DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 2021

SPECIAL EDITION

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF

AGRICULTURE 2021 EDITION

FOOD SUPPLY COVID-19 reveals gaps in industry

BLACK FARMERS Working for access to land and loans

AI TOOLS

RESOURCES Extension programs serve communities

INNOVATION Small businesses develop big ideas

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CONTENTS

202 1 S PECI A L E D ITI O N

DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE

46 STEP TOGETHER Climate change advocates partner with farmers

JAE C. HONG/ASSOCIATED PRESS

FEATURES

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38 CAROMONT FARM

FIELD NOTES Farmers tackle pandemic-related challenges

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SHELF LIFE America withstood a shock to its food supply chain

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CONTENTS This is a product of

EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Jeanette Barrett-Stokes jbstokes@usatoday.com

CREATIVE DIRECTOR Jerald Council jcouncil@usatoday.com

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TECHNOLOGY

LEADERSHIP

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FAMILIAR FACE Tom Vilsack rejoins Department of Agriculture

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FERTILE FUTURE

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SURE VISION

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Outlook positive for seeds and fertilizer

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Farmers betting on the hemp market

ALL KNOWING Artificial intelligence offers smart farming solutions

STEP ON IT Cutting-edge methods for combating pests

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SEEKING EQUITY Black farmers work to increase presence in agriculture

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RECENT DEVELOPMENTS Small businesses pioneer novel technology

CAREERS AND EDUCATION WORK AHEAD

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SKILL SHARE

SAFE SPACE Native American seeds added to global vault

Indoor growing gains ground in urban areas

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ISSUE EDITOR Deirdre van Dyk

EDITORS Amy Sinatra Ayres Tracy Scott Forson Harry Lister Debbie Williams DESIGNERS Hayleigh Corkey David Hyde Debra Moore Lisa M. Zilka

VERTICAL VARIETY

DIVERSITY

mjwashington@usatoday.com

ISSUE DESIGNER Gina Toole Saunders

INNOVATION

NEWS

MANAGING EDITOR Michelle Washington

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Matt Alderton, Mary Helen Berg, Adam Hadhazy, Gina Harkins, Nevin Martell, Sylvia A. Martinez, Robin Roenker, Adam Stone

ADVERTISING

State departments of agriculture commit to diversity

VP, ADVERTISING Patrick Burke | (703) 854-5914 pburke@usatoday.com

FOOD

ACCOUNT DIRECTOR Vanessa Salvo | (703) 854-6499

Cooperative extensions support communities

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HELPING HAND Food insecurity increases in U.S. during COVID-19 crisis

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CELEBRATE FARMERS Exhibit highlights importance of agriculture

FINANCE BILLING COORDINATOR Julie Marco ISSN#0734-7456 A USA TODAY Network publication, Gannett Co. Inc. USA TODAY, its logo and associated graphics are the trademarks of Gannett Co. Inc. or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Copyright 2021, USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc. Editorial and publication headquarters are at 7950 Jones Branch Dr., McLean, VA 22108, and at (703) 854-3400.

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LEADERSHIP

Return Engagement Tom Vilsack takes reigns as agriculture secretary for second time

By Donnelle Eller

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lready the second-longestserving U.S. secretary of agriculture, former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack began an unprecedented return engagement as the Senate confirmed

his nomination to the post in the Biden administration on Feb. 23. Vilsack is now back in the office he occupied from 2009 to 2017 under former President Barack Obama.

Vilsack’s “deep knowledge of agriculture and rural America is needed now more than ever,” Sen. Debbie Stabenow,

chair of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, said before the vote. “Our farmers, our families, our rural communities have so many challenges right now.”

The “COVID-19 crisis is continuing to disrupt our food supply chain for farmers, CONTINUED

Tom Vilsack

SUSAN WALSH/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Secretary Vilsack’s swearing in by Vice President Kamala Harris GETTY IMAGES

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“When we emerge from this crisis, we’re going to have an incredible opportunity before us to position American agriculture to lead our nation and the world in combating climate change and reap the new good-paying jobs and farm income that will come from that leadership.”

— TOM VILSACK, secretary, Department of Agriculture

food processors and essential workers,” said Stabenow. “And tens of millions of families still don’t have enough to eat.

And the climate crisis is posing an extremely grave threat to the viability of our economy and food supply.”

Vilsack told Senate agriculture committee members at his confirmation hearing Feb. 2 that he would return to lead the 70,000-employee, $146 billiona-year agency with the understanding “it’s a fundamentally different time.”

“I am a different person, and it is a different department,” Vilsack said.

The nation faces immediate challenges from the COVID-19 public health crisis, including getting food to hungry Americans, protecting front-line meatpacking and farm workers and rebuilding the U.S. economy from its pandemic-induced recession, said Vilsack.

But the secretary also said the nation can reach ambitious goals: Farmers can lead in the fight against climate change; the agriculture department can address systemic racial inequities within farm programs; the U.S. can solve chronic hunger for millions of families; and it can address the problem of concentrated control of resources in the farm industry.

Here are some of the issues that Vilsack faces as he takes office:

CLIMATE CHANGE Vilsack said the U.S. can build markets and provide incentives that pay farmers to improve soil health, sequester carbon, capture and reuse methane and create manufacturing that turns agricultural “waste material into new chemicals and materials and fabrics and fibers.” He signaled his support for a proposal that calls for farmers to receive and sell credits for the carbon they keep out of the atmosphere.

Vilsack and his wife, Christie, last August DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS

FOOD SUPPLY CHAIN The issue gained prominence early in the pandemic when giant meatpacking plants temporarily shuttered as thousands of workers became sick with COVID-19. Farmers destroyed pigs, chickens and other livestock that couldn’t be processed. At the same time, consumers faced skyrocketing prices and supply shortages.

Vilsack told senators that the agency can help provide incentives for building more regional meatpacking facilities so one or two plants temporarily shuttering doesn’t bring down the entire livestock market.

He also said the nation can help build CONTINUED

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CHARLIE RIEDEL/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Rod Bradshaw says he is the last Black farmer in Hodgeman County, Kan. Vilsack has promised to examine inequality at the USDA.

a food system “that makes healthy and nutritious food more available, more convenient and more affordable to all Americans” by supporting small and midsize farmers and creating new local markets for their products.

ETHANOL VERSUS ELECTRIC Sen. Joni Ernst, an agriculture committee member from Iowa, asked Vilsack in his confirmation hearing if he would support ethanol and biodiesel production as President Joe Biden seeks to shift the nation to electric vehicles to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Biden signed an executive order Jan. 27 directing federal officials to devise a plan to convert all federal, state, local and tribal vehicle fleets, including the massive one operated by the U.S. Postal Service, to “clean and zero-emission vehicles.”

“Will you be directing USDA to buy Tesla trucks that run on electricity or will you be supporting our farmers in purchasing Ford F-150s that run on E85?”

Ernst asked during the hearing.

Vilsack said the nation will need ethanol and biodiesel “in the foreseeable future” as the U.S. moves to electric vehicles. He said renewable fuels play an important role in tackling climate change, pointing to a study released in January that showed greenhouse gas emissions from corn-based ethanol are 46 percent lower than for gasoline.

HUNGER IN AMERICA Americans have flooded food banks and pantries, seeking assistance as jobs and hours have been cut during the pandemic.

Asked during the nomination process how the agriculture department can improve the food supply chain in a way that helps local fruit, vegetable and livestock producers, Vilsack said the agency can expand market support for local growers selling to schools, universities, prisons and other government institutions.

He also said the department can support food hubs that help local growers process, market and distribute their products, expand “commitments to

farmers markets” and help farmers who are interested in growing organic food.

The move would help millions of Americans “cope with obesity and diabetes and other chronic diseases,” he said.

Vilsack also strongly supported the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) — commonly known as food stamps — as a key instrument in helping the country’s most vulnerable families survive and recover from the pandemic era.

MINORITY FARMERS In front of the Senate agriculture committee, Vilsack discussed creating an “equity task force” inside the department. Its job, he said, would be to identify what he called “intentional or unintentional barriers” that prevent or discourage farmers of color from properly accessing federal assistance programs.

“We need to take a much deeper dive into USDA programs” to determine if they contain systemic racism or barriers that make it difficult for people to access programs, he said.

Vilsack served as Iowa governor from 1999 to 2007 and has known Biden since his days as mayor of Mount Pleasant, his first political role, more than three decades ago. Though raised in Pittsburgh — not on a farm, as were many others who’ve served as agriculture secretary — he nevertheless re-enters the office having served longer in the role than anyone but fellow Iowan James Wilson, who served 16 years, from 1897 to 1913.

At an event introducing Vilsack as the pick to lead the USDA, he said. “When we emerge from this crisis, we’re going to have an incredible opportunity before us to position American agriculture to lead our nation and the world on climate change and reap the new, good-paying jobs and farm income that will come from that leadership, to make landmark investments in communities throughout rural America, especially those mired in poverty for too long.”

Donnelle Eller writes for the Des Moines (Iowa) Register. Ashraf Khalis of The Associated Press contributed to this story.

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Clear Forecast Most seeds and fertilizers plentiful despite COVID-19

By Adam Stone

W

HILE THE PANDEMIC HAS disrupted

supply chains across many industries, farmer Matt Frostic is optimistic about the price and availability of seed and fertilizer in 2021.

“It looks right now as if there will be adequate supplies of both, with pricing about normal,” says Frostic, who grows 1,000 acres of corn, soybeans and sugar beets on a farm 80 miles north of Detroit. He’s also

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A field at BASF’s canola seed processing and distribution center in Alberta, Canada BASF

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Kristina Hubbard ORGANIC SEED ALLIANCE

“The increased demand for organic seed is an important opportunity for organic seed growers to scale up their operations, if their production capacity allows.”

— Kristina Hubbard, Organic Seed Alliance

BASF

Piles of cotton seed will be tested to see if they should become part of next year’s planting seed.

chairman of the Michigan Corn Growers Association.

Experts say his optimism is wellfounded. Farmers who’ve struggled through tariff wars and extreme weather over the past year can at least rest assured that seed and fertilizer will be amply available, and at reasonable prices, in 2021.

GOOD AND PLENTY “Regarding agricultural seeds, prices are expected to remain fairly constant,” says Deane Falcone, chief scientific officer at agricultural science company Crop One. This is due to the regular demand for seed, “which is generally known and predictable.”

For the biggest crops — corn, soybeans and wheat — there is plenty of seed on hand, says Trey Malone, a professor in the department of agricultural, food and resource economics at Michigan State University. “They are really large companies producing these, and seeds are storable, so they can produce a lot early on,” he says.

Large seed producers say that COVID-19 has had little impact on their efforts.

“We have had (a) reasonably good production year despite all the COVID restrictions. Our teams have been safe and have managed to work to the demand that we have,” says Garth Hodges, vice president of North American seed business for BASF Agricultural Solutions.

As to pricing, “the seed business is highly competitive in terms of price, programs and rebates,” which will tend to keep prices stable for the coming year, he says.

At Corteva Agriscience, seed production likewise has not missed a beat. “Prior to the onset of the pandemic, we had already made adjustments to improve the resiliency of our global supply chain and manufacturing structure by diversifying sourcing of raw materials and production,” says CEO Jim Collins. “We did not miss one customer order (in 2020) due to the pandemic and, we are on track to continue to meet customer demand in 2021.”

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) plays a key role in ensuring seed availability through its Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) seed health programs.

“To be competitive in today’s global market, U.S. producers need access to diverse varieties of healthy seed from around the world,” APHIS officials noted in a USDA online article. The agency works to create seed standards and to reduce seed-borne diseases, thus ensuring farmers have access to a robust supply.

SELECT SEEDS While corn and soybean seed may be readily available, farmers looking for more esoteric items may face challenges.

At Frontier Co-op, for example, sustainable supply chain manager Seth Petchers has seen growers struggle to keep pace with demand for organiccertified seed. “In many cases, farming in the countries we source from is so CONTINUED

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Loading seed in Iowa CORTEVA AGRISCIENCE

FRONTIER CO-OP

Growers showcase heirloom varieties of turmeric.

skewed towards conventional agriculture that organic-compliant seed, fertilizers and pesticides are hard to come by,” he says.

The co-op helps level the playing field.

In some cases, for example, “We worked with our supplier to implement a program to make it financially viable for farmers to save and replant organic root-stock of an heirloom turmeric variety,” he says. “That quality root-stock just wasn’t available in the local market.”

As more consumers seek out organic produce, “inventory concerns loom large,” says Kristina Hubbard, director of advocacy and communications for the Organic Seed Alliance. “The increased demand for organic seed is an important opportunity for organic seed growers to scale up their operations, if their production capacity allows.”

FERTILIZER FORECAST In addition to seed, fertilizer also has a strong prognosis for 2021, with supply

and prices expected to remain stable.

Fertilizer prices can be “highly dependent on prices determined in the international market, including the price of natural gas, a crucial raw material in the manufacture of ammonia, which in turn is fundamental to inorganic nitrogen fertilizer,” according to USDA’s Economic Research Service.

In 2021, those variables will tend to favor the farmer.

“In terms of fertilizer prices, we are still at levels lower than the 10-year average, and ... affordability looks to remain high,” says Charles Magro, CEO of Nutrien, which produces and distributes more than 25 million tons of potash, nitrogen and phosphate products for agricultural and other uses.

The COVID-19 restrictions that have affected other supply chains likely will not impede fertilizer production. “You literally can pull nitrogen out of the air, and it’s not a very manual process so you don’t have any COVID transmission

issues (for workers),” says Malone.

