How cyclospora got going

And how outbreaks of food contamination will keep going, until corporations are forced to change their ways.

To maximize returns, these companies aggregate and process harvests from multiple farms in a few central production and distribution hubs, before shipping across the U.S. This process, where contaminated produce from potentially just one field was mixed into thousands of fresh-cut salad bags, is likely how the outbreak has affected so many people, while the scale of the relatively uncompetitive distribution market resulted in it reaching so many states. In this cyclospora outbreak, the scale and concentration of the contemporary produce market has become a public health hazard.

In the United States, money translates to political power, and the produce industry has used that to kill food safety regulation and monitoring across administrations. The Food Traceability Rule passed by Congress and scheduled to be implemented at the start of this year would have enabled a much quicker and surgical public health response but was delayed to 2028 following coordinated industry lobbying by the Global Cold Chain Alliance, the Food Industry Association, and the National Grocers Association. In 2024, regulations requiring the testing of irrigation water for pathogens like cyclospora were replaced by what is essentially an honor system. During the Obama administration, fierce lobbying by the United Fresh Produce Association (now the International Fresh Produce Association) killed the Microbiological Data Program. This was a cheap and effective program run by the USDA from 2001 to 2012 for about $5 million a year, which pulled and tested samples of high-risk produce. In its last two years alone, this trip-wire triggered 23 product recalls.

In sum, the way that this outbreak has spread through a concentrated production and distribution network that has steadily eroded federal safeguards indicates a systemic problem of a few larger corporations controlling market governance itself, with the ability to cut costs and get rich at peoples’ expense. - IATP

Farmers are taking a big hit from Trump policies

This is being underreported in “legacy” media, of course.

A large group of agriculture experts warned that US farms are taking a financial beating thanks to President Donald Trump’s global trade war.

In a letter sent to the chairs and ranking members of the House and Senate Agriculture Committees on Tuesday, the experts warned of a potential “widespread collapse of American agriculture and our rural communities” caused in no small part by Trump administration policies.

The letter’s signatories—which include former leaders of American agricultural commodity and biofuels associations, farm leaders, and former USDA officials—pointed to Trump’s tariffs on imported goods and his mass deportation policies as particularly harmful.

“It is clear that the current administration’s actions, along with congressional inaction,” the letter states, “have increased costs for farm inputs, disrupted overseas and domestic markets, denied agriculture its reliable labor pool, and defunded critical [agricultural] research and staffing.” - Common Dreams

Who needs endangered species anyway?

I'm not sure how this will play out in the courts, if it happens.

The Trump administration is proposing a significant change to one of the country’s most important—and contentious—environmental laws, which could give farmers more leeway to use pesticides without regard to their impact on critical habitats.

In a proposed rule change announced on March 17, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service want to change the way they interpret the Endangered Species Act (ESA), which they collectively administer, by rescinding the definition of “harm.”

…Under the proposed rule change, habitat would not be protected, which could have huge consequences. It would open more of the United States to drilling, logging, and other industries. And it would represent a significant development for farmers, ranchers, and other food producers, affecting the ways they use land, make decisions about conservation, and treat crops. That’s especially true of pesticide use. - Civil Eats

The corporate "bigs," climate denial, and social media

Many of us didn't need a study to know full well this is happening. But it's good to have it documented and proved.

From 2008 to 2023, nine of the nation’s largest oil, agrichemical, and plastics trade groups and corporations posted thousands of tweets on the social media platform X, and their messaging on environmental issues was strikingly “obstructive” for climate policy and action, a study published (in January) in the journal PLOS Climate concludes.

The study found that all of the organizations, including the American Petroleum Institute (API) and the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF), were mentioned by at least four of the other groups – helping to essentially create an echo chamber for similar messages. The groups also frequently tagged regulators and the media in their posts, with researchers finding the Environmental Protection Agency was tagged 795 times and the Wall Street Journal, the most mentioned media organization, tagged 517 times out of more than 125,000 X posts.

“Our study suggests that climate obstruction in different industries is more coordinated than is generally recognized,” said co-author Jennie Stephens, professor of Sustainability Science and Policy at Northeastern University and of Climate Justice at the National University of Ireland Maynooth.

