Food Politics

October 25 2022

The USA Lags Behind the Rest of the World in Banning Harmful Pesticides

Would you be surprised if I told you that the United States uses a lot of agricultural pesticides that are banned in Europe? Maybe not. But what about pesticides that are banned in China? Or Brazil?

by Nathan Donley, BioMedCentral,

50 years ago the USA led the way in regulating pesticides, but research published in Environmental Health finds that the country is still using many pesticides that are either banned or being phased out in the EU, China and Brazil. In this blog Nathan Donley, author of the research, tells us about his study and how an unofficial policy of relying on voluntary pesticide cancellations has led to this situation.

Would you be surprised if I told you that the United States uses a lot of agricultural pesticides that are banned in Europe? Maybe not. But what about pesticides that are banned in China? Or Brazil?

After all, many people still remember the transformative period in the 1960s and ‘70s when Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring spurred the United States to establish the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and transform the country’s pesticide laws. The years that followed saw a flurry of activity from the EPA – banning pesticides like DDT, aldrin and toxaphene and fending off legal challenges from agrochemical companies infuriated that they were now subject to regulatory oversight. The agency used its new found authority to impose commonsense safety and health measures on a lawless industry, protecting countless human and animal lives in the process.

Since then, many countries around the world have followed the lead of the United States and strengthened their pesticide regulations. But today, the United States’ leadership has waned significantly and much of that is evident not in what the agency does, but what it often fails to do.

Let’s compare

Nations with large agricultural economies tend to use a lot of agricultural pesticides – that is certainly the case with four of the largest agricultural economies in the world: the United States, European Union (EU), China and Brazil. Comparing the ability of regulatory agencies in each of these nations to ban some of the most harmful pesticides used in agriculture is one way to differentiate those that are progressing from those that are lagging.

I recently compiled the approval status of over 500 pesticides in each of these four agricultural economies and found that the United States stills uses a whole lot of pesticides in outdoor agricultural applications that are banned or being phased out in the EU, China and Brazil. Just how much is truly staggering: The United States uses around 320, 40 and 26 million pounds of pesticides each year that the EU, China and Brazil, respectively, have deemed too dangerous to use within their borders.

There are more than a dozen agricultural pesticides that are EPA-approved but are banned by at least two of the three other nations in the study. The majority of those pesticides have not significantly decreased in use in the United States over the last 25 years.

Not just any other pesticides

As you might expect, the pesticides that are banned by multiple other regulatory agencies but still approved in the United States are not on the benign end of the spectrum.

Five of the pesticides – bensulide, dicrotophos, phorate, terbufos and tribufos – are in the neurotoxic organophosphate class that was once used in chemical warfare in World War II. Another, paraquat, is one of the most acutely lethal pesticides still in use today, with a teaspoon-sized dose being enough to kill a grown adult.

In addition to causing immediate, acute harm – only a fraction of which is reported to state agencies and poison control centers – other pesticides on this list can have more indirect effects. The medically-important antibiotics oxytetracycline and streptomycin are used on many fruit trees to fight bacterial diseases in the United States, and recent expanded approvals by the EPA have all but guaranteed that they will be more widely used as pesticides than they are as human medicines. This comes despite strong objections from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that this could facilitate the development of antibiotic-resistant human pathogens.

May I have a volunteer, please?

There is one key difference in the way these other nations go about prohibiting pesticides that is likely playing a major role in this discrepancy. The United States utilizes voluntary, industry-initiated cancellation as the primary method of prohibiting pesticides, which differs significantly from the non-voluntary, regulator-initiated cancellations that predominate in the EU, Brazil and China. In the last two decades, pesticide makers in the USA have voluntarily phased out nearly 60 pesticides – yet I can count on one hand the number of pesticides the EPA has taken upon itself to cancel during that same time.

Voluntary cancellations can be the product of a negotiation and, therefore, don’t always represent a truly “voluntary” act. However, many voluntary cancellations are business decisions rooted in simple economics rather than human and environmental health concerns. Furthermore, if a regulatory agency is “negotiating” the cancellation of nearly every single pesticide it decides to ban, then that is a strong indication that the regulatory system is broken and that far too much power is being held by the pesticide makers.

Abdication nation

What does it say when the country that once had the strongest pesticide laws in the world is now relying on the regulated industry to erase the worst pesticides from its roster? And what does all of this say about the industry that tells us we need to keep using these poisons on our food or face famine? If the most successful agricultural economies in the world are growing the same crops and dealing with many of the same pests we are without the use of these dangerous pesticides, then there is no good reason why we should continue using them in the United States.

In the 1970s, the EPA recognized the importance of banning the most dangerous, persistent pesticides that were still in use at the time. We all benefitted immensely. Now, 50 years later, there is broad scientific consensus that some of the pesticides once considered to be “safer alternatives” are too harmful to safely be used. As other nations are, to varying degrees, taking steps to get rid of the worst-of-the-worst pesticides, the United States is relying on the pesticide industry to regulate itself.

March 14 2021

Food, Farming, and the Fate of Planet Earth

Dr. Jonathan Foley Food Politics 0

Agriculture has disrupted the planet more than anything we have ever done, including burning fossil fuels. A sustainable future depends on recognizing this fact — and radically changing the way we farm and eat.

More than any other invention in human history, agriculture has radically transformed our civilization and our relationship with the natural world.

How did we get to this point?

Early humans didn’t farm to get food; we were hunter-gatherers who lived off whatever we could find around us. But from meager beginnings about 12,000 years ago, early forms of agriculture began to appear worldwide — most notably in Mesopotamia, India, and China. Over the coming centuries and millennia, farming slowly spread across the world, transforming landscapes, economies, and cultures along the way.

