and dissemination of new technologies. Reversing a two-decade decline in science funding will be key. Agriculture is now a knowledge-driven industry, fueled by new technologies and improved management practices. Publicly funded research laid the foundations for these advances.

To reap environmental gains, I believe the U.S. Department of Agriculture will need to revamp and stabilize the Conservation Reserve Program, so that it is economically viable and enrollment does not fluctuate with market conditions. The Trump administration reduced incentives and rental payment rates, which drove down enrollments.

The Biden administration has already taken a modest step forward by extending the yearly sign-up for the program indefinitely.

Research From page 13 is just not a way that can’t impact the product and information from USDA,” he said.

Dan O’Brien, a grain market specialist at Kansas State University Research and Extension, acknowledged that farmers have increasingly been questioning the reliability of the government’s agricultural data over the past few years. However, he said those frustrations have dealt more with reports published by other USDA agencies, and that some farmers may be confusing them.

Laura Dodson, the union representative for ERS employees, said the relocation will affect the agency for another five years. It hasn’t affected the accuracy of its reports, but it has reduced their scope and frequency.

Dozens of ERS reports have either come out late or not at all, including reports on the organic food sector, antibiotic use in animal production, and hired farm workers and labor

markets, among others, Dodson said. For example, a two-year research project on pollinators such as honeybees was shelved because the entire team working on it left the agency rather than move to Kansas City.

ERS published 37 reports in 2018, compared to 11 last year, Dodson said. Those figures don’t include its monthly crop price and analysis reports, which have remained fairly steady despite the relocation and the pandemic. Agency employees also published 100 articles in academic journals related to their fields of study in 2018, but just 64 in 2020.

“We help make sure that food is produced safely, timely and responds to changes in the marketplace and changes to environmental sector,” she said. “And so if those become less effective because they are not being informed by good data and research, that will translate directly to how Americans receive their food.”

Matt Herrick, a USDA spokesman, said in an email that he couldn’t speak to the volume and

variety of ERS reports and research under the Trump administration.

“However, when you lose more than half of your expert workforce, there is bound to be a noticeable effect,” he added, noting that the USDA is focused on restoring employee confidence and morale.

When former Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Purdue toured the new Kansas City headquarters in November 2019, he predicted the agencies would be fully staffed by the first quarter of 2020. That didn’t happen.

In October 2016 — before Trump’s first year in office — ERS had 318 permanent employees, according to USDA data. By October 2019 — just a month after the move — its workforce had shrunk to 164. As of late January 2021, it had 219 employees, including 67 still based in Washington.

The same trend played out at NIFA, which had 320 employees in October 2016. In October 2019, it was down to 112 workers, though it rebounded somewhat to 218 by late January, including 16 based in Washington.

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