He noted, too, that the change of presidential administration could help to smooth out some of the bumps in international trade, potentially making it easier for fertilizer makers to access raw ingredients such as potash on the global market.

“These international trade conflicts that we have had in recent years can impact the supply chain for some of these fertilizers,” he says. “I am optimistic that those trade relationships will improve in the next two years.”

Even as the pandemic’s effects linger, Frostic says, key agricultural inputs like seed and fertilizer will likely remain on track.

“These products don’t require people working closely together — it’s not a factory where there is close interaction,” he says. Thus, supply remains strong.

As to pricing, “It isn’t a challenge at this point. I won’t say it is a huge bargain, but it fits in with our profit model.”

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Hemp plants in Bristol, Tenn.

DAVID CRIGGER/BRISTOL HERALD COURIER VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS

Growing Pains Despite early challenges, hemp industry still optimistic

By Adam Hadhazy

W

HEN FEDERAL LAWMAKERS GAVE the green

light for commercial production of hemp in the 2018 Farm Bill, many farmers took the plunge. Planted

acreage — according to the USDA Farm Service Agency — surged nearly fivefold from 32,464 in 2018 to 146,065 in 2019 (the most recent year for which figures are available).

At present, 49 states have some sort of hemp program in place, according to Erica Stark, executive director of the

National Hemp Association, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group.

Yet this buzz has belied a harsh reality for many growers who, due to factors such as a lack of buyers, a saturated marketplace, onerous regulation and a poor knowledge base about the longoutlawed crop, have so far found hemp

cultivation to be a fraught enterprise.

“It’s a brand-new industry and lots of things aren’t in place,” says Chase Hubbard, senior analyst for industrial hemp at The Jacobsen, a Colorado-based price reporting agency.

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SANTA FE FARMS (2)

Gary Chavez harvests his crop in New Mexico.

HEMP 101 So-called industrial hemp is the same species — Cannabis sativa L. — as marijuana, which remains an illegal, Schedule I controlled substance at the federal level. In order to be sold, the hemp plant must contain no more than 0.3 percent tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana.

Even strains of Cannabis sativa L. with naturally low levels of THC can end up testing over the limit at harvest time because exposures to excessive soil nutrients, temperatures, rainfall and other factors can cause the THC level to spike. In these instances, farmers have had to destroy their hemp crop, incurring significant investment losses.

“One of the hardest things has been to find, grow and run a steady cultivar or strain that produces within the legal limitations,” says Cole Daeschel, director of agriculture and co-founder of Santa Fe Farms, a New Mexico-based hempproduction startup.

Daeschel described how ongoing testing of an early planting by his company had shown the hemp plants to be doing just fine. But sudden changes in the weather meant that “by the time we harvested our crop, it was all ‘hot,’” he says, using the term for plants exceeding the 0.3 percent limit.

Learning from the setback, Santa Fe Farms has had more success recently and plans to expand its roughly 100 acres of hemp grown in 2020 to 250 acres in 2021.

“It’s been challenging, but it’s getting better,” says Gary Chavez, the director of science at Santa Fe Farms and also a

co-founder. “There’s light at the end of the tunnel.”

Even when crops have stayed within legal THC limits, farmers have often struggled to locate buyers or fetch the prices expected. According to Hubbard, hemp sold for the extraction of cannabidiol (CBD) oil — a popular early market for the plant — went for more than $40 per pound in 2019, but is now mired in the $5-per-pound range.

“Once hemp became federally legal, so many people jumped in the game that prices plummeted,” says Stark.

Another complication for hemp growers has been processing the harvested hemp, either on-site or in most cases by a separate commercial entity.

VERSATILE CROP Like other crops, hemp requires processing to be broken down into its variously useful parts — such as the seeds, leaves and stalks — from which hundreds of consumer products and industrial inputs can be produced and extracted.

The seeds, for instance, are highly nutritious for human consumption and a source of hemp oil, a potential biofuel.

The leaves are a key source of the CBD oil increasingly sold as a supplement with many claimed medicinal properties, including treating anxiety and insomnia.

The stalks are a good source of fibers for textiles and paper products.

“There just simply is not another crop that is as versatile as hemp is,” says Stark.

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SANTA FE FARMS

Cole Daeschel, left, and Gary Chavez run Santa Fe Farms, a hemp production startup in Moriarty, N.M.

Hemp is environmentally friendly, absorbing more carbon dioxide per acre than other commercial crops. It’s also naturally pest- and mold-resistant and needs little in the way of pesticides, Stark adds.

BRIGHT FUTURE Given all these benefits and uses, the market for hemp in the United State and abroad is expected to expand dramatically.

The market for CBD in the U.S. alone, which was about half a billion dollars in 2018, has been projected to expand to $26.4 billion by 2025, according to New Frontier Data, an analytics company focused on global cannabis.

For farmers looking to get into the hemp market, industry observers and fellow farmers recommend lining up a buyer first and then starting out small.

“It makes sense for farmers to plant small acreage,” says Hubbard. “Don’t

“One of the hardest things has been to find ... (a) strain that produces within the legal limitations.”

— COLE DAESCHEL, Sante Fe Farms

plant more than you’re willing to lose.”

Hubbard notes that the enthusiasm he and others have seen in the hemp growing community suggests that, after initial growing pains, the industry will ultimately thrive.

“It’s amazing for me personally, and I’m honored to be a part of it,” says Daeschel. “Hemp has so many uses that are going to help this country and the environment in so many ways.”

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Pest Control Scientists use technology to keep invasive species at bay

By Adam Stone

C Asian giant hornets

ALL SOMETHING AN INVASIVE species

and people get worried. Call them murder hornets, and people get really scared. “It’s easy to understand the human fear factor of having a very large hornet that can sting repeatedly,” says Department of Agriculture (USDA) computational biologist Anna Childers.

Even more worrisome is the threat to agriculture.

Invasive insects and plant diseases cost the nation an estimated $40 billion annually, and invasive pests can destroy up to 40 percent of global food crops each year,

CONTINUED TED S. WARREN/ASSOCIATED PRESS

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Burmese python

according to the USDA. With the Asian giant hornet (AGH), “the larger concern is about the bee industry. A small nest of hornets can take out tens of thousands of bees in a few hours,” says Childers, “and we need the bees in order to pollinate our crops sufficiently.”

Childers was part of a team that brought high-tech solutions to the table when this particular invasive arrived in the Pacific Northwest in 2019. With its mini radio transmitters and DNA testing, the AGH response was just one example of how USDA and others are leveraging technology to keep invasives in check.

Spichiger, managing entomologist in they proliferate and threaten native Washington State’s Department of Agriwildlife. The snakes reflect the infrared culture. Finding the AGH nest had proved differently than surrounding vegetation, difficult, so they let the hornets lead allowing researchers to spot them. them there. Spichiger attached miniature “The challenge and the solution radio tags to hornets captured in the for eradicating these giant snakes wild, tracking one specimen to its lies in locating them,” says home near Blaine, Wash.

Orges Furxhi, the company’s The radio tags, provided research and development

by USDA’s Animal and Plant manager. “Because they are Health Inspection Service, cold blooded, we had to look are a high-tech solution. But beyond thermal-imaging it took low-tech ingenuity methods.”

Gall-forming to put them to use. Gluing fly PEST VERSUS PEST them onto the hornets didn’t SCOTT PORTMAN In California, USDA scientists work — it kept gumming up their are using nature to fight their wings — so the researchers eventubattles for them. They are developing ally tied on the transmitters with dental sophisticated techniques for releasing floss. Once they had followed the signal Asian giant hornet the non-native gall-forming fly as a to the nest, an advanced thermal image means to stop the non-native — and camera gave them a look at what they GETTY IMAGES highly invasive — Cape-ivy weed. were up against.

Cape-ivy proliferates in watersheds, “You can see the tree and there’s just a but as that is water farmers may need to giant, white-hot spot where the nest is. It use in their fields, researchers wanted a helped to narrow down exactly what we way to subdue the weed without spraywere dealing with,” Spichiger says. ing herbicides.

Even as that nest was destroyed, “Chemical herbicides are used quite a work continues to track and bit, but they have a risk of damaging or eradicate the AGH. USDA has killing other plants,” says Patrick Moran, seen no recent apiary attacks, a research entomologist at USDA’s “which gives us a lot of optimism,” Agricultural Resource Service (ARS) Spichiger says. “We may have invasive species and pollinator health found this in time and reacted research unit. swiftly enough, in which case we In the ARS research, scientists have have a good chance of wiping this released the flies at 18 locations along out.” the coast, from Humboldt County in HIGH-TECH TRACKING northern California to San Luis Obispo in Spotted laternfly central California. The flies lay their eggs At Drexel University’s College of Engineering, associate professor Antonios in the ivy’s new-growth shoots, stunting MATT ROURKE/ASSOCIATED PRESS (2) the ivy’s runaway expansion — with no Kontsos is using a form of artificial intelligence to counter the spread of the chemicals required.

Such biological controls always invasive spotted lanternfly, which USDA present a risk: What else might the fly says is a threat to the grape, orchard attack? To ensure agricultural safety, and logging industries. First spotted in Pennsylvania, the insect is “we tested 99 different plant species, including representative crop plants and spreading, recently having GETTY IMAGES other plants that grow in the same places been seen in Ohio. as Cape-ivy,” Moran says. “This fly is “We’re leveraging very picky: It will only damage Cape-ivy. image-processing technolUNDERSTANDING But we had to demonstrate that... before ogy ... to detect cracks and THE ENEMY we could release it.” defects in infrastructure A researcher searches for Burmese pythons.

To keep the giant By developing creative approaches and manufactured hornets at bay, Childers to invasive control — from miniature products,” Kontsos says.

IMEC USA and her colleagues An image-processing hornet-tracking gear to ivy-killing fly used sophisticated DNA releases — USDA scientists are helping to algorithm identifies likely sequencing tools. “Our goal was to help egg clutches in these hidden places, advance the department’s agenda. understand the origins of these particular “This is about serving the public good. giving researchers the chance to destroy hornets, because each subspecies has eggs before they hatch.

Part of the USDA mission is to protect a slightly unique biology: One is a tree crops and protect natural resources In the Florida Everglades, meanwhile, nester, while the others are ground researchers from nanotechnology such as soil or water, which in turn helps nesters,” she says. “All of this feeds into farmers,” Moran says. “There is not much firm Imec USA have developed near our ability to develop better controls.” infrared cameras to stop the spread of incentive for private industry to do this That research helped to guide a team kind of work, so USDA has a critical role Burmese pythons — often bought as to play in this.” of inspectors that included Sven-Erik pets, then dumped in the swamp, where

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Working for Change Farmers and lawmakers strive to create opportunities for Black producers

By Nevin Martell

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OR THE LAST FIVE years, Alexander Wright’s African Heritage Food Co-op in Niagara Falls N.Y., have purchased roughly half a million dollars’ worth of produce and products from farmers. “But only a very small percentage of that has come from people who look like me,” says Wright.

African Americans represent less than 2 percent of farmers in the United States, according to the most recent Department of Agriculture (USDA) Census of Agriculture report.

John Boyd Jr., National Black Farmers Association president NATIONAL BLACK FARMERS ASSOCIATION

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DIVERSITY when it was, there were all these mechanisms to dispossess them of land by denying them loans and documented discrimination at USDA.” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has pledged to create a commission to examine equity in the department and the USDA has been working to ensure that new initiatives are administered equitably, efficiently and effectively. According to the department, direct loans to Black and other historically underserved farmers increased from 15,000 borrowers to 19,078 from fiscal year 2011 to 2020, with credit valued at $2.2 billion in 2020.

While Wright has purchased a 22-acre farm in upstate New York, leasing lots and promising to buy what is grown locally, there are many organizations and individuals working to create more diversity, including an urban activist gardener, a farmer and a state secretary of agriculture.

INSPIRING GROWERS Duron Chavis, an urban agriculture and local food systems activist, has been working on assisting minorities with access to food and land in the Richmond, CONTINUED

DURON CHAVIS

Cabbage grows on a 1.5-acre urban farm run by Duron Chavis.

Social justice activists and Black farmers have long worked to increase diversity in the industry. And Sen. Cory Booker proposed the Justice for Black Farmers Act to create access to land and provide capital and training for those who are eligible.

“I think it’s a great start,” says John Boyd Jr., a fourth-generation farmer and president of the National Black Farmers Association who has long pushed for action on Capitol Hill. “We may not get everything in that first bill, but it certainly points us in the right direction, redistributing land to people who have been forgotten for so many decades.”

Farmers of diverse backgrounds face many challenges, Boyd says, but among the most critical is access to loans and

credit, which they need to keep operations running from one season to the next. A 2019 report by the Government Accountability Office confirmed that socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers receive “proportionately fewer loans and less agricultural credit overall.”

“The historical, systemic racism really has to be considered as a key foundational context in which farmers are now accessing land,” says Holly Rippon-Butler, land campaign director for the National Young Farmers Coalition and author of its Land Policy: Towards a More Equitable Farming Future report, which documents the barriers farmers of color face with accessing land. “During slavery, landownership was obviously not available to Black farmers and then,

NICK DAVIS

Duron Chavis tills the land on one of his urban farms in Richmond, Va.