“Combined with the high engagement of the petrochemical derivative and fuel sectors with government regulatory, policy, and political entities in the energy and environmental in particular, this suggests strategic attempts to undermine and subvert climate policy through social media,” the authors wrote. - DeSmog

Apparently antimicrobial resistance isn't that big a deal

Talk about Big Ag capture

Last May, the United Nations (U.N.) released the first draft of a global plan to tackle antibiotic resistance that aligned with a call from world leaders’ expert advisors to take “bold and specific action.” That included a commitment to reduce the use of antibiotics used in the food and agriculture system by 30 percent by 2030.

But when those leaders (met at the U.N. in September) to adopt the Political Declaration on Antimicrobial Resistance, that concrete goal and others (were) missing from the latest draft.

After months of negotiations and edits to the proposal, these ambitious—and likely effective—commitments have been replaced with a toothless target: to “strive to meaningfully reduce” antibiotic use in agriculture. Now, experts and advocates are concerned that this new, vague provision, among other weakened commitments, will be included in the final declaration…

U.S. officials were at least partially responsible for weakening the U.N. declaration’s commitments on animal agriculture. - Civil Eats

Agriculture commissioners are sticking their noses where they don't belong

Sone state ag commissioners are OK. Some aren't. This is from an article that goes into depth on the matter.

America’s 50 state agriculture commissioners receive far less attention and news coverage than most other statewide officials, such as governors and attorneys general.

However, these individuals hold significant influence over local farming policies, oversee state agencies dedicated to food safety and often set the tone for how environmental regulations are enforced within the local agriculture sector…

“The work is so broad with regards to fuel production, with regards to clothing (production), food safety, natural disaster response, forest management,” said RJ Karney, senior director of public policy for the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture. “It’s not just about rural communities and their farms.”

…“It is often hard to tell who has an R or has a D next to their name,” said Karney, referring to Republican or Democratic officials.

But many of the elected commissioners have increasingly latched onto partisan issues, including some that would not appear to have much of a connection to agriculture policies. - Investigate Midwest

The Gulf dead zone is still big and dead

There's been no real progress. Big Ag, among others, has seen to that.

The Gulf of Mexico Hypoxia Task Force, a collaboration of state, federal and tribal agencies charged with controlling fertilizer pollution, told Congress last fall that nitrogen loads in the Mississippi River basin decreased 23% from the baseline period to 2021.

But the five-year running average – which accounts for extremely wet and dry years more common with climate change – tells a different story. By that measure, nitrogen is only slightly below baseline and well above the 20% target. Phosphorus loads worsened since the baseline period.

The oxygen-deprived ‘dead zone’ in the Gulf is predicted to be 5,827 square miles this summer, 5% larger than average, according to a forecast last week by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Two long-time Gulf researchers predict a smaller ‘dead zone’, but only because of warming ocean temperatures, not because of progress reducing nutrients in the Mississippi River basin. - Investigate Midwest

The hidden costs of industrial ag are mind-blowing

The UN report linked in the quoted story actually covers all agriculture worldwide. But when you look at the second paragraph below, you know almost all the problems are originating with the greedheads of Big Ag.

Food systems are about much more than just food. What’s on your plate or in your bowl is important, of course, but food is linked with everything from labor rights and healthcare to social justice and the climate crisis.

But when consumers buy a cluster of tomatoes on the vine or a carton of eggs, the price does not necessarily consider that inter-tangled web of connections. These external impacts of food production—on human health, animal welfare, workers, biodiversity, waterways, or soil—aren’t always reflected in the market price.

The movement to calculate, value, recognize, and pay down these costs is known as True Cost Accounting (TCA), and we’ve talked about it before. But in a landmark report just published, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization took on the massive task of analyzing virtually the entire world’s food system through the lens of TCA.

This report estimates that the global quantified hidden costs of agrifood systems is approximately US$12.7 trillion.

It’s almost like a debt the food system owes to the world—a debt that, so far, it’s not making payments on. - Food Tank

Too often, conservation programs help bolster industrial ag

There is plenty of both good and bad in this report.

Industrial animal agriculture is a well-documented and significant source of greenhouse gas emissions, water and air pollution, poor animal welfare and environmental injustice.

One way the U.S. Department of Agriculture attempts to address the harms caused by industrial agriculture is with conservation programs funded through the Farm Bill. These programs are intended to “help agricultural producers improve their environmental performance with respect to soil health, water quality, air quality, wildlife habitat, and greenhouse gas emissions.”