For most of history, our food production increased mainly by expanding the amount of land in production. By the twentieth century, large areas of farmland had been established around the world, forming the “breadbaskets” we know today.

Changes in global land use for agriculture and the loss of tropical forest between 1750-2020. Data: IGBP Great Acceleration. Graph: J. Foley © 2021.

But starting in the 1960s, we witnessed a dramatic change in the way we farm in the form of the so-called Green Revolution, which mobilized industrial farming methods that yielded more crops on each parcel of land, fueled by improved crop varieties and dramatically increased use of fertilizers, irrigation, and machines. As a result, the world’s agriculture shifted from a long period of geographic expansion to a period of rapid industrial intensification. Farming would never be the same.

Changes in global fertilizer use and nitrogen pollution flowing to the ocean between 1750-2020. Data: IGBP Great Acceleration. Graph: J. Foley © 2021.

Changes in dam construction and water use (mostly for irrigation) between 1750-2020. Data: IGBP Great Acceleration. Graph: J. Foley © 2021.

In many ways, the story of agriculture and food has been a story of success — at least at first glance. Agriculture allowed us to shift from hunter-gatherer societies, to early settlements, to cities, ultimately to our modern global society. We live longer, healthier lives, and most of the world’s population has been freed from gathering food to follow other pursuits. The success of our species is due, in part, to the success of agriculture and the food system.

But this success has come with a cost. A big one.

Our food system is now so large, and so unsustainable, that it is endangering the very environmental systems that support and sustain it.

. . .

While we typically think of tailpipes, smokestacks, and giant factories as being the biggest driver of environmental damage worldwide, it turns out that agriculture is the biggest. Don’t believe me? First, consider the size of agriculture’s geographic footprint.

Changes in land use for agriculture between 1750-2020. Data: IGBP Great Acceleration. Graph: J. Foley © 2021.

Today, roughly 16 million square kilometers of the Earth’s land, or an area approximately the size of South America, is used just to grow the world’s crops. And another 34 million square kilometers, an area about the size of Africa, is used for pastures and grazing lands.

Together, these agricultural lands cover roughly thirty-seven percent of Earth’s ice-free land surface; the world’s urban lands, by comparison, cover roughly one percent. No other human activity can match the geographic footprint of agriculture.

Croplands and pastures cover ~37% of the world’s ice-free land area (Foley et al., 2011).

Most people are surprised to learn that most of this land is used to raise and feed animals. Roughly 75% of the world’s agricultural land is used for grazing animals or producing animal feed. As a result, animal production and our desire for meat and dairy products is a major driver of food’s footprint around the world.

. . .

As the world’s agricultural lands have expanded, they have cleared and converted vast areas of natural grassland, savanna, and forest in their wake. This conversion of natural landscapes to agriculture has caused massive habitat losses worldwide and the extinction of countless species.

Today, some entire ecosystems, such as the prairies of North America or the Atlantic rainforests of Brazil, are nearly gone, almost entirely replaced by farmland, and others are being cleared at alarming rates. Agriculture has consumed more land and habitat and driven more species to extinction than any activity in human history. Nothing else comes close.

. . .

Agriculture also has a tremendous impact on our planet’s water resources. Agriculture is responsible for roughly 70% of all of the world’s water withdrawals (or approximately 2,800 cubic kilometers of water per year), where freshwater is taken from groundwater, rivers, and lakes worldwide. In terms of consumptive water use, where water is withdrawn and not returned to the same watershed later, this figure climbs closer to ~85%.

The use of water for agriculture has caused the collapse of rivers, lakes, and even inland seas across the world. The Colorado River, for example, rarely flows into the ocean today. The Aral Sea in the former USSR has virtually disappeared since its main sources of water were diverted to grow cotton in central Asia’s deserts.

The decline of the Aral Sea, from the 1970s to the 2000s, caused by diverting the region’s major rivers to grow cotton in the desert. Images courtesy of NASA.

Industrialized farming has also been a major source of pollution around the world. Perhaps the most obvious impact comes from the use of chemical fertilizers. Today, the use of fertilizers is so high that it has more than doubled the normal geological flows of nitrogen and phosphorus across the Earth’s surface.

But the biggest impact is felt not in the soil, but in the waters of our planet. Excess nitrogen and phosphorus have polluted waterways worldwide, chocking them with excessing plant and algae growth, and can severely degrade lakes, whole watersheds, and even our coastal oceans. For example, the “Dead Zone” of the Gulf of Mexico is caused by fertilizer runoff from Midwestern farms carried by the Mississippi River to the sea. Other “dead zones” appear in nearly every coastal area downstream of industrialized agriculture.

Nitrogen fertilizer, along with sediments, are flowing from the Mississippi River into the Gulf of Mexico. Image courtesy NASA.

In addition, the world’s agricultural practices are a massive contributor to climate change on the planet.

Deforestation, mainly used to convert forests into croplands and pastures, is a major source of carbon dioxide (CO2) to the atmosphere. Other agricultural practices, particularly raising cattle and growing rice, are a major source of methane (CH4) to the atmosphere, a powerful greenhouse gas. And the overuse of fertilizers and manure can release nitrous oxide (N2O) from the world’s agricultural soils, another powerful greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere.

Breakdown of global greenhouse gas emissions by sector and activity. Data: IPCC Fifth Assessment Report, Working Group Three. Graph: J. Foley© 2021.

Taken together, farming practices and land use directly release about 24% of the world’s total greenhouse gas emissions, making it the second-biggest source of greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere. (For comparison, producing all of the world’s electricity releases ~25%.) So, if you want to address climate change, rethinking agriculture should be somewhere near the top of the list.

Those are the direct emissions from food, agriculture, and land use. But it turns that the entire food system — including the transportation, packaging, refrigeration, and cooking of food — releases even more. A recent study published in Nature shows that the larger food system emits roughly one-third of global emissions when including these indirect emissions as well.