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Derrick Jackson

A farmto-table dinner at Grass Grazed

Derrick and Paige Jackson

SHANNON DUSABLON; PROVIDED BY DERRICK JACKSON; LISA THAYER; DAMON BUTLER

Va., area. Chavis started a farmers market in 2009 for a neighborhood located in a food desert, and over the last decade has created community gardens, markets, urban orchards, vineyards and farms around the city. “We utilize those spaces as training areas for community members,” says Chavis, “so that they can learn to grow their own food and express agency around the topics of food access and food insecurity.” Chavis estimates 100 budding farmers have graduated from programs he’s led.

During the pandemic, Chavis stepped up his efforts to provide access to food and land with a new initiative, the Resiliency Garden. The program offers locals a raised garden bed set up on their property or one of the organization’s community gardens. More than 500 garden beds were requested, mostly by first-time gardeners.

Online training and a socially distanced gardening boot camp were set up to support growers. Chavis hopes that with this new initiative and his long-running programs, “We’re recruiting people who want to get into farming and

“Only a small percentage of that (product and produce) came from people who looked like me.”

— ALEXANDER WRIGHT, African Heritage Food Co-op take this work up a notch.”

This spring, Chavis and his colleagues plan to deliver more beds and train the growers who will tend them. “It’s about inspiring the next generation of urban farmers,” he says.

PAYING IT FORWARD Derrick Jackson didn’t come from a farming family or attend agricultural college. Instead, in an effort to gain access to affordable organic meats, the Army veteran learned farming by watching YouTube and attending conferences.

After fundraising and dipping into their savings, Jackson and his wife, Paige, founded the 82-acre Grass Grazed farm just north of Durham, N.C., in 2019.

They raise heritage pigs, grass-fed cattle and free-range poultry to sell at farmers markets and online.

Their journey inspired them to attract, train and support a new generation of Black farmers. With their nonprofit Farmers Concord, they offer full-time, paid fellowships. Participants learn rotational grazing and chicken processing as well as grant writing and how to secure loans.

Once the program is completed, Jackson helps graduates access land, find funding and write a business plan. “We all have something to bring to the table. And when we all work together, we’re able to accomplish a lot,” says Jackson.

ASSISTING CONSTITUENTS After Bettina Ring was sworn in as Virginia’s Secretary of Agriculture and Forestry in 2018, she embarked on a series of listening sessions with minority farmers to discover the barriers to success they faced. A recurring issue

that came up was heirs’ property, says Ring, when land is not formally deeded because an owner lacked access to legal counsel to correctly will the property.

In collaboration with the Virginia Cooperative Extension, Ring’s department hosted a series of Generation NEXT workshops to help guide families through intergenerational land transfers.

The department also collaborated with Virginia State University and Virginia Tech to provide outreach to minority farmers about programs and other available benefits. “A big part of this is trust,” Ring says, “and making sure individuals feel comfortable trusting government officials who may have cost-share programs (such as one that helps farmers pay for organic certification) that may be of help.”

Ring has a vision for creating equity in agriculture and providing increased opportunities for future Black farmers in her state. “There’s much more leadership and greater intention out there,” she says, “but there’s a lot more we can do.”

Mary Helen Berg contributed to this story.

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DIVERSITY

Svalbard Global Seed Vault

By Matt Alderton

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Cultivating History Heirloom seeds help the Cherokee Nation grow native crops, preserve native culture

Omaha ruby flint corn variety grown by Sacred Seed TAYLOR KEEN; THE CROP TRUST

N A REMOTE ISLAND in the Arctic Ocean hides a precious treasure: the genetic blueprints to rebuild the global food supply.

Designed to safeguard food crops from both natural and manmade disasters — including nuclear wars, hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, plagues and pests— the Svalbard Global Seed Vault on a remote island between Norway and the North Pole holds more than 1 million diverse seed samples. Each is stored in a custom-made foil package, which is sealed inside a box that’s kept on a shelf more than 100 meters inside the bowels of a mountain. Here, at a carefully controlled temperature of zero degrees Fahrenheit, are the foundations to grow everything from Asian rice and African cowpeas to European eggplants and Peruvian potatoes.

“The seeds that are kept in seed banks traditionally are very old, ancient varieties that farmers no longer grow for whatever reason,” explains Hannes Dempewolf, senior scientist and director of external affairs at the nonprofit Crop Trust, which has managed the seed vault since its opening in 2008. “Seeds are kept in a frozen condition and distributed either to farmers who would like to use them directly in crop production or, more typically, in breeding programs that cross material from these old varieties with modern varieties to recover some of the genetic traits that have been lost — which, of course, is becoming more and more important in the context of climate change.”

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DIVERSITY

Seeds destined for the vault are carefully packaged in sealed foil.

THE CROP TRUST

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is located in the Svalbard archipelago, halfway between Norway and the North Pole, and holds more than 1 million seed varieties.

Cross-breeding old crops with new ones creates food staples that are more resilient to extreme weather and pests.

But not all the seeds in the global seed vault are there to protect the food supply. Some are there to preserve something entirely different, yet equally dear: endangered cultures such as the Cherokee Nation, which in February 2020 became the first Native American tribe and only the second indigenous community to deposit its traditional heirloom seeds in the global seed vault.

GERM OF AN IDEA For Cherokee Nation’s Environmental Resources senior director Pat Gwin, the deposit was the pinnacle of a 15-year journey that began in 2005, when he heard about the global seed vault for the first time. He proposed that the Cherokee Nation deposit some of its traditional seeds for safekeeping during a routine tribal council meeting.

There was just one problem: He couldn’t find any.

“Unfortunately, I had to come back

to the following tribal council meeting and say that the tribe did not have any, retain any nor was it growing any of what we would consider our traditional heirloom crops,” recalls Gwin, who later discovered the reason: When the Cherokee people were forcibly removed from their native lands in the 19th century and relocated to Oklahoma, they left their gardens behind.

“Anyone with even a rudimentary understanding of the Cherokee culture knows that we believe plants, animals

and people to all reside on the same tier of existence. Just because the Cherokee people were being forcibly removed from their homes was no reason for their plants or animals to be (treated) thusly,” says Gwin.

RESTORING HERITAGE And so began a yearslong effort to find, collect and preserve surviving Cherokee seeds, which are now stored CONTINUED

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DIVERSITY not only in Svalbard, but also in the official Cherokee Nation Seed Bank, located in Park Hill, Okla.

Established in 2006, the bank now consists of giant refrigerators in two separate locations, ensuring one survives should one of Oklahoma’s infamous tornadoes strike the other.

The bank holds seeds for roughly 30 varieties of heirloom crops, including corn, climbing beans and winter squash, which in indigenous cultures are known as the “Three Sisters,” thanks to symbiotic properties that allow them to be successfully grown together at the same time and on the same plot.

Each year, the Cherokee Nation Seed Bank distributes seeds to tribal citizens who wish to cultivate them in their own gardens. Demand varies year to year.

In 2020, it distributed approximately 5,000 seeds, and in 2019 it distributed nearly 10,000.

VITAL DIVERSITY Taylor Keen of Omaha, Neb., is among many tribal citizens who grow Cherokee crops from seed bank seeds. A business professor at Nebraska’s Creighton University, Keen is founder of Sacred Seed, a nonprofit with the mission is growing and preserving indigenous crops from both the Cherokee Nation and the Omaha Tribe of Nebraska, to which he jointly belongs.

The idea was inspired by his mentor, Deward Walker, anthropology professor emeritus at the University of Colorado with whom he often discusses Native American scholarship and research.

One day, Walker called and asked in a booming voice, “‘Young man, what are you doing to protect your corn?’”

By propagating only a minority of crops that have been genetically engineered for industrial agriculture, large seed companies are destroying crop diversity, argued Walker, who persuaded Keen to take up the cause of preserving indigenous seeds. Ever since, Keen has been growing an heirloom garden in his backyard and helping others do the same.

“Monocrop agriculture is tenuous at best,” explains Keen, who says the genetic diversity inherent in heirloom crops might one day save the world from agricultural disaster. “In the age of plagues and viruses, if something attacked our (modern food supply) it could render us unable to feed everyone. By finding these old strains of indigenous heirloom seeds and propagating them, we do a lot to help humanity.”

PROVIDED BY TAYLOR KEEN

Taylor Keen, a business professor and founder of Sacred Seed, works to preserve indigenous crops in Omaha, Neb.

SAFEGUARDING THE FUTURE Yet for Keen and other indigenous peoples, seed preservation is more about the past than the future. “It’s very important that we don’t separate indigenous heirloom seeds from the indigenous peoples who grew them,” Keen says. “When I first got started on a very small plot in my backyard, I learned by asking elders and consulting with my clan leadership. Over time,

I began to glean a lot of stories about when we planted and how we planted. ... It’s been an amazing journey filled with learning the real history of these seeds and of this land.”

In fact, the Cherokee Nation secured a special waiver from the global seed vault when it finally made its deposit in 2020: In order to avoid cultural appropriation, its seeds are not to be shared for use either in breeding or

commercialization.

“We take a protectionist view of these crops,” says Cherokee Nation Secretary of Natural Resources Chad Harsha. “Our seed bank was developed with a very narrow mission, and that is to revitalize our historic and culturally significant heirloom crops, and to make them available to Cherokee citizens for cultivation, protection and passing down to future generations.”

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RUGGED RESILIENCE Farmers and ranchers endure challenges of pandemic, economy

By Sylvia A. Martinez

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S 2020 DAWNED, FARMERS faced

trade wars, climate change, falling commodity prices and bankruptcies.

Then COVID-19 hit.

But despite the myriad challenges and obstacles exacerbated by the pandemic, Zippy Duvall, a third-generation farmer and president of the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF), says farms will survive.

“If we learn the lessons that COVID-19 has presented to us, then we just might come out of this stronger than before.

If you look at the history of farming, it’s always up and down. Farmers are very resilient and will find a way to be better on the other side,” Duvall says.

According to Duvall, the single greatest pandemic challenge for America’s farmers was the break-

down of the supply chain, resulting in delays getting food to store shelves.

Some issues, such as the shutdown of meat processing plants due to COVID-19 outbreaks, were “out of our control as farmers,” Duvall says. “The backlog of harvesting animals caused tremendous hardship. Add to that the marketplace — what we were receiving for commodities went south on us. Beef prices went downward, but consumers were paying more.”

One benefit of the pandemic: Americans are more aware of where their food comes from and how critical it is to the nation’s infrastructure. “People realize more today that food is a national security issue,” Duvall says. “It’s just as important as having a strong military.”

To assist farmers, the Department of Agriculture (USDA) made available $54.3 billion in

pandemic-related funding through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, Coronavirus Food Assistance Program (CFAP) and the Families First Coronavirus Response Act in May 2020, according to a USDA Office of Inspector General report.

AFBF looks forward to working with new Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and is confident the Biden administration’s efforts to battle COVID-19 through vaccine distribution, testing and PPE will extend to farmers and workers. “Vilsack earned a reputation for rising above partisanship to serve farmers and ranchers, and I’m confident he’ll continue to do so,” says Duvall.

As farmers navigate the changed landscape, we caught up with a few to talk about how they rode out 2020 and what’s ahead in 2021.

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GAIL HOBBS-PAGE Caromont Farm Esmont, Va.

SARAH CRAMER SHIELDS

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GAIL HOBBS-PAGE Caromont Farm Esmont, Va. When the pandemic forced area restaurants, wholesalers, specialty stores and farmers markets to close in mid-March 2020, Caromont Farm, a 24-acre Virginia dairy producer, lost 75 percent of its revenue within a week.

“The milk was coming and the cheese was being made, but how were we going to sell this?” says cheesemaker and Caromont Farm owner Gail Hobbs-Page.

“I thought, ‘I’ve got to stay calm, figure out what to make, how to sell it and where to sell it.’”

Hobbs-Page has a loyal customer base, and received a small USDA grant to help offset her losses, but she knew she had to get scrappy.

With the help of central Virginia nonprofit Local Food Hub, Caromont and about a dozen other small farms held contactless drive-thru markets to replace farmers markets. Three days a week, customers drove up and popped open their trunks to receive their orders. “It was safe,” Hobbs-Page says.

“It worked, and the community supported it.”

Hobbs-Page also worked to reconfigure another part of her farm’s operation — agritourism. Each spring, she sells tickets to farm open houses, where visitors can go into the barns and play with the goats. COVID-19 shut down her 2020 season. For 2021, she has restructured her events with new safety protocols.

Her cheesemaking also continues, but with a different emphasis. Instead of fresh cheeses, Hobbs-Page has started creating aged cheeses. “It’s a completely different business model,” she says.

Caromont has also sought out new sources of revenue, partnering with nearby wineries to provide cheese-tasting boxes and a cheese share program, which allows customers to buy monthly shares of small-batch cheeses. In addition, Hobbs-Page is working on giving back to her local community, setting up part of the farm with a nonprofit focusing on agriculture education. “Going forward we have to recognize that local partnerships like this are an opportunity to share resources,” says Hobbs-Page.

SARAH CRAMER SHIELDS

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JAY HILL Chaffhaye, Inc. Las Cruces, N.M., and Dell City, Texas Jay Hill owns 13,000 acres spread over three farms in Texas and New Mexico, producing alfalfa, cotton, chili peppers and wine grapes.

When COVID-19 struck, Hill began experiencing supply chain issues.

As the dairy farmers Hill sold wheat and oats to were dumping milk daily, he worried whether the bulk of his operation would survive.

Hill told his bankers that he may not make payments for a couple of months but would make good on his loans. But what concerned him most was the welfare of his employees. For the first time in his 22 years as a farmer, he wondered: “Are my employees going to have a paycheck?”