However, one of the leading conservation programs, the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), also supports the factory farm system of industrial animal agriculture — the very system that impairs rural water and air quality, releases high levels of greenhouse gases and undercuts independent farmers using high animal welfare systems that protect the environment! Since 2002, 50% of total EQIP funding has been required to support livestock operations, including industrial-scale factory farms. These EQIP contracts are often up to six figures and pay for equipment and infrastructure that support and lock in the industrial model, ultimately using limited conservation funds to subsidize factory farms. - IATP

Exported hay is helping to dry up the Colorado River

I get that cows, people, and everything else living on the other side of Earth have to eat, too. But there are far better options, all around.

Farmers working in unforgiving desert climates have their own reasons for cultivating alfalfa. For one, with enough irrigation, it can handle the ferocious summers in the West better than many fruit and vegetable varieties. It’s also a serious cash crop: Between 2012 and 2021 in California, alfalfa fetched more dollars per ton than any other hay variety for nine years straight. It dominates agriculture in Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah, the four driest states in the country, all of which depend on the Colorado River.

In fact, much of the Colorado River is exported as hay. Rising demand for dairy products in the Middle East and skyrocketing beef consumption across the globe are driving up the demand; 40% of the alfalfa grown in California in 2020 was shrink-wrapped, containerized, and shipped to cows on the other side of Earth. - High Country News

Mexico looks to stick it to New NAFTA

The article is from mid-December. I suspect there are other factors here, beyond what's noted therein. Namely, that like a lot of countries Mexico is fed up with U.S. "dumping" practices. And at least equally fed up with its agriculture being at the mercy of the ultra-exploitative greedheads of global Big Ag.

A high-level delegation from the Mexican government is in Washington today to discuss a series of bilateral trade issues, one of them being U.S. government and biotech industry claims that Mexico's intention to restrict imports of genetically modified corn in 2024 violates the new Agricultural Biotechnology provisions in the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) that replaced NAFTA in 2020. Three years ago, the Mexican government announced its intention to phase out the use of the herbicide glyphosate and the importation of GM corn, citing both public health and environmental reasons.

U.S. and Mexican agribusiness interests responded with a demand that the U.S. government threaten Mexico with a USMCA trade dispute, arguing that the new USMCA provisions guarantee their rights to export GM corn to Mexico. Mexico is the largest export market for US corn, nearly all of which is genetically modified. The Mexican government has shown a willingness to negotiate the 2024 deadline, delaying the prohibition on GM feed corn imports, which constitute the vast majority of US exports to Mexico. Industry representatives continue to demand trade action from the U.S. government.

But does the Mexican action actually violate the Agricultural Biotechnology provisions of the USMCA? Senior trade attorney at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) Sharon Anglin Treat did a detailed textual analysis of the agreement earlier this year and concluded that Mexico is not obligated to accept GM corn exports from the United States if it has legitimate concerns about public health or the environment. - IATP

Big corporate donors demand ag school influence

That this has been going on with economics programs is well documented. It's not ending there.

Since 2010, corporations have given at least $170 million in donations to public university agricultural programs, according to data collected by Harvest Public Media and Investigate Midwest in four states.

The figure likely undercounts the impact because it represents just four schools: University of Illinois, Iowa State University, Oklahoma State University and University of Missouri. The media organizations were denied records sought from several other universities that cited state privacy laws shielding donor information.

That corporate money has paid for research centers and specific studies at universities. That influence might limit the scope of what areas of research universities tackle, said Gabrielle Roesch-McNally, who advocates for women’s ownership with the American Farmland Trust. As an Iowa State doctoral student, McNally worked on a large federally funded research project.

”Corporate influence has that kind of much more tacit control over the research agenda,” she said. “It’s a way for people to say, ‘Well, they’re not controlling us. They’re not our puppet masters.’ But we only research the crops that they’re heavily investing in.” - Investigate Midwest

Lab-produced dairy isn't the big answer

There's probably nothing wrong with it that I know of, in context. But the real, mega-problem is called "Big Ag."

And yet while these “animal-free” dairy brands are promising lower-carbon, kinder products through technology, they may also be benefiting from the fact that most consumers know little to nothing about the science it relies on. And a number of the scientists and food system advocates Civil Eats spoke to worry that a loophole at the U.S. Food and Drug and Administration (FDA) has allowed the company to declare its own products safe, despite being an ultra-processed food made with a novel set of proteins that have never before been on the market. There are also big questions about whether Perfect Day and its peers are simply providing a very expensive distraction from other more—to use their own word—urgent systemic solutions.