Without a doubt, how we grow the world’s food is having a serious impact on the environment. It uses more land than anything we do. It is the biggest driver of species extinctions and ecosystem degradation. It is also the single biggest user and polluter of water on the planet. And it is one of the largest contributors to climate change in the world.

The numbers speak for themselves. The world’s agriculture and food system:

uses ~35–40% of all of the world’s land (and ~75% of that is used to raise animals or the feed they eat)
is the largest driver of habitat loss and species decline in human history
is responsible for ~70% of the world’s total water withdrawals and ~85% of our global water consumption
is the largest source of water pollution, especially in the form of nitrogen and phosphorus runoff to aquatic ecosystems and coastal oceans
is one of the largest sources of greenhouse gases — causing ~24% of our emissions directly, or ~35% of when including indirect emissions from the larger food system

And, yet, we all need to eat. We can’t simply decide to stop agriculture for the sake of the environment.

Producing food is perhaps the single most important — and absolutely necessary — activity humans engage in. Without it, we would literally cease to exist as a modern civilization. And the need for food is increasing, as populations continue to grow and more people shift towards meat-rich diets.

The crucial thing for our future is to find ways to feed a growing world without ultimately destroying the planet we all depend on.

May 20 2020

Was It Just Fine? A Farmer Shares His Insight

Joel Salatin Food Heroes, Food Politics 0

Originally published by Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms.

As people respond to the shock of the pandemic, it’s interesting to hear their perspectives about pre-pandemic days. One that caught my attention this week in a newspaper column was an interview of a bunch of people responding to the shock of the whole thing.

One guy said “Everything was going along just fine.” Folks, that struck me. Did you think everything was going along just fine prior to the pandemic?

For sure, it was “let the good times roll.” Unemployment was at historically low levels so everybody who wanted to work had plenty of options. Venture capitalists were throwing money at projects like it was water. You could borrow money cheaply. Even an idiot could make money in the stock market. Tesla was valued higher than all the U.S. car makers combined. What wasn’t to love?

But as my friendly German mentor says, in reality it was an EVERYTHING BUBBLE. And it was built on some devastating realities. You couldn’t see across the street in Shanghai. Waters in Venice were polluted. Aquifers worldwide retreated underground while above ground deserts continued their march across northern Africa and the southern U.S. Collapsing species signaled catastrophic biological disruptions. Factional, sectarian, and civil wars created massive refugee situations and humanitarian crises around the globe. In the U.S. health costs continued to escalate; farmers committed suicide at unprecedented rates; for the first time life expectancy dropped year to year. Need I mention autism, opioids, and more people incarcerated per capita than any nation on earth? Oh, and don’t forget we’d become a debtor nation rather than a creditor nation.

For the average person, as long as beer is in the fridge, the NFL is on TV, and the Kardashians still adorn the cover of People magazine, life is good: “Everything was going along just fine.” Who thinks that a country that criminalizes the sale of raw milk, censors herbalist podcasts and breaks up medical offices when a doctor starts doing something unorthodox is a country where “everything was going along just fine?”

This is not to say I was depressed or angry prior to the pandemic. But in the face of increased divorce, juvenile delinquency, plummeting SAT scores and public education’s war on private and charter schools, the USDA’s promotion of genetically modified organisms and the Chinese and Brazilians buying nearly half of the U.S. meat processing plant capacity, for anyone to nonchalantly say “Everyhthing was going along just fine” indicates profoundly shallow thinking.

Remember, crises never create trends; crises only accelerate or clarify existing trends. That is exactly what has happened here. Thinking people did not listen to the gloating economic pundits and Wall Street who fed the narrative “Everything was going along just fine.” That was the official line from credentialed experts and most people bought it. And now they blame the pandemic for disrupting Fantasy Island.

Lots of people want to go back to Fantasy Island, calling it normal. It wasn’t normal. It’s not normal for people to spend fewer than 15 minutes on average in their kitchens. It’s not normal for 70 percent of the people at 4 p.m. to not have a clue what’s for dinner. It’s not normal for millenials to ask “what’s dinner?” It’s not normal for half of all males 25-35 years old to spend 25 hours per week playing video games, most of which are extremely violent. It’s not normal for a business person to have to fill out forms for 10 federal agencies just to hire somebody. It’s not normal to cram 15,000 chickens in a house breathing fecal particulate and unable to ever see a ray of sunshine. It’s not normal to put thousands of small community abattoirs out of business with draconian inappropriate regulations and concentrate the production in 100 mega-processing facilities.

In the face of such dysfunction, only a fool would say “Everything was going along just fine.”

What did I miss?

March 4 2020

Expo West: 10 Trends Missed and the Opportunity in Front of Our Industry

Robyn O'Brien Food Financials, Food Politics, From Robyn 0

It’s been two years since I wrote this article, reflecting on the state of the food industry, as seen at our largest trade show, Expo West.

Up until this last weekend, it was the most-viewed article I’ve ever shared on LinkedIn. My post, inviting the industry to collaborate on improving this platform, embracing the values 21st century attendees share around environmental impact, food waste, sustainability, inclusion, diversity and more, blew it out of the water by about three fold.

The challenges still hold, and while some progress has been made, we have a lot of work in front of us, especially when it comes to a more efficient platform, one that leverages 21st century technology to meet the needs of the 21st century consumer. It is a call to action for all of us.

Can we put a cap on materials used per booth? Can we offer carbon offsets to attendees? Can we offer credits to companies with the lowest environmental impact? Can we require that attending companies have boards that include women and people of color? Can we embrace the values of the B Corp community, values going viral across our industry? Can we upcycle the food waste from the trade show floor? Can we listen to the young entrepreneurs and get them on stage, because our future belongs to them?