Thanks to the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) under the CARES Act, Hill was able to keep all 94 men and women employed.

The Small Business Administration (SBA), which administered the program, has approved more than $525 billion in PPP loans to small businesses, including farms, according to an August 2020 SBA report.

A second-generation farmer who started with 10 acres given to him by his father, Hill experienced the impacts of the pandemic on many fronts, including an already declining cotton market, transportation issues and backlogs in harvesting animals. His specialty crops, such as lettuce, onions, chilis and pecans, suffered declines in demand due to the shift from food service to consumers. He also had some buyers renege on contracts, and was left with more than 60,000 pounds of pecans due to a depressed market.

On the plus side — and supported by a 14 percent increase in alcohol consumption by American adults during the pandemic, according to a JAMA Network Open study — Hill says his wine grapes “were selling like they were going out of style.”

PROVIDED BY JAY HILL

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RICK CLARK

MIKE ECHEVERRIA

Clark Land & Cattle Williamsport, Ind.

Echeverria Cattle Company Bakersfield, Calif.

A fifth-generation farmer, Rick Clark raises cattle and grows corn, soybeans, wheat, alfalfa and field peas using regenerative practices on his 7,000-acre farm, which means no tilling, herbicides or pesticides are used.

Cattle ranchers also bring their cows onto his property to graze and fatten up. “They’ll come in as 400-pounders and leave as 600-pounders because they gained weight while they were grazing our forages,” says Clark.

Other than having cattle graze on his property for longer than they otherwise might have, Clark says he was affected more by the pandemic in his personal life than his farming life. His wife, Carol, tested positive for COVID-19 and displayed mild symptoms for about two weeks.

The pandemic has also delayed Clark’s plans to raise his own cattle and sell meat direct to the consumer. But as backlogs at meat processing plants continue into 2021, that won’t be for at least another year. “I called (in January), and the closest time they can get me is (spring) 2022,” says Clark.

Still, like Duvall, Clark says there is one positive outcome of the pandemic: “What COVID has done for our business is woken most people up (so) that they now care where their food comes from, how it’s being handled, how it’s being processed. That’s a good thing. Farmers need to be more transparent in what they do, and the consumer needs to be more aware of what they’re buying.” This new consumer awareness serves as affirmation that he was right to pursue regenerative farming 12 years ago. “(The pandemic is) still not over but we’re learning how to overcome this and look at things differently,” says Clark.

A fourth-generation rancher and owner of the family business, Echeverria Cattle Company, Mike Echeverria has thousands of head of cattle on five ranches in the San Joaquin Valley of California and southern Oregon. The company, which owns feedlots and sells cattle to other producers and to meat processing plants, was severely impacted by restaurant and hotel closings and the much-publicized logjams at processing plants.

“That was our biggest choke point as an industry; the spout of the funnel is fractional compared to the amount of cattle.

Once they started to back up, that shot shockwaves through our industry,” Echeverria says. “Our sales and prices dropped drastically.”

In December 2020, meat that should have been processed six to eight months earlier was just getting processed, he says. “You have cattle sitting there on feed, gaining more weight, resulting in more product and more backlog.”

With restaurants suffering huge losses or going out of business, the demand for prime cuts has dwindled and has been replaced by more affordable cuts. “The values have moved from prime cuts to the ends, to the ground (beef), which decreases the value of the animals,” Echeverria says, “but that’s what consumers are buying, so we’re moving it.”

Echeverria received federal funding to help offset beef sales and job losses. “We would have lost a lot more money,” he says. “We would have suffered a loss of 40 percent more money than we did.

“CFAP was a godsend to everyone in our industry,” he says.

“For folks like us, it made a huge difference. We would have most likely gone into much deeper debt.”

MYKAL MCELDOWNEY/INDIANAPOLIS STAR

BRING DISTRIBUTION IN-HOUSE Jay Hill purchased two 18-wheel trucks and is starting his own transportation company to handle farm deliveries himself.

“We’re wiser about how to get our products to market,” says Hill, who hopes to eventually have a fleet of 20 to 40 vehicles.

PROVIDED BY MIKE ECHEVERRIA

LESSONS LEARNED The pandemic created a variety of new challenges in the agriculture industry in 2020.

These farmers weathered the storm and share what they learned in the face of adversity:

butchers and grocers he supplies, Echeverria learns what customers are buying.

LISTEN TO THE CUSTOMER

CONSIDER NEW TECHNOLOGY

“Americans’ cooking and eating habits have shifted. ... As producers, we need to be more adept at listening to consumers,” says rancher Mike Echeverria. By talking to

“Now’s the time ... to invest in technology,” says Hill, who has been able to reduce water consumption by 1.3 million gallons per day because of a monitoring system purchased

in 2019. “If we continue to make leaps in technology like that, we can better deal with paralleling stressors like a pandemic.”

ELIMINATE THE MIDDLEMAN “We definitely have seen the benefit of selling direct.

You are able to make your margins,” says cheesemaker

Gail Hobbs-Page. Before the pandemic, Hobbs-Page relied on selling her cheese to restaurants and specialty shops.

Now she has reworked her business plan to sell her products directly to the consumer.

EMBRACE SOCIAL MEDIA Caromont Farm already had a web presence, but HobbsPage invested in hiring a social

media manager who increased her profile, managed online payments and helped interact with customers. “We could have done it ourselves, but it helped having an expert,” says Hobbs-Page.

BE TRANSPARENT “The consumer wants to know where their food is coming from and how it’s being handled. ... I am willing to ... convey to the consumer that our product is being grown in a regenerative ... stewardminded systematic approach.

It validates that what I’ve been doing is the right thing,” says Rick Clark.

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After decades of reticence, farmers ready to talk about climate change

GETTY IMAGES; TRAVIS HEYING/THE WITCHITA (KAN.) EAGLE VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS

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By Matt Alderton lthough the climate crisis demands that they be allies, agriculturalists and conservationists have often been cast as adversaries. It started in the 1930s. For decades, federal homesteading policies encouraged waves of inexperienced settlers to take up farming. The increase in plowed land helped create the Dust Bowl, an environmental catastrophe during which the Great Plains lost to wind and drought millions of acres of fertile topsoil.

Some 30 years later, another environmental crisis befell American agriculture in the form of synthetic pesticides such as DDT. Although

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they helped protect crops that fed the world after World War II, so stark was their ecological fallout that it inspired a verse in Joni Mitchell’s 1970 hit Big Yellow Taxi, in which Mitchell croons, “Hey farmer, farmer, put away that DDT now. Give me spots on my apples, but leave me the birds and the bees — please!”

“A lot of environmentalists were anti-farm, and their feelings were legitimate because farmers back then were big polluters,” explains John Piotti, president and CEO of American Farmland Trust (AFT). “(The farmers) weren’t bad people. They were hardworking Americans trying to stay in business by following the advice of their suppliers and (the federal governCONTINUED

Wheat field during a drought near Beulah, N.D., 2017

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Flooded field near Holly Bluff, Miss., 2019

ment). But at that time, they were perceived by many as the enemy.”

After decades of antagonism, it stands to reason that some farmers might remain hostile to environmental causes — and remarkable that others have managed to embrace them. And yet, many have. So many, in fact, that agriculture in 2021 appears to be on the cusp of an environmental tipping point, the impact of which could yield major benefits in the fight against climate change.

“There is movement in the agricultural industry writ large in terms of how it perceives climate and the environment,” observes Sasha Mackler, director of the Energy Project at the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC), which last November launched a Farm and Forest Carbon Solutions Initiative to identify climate change mitigation opportunities for agriculture and forestry. Instead of seeing it as punitive, he says, rural America is beginning to see climate action as remunerative.

“It’s a paradigm shift.”

CLIMATE AND CROPS

Freezing temperatures, Edinburg, Texas, 2021

Drought and heat in Nashville, Ill., 2012

There are good reasons for farmers to make nice with environmentalists.

“Farmers are among the stakeholders who are most impacted by climate change,” says rural sociologist J. Gordon Arbuckle Jr., chair of the graduate program in sustainable agriculture at Iowa State University. “Whether it’s rain, heat or early frost, their daily lives are totally impacted by the weather.”

In its Fourth National Climate Assessment, published in 2018, the U.S. Global Change Research Program, a government program that studies forces affecting the environment, predicts “numerous challenges” for agriculture as a result of climate change. “Rising temperatures, extreme heat, drought, wildfire on rangelands and heavy downpours are expected to increasingly disrupt agricultural productivity in the United States,” it observes.

Eventually, what affects farmers affects everyone else. “The practices that farmers employ determine the long-term health of our soils and our capacity to produce food to maintain survivability,” Arbuckle says.

While industry or transportation are responsible for most of the greenhouse gas emissions, agriculture still accounts for 12 percent globally, according to the United Nations (U.N.). When looking at the most damaging gases — nitrous oxide, which is 300 times more effective at trapping heat than carbon dioxide, and methane, 25 times more effective — agriculture accounts for 60 percent and 50 percent respectively of these CONTINUED

Wildfire in Watsonville, Calif., 2021

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: ROGELIO V. SOLIS/ASSOCIATED PRESS; SETH PERLMAN/ASSOCIATED PRESS; RANDY VAZQUEZ VIA (CALIF.) BAY AREA NEWS GROUP VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS; DELCIA LOPEZ/THE (MCALLEN, TEXAS) MONITOR VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS

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American Farmland Trust’s John Piotti, right, at a farm in Berne, N.Y.

gases, according to a U.N. report.

Because agriculture contributes to global warming, environmentalists believe it must help stop its rate of acceleration by embracing regenerative practices that reduce soil erosion and agricultural runoff, increase carbon sequestration in soil, decrease the use of fossil fuels in field preparation and minimize the use of synthetic chemicals. Adopting just two regenerative farming practices — no-till farming and cover cropping — on 70 percent of American cropland is tantamount to removing 53 million cars from the road, according to AFT. More farmers than ever recognize their impact, suggests Arbuckle, who annually surveys Iowa farmers — probing rural attitudes about climate change — for his Iowa Farm and Rural Life Poll.

Most farmers, he says, agree that climate change is occurring, and that humans are at least partly to blame for it. Specifically, 81 percent of farmers acknowledge that climate change is taking place, according to the 2020 edition of the Iowa Farm and Rural Life Poll. That’s up from 68 percent in 2011. Likewise, 58 percent of farmers attribute climate change either mostly to human causes (18 percent) or equally to human and natural causes (40 percent), which is up from 45 percent in 2011,

when just 10 percent attributed climate change mostly to human causes and 35 percent equally to human and natural causes. Finally, 51 percent of farmers say they’re concerned about the effects of climate change on their farm, compared with 35 percent in 2011.

“People often paint farmers as being mostly climate deniers, but my research shows that’s not the case,” Arbuckle says.

A SEAT AT THE TABLE Still, few farmers are willing to act, according to Arbuckle, whose research shows that just 26 percent of Iowa farmers believe they should reduce greenhouse gas emissions from their own farm operations.

Their reluctance to embrace climate change mitigation is more about economics than environmentalism. “Farmers understand the benefits of other types of cropping systems, but they also understand that those systems increase management requirements,” explains Arbuckle, who says environmentally friendly farming practices typicallly produce smaller yields, yet often require more time, technical assistance, land and labor. That translates into higher food prices, which for farmers means fewer customers

and less revenue.

“There’s a huge amount of risk involved in farming to begin with,” says Cristel Zoebisch, climate policy associate at the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition. “Farmers already operate with very thin margins. Now we’re asking them to implement (sustainable) practices, which means introducing more risk by changing the way they do things. That can be really scary.”

While farmers’ fear is understandable, it’s also surmountable.

Step one is creating grassroots forums so farmers can share their opinions and concerns, according to Mackler, who recalls the 2009 failure of the American Clean Energy and Security Act. The first-ever bill approved by either house of Congress explicitly to reduce greenhouse gas emissions associated with climate change, it passed the House of Representatives but failed in the Senate due in part to opposition by farmers.

“It was environmental stakeholders engaged primarily with stakeholders from the energy industry who helped design that bill. The agriculture sector was left out of discussions until the very end; farmers did not feel like they CONTINUED

OLIVIA FULLER

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sustainable agriculture by purchasing carbon offsets from regenerative farmers and making direct investments in regenerative operations through lending, venture capital and farmland mortgages.

“At this very moment, there’s $30 trillion in liquid capital sloshing around in the United States, but almost all of it is in the stock market,” Cummins says. “We need investors to use that money to improve the environment, and I think that’s coming.”

THE TIME IS NOW Planting near Walford, Iowa

were built into the policy, and so they were very antagonistic toward it,” recalls Mackler, who says BPC’s Farm and Forest Carbon Solutions Initiative seeks to avoid the same mistake by giving farmers a forum in which to contribute to climate policy. Co-chaired by former Sens. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) and Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.), who served on the Senate Agriculture, Forestry and Nutrition Committee, its goal is developing policy recommendations that simultaneously advance the interests of farmers and the environment.

“It’s a wonderful opportunity not only to find solutions for our climate challenges, but also to look at how we reward people who engage in practices that are consistent with meeting climate goals,” says Heitkamp, who believes she and Chambliss are ideally suited to facilitating climate change conversations with farmers.

And she might be right. Although progressive Democrats have often criticized both senators for their relationships with agribusiness, those relationships are the very thing that might help climate-smart ag policies clear legislative hurdles.