Or, as Anna Lappé, sustainable food advocate and author of Diet for a Hot Planet (and a Civil Eats advisory board member), put it in a recent interview about the phenomenon: “I don’t think the conversation about alternative meat and dairy should take the place of the important conversation about how dominant the meat and dairy industry is, how it needs to be regulated better. We’re not going to take on that corporate power by choosing a different [product] in the marketplace.” - Civil Eats

Big Ag's ongoing push to control the narrative

This article is actually wide-ranging, with plenty of positive stuff in it. It just so happens that I’m quoting this:

Industry representatives took that messaging and ran with it. Multiple panelists repeatedly referred to an amorphous “them” to refer to an uneducated public without their hands in the dirt. As a result, the conversations often felt politicized and at odds with other discussions happening around the country, in which politicians are calling for shifts away from classes of pesticides or experts are recommending Americans reduce meat consumption (which is currently much higher than dietary guidelines recommend) to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

This framing was most prominent on a panel devoted to the U.N. Food Systems Summit, which almost immediately turned into a narrative of industry efforts to thwart what they saw as an “anti-animal-ag agenda” driving it. One of the major criticisms scientists and activists had of the U.N. event was that it gave powerful food and agriculture corporations too much of a voice. And, panelists at the Sustainable Ag Summit from the meat, dairy, and animal feed industries laid out, step by step, how they came together to ensure that their interests were represented, specifically by preventing any recommendations to reduce meat consumption. - Civil Eats

Corporate Ag fails badly in Africa

This is no surprise. Indeed, sadly predictable.

According to an anonymous inside source, the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) is preparing a campaign to raise $1 billion in the coming months to fund its promotion of industrialized agriculture through 2030. The organization, which has spent $1 billion since its founding in 2006, is reportedly counting on the September United Nations Food System Summit as a key platform for its fundraising. AGRA’s president, Agnes Kalibata, was named Special Envoy last year by U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres to lead the summit. The simultaneous fund drive raises immediate questions about her conflicts of interest.

The reported funding campaign comes one year after our research documented that AGRA was failing on its own terms. Our review of national-level data from 13 AGRA focus countries showed that Green Revolution programs were falling far short of stated goals of doubling productivity and incomes for 30 million small-scale farming households while reducing food insecurity by half by 2020.

AGRA’s fund drive is sure to intensify calls from African farm, environmental and community organizations to demand that donors shift their funding from expensive Green Revolution programs to more affordable and sustainable approaches such as agroecology. Ecological agriculture received another vote of confidence earlier this month when the U.N. Committee on World Food Security approved a set of policy recommendations supporting such measures. - IATP

Big Beef will finish off small ranchers, if changes aren't made

After reading this, I don't know what might happen.

In the last three decades, this has become more acute. Economic consolidation across the beef industry has made the once comfortable livelihood of small- and medium-sized ranchers nearly untenable. In Nebraska, Wright described watching young farmer after young farmer squeezed out of the cattle industry and forced to drive semitrucks or work at fertilizer plants to pay off debts. He says nearby farmers were pushed to abandon their cattle and farms after being priced out by the same culprit: Big Beef.

The stranglehold on the beef industry can be traced to the processing and packing companies at the center of the market. Ranchers and legislators say that the four major meatpacking companies—the “Big Four,” as ranchers call them—are to blame. Tyson, JBS, Cargill, and National Beef purchase and process 85 percent of beef in the United States, giving them immense economic control. They operate at the nefarious nexus of being both regional monopsonies and monopolies, having a significant sway on both the price of cattle bought off the ranch and the price of beef bought at the supermarket. These four middlemen firms are both the buyers and sellers. - The American Prospect

Corporate "junk agroecology" is predictably on the rise

There is a lot of money, and therefore power, at stake. And that's what really matters, right?

Agroecology is at a crossroads. The farming system—which is primarily practiced in the developing world but is gaining some traction in the U.S.—incorporates a suite of ecological growing practices into a wider philosophy rooted in shifting power from global agribusiness companies to peasant farmers.

The approach has received growing global attention in recent years from international organizations, including the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), which has repeatedly pointed to agroecology as an effective, cross-cutting strategy to reach its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including climate action, zero hunger, and reduced inequalities.