There is incredible opportunity in front of all of us for radical collaboration to move this platform forward.

~~~~

Written March 2018:

In the food industry, we have a trade show called “Expo West.” It’s been happening for over 30 years, and its size is massive, with over 80,000 attendees and over 5,000 companies presenting. This year, many commented that “the show has lost its soul.” Others were totally and completely jazzed, a real bifurcation.

And while I thought about doing another trends piece, it didn’t feel ‘value-add’ to talk about collagen and turmeric, given the enormity of what we are facing as an industry.

So after discussions with many from the industry, from food+tech to finance, here are the top 10 trends that could use some attention and some examples of the companies that are getting it right:

B-Corps: There are a lot of trends to cite from the show: CBD oil and ingredients, collagen, more turmeric, even more fermented foods, but few as important as the rise of companies seeking B-Corp certification. So what is it? “B Corps are for-profit companies certified by the nonprofit B Lab to meet rigorous standards of social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency. Today, there is a growing community of more than 2,100 Certified B Corps from 50 countries and over 130 industries working together toward 1 unifying goal: to redefine success in business.” MegaFood is one of the companies leading this transition, and as more and more companies in our industry look to this certification, the B-Corp certifying team should have a prominent place at the show, answering questions, accessible and available, encouraging participation in meaningful change. The show could provide an incentive for companies embracing B Corp in the form of a booth discount, employee discount or more.

Transparent Financing: As we grow the industry, we are only as good as our capital partners. We can’t fix a broken food system with a broken financial system. Companies should consider the source of their capital as carefully as they consider the source of their ingredients; otherwise, their returns are benefiting the very industries and companies we are trying to replace. New Resource Bank is a shining example of a financing source that is getting it right. An important question to ask: Where does your capital sleep at night? And perhaps even more importantly: Who else is it sleeping with?

Funding the Future: When you look at the non-white CEOs in our industry, they are few and far between. I reached out to a colleague to ask for a list of the ones that came to mind, and of the 5,000+ companies that participated in the show, she came back with less than 10. It’s shocking and also why I am so excited about Carla Vernon taking the lead of Annie’s and General Mill’s natural and organic division. Her own mother was a hidden figure at NASA, similar to the women in the film “Hidden Figures.” Her DNA has “change maker” markers in it. If our industry is truly going to meet the needs of 21^st century families, it has to get past the “white savior” look it currently has and embrace diversity in its leadership. The future of our country is beautifully ethnic. Let’s fund that as an industry so that we can successfully grow the movement beyond the 5-6% of the food industry that it is today. So this serves as an open invitation to the investors walking the trade show floor. Otherwise, we run the risk of putting out white people solutions to white people problems.

Zero Waste – Follow the Super Bowl: While the show has taken some steps to tackle its environmental impact, it could follow the lead of the Super Bowl which declared the goal of “zero waste” for 2018. It’s time for Expo West to do the same. We are a trade show that talks about conscious capitalism, sustainability and the climate – non-stop – and we could learn a thing from the NFL. The 2018 Super Bowl launched a huge collaboration called Rush2Recycle that targeted zero waste at the US Bank Stadium in Minnesota. “The program successfully recovered 91% of all the trash. Nearly 63 tons of the 69 tons of game day waste were recovered through recycling or donation for reuse (62%) and composting (29%), according to the NFL.”

According to Environmental Leader:

In order to reach the 91% recovery rate, the partners took these steps before the Super Bowl:

US Bank Stadium replaced most of its food vessels, service products and utensils inventory for fans with compostable alternatives

US Bank Stadium worked with Recycle Across America to design illustrated signs for new three-bin waste stations to show fans how to sort items at the stadium

Recycling and compost bins were changed to become larger and more accessible to fans

Trash bins were shrunk in size, encouraging fans to consider using alternative containers

A LEED-certification-level waste audit last October identified materials for recovery in the stadium’s waste stream

A zero-waste trial run took place at a December 2017 Minnesota Vikings home game

Steps taken after the Super Bowl included:

The SMG team sorted all fan-generated waste into the right waste compactors

The waste hauling partners collected and provided weight-tickets at each destination, including the recycling facility, the composting facility, and the waste-to-energy facility

The waste data was reviewed by SMG and combined with the reuse and donation data collected by the NFL from their community partners

Supply Chain Focus: Every year we assemble our entire industry and fail to have a unified call to action. There is no greater issue confronting our industry than expanding our supply chain, given that less than 1% of U.S. farmland is organic. As the industry grows, rather than importing the organic ingredients needed, we should be growing them here, benefiting the U.S. farmers and economy. Companies like Kashi are tackling these issues on their own, but the goal of increased organic acreage benefits everyone – from Kellogg’s to General Mills to the tiniest of startups. It directly impacts their bottom line. Make a pledge to grow your organic acreage 30% by 2030. As Richard Branson always encourages, set a goal and write it down.

Diversify: Jennifer Garner, in her keynote with John Foraker on Friday, remarked that everyone at the show is so “clean and shiny”. As I looked around the room at the hundreds of people attending her keynote, it was also almost entirely white. Half of all U.S. kids are going to be non-white in two years time, by the year 2020. Once Upon a Farm wants to be the first company accepted into the WIC program. It’s that kind of creative thinking that is needed. The show does not reflect that, the industry does not reflect that. The running commentary at the dinner the night before was the same, too: “It’s so white.” What multi-cultural initiatives can be introduced? Can the Organic Center’s Dinner embrace diversity in its theme each year? Can it embrace an international menu? Can attendees do the same with their leadership teams? Can the show showcase the beautiful diversity of our country going forward? We do a great job showcasing the incredible foods and ingredients from other countries, let’s do the same with people.