Consider the oft-maligned Green New Deal, which many farmers have dismissed not necessarily for its policy agenda, but rather for its leftist sponsors. “This is about personality as much as it is about issues,” Heitkamp continues.

“The project we’re engaging in is driven by trust and friendship — and nothing in Washington gets done without trust and friendship.”

BPC’s initiative isn’t the only grassroots agriculture group channeling trust and friendship into climate policy. Others are the Climate Change Policy Advisory Panel, which the National Farmers Union (NFU) launched last December; and the Food and Agriculture Climate Alliance, established in February 2020 by NFU, the American Farm Bureau Federation, the Environmental Defense Fund and the National Council of

Farmer Cooperatives.

Progressives, meanwhile, have formed Farmers & Ranchers for a Green New Deal, which represents approximately 20,000 farmers and ranchers who support regenerative agriculture reforms.

“The idea of a Green New Deal ... connotes big changes in our food and farming system, and that’s what’s needed,” says Ronnie Cummins of Regeneration International, the group’s parent organization. “We need to stop subsidizing bad farming ... and start subsidizing the good stuff.”

SUBSIDIZING SUSTAINABILITY Subsidies figure prominently in almost every conversation about climate-smart agriculture.

“Our ability to make real progress when it comes to climate depends on our willingness to confront farmers’ anxiety around the perceived economic trade-offs associated with helping the environment,” Mackler says. “That economic anxiety is not a second-order issue; it needs to be front and center as we design new policies — especially in the midst of an economy that has been ravaged by the coronavirus pandemic.”

The principal mechanism through which the federal government helps farmers manage economic anxiety is the farm bill. Passed roughly every five years, it includes billions of dollars in public funding for farmers in the form of grants, tax credits, direct payments and crop insurance.

Restructuring those programs to favor conservation practices would do a lot to advance regenerative agriculture, according to Cummins.

“The bottom line is the No. 1 priority for farmers and ranchers in the United States,” he says. “If our government were putting serious money into helping them adopt regenerative practices, they would make the transition right away.”

Congress won’t revisit the farm bill until 2023.

In the meantime, the private sector can buoy

Farmers and policymakers know what needs to be done. But the question remains: Why have they chosen this moment to finally acknowledge it?

Perhaps the most obvious reason is extreme weather, which has made climate change painfully real for many farmers. “We’ve seen an increase in natural disasters on a historic scale ...

They’re bigger, more frequent and more expensive,” says NFU Senior Government Relations Representative Jenny Hopkinson. “Farmers already are facing a lot of economic challenges. If you’re a farmer in Iowa, having your crops wiped out by a derecho on top of those other challenges has brought this issue home in a really meaningful way.”

Just as palpable as changing weather are changing political winds. “When Democrats took the House in 2018, you suddenly had a lot of freshmen in Congress who were showing interest in climate,” Hopkinson continues. “That political push came from a very grassroots place.”

That place is young people, whose activism gives climate change new weight on Capitol Hill. “If you’re a politician who wants to stay in office in the next 20 years, you need to be able to talk to millennials and Gen Z. That means you’d better be talking about climate,” insists Heitkamp, who says foreign buyers of American crops are becoming just as demanding as young people. “If you’re a producer who wants to access international markets, you have to ask yourself: What are the Europeans going to demand when they buy soybeans? Going forward, it’s going to be increasingly difficult to keep sustainability out of trade negotiations.”

Although there’s no denying the persuasive powers of weather, young voters and foreign trade partners, perhaps the most compelling reason for farmers to finally engage on climate change is President Joe Biden.

Concludes Hopkinson, “the new administration has been pretty explicit about its climate agenda, so I think it behooves groups across the spectrum — but especially in agriculture — to ask themselves: If this is going to happen, either legislatively or administratively, how can we participate?”

JIM SLOSIAREK/THE (CEDAR RAPIDS, IOWA) GAZETTE VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS

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SUPPLY SIDE Can America’s food system survive another crisis?

By Matt Alderton

AMERICANS MAY NEVER TAKE TOILET PAPER for granted again. Whether you prefer name-brand or generic, double- or triple-ply, at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, supermarkets had nary a square to spare.

Mostly, it was inconvenient. For some people, however, it also was eye-opening.

One such person was Shay Eliaz, a principal with Deloitte Consulting’s multinational strategy practice serving clients in agribusiness, among other industries. “When toilet paper started flying off the shelf, my immediate thought was, ‘What’s going to be the impact on food?’” recalls Eliaz, who also serves as project adviser for the World Economic Forum’s New Vision for Agriculture initiative, which promotes agricultural transformation in pursuit of environmental sustainability and global food security.

Eliaz’s concerns were warranted: At the onset of the pandemic, two-thirds of consumers reported being unable to buy the fresh food they wanted because it was out of stock, a Deloitte survey found. Meanwhile, restaurants closed in such large numbers that their purveyors at one point were plowing millions of pounds of vegetables back into fields, disposing of more than 750,000 eggs per week and dumping up to 3.7 million gallons of milk per day. “When I saw that disconnect, a light bulb went off in my head,” Eliaz continues. “I knew we had a serious problem.”

The coronavirus exposed the state of our food system: It is extremely efficient, but also extremely vulnerable.

FRAGILE ABUNDANCE “We actually recovered pretty quickly from some of those initial supply chain shortages. So, in that sense, our food system showed a fair amount of

resilience,” says Roni Neff, director of the Food System Sustainability and Public Health program at Johns Hopkins University’s Center for a Livable Future. “But at the same time, the pandemic also exposed a lot of really severe and really deep structural problems.”

The modern food system is largely a product of World War II. The war’s aftermath crippled many countries’ capacity for food production while also spawning a global baby boom. To feed the growing population, the United States conceived an industrialized food system based on consolidation, monoculture and mechanization. Decades later, we have a global supply chain with a small number of large-scale producers supplying a finite number of commodities to customers in highly vertical markets.

The structure has its merits. “The system we have is extremely robust. Although it’s much more about increasing yield and productivity than nutritional value, it makes sense in the context of the problem it was created to solve, which is hunger,” Eliaz explains. “The food system we have has actually been pretty good at solving that problem by enabling us to produce more calories.”

Industrial agriculture is to thank not only for

“When you make a system that’s super efficient, it means there’s not a lot of slack in it.”

— SHAY ELIAZ,

Deloitte Consulting

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From April to June 2020, more than 80 beef and pork packing plants reported confirmed cases of COVID-19. food’s abundance, but also for its affordability, argues agricultural economist Jayson Lusk, who says food prices benefit from technology and economies of scale, both of which loom large in the modern food system. “Consumers in the United States are spending about 10 percent of their income on food, which is about as low as it’s ever been,” says Lusk, distinguished professor and head of the agricultural economics department at Purdue University.

And yet, the tremors the food system experienced in 2020 are proof that it is as fragile in some respects as it is fertile in others.

“When you make a system that’s super efficient, it means there’s not a lot of slack in it,” explains Eliaz, who says grocery stores that used to keep extra inventory on hand no longer have to do so because supply chains are calibrated to deliver exactly the right amount at exactly the right time.

“When everything works the way it’s supposed to, it’s seamless. But when there’s a hiccup like the pandemic, traditional supply-and-demand signals don’t operate very well. To me, that’s the only way to explain how farmers could be throwing away produce at the very same time that there were shortages in supermarkets.”

Grocery store shelves are empty on March 13, 2020, in Saugus, Mass.

VULNERABLE WORKERS It’s a tug of war between efficiency and flexibility.

And what the food system needs to withstand future shocks is more flexibility, argue its critics, whose priorities for reform include protecting vulnerable workers and diversifying food economies, both of which can make the process more elastic.

Labor issues, especially, resonate for Neff, who notes the impact of COVID-19 on American meatpacking plants. An analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City shows that from April to June 2020, more than 80 beef and pork packing plants reported confirmed cases of COVID-19. On average, 10 percent of employees tested positive for COVID-19, according to the bank, which reports the virus affected as much as 70 percent of the workforce at some plants. Among plants with outbreaks, nearly half closed for some time, which resulted in reduced meat supply and higher prices.

“The pandemic has focused our attention much more on workers,” says Neff, whose team recently surveyed food system workers and found that only 31 percent believed they could avoid contracting COVID-19 at work; among workers who’d already contracted the virus, a majority said they likely got On May 5, 2020, a Pennsylvania dairy farmer, who is unable to sell his milk, cares for his herd.

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it on the job. “When we don’t protect people, that leaves us exposed.”

Workplace safety is important, but so are competitive wages and benefits. “The turnover in front-line positions in the food industry has been incredibly high for a very long time,” Neff continues.

“That introduces ... a lot of inexperience. When you’re inexperienced, you’re more prone to injury and illness, and you don’t perform at the same level ... That creates vulnerability in the system.”

“(Institutional buyers) can make a difference by keeping alive alternative channels that are able to respond when you have a crisis.”

— SOPHIA MURPHY,

executive director, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy

IMPOSSIBLE PIVOT Also creating vulnerability in the system are siloed supply chains, which became evident during the pandemic as American consumption switched from dining out to eating in. “One of the things the pandemic has revealed about our food system is that food is not as fungible across market outlets as people have often perceived it to be,” explains Lusk, who says diverting food from one channel to another isn’t as straightforward as it seems because of different packaging, regulations and logistics. “A good example is eggs, which experienced one of the highest initial increases in retail prices as a result of the pandemic. The naive view was, ‘Why don’t we just take all the eggs that were going to restaurants and send them to grocery stores?’ That sounds like a good idea until you realize that you don’t have enough egg cartons sitting around.”

While eggs in grocery stores are sold in cartons of 12, they’re typically furnished to restaurants in flats of 30. What’s more, eggs often are supplied to restaurants in liquid or powder form. What’s true for eggs is true for countless other products, including flour and milk, which are sold to restaurants in bulk quantities that are impractical for consumers.

Or take potatoes, says Sophia Murphy, executive director of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. McDonald’s purchases more than 3.4 billion pounds of potatoes every year from American potato farmers. Those potatoes, Murphy points out, are grown to the company’s specific and highly specialized standards. Their size, shape and genetics are optimized for making McDonald’s french fries that are precut, frozen in large bags then flash-fried in restaurants. “If you shut McDonald’s,” Murphy says, “the dominoes will fall.”

The problem isn’t just that consumers can’t utilize giant bags of frozen fries, but also that potato farmers lack relationships with alternative buyers. There may be other markets for their products, but they don’t know how to access them because their entire operation is concentrated on a single customer.

“We need to strengthen local and regional food systems,” says Murphy, who would like to see institutional buyers — public schools, universities, hospitals and prisons, for example — sign more contracts with local and regional purveyors in order to help farmers diversify their incomes and buyers decentralize their supply chains. “Those contracts are big and can make a difference by

War Room that deploys digital tools to collect real-time data on food availability, accessibility and affordability across the country. By centralizing the data, the government can identify shortages and surpluses in order to direct support and resources to the places that need them most.

“Strengthening data capture within the supply chain ensures that shifts can be made. If you’ve got data around local food sources, for example, you can shift from an international source to a local source to buffer against a shock in the food system,” de Cleene explains.

LOCAL INNOVATION

Farm2People’s co-founders Anna Rose Hopkins, left, Eric Holdener, right, and a volunteer show donated produce.

keeping alive alternative channels that are able to respond when you have a crisis that for some reason cuts or diverts your main supply line.”

TECHNICAL ASSIST Because it requires systemic changes, reforming the food system will take time. In the interim, there’s at least one thing that can make a big difference quickly: data.

“Supply chains need to do a better job talking to each other. And what I mean by that is not people talking, but rather data and information flowing freely between various participants along the value chain,” Eliaz says. “When you integrate those participants, you create better visibility, which allows for planning to happen in a coordinated way as you’re thinking about how to prepare for different scenarios that might emerge.”

Sean de Cleene, head of the Future of Food at the World Economic Forum, echoes the importance of data sharing, the value of which is on display in the African nation of Kenya. In response to COVID-19, de Cleene reports, Kenya’s Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries established a Food Security

A grassroots group in Los Angeles has established a digital platform to support exactly that sort of shift. Farm2People is an all-volunteer organization formed in April 2020 in response to COVID-19 disruptions in the Southern California food system.

When they realized that local farmers were being forced to destroy excess food for which they had no buyers, co-founders Eric Holdener, Anna Rose Hopkins, Henry Fischer and Michel Algazi created an open-source, cloud-based marketplace that tracks the inventory of progressive local farms — in particular, minority-owned farms and those that practice environmentally responsible regenerative agriculture.

Using the platform, farms can build relationships with new buyers who share their values.

And when they have excess inventory that they can’t sell, Farm2People uses crowdfunding and microdonations to purchase surplus food that it directs to food relief organizations in food-insecure areas of Los Angeles County. In so doing, it supplies underserved communities with healthy food while securing jobs for vulnerable producers.

“The industry of global food production is around 70 years old, and in that time it’s become an outsized behemoth that is very hard to disrupt. And yet, disruption is what is necessary,” says Hopkins, who sees Farm2People not as a replacement for the current food system, but as an additive to it.

“Because no matter what country you’re in, there’s not a problem with the food supply. There’s a problem with how that food supply reaches the people. The coronavirus (pandemic) has made that more apparent than ever.”

INSTITUTE FOR AGRICULTURE AND TRADE POLICY; FARM2PEOPLE

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FOOD

A couple using food assistance for the first time wait with others overnight outside a food bank in Metairie, La., in November 2020.