But with that increased attention has come what some advocates describe as a move toward watering down the political, societal, and civic engagement aspects of the system. - Civil Eats

Big changes that ag policy needs

But unfortunately probably won't get, any time soon. Worth trying for, though.

But then came the somehow inevitable yet untenable claim: “We are convinced the science and data-based, technology-focused US model that has helped propel modern agriculture to incredible levels of sustainable productivity will be a critical piece in the broader strategy to continue feeding a growing world.”

The assertion is all too familiar. The Trump and Obama administrations differed in so many fundamental ways that finding similarities feels a bit shocking. Yet the arrogance of U.S. assumptions about the role of US agriculture in the world have not changed for decades.

The myth that US food feeds the world, for instance, and that barriers to U.S. exports must be eliminated. The insistence that US agricultural technologies (complete with monopoly-granting patents) must be adopted everywhere, even though US regulatory systems are deeply flawed, underfunded, neglected, and inadequate.

The fact that other cultures and economic ideals have led to sufficient food, far better environmental outcomes, more nutritious diets, and more prosperous rural communities is not acknowledged. Nor are the deep divisions within the US over the future of domestic food and agriculture.

The government shuts down challenges to fossil-fuelled agriculture in international negotiations. It does not discuss how US food systems are failing. Yet the country suffers from world-leading levels of obesity coupled with rising food insecurity. - Euractiv

Monsanto needs to be crushed

First, though, I'm noting that the fervent, eloquent tsunami of criticism of Tom Vilsack as the pick for Ag Secretary is entirely valid. Lost in that is that Rep. David Scott (D-GA) is the pick to replace Rep. Collin Peterson (D-MN) as chair of the House Ag Committee. He's saying, or rather posting, the right things.

“I will use this critical opportunity to represent the values of our entire caucus and advance our priorities for trade, disaster aid, climate change, sustainable agriculture, SNAP, crop insurance, small family farms, specialty crops, and rural broadband,” - Black Enterprise

Getting back to the title, Rep. Scott needs to set his sights on the likes of this.

This real­i­ty is what Mon­san­to was count­ing on when it launched dicam­ba-tol­er­ant crops, an inves­ti­ga­tion by the Mid­west Cen­ter for Inves­tiga­tive Report­ing found.

Monsanto’s new sys­tem was sup­posed to be the future of farm­ing, pro­vid­ing farm­ers with a suite of seeds and chem­i­cals that could com­bat more and more weeds that were becom­ing hard­er to kill.

Instead, the system’s roll­out has led to mil­lions of acres of crop dam­age across the Mid­west and South; wide­spread tree death in many rur­al com­mu­ni­ties, state parks and nature pre­serves; and an unprece­dent­ed lev­el of strife in the farm­ing world.

Exec­u­tives from Mon­san­to and BASF, a Ger­man chem­i­cal com­pa­ny that worked with Mon­san­to to launch the sys­tem, knew their dicam­ba weed killers would cause large-scale dam­age to fields across the Unit­ed States but decid­ed to push them on unsus­pect­ing farm­ers any­way, in a bid to cor­ner the soy­bean and cot­ton markets. - In These Times

Will farmers get a better deal?

Yesterday I had occasion to take a back roads drive, mostly through Benton and Morrison Counties. Plenty of country folks are still displaying their Trump signs and flags. None of my business, what they put in their yards.

A farm economy awash in an unprecedented infusion of public dollars directed by the Trump administration could face a reckoning soon. Close to $40 billion in agriculture-related payments this year mask structural problems in a badly broken market that doesn’t pay most farmers enough to continue farming. New leadership in the White House and congressional agriculture committees should act to fix a policy framework that has greatly benefited global grain and meat companies at the expense of farmers before these ad hoc Trump payments disappear.

The massive public payments over the last three years help conceal how little farmers have made from the market. The USDA projects median farm income in 2020 will be $934, up from $296 in 2019. Median farm income has been negative from 1996 through 2018. Farm debt is forecast to rise to a record $433 billion in 2020, according to the Congressional Research Service. The farm asset to debt ratio is up 14%, the highest since 2003 after rising steadily over the last eight years. Approximately 8% of loans are in poor condition, double the rate in 2014, according to the Farm Credit Council.

It is off-farm jobs, often coming with a health care plan, that keep most farm families going. - IATP