The ‘Give A Shit’ Booth: This goes along with the zero waste issue, but the trash and food waste spinning off of the show was of epic proportions this year. The show could use a booth where people can sign up to be “zero waste.” Something along the lines of a commitment to reduce, reuse and recycle, perhaps with the ability to pick up a bamboo cup and plate to use at the show (I’m sure there is a supplier who would be happy to oblige!). Companies could be compensated for the number of employees who choose to participate. New Hope could offer some sort of kick back or discount to those that do. A compost bin could be available that is then delivered to a local farm at the end of the show. When you participate, your nametag is immediately marked, so that you are identified as someone who “Gives a Shit” beyond the financials. You only have to look to the remarkable success of Patagonia to see what happens when you fearlessly put the planet first.

Giveback: Maybe it was the hometown Super Bowl influence, but General Mills nailed it this year with their natural and organic booth. The entire thing was built incredibly mindful of its impact on the environment and with a focus on the reduction of waste. So much so, that the plants used to decorate their booth were going to a non-profit in the LA area. In fact, a few different companies were supporting the same non-profit. With so many non-profits working in the space and doing incredible advocacy work around clean food, gardening, reducing exposure to risky ingredients, I realized that it would benefit all involved to have a list of non-profits to whom companies could donate their products, materials, supplies after the show. With Will Allen having to shut the doors on his amazing program, it is important for companies to know just how many incredible organizations there are to support. The Salvation Army is even opening a grocery store in Baltimore (heads up: Expo East). Some other non-profits that come to mind are Made Safe and Civil Eats. It is impossible to understand how we as an industry failed Will Allen’s “Growing Power.” It would have been nice to have the NBA as a partner.

Packaging: I spent time with Scandinavian colleagues at the show this year, and they asked: “Why do your companies care so much about what goes in the products and so little about the packaging around them?” They were horrified at the chemicals that sit on top of and around the foods we eat, leaching into them. I told them that Kroger is doing a phenomenal job tackling this, in real time, as are a few others, and reminded them that while they did not have to fight to know what is in their food, we did and are only just now seeing the success of those efforts. First things first, I said, but duly noted. Let’s get on smarter packaging that doesn’t disrupt the health that the products inside are trying to support.

A Kroger Booth: Few other companies have done more to shift the huge, conventional brands than Kroger. It has a market cap big enough to present a real threat, so when they launched their Simple Truth line back in 2012, the big CPG brands noticed. Their Simple Truth line went from $0 to a billion in revenue in two years flat and is still growing. Their CEO, Rodney McMullen calls the division of the company “the bright spot” in its earnings. And with Jill McIntosh at the helm of their natural and organic division, the company rightfully has earned a prominent place in the show. Others are taking notice, so more change is coming.

What is clear this year is that the leadership is changing in the food industry. Both the Grocery Manufacturers Association and the Organic Trade Association feel confused in their missions, as the dividing line between conventional and organic blurs. This is creating enormous opportunities for leadership by brands themselves in the marketplace. As companies like Kroger, Annie’s, Dr. Bronner and Patagonia step into that leadership space, one thing is certain:

Courage is contagious, and it is showing up in creative, regenerative new ways from a select number of brands in our industry that are certain to drive meaningful change for years to come.

Robyn is the co-founder of rePlant Capital. To hear more of Robyn’s work, you can listen to her podcast, Take Out with Ashley and Robyn on iTunes.

January 27 2020

Make Your Impact with a 6-Pack

Robyn O'Brien Food Heroes, Food Politics 0

“America, less than 1% of our farmland is organic….”

Not enough Americans know this. With over 911 millions farmable acres in the United States, less than 1% of those acres are organic. So while 80% of us are now eating something organic, and 75% of grocery store categories now carry something organic, less than 1% of American farmland is organic.

Why? The cost of conversion for a farmer is huge. New equipment is required, a three year transition period is required and technical assistance is required. In other words, our farmers can’t do this without capital.

It is because our farmers are facing monumental hurdles in the conversion process that we started rePlant Capital: to work with farmers and food companies, to give farmers access to low cost capital with innovative loans that put farmers first so that they can convert their farmland from conventional agricultural practices, dependent on costly chemical inputs, to regenerative, organic agriculture.

Why did we do this?

You can’t fix a broken food system with a broken financial system

So please take 60 seconds to watch this year’s Super Bowl commercial from Anheuser Busch In Bev.

“Pick up a six pack, we’ll help transition 6 square feet of farmland to organic.”

The choices we make every day can change the world.`

November 20 2019

Investment Insight: 90% of S&P 500 Bankruptcies Had This In Common

Robyn O'Brien Food Financials, Food Politics, From Robyn 0

As the CEO of Mars recently stated in an interview, “Right now, the global supply chain is broken. We’re taking more out of the planet than is sustainable. And we have to fix that.”

It’s an important call to action. The food system is broken, as I wrote about in my book, The Unhealthy Truth, How Our Food is Making Us Sick and What We Can Do About It (Random House).

A growing number of companies from Danone to General Mills are recognizing that their supply chains do not meet the needs of 21^st century families, so they are taking action. Global organic food sales topped $100 billion in 2018 and have grown 483% since 2000. However, only 1% of U.S. farmland is organic.

Farmers alone are unable to transition, given their backbreaking financial situation. In the U.S., there is over $426 billion in farm debt, with the Wall Street Journal reporting that the median farm income is negative, a negative $1, 548.

As the food industry begins to replant capital and embrace regenerative, organic agriculture, Wall Street needs to ask better questions and employ relevant metrics.

One way to capture this is to look at the trends in sustainable investing.

A recent article by Joel Makower, the Chairman and Executive Editor of the GreenBiz Group, highlights what is happening:

“The S&P 500 in October had a market capitalization of just over $25 trillion.