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By Gina Harkins

T

HE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION ESTIMATES that 29 million

Americans, including 12 million children, are facing a hunger crisis. One of the first orders of business for the president was to sign an executive order directing the Department of Agriculture (USDA) to examine ways to assist Americans facing food insecurity. Having spent the day before his inauguration filling boxes at a Feeding America member food bank in Philadelphia and seeing the problem firsthand, Biden said on Jan. 22, “(Families) literally can’t wait another day.”

The executive order instructed the USDA to consider ways to expand the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP. The USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) provides eligible households with benefits to buy food at grocery stores and farmers markets.

In his executive order, Biden also urged the USDA to boost the benefits families receive during the pandemic if they rely on the FNS’ National School Lunch Program. The department responded by increasing pandemic electronic balance transfer benefits by about 15 percent. The move gives eligible families approximately $100 more every two months to cover meals the school lunch program usually provides, National Economic Council Director Brian Deese says.

Hunger in America The COVID-19 pandemic has inflamed the country’s food crisis

GEORGE HERBERT/ASSOCIATED PRESS

FOOD PANTRIES STEP IN SNAP is the government’s largest food assistance program. The USDA spent $92.4 billion on food and nutrition assistance programs in 2019, and two-thirds of that amount funded SNAP. But SNAP payments, while helpful, may not stretch very far. In 2019, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimated the average recipient received $127 per month, or $1.40 per meal.

“The ‘s’ in SNAP stands for supplemental,” says Amy Lazarus Yaroch, executive director of the Gretchen Swanson Center for Nutrition in Omaha, Neb., an independent nonprofit research center. “It was initially intended to help food insecure populations supplement their household food budgets, but given decades of widening inequities, many rely on SNAP as their sole food budget.”

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AN ESTIMATED

50 MILLION PEOPLE WILL FACE FOOD INSECURITY IN AMERICA DUE TO THE PANDEMIC SOURCE: Feeding America

Outside a mosque in New York City GETTY IMAGES

To fill in the gaps, organizations such as Feeding America, a nationwide network of 200 food banks and 60,000 food pantries and meal programs, have long provided help. Then came the pandemic. “(Studies have shown) that many families are one paycheck away from needing food assistance,” says Yaroch. With 10 million fewer jobs in the U.S. than when the pandemic started, waiting in line at food pantries “has become a reality for a lot of people.”

An Associated Press analysis of Feeding America data found the organization distributed nearly 57 percent more food in the third quarter of 2020 compared with the same period in 2019. “We think the number has gone from 1 in 9 to 1 in 6 people in the United States facing

food insecurity. It’s a very significant increase,” says Kate Leone, chief government relations officer for Feeding America. “There’s not a county or congressional district in the country that doesn’t have people who are in need.”

Leone estimates that Feeding America provided 4.8 billion meals during the first six months of the pandemic. That food ordinarily comes from retail and farm donations or it’s purchased with funds individuals donate to the organization.

During the pandemic, the organization was able to rescue 4 billion pounds of groceries and redirect it to food banks.

That was up from 3.6 billion pounds of food rescued in 2019. As restaurants and college cafeterias shut down, food banks worked with suppliers to pick up the

extra inventory.

USDA also has programs that assist food banks, which Leone says have been crucial during the pandemic. Last year, about a third of the food Feeding America served came from USDA food purchases, she says, such as the Farmers to Families Food Box Program, which includes fresh produce, dairy items and cooked meats, and the Food Purchase and Distribution Program in which the government purchases from farmers negatively affected

by U.S. trade policies.

Food banks are not designed to deal with a continuing crisis of this magnitude. The creativity of the organizations and front-line workers who helped ensure people had enough food is an inspiration, Yaroch says. However, she

adds, “Food banks and food pantries are intended for emergency food needs.”

PUTTING SOLUTIONS ON THE TABLE Yaroch and Leone stress the need to increase SNAP benefits to fight hunger. It’s the most efficient way for people to get access to food, Leone says, since benefits are loaded onto a card that families can use at their local grocery stores.

“It’s helping people put food on the table, but it’s also helping create jobs and stimulate local economies,” says Leone.

“It creates jobs at retailers, producers and all back down that line of supply for the food system. We think that’s the best way (the government) can address this.”

Deese said in January that the ad-

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Lines at the Greater Cleveland Food Bank in January TONY DEJAK/ASSOCIATED PRESS

ministration would look at revising the Thrifty Food Plan, a program that sets SNAP allowances. The plan, according to Deese, is “out of date and needs to be updated to better reflect the cost of a healthy diet.”

The Thrifty Food Plan was last updated in 2006, Yaroch says, and has not been adjusted for inflation or cost-of-living differences in large urban areas, where food is typically more expensive.

Another change that could help is a uniform benefits application system.

Even if they qualify for SNAP, people new to food insecurity often don’t know how to apply for benefits, Yaroch says. It can be difficult for families to figure out if they are eligible, and people don’t always know where or how to access information

about the program since it differs state by state. “There needs to be one nationwide system that everyone navigates similarly,” Yaroch says.

PREPARE FOR LONG-TERM IMPACT Whatever plans are put into place, it’s important to keep in mind that food insecurity is a problem that could last well beyond the pandemic, warns Yaroch.

Food insecurity increased for three years following the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, she says, and that recession was less significant than the one the country’s facing now.

Leone agrees, saying people don’t easily bounce back from financial crises.

“They’ve got bills that are stacking up,”

she says, adding that former Feeding America volunteers and donors are now turning to the organization’s food pantries for help themselves. Looking ahead, “We estimate that more than 50 million people will face food insecurity due to the pandemic, including 17 million children,” says Leone.

We also may be looking at long-term health problems. “People who are food insecure don’t need just any food, they need healthy food,” Yaroch says. Not only is the quality of food a problem, but the ebb and flow in their pantries is also an issue. “If ... their access to food is cyclical, even volatile, it can result in nonintentional fasting,” adds Yaroch, “and binge eating when resources are available, which can ultimately contribute to obe-

sity. From here, there is an endless array of illnesses and disease that results from that obesity, negatively affecting quality of life and life expectancy.”

Leone says she hopes the pandemic leads to wholesale reforms that can better provide Americans with safety nets since the health crisis has shown how close so many are to food insecurity. “It can happen to your neighbor; it can happen to people you know,” she says. “Hopefully, that will translate post-pandemic to people understanding that sometimes crises can happen through no fault of your own. I think having the president come to a food bank and help pack boxes helps drive home how important it is to make sure that we’re investing now, so that it’s easier to recover later.”

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FOOD BANKS WORK HARD TO KEEP AMERICANS FED

By Mike Argento At 1:30 p.m., cars, pickup trucks and SUVs trickled in, lining up in rows designated by traffic cones outside of the suburban shopping center. By the end of the December day, as many as 1,100 cars would stream through the parking lot at the York County Food Bank Emergency Food Hub near York, Pa. Many of those lining up have never had to ask for help. Feeding America estimates that 13.3 percent of the county’s households were suffering from food insecurity. Before the pandemic, that figure was 9.1 percent.

Brenda Gruver, a 63-year-old laid-off truck driver from Dover, Pa., was near the front of the line. It was difficult to admit to herself that she needed some help, she says. She’d

worked steadily since she was 15 years old. “I never had to do this before,” she says. “It’s not easy.”

“A lot of the people here never thought they’d be in this position,” says Alyssa Mummert, the food bank’s volunteer coordinator. “That’s the reason we’re here.”

The food bank has become a symbol of hope during a time when jobs disappeared and have been slow to reappear. For largely blue-collar York County, that means a lot of families who were living paycheck-to-paycheck have fallen into food insecurity. Some middleclass residents who had previously volunteered with or donated to the food bank never envisioned that they would have to wait in line for food.

Prior to the pandemic, Mummert says, the food bank’s weekly distribu-

tions at its headquarters served about 250 families a week. In December, she says, that number was 900 to 1,100.

Before the pandemic, the food bank was distributing about 2.5 million pounds of food a year. At the end of 2020, that figure was closer to 6.5 million pounds.

The operation works because of its volunteers, Mummert says. About 150 volunteers descend on the distribution center every week to help hand out food to those in need. Among them is Rodney Markle, a 66-year-old retiree.

“People just feel so helpless. The best thing about it is people really appreciate this,” says Markle.

Waiting his turn in his Ford F-150, Donald Strickler killed time doing a word-search puzzle. He’s 72 years old, a Marine Corps veteran who served in

Vietnam from 1967 to 1968 and lives with his wife in southern York County.

He had worked since he was 13 years old, at one point holding down two full-time jobs. Now, he says, he and his wife get by on Social Security and a very small pension.

“We’ve had some tough times, but nothing like this,” says Strickler.

“I was a hardworking person,” he says. “You work all your life, and you can’t make it.”

It was difficult for him to come to the food bank for help.

“It kind of irritated me at first, like I had to get a handout,” he says. “I’m not like that. I always helped others, and I could use a little bit of help now.

That’s why I’m here.”

Mike Argento writes for the York (Pa.) Daily Record.

Volunteer at the York County Food Bank in Springettsbury Township, Pa.

PAUL KUEHNEL/YORK (PA.) DAILY RECORD VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS

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TECHNOLOGY

Know-It-All Artificial intelligence is poised to drive a new agricultural revolution

DEREK BAILEY

A Brangus cow wears a GPS tracking collar to monitor the animal’s movements at New Mexico State University’s Chihuahuan Desert Rangeland Research Center.

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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE USE IN THE GLOBAL AGRICULTURE MARKET IS PROJECTED TO REACH

$4 BILLION BY 2026 SOURCE: Markets and Markets Report

DEREK BAILEY

Ph.D. student Colin Tobin places an accelerometer tag, which can trace the animal over long distances, on a cow near Prescott, Az.

By Adam Hadhazy

O

NE OF HUMANITY’S OLDEST

industries, agriculture traces back 12,000 years to when our Neolithic ancestors shifted from nomadic hunting and gathering to a stationary life cultivating plants and domesticating livestock.

Borne of our species’ intelligence and sustained over millennia, agriculture — like so much else — has changed significantly in modern times. Yet, in order to continue nourishing the world’s swelling population, some industry observers argue agriculture will have to revolutionize further by embracing artificial intelligence, or AI. In agriculture, as well as in other industries, AI involves computer programs parsing colossal sets of machine-gathered “big data” for beneficial, actionable insights that humans might not reach in any reasonable amount of time.

In this way, AI-assisted farming is the next logical step in agriculture. As a human enterprise, agriculture has evolved

from farmers relying solely on the information they could glean with their own senses, to modern agriculturalists who constantly loop in valuable external information, such as weather forecasts and the latest innovations in science.

Now, AI is poised to blend human intuition and the ability to learn with machines’ unmatchable capability of crunching myriad, voluminous streams of data.

are farms across the U.S. and around the world that are radically transforming agriculture.”

The main motivation behind the emerging revolution is the same as that behind the last major agricultural shift: more mouths to feed. Over the past half-century, as the human population doubled to today’s nearly 8 billion, the so-called Green Revolution saw world grain production triple, though only a third SILENT REVOLUTION more land was under cultivation.

As agriculture The revolution’s leaps revolutions go, it is not in mechanization, along as obvious as, say, the J. Mark Munoz with advances in crop invention of the plow, genetics, irrigation and but it would be no less PROVIDED BY J. MARK MUNOZ fertilizer use, have been profound, according to J. credited for successfully Mark Munoz, a professor staving off much-feared widespread of management at Illinois’ Millikin famines.

University who has studied AI’s potential But the more-mouths-to-feed in agriculture.

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TECHNOLOGY challenge has not actually abated.

The human population is currently projected to reach nearly 10 billion by 2050, according to the United Nations, and when coupled with changes in diets favoring animal over plant protein as nations get wealthier and more urbanized, agriculture will need to make 70 percent more calories for consumption available — all the while withstanding the increasing strains posed by climate change and dwindling water supplies.

“There is no other option (for humankind) than to almost double the yield of traditional farmers,” says Sachin Gupta, global agribusiness lead at IBM. “Technology is going to do the same thing that mechanization did 40 to 50 years back.”

IBM is one of many companies expanding AI in agriculture, empowering decisions based on real-time monitoring of crops, growth levels, weather forecasting and more. Such decisions are facilitated by increasing automation through “smart” irrigation, nutrient management, crop tending and harvesting, making farmers’ lives easier and yields more bountiful and sustainable.

TOOLS OF THE TRADE A key technology behind the burgeoning revolution is the moving of computing to the “cloud” — the term for off-site servers storing and processing data instead of farmers having to buy and maintain costly and bulky hardware.

Another key advance of the hardware has been shrinking and reducing the costs of electronic components needed for making tiny, internet-connected sensors, which can be placed throughout fields and on animals.

These tiny devices form part of the so-called Internet of Things, or IoT. The sensors collect data that is then wirelessly fed into cloud-based AI software programs, for instance those hosted by Amazon Web Services (AWS), the most adopted cloud platform in the world.

“The cloud can offer farmers around the globe the tools they need to increase efficiency and output,” wrote Teresa Carlson, vice president of the worldwide public sector at AWS, in a 2020 blog post.

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TECHNOLOGY

VINEVIEW

VineView’s software measures water levels, helping farmers adjust their irrigation.

“The heightened competition among farmers in the quest for ‘more intelligent’ farms sets the stage for even more amazing technological breakthroughs.”

— J. MARK MUNOZ, professor, Millikin University optimally timed actions on farms.

In the case of crops, that information can include broad indicators of plant health, such as colors and patterning.

This data in turn can trigger actions such as water or nutrient administration, or alerting farmers that the crops are ready for harvest.

SPY IN THE SKY In this vein of active data collection, drones — small flying machines equipped with cameras and sensors — are another major enabler, increasingly used to survey fields and livestock from above.

The decreasing cost and rising sophistication of multispectral (multiple forms of light) sensors that feed data into AI algorithms has also made traditional aerial surveillance flights by airplanes an increasingly available and affordable tactic for farmers.

Nova Scotia-based VineView, for instance, flies a multispectral sensor system aboard Cessna aircraft that surveils vineyards in infrared as well as

visible light. The system’s AI is able to identify plant disease and measure water levels in the canopy of the grape plants, guiding irrigation practices.

This precision extends to applying fertilizers and herbicides plant-by-plant in a field. For instance, Blue River Technology (which John Deere acquired in 2017 for more than $300 million) has developed a weed control machine that attaches to a tractor.

As the tractor rolls through the rows in a cotton field, the camera-equipped machine uses image recognition algorithms to discern undesirable pigweed, then sprays a targeted dose of herbicide to kill those weeds.

The California-based company claims farmers can reduce their herbicide use by 90 percent, as well as utilize herbicides that would not be appropriate for widearea spraying.

LIVE AND ON DEMAND For animals, tracking their movements and then having AI programs analyze their behaviors can reveal when the

TOM MOBLEY

New Mexico State University professor Derek Bailey places a GPS collar on a Brangus cow at the Sierra Alta Ranch.

animals are getting sick, ready to give birth or go into estrus, says Derek Bailey, a professor of range science at New Mexico State University.

Bailey and colleagues are testing sensors on cattle that receive GPS signals, enabling real-time (or near-real-time) tracking and monitoring.

For roundup and intervention pur-

poses, knowing the locations and states of cattle spread across pastures that can easily run into hundreds of square miles in the Western U.S. is a tremendous timesaver for workers, who often must spend hours seeking herds, and also a boost for the welfare of the cattle themselves.

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TECHNOLOGY

IBM and Yara’s digital farming platform IBM AND YARA

“Technology is going to do the same thing that mechanization did 40 to 50 years back.”

IBM AND YARA

By providing artificial intelligence and data analytics, IBM and Yara hope to help farmer’s increase crop yield.

“It really changes the game for ranchers, knowing exactly where your cattle are and how they’re doing, right on your cellphone or laptop,” says Bailey.

PRECISION PLANTING This data-driven approach extends to the time before a single seed even goes into a planned row of crops. By crunching the data on multiple seasons of growing dynamics, real-time soil parameters, plus extended weather forecasts, AI can empower farmers to know what crop to plant when.

Gupta compares this sort of hyperlocal profile of a patch of land to a “farm’s equivalent of an electronic medical record — an electronic field record.”

Such detailed knowledge can be the difference between a failed crop and a bounteous harvest.

“Optimal decisions can be made by finding the right crop, for the right place at the right time,” says Munoz.

Toward this end, IBM began a partnership in 2019 with Yara, a

Norway-based firm and one of the world’s largest fertilizer producers, to develop a digital farming platform.

The cloud-based platform offers data services for precision weather forecasting and crop yield predictions, combining AI and in-field data to provide actionable recommendations.

IBM aims for the platform to eventually cover 7 percent of the world’s arable land, or 386,000 square miles of farmland.

The AI-enhanced digital farm concept is only in its early stages.

According to a 2019 Markets and Markets report, AI in the agriculture industry had a value then of about half a billion dollars, but with major growth estimated in the years ahead, they predict it will reach the $4 billion mark globally in 2026.

“This data snapshot suggests that AI usage in farms across the U.S. and around the world is practically still in its infancy,” says Munoz. “There is so much room for growth and at a very rapid pace.”

— SACHIN GUPTA, global agribusiness lead, IBM CHALLENGES AHEAD Gupta points out that extending the benefits of the latest AI and other agricultural technologies to smallholder farmers, who make up more than 70 percent of farmers worldwide, will be a challenge because the physical infrastructure of the internet has not yet reached some developing countries.

Another hurdle is addressing the widespread lack of fulfillment.

An AI program may recommend a particular type of nitrate fertilizer for maximum yield, but that is not available in the farmer’s region, Gupta adds.

Those countries where the AIassisted revolution initially take root, will serve as incubators for even more impressive gains, here in humankind’s 13th millennium of farming.

“The heightened competition among farmers in the quest for ‘more intelligent’ farms sets the stage for even more amazing technological breakthroughs,” says Munoz.

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INNOVATION

AEROFARMS

AeroFarms’ grow room in Newark, N.J. AEROFARMS

Fresh Start Vertical indoor farms revolutionize food production

By Gina Harkins

S FORWARD GREENS

ome packaged salads sold at Whole Foods Market and other outlets in the Pacific Northwest don’t come from sprawling country farms, but a suburban warehouse where Hewlett-Packard printers were once made.

Forward Greens grows a variety of leafy vegetables in 26-foot-high racks in its warehouse in Vancouver, Wash.

The 28,000-square-foot space, about 10 miles outside of Portland, Ore., still resembles a manufacturing setting.

There are picking lifts that raise workers into the air to harvest greens and tend to the vertical farm, which grows under bright LED lights in a

region known for rainy gray weather.

“Our workforce looks more like a manufacturing or warehouse workforce,” says Ken Kaneko, Forward Greens’ founder.

Kaneko doesn’t have an agriculture background — he previously worked in operations, manufacturing and CONTINUED

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INNOVATION development and genetics to expanding beyond the world of food to key verticals like pharmaceutical, cosmeceutical and nutraceutical.”

Indoor farming can be expensive on the front end because urban or suburban property is often more expensive than land in rural areas, but far less acreage is needed, and companies can produce crops year-round.

Some indoor farms use hydroponics that allow them to grow produce without soil, instead relying on other materials to support plants’ root growth in nutrientrich water. Others are experimenting with robots to seed, harvest and package plants.

“We’re really in the early innings of the industry. It’s a very young industry,” Kaneko says.

Forward Greens, Vancouver, Wash.

FORWARD GREENS

“There are a lot of opportunities to start installing these types of indoor farms into those (vacated manufacturing) buildings and making better use of them.”

— KEN KANEKO, founder, Forward Greens process development for Intel and Apple — but when he visited an indoor farm during a 2016 business trip to Japan, he thought of the vacated manufacturing sites back in the U.S. “There are a lot of opportunities to start installing these types of indoor farms into those buildings and making better use of them,” he says.

STABLE SUPPLY Indoor farms can grow produce year-round in any climate without the threat of drought or other weather events disrupting production. That could prove increasingly important, Kaneko says, if climate change causes more extreme weather conditions.

The farms also cut waste, says Marc Oshima, the co-founder and chief marketing officer at AeroFarms in Newark, N.J. AeroFarms and Forward Greens say they use 95 percent less water than if they grew outdoors, and neither needs pesticides.

“You create some great irrigation solutions (on outdoor farms), but a lot of it goes back into the groundwater or it just evaporates into the air,” Kaneko says. “A lot of it gets lost. In our case, everything gets re-circulated.”

Each square foot of AeroFarms’ indoor facility is 390 times more productive than it would be in a field, Oshima adds.

“Through our vertical growing and rapid crop cycles that are often (a third to half) the time than it would take in the field, we are able to enable local production and bypass a very complex supply chain,” he says.

Getting product to consumers quickly is another big benefit to indoor farms, particularly after the global pandemic highlighted shortfalls in the American food-supply chain. Many farms rely on foreign workers with temporary visas, which were briefly halted at the start of the pandemic. Indoor grow centers, with the ability to socially distance their workers because fewer employees are needed

to grow and harvest, may also reduce the chance of COVID-19 transmission, a problem that some traditional farms had in 2020.

On traditional farms, there might be different parties handling land management, harvesting, packaging, transportion and distribution. Forward Greens harvests, packs and refrigerates everything on-site, allowing them to move product to the consumer within two days of picking.

“What we’re doing is really truncating the supply chain within one organization, which allows us to maintain the quality at a much higher level,” Kaneko says.

SKY’S THE LIMIT AeroFarms, which has been producing vertically indoors since 2004, has grown more than 850 varieties of plants.

“There is not a technical limitation to what we can grow,” Oshima says. “We continue to look at where we can add value, from commercial growing to seed

FUTURE FOCUS The Department of Agriculture (USDA) has taken notice of urban farming initiatives such as vertical planting.

There’s interest in repurposing empty lots, abandoned factories and residential areas in former industrial cities that have fallen into disrepair, according to the USDA. The agency worked to accelerate urban agriculture opportunities, including awarding $4.1 million in grants and cooperative agreements to support urban agriculture in 2020.

The USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture also established a competitive grant program to support research, education and development of urban, indoor and other emerging agricultural techniques. The 2018 farm bill provided $10 million in funding for those grants and authorized up to $10 million more annually between 2019 and 2023.

AeroFarms received two of those grants, each worth about $99,000. One is for researching ways to improve the shelf life of leafy greens. The other is to study ways to increase yield and reduce waste.

Oshima says it’s important that indoor and other unconventional farms be eligible for federal grant programs because their experimentation can lead to agricultural advancements that benefit all farmers. Growing vertically could also become more mainstream, Kaneko says, especially for produce like greens and berries that need to move to consumers quickly to maintain freshness.

“We need to figure out a way to more responsibly produce food while feeding more people at the same time,” he says.

“I’m confident that innovation is only going to be increasingly important in the future.”

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INNOVATION

Transforming Technologies USDA teams up with small businesses to create innovative solutions

By Mary Helen Berg

S

mall businesses get a boost each year from USDA grants to develop creative solutions to real-world problems. Since 1983, USDA has distributed more than 2,000 grants through the

Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program administered by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA). For the 2020 fiscal year, NIFA awarded more than $16 million to 29 Phase II projects that have the potential to transform the agricultural industry, help the economy and benefit the general

public, says Timothy Conner, NIFA’s bioenergy division director.

“Successful SBIR companies grow,” says Conner. “When they grow, they create jobs and thus contribute to hiring people with all types of skills. Also, when CONTINUED

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KURT MILLER

ISCA CEO Agenor Mafra-Neto shows magnified seeds of the camelina sativa plant. The company uses the seeds to produce a nontoxic pesticide.

successful, and when the innovations are adopted, the innovations turn into products, which provide benefits, convenience or services to communities.”

The wide-ranging winners of this year’s Phase II SBIR grants include projects that create green pesticides, increase food safety, provide low-cost wind power in rural areas and eliminate harmful fumes in poultry houses.

NONTOXIC PESTICIDES ISCA, a biotech company based in Riverside, Calif., and their partner, Lund University in Sweden, earned two $650,000 grants for their pioneering work on the use of insect pheromones to control pests — the only group to receive multiple awards this funding cycle according to Kellie Burdette, senior communications manager for NIFA. One of the company’s projects implants insect pheromone genes into the genetic code of the camelina sativa plant. When oil from the plant’s seeds is expressed, it contains insect pheromone precursors, and through a chemical modification, pheromones are manufactured.

When the product is applied to crops as pest control, the pheromone confuses insects, and as a result, they either won’t mate or are repelled altogether.

The product is nontoxic and costs less than traditional petroleum-based pheromone pesticides, making it accessible to all types of agricultural operations, says Agenor Mafra-Neto, ISCA’s CEO. ISCA’s other project targets forests devastated by bark beetle infestations.

Wildfires, windstorms and warmer winters as a result of climate change have made Douglas fir and spruce trees easy targets for the beetles, Mafra-Neto explains. The insects infest trees that are stressed or dying.

The spruce beetle alone destroys an estimated 333 million to 500 million board feet of timber annually, according to ISCA’s proposal. The company is improving an existing pheromone product that repels the beetles and is developing an efficient way to distribute it over wide areas using drones and other innovations.

“Our solution allows complete protecCONTINUED

HALOMINE

Halomine’s CTO Mingyu Qiao demonstrates HaloFilm which, when applied before chlorinated disinfectants, prevents them from evaporating.

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INNOVATION tion of single trees and stands without using a single drop of conventional insecticides,” Mafra-Neto says.

CLEANING COMPANION More than 48 million Americans become ill and 3,000 die from foodborne diseases each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But creators of HaloFilm, a novel antimicrobial coating, say their product could make contamination from E. coli, salmonella, listeria and mold a thing of the past.

Halomine, based in Ithaca, N.Y., received a $600,000 SBIR grant to create HaloFilm using technology originally developed at Cornell University, says CEO Ted Eveleth.

The product has the potential to save lives and preclude recalls that cost the agriculture and food industry millions every year, according to HaloFilm.

HaloFilm can be sprayed on surfaces such as food processing or farm equipment, cooling bins and work areas before they are sanitized with chlorine-based disinfectant. HaloFilm holds disinfectant in place and prevents it from evaporating, keeping surfaces sanitary for much longer.

“We’ve come up with a way to take the same level of chlorine that you’d find in a (swimming) pool and hold it onto surfaces for as long as 30 days in a safe and effective manner,” says Eveleth.

The clear film, which smells a bit like hand sanitizer, can ultimately reduce the amount of chlorine that industries use — a bonus for the environment, notes Eveleth.

The SBIR grant represents a vote of confidence by USDA, Eveleth explains, and should make it easier to raise additional capital to help roll out the product by this summer.