There remains a huge gap between interest in sustainable investing and actual investments. A recent white paper (PDF) from Morgan Stanley’s Institute for Sustainable Investing reported that a whopping 85 percent of investors it surveyed said they are interested in sustainable investing, an increase from 71 percent who indicated interest in a similar survey in 2015.

For more than two decades, sustainability reporting has been a relative backwater of corporate finance, of interest primarily to a small niche of socially minded investors. Increasingly, it is expected to approach the importance of financial reporting.

According to the US SIF Foundation’s 2018 Report on US Sustainable, Responsible and Impact Investing Trends, as of year-end 2017, just over $1 out of every $4 under professional management in the United States — $12 trillion or so — was invested according to socially responsible investment strategies.

For good reason. ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) investing is no longer merely a vehicle only for so-called socially responsible investors. Increasingly, the process goes to the heart of investing fundamentals.

According to the B of A report, “ESG is the best measure we’ve found for signaling future risk,” superior to leverage or other risk and quality factors. Moreover, “90 percent of bankruptcies in the S&P 500 between 2005 and 2015 were of companies with poor Environmental and Social scores five years prior to the bankruptcies,” the analysts wrote.

They concluded: “Analyzing financial metrics alone simply won’t suffice anymore.”

Let’s repeat that last statement: Analyzing financial metrics alone simply won’t suffice.

How well does Wall Street know the Chief Sustainability Officers at the publicly traded companies? How well does Wall Street understand the B Corporation certification?

Because if the goal is to fix the broken food system, as stated by the CEO of Mars, the truth is you can’t fix a broken food system with a broken financial system.

September 26 2019

Keynote: A Broken Financial System Won’t Fix Our Broken Food System

Robyn O'Brien Food Allergies, Food Politics, Solutions 0

It’s becoming increasingly obvious that our global food system needs restructuring. Nine plants account for 2/3 of our global food system. Food security is national security, and if one of those crops gets wiped out, we are vulnerable.

But here’s the rub: You can’t fix a broken food system with a broken financial system. And right now, rather than allocate resources into sustainable practices in a meaningful way to combat the climate crisis, public companies are spending $1.1 trillion on share buybacks to appease investors.

If it takes three years to convert farmland from conventional agriculture (a system dependent on a genetically engineered operating system and a portfolio of agrochemicals) to one that is regenerative and organic, how are publicly traded companies expected to do that on the quarterly earnings’ model?

And is Wall Street even asking the right questions?

What would it look like if Mother Nature was a publicly traded company? What would the ticker symbol be for MN Inc?

Take a look and let me know what you think.

April 16 2019

State of the Plate: What We Need to Be Asking Presidential Candidates in 2020

Robyn O'Brien Food Politics 0

About 11 million deaths a year are linked to poor diet around the globe. A new study published in the Lancet shows that poor diet is the leading risk factor for deaths in the majority of the countries of the world.

And it’s hammering Americans. 1 in 3 children here now have at least one of the 4As: allergies, asthma, ADHD and autism. The rates of obesity and diabetes are escalating, and pediatric cancer is impacting the lives of far too many families.

This needs to be a key topic in presidential debates. Candidates will talk about how to pay for health care, but it’s time to talk about how to build a better food system that will keep us healthy in the first place. 800 million people around the globe don’t get enough to eat, and 1.9 billion people weigh too much. Malnutrition is impacting both ends of the spectrum, and it’s impacting our families, our companies, our health care system and our economy.

A report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies states: “Worldwide, malnutrition costs $3.5 trillion annually, with overweight- and obesity-related noncommunicable diseases, such as cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes, adding $2 trillion.”

The U.S. is famous for over-spending on health care. We spend more on disease management than any other country on the planet. Per capita, the U.S. spent close to $10,000. That’s nearly double what other countries spent.

And as for the drug market, which we’ve covered extensively on these pages, due to Mylan’s price-gouging with the Epipen device and the #epigate issue, the U.S. spent $1,443 per capita on pharmaceuticals. The average pharmaceutical spending of all 11 countries came to $749 per capita. Almost have as much.

This is crippling our families, our companies, our productivity and our economy. So why aren’t we talking about this at every presidential debate?

What if instead of political action committees, we had food action committees (FAC)? What if every presidential candidate not only had to answer questions about our health care system but also about our food system?

FACs not PACs

What if we started asking different questions? My friend, Tim Ryan, is doing just that. I actually had no idea he was running for President until he reached out and asked if I would share this video. He was direct: I’m not asking for an endorsement, Robyn, but just help getting this message out.

If you watch the first minute, you will understand why I am sharing it.

In the video, Tim, a dad of three and Congressman in Ohio, takes on Big Food and Big Ag and asks the obvious questions, “Is it important that big agriculture makes a bunch of money or that big pharma makes a bunch of money? Or, is it most important that our citizens are healthy?”

Isn’t it time to use the power of the White House to bring everyone to the table?

The Wall Street Journal is running stories about farm bankruptcies. Why? Median farm income for U.S. farm households was negative $1,548 in 2018. Food security is national security, and negative farm income provides no security.

It is time that our Presidential candidates answer this basic question: What plan do you have in place to rescue the American farmer and build a better food system, one that meets the changing and dynamic needs of 21st century families?

It was Harry Truman who said, “In the long view, no nation is any healthier than its children or more prosperous than its farmers.”

In 2020, every candidate should be asked about the State of the Plate and what their roadmap is to fix food and restore the health of our country. I’m grateful to Tim Ryan for kicking off this critical conversation.

Click here to donate to Tim Ryan’s campaign.

February 15 2019

Beatles Fan? Check Out “The Glyphosate Song”

Robyn O'Brien Food Politics, From Robyn, GMOs 0

I’m a Beatles fan, always have been, thanks to my dad. When I was visiting my parents in Houston over the weekend, I came downstairs Sunday morning to Dad streaming the Beatles station on Spotify.