PECOS WIND POWER

Pecos Wind Power CEO Josh Groleau and mechanical engineer Quentin Pagnier visit wind turbines at a farm in upstate New York.

POWER PROVIDER Pecos Wind Power is a tiny company with a big dream: to bring low-cost, renewable energy to rural communities nationwide, says Will Hersey, vice president of business development for the Somerville, Mass., firm.

The Pecos team of four full-time employees and an “army” of part-timers developed a special drivetrain to power wind turbines with longer blades that can

take advantage of the low windspeeds found throughout much of rural America, Hersey says.

Their Pecos PW85 turbine is the only small engine adapted for windspeeds of just 5 mph to 6 mph, according to Pecos’ NIFA grant proposal.

Farms that install a turbine can benefit from energy independence and lower operational costs, Hersey says. For example, a medium- to large-size dairy farm with around-the-clock electrical needs could see savings of up to 25 percent, according to Hershey.

In 2022, the company will field test its project in Kansas and hope to have it available for sale by 2023, a speedy timeline made possible with USDA support and the $649,970 grant, Hersey explains.

“I wouldn’t say it wouldn’t happen otherwise, but (the SBIR grant) allows us to do a lot of work, and it gives us the resources that would be a lot harder to find,” he says.

AIR PURIFIER In poultry houses where broiler chickens are raised, ammonia from the birds’ waste can build to unhealthy levels for both fowl and farmer.

Ammonia causes respiratory problems and eye damage in birds, making it difficult for them to eat and gain weight, says Jeff GETTY IMAGES Weissman, project director and principal scientist for Precision Combustion Inc. (PCI).

The North Haven, Conn., company is working on a high-intensity photocatalytic reactor that converts ammonia to water and harmless nitrogen, creating a safer environment. This kind of device would be a first for the industry, according to Weissman.

“Other ammonia treatment technologies don’t destroy the ammonia, they just move it around,” he explains.

The company received a $599,640 grant to develop the powerful, portable air cleaner, which could be used with other indoor livestock, such as hogs or turkeys, Weissman says. The company expects it to be available within three years.

With the potential to improve poultry house air quality and eliminate the need for other ventilation efforts, says Weissman, PCI’s technology will result in healthier birds, safer workers and higher profits for poultry farmers.

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CAREERS & EDUCATION

Metro Atlanta Urban Farm in College Park, Ga. MANRRS NATIONAL ARCHIVE

Decision for Diversity Agricultural leaders adopt platform of inclusion

By Mary Helen Berg

I

N THE WAKE OF a pandemic that rocked the country and nationwide protests against systemic racism in 2020, the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture (NASDA), a nonprofit that represents agricultural industry leadership from every state and four U.S. territories, adopted a policy that formally commits the organization to prioritize diversity, inclusion and racial justice.

The agricultural industry must embrace racial diversity and inclusion in order to grow and thrive and encourages all levels of government to adopt CONTINUED

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MANRR leadership brainstorming session MANRRS NATIONAL ARCHIVE

MANRRS members learning culinary techniques MANRRS NATIONAL ARCHIVE

NASDA CEO Barb Glen at a 2020 conference NASDA

The goal is to ensure that the next and follow similar principles, the policy generation of agriculture leadership is asserts. more diverse, Benson says. “We want to “We all need to take ownership,” says make sure we’re creating an environment Barb Glenn, CEO of NASDA. “We all have a where people can thrive and that we build responsibility.” a strong pipeline. And that’s not going to The new policy is now one of seven come overnight.” guiding principles that supports NASDA’s NASDA’s new diversity and inclusion mission and frames its policies, providpolicy represents “a major ing a “lens that we’re going societal shift,” says Ebony to always look through to Webber, MANRRS chief adopt sound food and agrioperating officer. But, she cultural policy,” says Glenn. adds, “Policy alone will not Adopted unanimously fix the issue. The policy at NASDA’s annual meetnow has to be adopted, ing in September 2020, the implemented and operaamendment reads in part: tionalized in all 50 states.”

“NASDA recognizes that the The California Departroots of racism run deep in ment of Food and Agriculour shared history which ture (CDFA) will help pilot we must address. NASDA the effort, according to believes that the future of Benson, and has entered agriculture is best served Ebony Webber into a memorandum of unwhen all of those in the derstanding with MANRRS agriculture community are to “enhance the diversity, empowered regardless of MANRRS equity and inclusiveness race, gender, sexual orientaof our recruitment protion, and/or religious creed.” grams,” states CDFA SecThat policy followed a retary Karen Ross on the June statement NASDA agency’s website. issued in the midst of Of the nation’s 3.4 nationwide racial justice million farmers, only 1.4 demonstrations after percent are Black, 3.3 George Floyd’s death in percent are Hispanic, 2.3 Minneapolis, committing percent are American the organization “to efforts Indian or Alaska Natives and partnerships that disand less than 1 percent are mantle systemic racism and Asian American, according discrimination.”

Lisa Benson to the USDA’s 2017 Census “We are ready to listen, of Agriculture. Leaderlearn and support equitable NASDA FOUNDATION ship within the industry is solutions that elevate all equally homogenous, Webunderserved communities,” ber notes. “The majority of NASDA’s state the earlier statement read. leaders are primarily senior-leveled in“We knew we wanted to speak out dividuals, male and caucasian,” she says. as key leaders in agriculture,” Glenn But the new partnership between says. “We’re public servants, and we’re NASDA and MANRRS potentially “means serving the public by making these removing any barriers as it relates to age, strong statements.” race, gender, orientation and any other Backing words with action, NASDA’s intersectionality that will inhibit an indieducational and research arm, the NASDA vidual from being invited, welcomed and Foundation, formed a five-year partneraccepted in a space that has traditionally ship last August with the National Society lacked the same representation,” says for Minorities in Agriculture, Natural ReWebber. sources and Related Sciences (MANRRS) Ultimately, Glenn believes a diverse, to increase leadership opportunities for inclusive agricultural industry will be young people of color. stronger and more resilient. Additional The new partnership will help train leadership opportunities for students college students in agricultural policy, and diversity and inclusion training for offer opportunities to meet and network industry leaders could offer what she calls with industry leaders and provide current “a winning combination.” leadership access to a diverse talent pool “The ag sector is ready to do this across says Lisa Benson, executive director for the board,” Glenn says, confident that the NASDA Foundation. Diversity training change throughout the agriculture sector will also be offered to NASDA members is on the way. “I think we’re ready.” and staff.

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MARY STEWART

John Brunoe, an Oregon State University extension service educator, shows young people how to plant a community garden.

At Your Service Cooperative extensions offer information and resources

By Robin Roenker

R

OOTED IN AGRICULTURAL CLUBS

of the early 1800s and formalized in 1914, the cooperative extension system (CES) has long been a trusted, community-based resource for information on everything from farming best practices to nutrition and youth development.

With more than 32,000 extension professionals at work in land-grant universities and county-level field offices across the country, “cooperative extension serves nearly all 3,143 counties or countyequivalents in the U.S.,” says Parag Chitnis, associate director for programs with the Department of Agriculture’s National

Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), which supports the work of CES. “The mission of the modern extension system is identifying needs within communities and engaging community members from the beginning in helping us to address those needs,” says Anita Azarenko, director of the Oregon State University (OSU) extension service and interim vice provost for OSU’s Division of University Outreach and Engagement.

“Extension today is not the same as it was 50 years ago,” says Peggy Compton, a program manager with the University of Wisconsin-Madison Division of Extension, who trains volunteer community scientists CONTINUED

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CAREERS & EDUCATION making a positive impact in his or her community.

“The videos, website and educational documents we produce and share on our social media accounts are used by beekeepers around the world,” says Ellis.

“We’ve been able to help beekeepers at the national and international level.”

BUILDING THE FUTURE State extension systems have long made youth development programs a priority. The University of Missouri Extension created the 4-H Youth Futures: College Within Reach initiative, which provides mentoring and programming to encourage first-generation, vulnerable and underserved youth to pursue higher education and career readiness.

Honored with the National Diversity in Extension Award in 2020, the program’s success has inspired roughly a dozen other states to introduce the Youth Futures model into their own extension programming.

“We want to help Missouri and other states ... increase their percentage of youth who are graduating from high school and then going on to higher education institutions — whatever that may look like, whether it’s a trade school, community college or four-year college — and then becoming productive members of the workforce,” says Donna Garcia, a University of Missouri Extension college and career readiness specialist, who directs the Youth Futures program.

DONNA GARCIA

Last summer, the University of Missouri Extension 4-H Youth Futures conference was virtual, but in previous years members participated in team-building exercises such as this one, where students built a chair out of limited materials with no instructions.

“One of the few positive things to come out of the pandemic is that we’ve been able to reach more youth ... with our virtual programs than we would have ever been able to reach in person.”

— HANNAH CARTER, University of Maine Cooperative Extension

to help monitor water quality in Wisconsin streams and rivers. Compton says modern extension programs have a wider range of topics.

“The beautiful thing about extension is that its educators and specialists are very nimble at changing with the times and meeting the current needs of their communities,” says Compton, who currently serves as national president of Epsilon Sigma Phi Inc., a professional association for extension specialists.

These days, extension experts lead classes and workshops on a broad range of issues, from wildlife habitat management and food preservation to senior fitness and small business development.

INTERNATIONAL REACH Extension professionals often serve as front-line community liaisons for the research and education being done at their land-grant campuses. That benefits not only local communities, but international ones.

At the University of Florida, entomology professor and extension specialist James Ellis leads the Honey Bee Research and Extension Laboratory. In October, he was named winner of the 2020 Excellence in Extension Award, a national honor given annually by NIFA and the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) to recognize an extension professional whose work is

CONTINUOUS WORK During the pandemic, extension offices across the U.S. continue to help communities and ensure that their services reach the people who need them.

“The value of this vast network has rarely been as evident as it was this past year, when the system showed how quickly it could pivot to provide much-needed education and information during the pandemic,” Chitnis says.

At University of Maine (UMaine) Cooperative Extension, where youth development is a key focus, extension specialists found ways to continue engaging students with their 4-H programs.

“Our 4-H faculty upended the traditional, in-person extension learning model and within weeks put together an extraordinary 4-H Learn at Home series,” says Hannah Carter, dean of UMaine’s extension.

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“The mission of the modern extension system is identifying needs within communities and engaging community members from the beginning in helping us to address those needs.”

— ANITA AZARENKO, Oregon State University Extension Service

MIKE KNUTZ

A 4-H student cares for ducks evacuated during Oregon wildfires.

more — as well as popular Virtual Teen Science Cafés, in which high school students engage directly with UMaine scientists on Zoom to learn about their work.

“One of the few positive things to come out of the pandemic is that we’ve been able to reach more youth — both inside and outside of the state — with our virtual programs than we would have ever been able to reach in person,” Carter says.

DISASTER AID Local extension offices also support emergency management efforts. The OSU Extension Service helped evacuate

animals during Oregon’s devastating wildfires in 2020.

It also created checklists and damage assessment forms for property owners returning to their homes after fire damage, as well as information on damage mitigation and recovery resources.

“We started a fire program (just as the wildfires started),” says Azarenko. “(We) helped communities access relevant information on ways to navigate what happens after a wildfire. (Extension professionals) stepped up, not only in the moment, but their work going forward will also be able to help design more resilient landscapes and communities.”

James Ellis, head of the Honey Bee Research and Extension Laboratory at the University of Florida TYLER JONES

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DISCOVERY PARK OF AMERICA

Showcasing Innovation Exhibit teaches families about farmers

By Amy Sinatra Ayres

I

N THE SUMMER OF 2019, kids visiting Discovery Park of America in Union City, Tenn., were asked what they knew about farmers. Their typical answers? “They wear overalls and boots — and they’re old.”

When families visit the museum’s new $1 million exhibit, AgriCulture: Innovating for Our Survival, which opened in December 2020, they’re likely to gain a new perspective. That’s because the team that created it asked professionals in the field what people should know about agriculture, and they got a wealth of information.

“It was like they had been waiting to be asked that question,” says Scott Williams, president and CEO of Discovery Park.

“We were writing as fast as we could and videotaping ... it was just incredible how passionate they were about the topic.”

AgriCulture focuses on the importance of innovation in farming and gives visitors a better understanding of today’s farmers, Williams says.

The permanent exhibit, which is part of Discovery Park’s $100 million, 50-acre museum, educational center and heritage park, sits in a space that once housed about 60 vintage tractors, Williams says.

About seven of those are now on exhibit, including a Case steam engine from the

early 1900s, parked next to a state-ofthe-art 2021 Case IH Magnum tractor that guests can climb into.

Among Williams’ favorite aspects of the exhibit are the 250 portraits of men and women working in agriculture that are woven throughout the space. They include farmers, professors, scientists and more who stopped at photo booths Discovery Park had set up at a number of farm conferences.

“They’re just beautiful to see ... men and women, Black and white, Hispanic, Asian, young and old,” he says.

Also included is a social media wall that shows real-time photos and videos farmers are sharing online.

Williams hopes all of the exhibit’s interactive information engages visitors, provides an understanding of agriculture and perhaps even encourages them to explore a career in the field.

“I hope other people, when they come to experience the exhibit, will be like me and ... learn more about innovation in ag, but ... also be inspired to go home and look up more, to read more, to understand more about all these topics,” Williams says.

“In order for us to be able to provide the food, fuel and fiber that we need by 2050, we need some of our best and brightest to want to go into some of the agriculture-related fields.”

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