“Yesterday” has always been one of his favorites! A few years ago, someone created a fun and engaging parody of that same song, only singing about Monsanto’s glyphosate. Sometimes these can be painfully terrible, this one is absolutely awesome.

Enjoy! The lyrics are below!

Glyphosate, all my other troubles, they can wait…
I got problems on my dinner plate…
Because I ate some glyphosate…

Suddenly, I’ve been modified genetically…
There’s a cancer hanging over me…
And glyphosate sterility…

Why they had to grow GMO they wouldn’t say…
I ate something wrong, now my song is glyphosate…

Glyphosate… Not the herbicide it claims to be…
Now there’s Round-Up in my family tree…
Cuz’ they believed in glyphosate…

Why they had to grow GMO I couldn’t say…
Don’t eat something wrong, or your song is glyphosate…

Glyphosate… I got problems on my dinner plate…
(And) all my friends will suffer this same fate…
If they believe in glyphosate…

I have no idea who the original creator is but sure do wish they’d come forward! The only thing we could find was a person or group called OccupyWallets, listed on a blog site as “artist, writer, activist, philosopher, and world traveler.” They might want to add “world changer” to that bio, as this song needs to be heard!

January 20 2019

The State of the Food System, as Shared by a Farmer

Marty Kassowitz Food Politics 0

From Karen King, Mt Citra Farm

It has been a hell of a year for farmers, and I don’t mean that in a good way. A study released last year by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suggested that male farmers in 17 states took their lives at a rate two times higher than the general population in 2012 and 1.5 times higher in 2015. (Click for article) Farmers have a higher suicide rate than any other profession. That was before the trade wars started and the USDA shut down.

Since the article came out, hundreds of dairy farmers have lost their farms due to falling milk prices, and commodity farmers have found themselves in the center of a trade war that has affected their ability to sell their crop and the animals they raised and fed in expectation of selling them to a market they have been able to count on for decades. Now with the government shutdown, their ability to obtain operating loans and obtain data from the USDA for planning is being affected, as are food inspections and many other sectors. Every day, there is new information about how this is affecting our food system. The latest revelation of programs to be affected is the school lunch program, which is funded in the farm bill that is not being implemented due to the shut down.

Winter is the time when farmers would normally obtain operating loans, purchase their seeds, pay their bills from the previous year, and plan for the upcoming growing season. This year, however, with the shut down, USDA services have been dramatically affected, and the recently passed farm bill is on hold, as is the trade war bailout that was promised to farmers. Banks are not lending because the USDA backs farm loans and crop insurance. Farmers cannot plan their upcoming season or purchase the seeds, fertilizer, and pay their bills. If this continues much longer, we are going to see mass foreclosure of farms.

There are only 4 USDA inspected processors in the entire state of Florida for independent farmers; only one of which does not steal or lose meat. We are concerned right now because the USDA inspector we depend on is working unpaid. If she decides to not work or finds other employment, we will not be able to get meats processed. All of the local farmers are in the same boat right now. Chicken can be processed without USDA inspection, but it cannot be sold to distributors or retailers under the limited poultry license. In order for it to be sold and distributed, it has to be done under USDA, which of course, is shut down, and there is only one USDA poultry processor in the entire state of Florida. They are five hours from here.

Thankfully, we are not commodity farmers, nor do we rely on bank loans. My stubbornness and unwillingness to borrow money from the bank and use our land as collateral has kept us from growing our farm and severely limited us, but at the same, our farm is not at risk right now. This year has been tough. The crazy weather and intense heat affected the growth of our crops in the beginning of the season. Other local farmers have experienced wash-outs from the rains. Thankfully, our land is located on high ground and has good drainage so we only lost crops from the heat and not from the rains too. Now that the weather has cooled, produce is growing nicely. But the lack of distribution channels and inability to get into a good local “farmers” market due to market politics has limited the amount of produce and meats we are able to sell, which in turn limits our income and ability to be profitable. I have to have an off-farm job, but at least we still have our farm, while thousands of other farmers are losing theirs. We question every day whether we should continue to grow food for others, since it seems that no matter how hard we try, our expenses are more than our income, and my husband working 80 hours a week for no pay, while putting over 400 miles on his truck each week for one delivery alone, does get daunting. At this point, after we pay our helper, we are paying to feed others.

An average of 3-6 people come to our farm each weekend for produce. I enjoy visiting with our customers and love the conversation. It is wonderful to be speak to others with similar values who appreciate what we do. I am grateful for those we have met and those who have supported us along this journey through the many ups and downs. The personal satisfaction, relationships we have fostered, and knowing what we are doing is very much needed and appreciated by those who we provide food to is what keeps us going. The CSA pays for our helper’s labor, but there is no extra for us or to invest in infrastructure. I love food. I love educating others about it – it gives me purpose – and I understand the state of our food system. That is what has kept us going. There is so much to love about this lifestyle and the impact we have that I don’t want to give it up but the struggle is real, and that part I do not like. Again, at least we are not being forced out like so many other farmers right now, and we have food for ourselves.

We are originally from the Midwest. We moved to Florida in 2011 and came to the Ocala area five years ago to build our farm. Although we were not farmers previously, the community I grew up in was surrounded by farms and was a major exporter of grains. We lived in the center of hurricane during the last farm crisis and it has forever been burned in my mind. As I got older, I began to think about where our food came from and we opened a natural food store in Illinois, then one in southwest Florida. Experiencing the food system through being a grocer in two different states and working with the local farmers was a real eye opener as to the history and the future of our food. Hearing their stories and having experienced shortages due weather related crop failures, collapsed bridges, and other events has made me aware of just how vulnerable our food system is, and I have been able to recognize the direction we were headed. Being educated about the true reality of situation scared us so much that we sold our businesses and bought this farm. I have watched the pieces come together and I have to say, having followed the food system closely for twenty years, what is happening right now, was fully expected, minus a few details and curve balls that I did not see coming. I did not expect a government shutdown to be the nail in the coffin for so many farmers. I expected other things to disrupt our food system, but not this. The impact of losing our farmers and where this crisis may lead us is a sobering thought.

There is a lack of local farms, and our community could not feed itself it had to. Without enough local farms to feed us and relying on imported food, we become immensely vulnerable to natural disasters and political disputes. I don’t know about you, but I found it extremely unnerving to see the empty store shelves and coolers after 8 days without power during hurricane Irma. Walking into Winn Dixie and seeing the empty shelves and coolers, normally filled with food, was as if I had stepped on to the set of a post apocalyptic movie, only it was real, and thankfully, there were no zombies. That alone should have caused enough alarm for people to take seriously the vulnerability of our food system. Our reliance on food being shipped from afar and the necessity of electricity for coolers and storage, not to mention electricity necessary to pump fuel and transport food, is another factor to consider. If you remember, there was also a fuel shortage from the hurricane. Relying on food being transported from far away is like playing Russian Roulette with our sustenance.

I have been involved in the last three farm bills and seen the corruption, and am one of the very few people who has actually read a farm bill. I can assure you that would be shocked to know what and who is funded in the farm bill. It is the single largest piece of legislation enacted by Congress and has a budget of nearly three quarters of a trillion dollars. Many things in the farm bill, in my opinion, should not be in the farm bill. But as I have come to realize, the farm bill is a giant slush fund for corporations and Congress. I was heavily involved 2012 bill when Congress slipped in a rider giving biotech companies immunity if health problems were later found from gmos. After six months, the rider was removed from the final draft, but not without a huge amount of activism and awareness through social media resulting in thousands of phone calls to Congress and protests. This latest farm bill includes funding for blue-green algae, which is used to make jet fuel and is causing havoc in South Florida.

Ultimately, I know the farms in the Midwest are doomed. I have known it for years. When we sold our grocery store nearly six years ago, we went back home for a visit. I was appalled at what I saw and learned. Mining companies had begun buying up thousands of acres of land and stripping the top soil for what they called “white gold”, the main ingredient in fracking; silica. The silica lies under the Midwest farmland. My mother’s community, and where I grew up, in La Salle County, Illinois has named themselves “The Silica Capital of the World”. The large deposit of silica, known as the Saint Peters Sandstone is very shallow and lies under the farmland of four Midwest states; Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa. Millions of pounds of silica are used in every fracking well in the world.

The land must be stripped in order to access the silica. The grain terminals back home, owned by ADM (Archer Daniels Midland), are one of the main exporters along the Illinois River. The grains are loaded onto barges and sent down the Illinois River to the Mississippi River, then out to the Gulf, and shipped throughout the world. Those ports along the Illinois River are now being used to export silica instead. You see, we are on our way to becoming the world’s largest supplier of liquified natural gas (Wall Street Journal). They are now fracking the Gulf along Florida’s coast, and have sold gas well leases along the Atlantic. It is the plan to frack along every coast of the United States. The gas is being sold to China, Germany, and is being used in the space program. The main ingredient; silica is under the Midwest farms. They have to get the farmers off the land to access the silica. We fought the miners and they won. They have contaminated the water in my mother’s community and in Wisconsin and Minnesota. They have been driving farmers out of my community since at least 2012.

Then there’s Brazil. As the US shifts away from an agriculture based economy to a major oil and gas exporter, Brazil is stepping in and taking over as the new agriculture superpower. Brazil has been purchasing major American food manufacturers in a buying spree that began in 2014. Brazilian companies, with loans backed by the Brazilian government, have purchased many of the US beef and poultry operations, as well as Kraft and Heinz, and is attempting to take over Unilever. As the US is putting corn farmers out business so they can strip their land, Brazil has negotiated to become Mexico’s main supplier of corn, and supply China with soy. Brazil and Mexico now supply more orange juice to Florida than Florida farmers do. JBS, Brazil’s major meat exporter, who supplies 60% of the US meat market, was recently found to be exporting rotten beef and poultry. Many government inspectors were fined and terminated, and former president of Brazil was indicted in accepting bribes from JBS.

It just gets worse the deeper you go but I will stop here for now. Take my advice. Plant a garden and get to know your local farmer. At the rate things are going, you are going to need both garden and a relationship with your farmer sooner than we want to believe. I have spent the last four years running around trying to circumvent what is happening right now. I tried to warn our local leaders about future shortages and price spikes, but nobody has taken this seriously, and here we are, about to put the reaming farmers out of business. The privilege we have had in this country of abundance and cheap food is nearing its end.The fruits our labor, beautiful produce, organically grown.

This week we have the following. Everything was grown on our farm and is harvested fresh to order.

Carrots 🥕
Purple Top Turnips & Greens
Lettuce
Kale (Tuscan/ Lacinato & Curly)
Cabbage
Green onions
Jimmy Nardello sweet frying peppers
Chard
Radishes
Broccoli

The Sobering Details Behind the Latest Seed Monopoly Chart

“As four seed companies now control more than 60 percent of the global market, a seed policy expert argues that consolidation poses major risks to our food supply.”
https://civileats.com/2019/01/11/the-sobering-details-behind-the-latest-seed-monopoly-chart/amp/#click=https://t.co/s9bTwMVcNv

Food Politics

Let’s compare

Not just any other pesticides

May I have a volunteer, please?

Abdication nation

FACs not PACs

The Sobering Details Behind the Latest Seed Monopoly Chart

Read More about the state of our food system by clicking on the title of the articles below.