As it rots, it emits methane, a greenhouse gas that for the first 20 years of its life in the atmosphere has 80 times the warming power of carbon dioxide. What’s worse is that while all that edible food percolates in the dump, one in eight American adults is experiencing food insecurity.

But like many modern-day problems, there’s an app for that. 

These apps connect farmers, restaurants, and grocery stores that have extra food that might otherwise go to waste, with folks who bring it back into circulation. “If some of these apps can change how we think about food and can include educational components and resources, this may help their customers spread the word about the importance of reducing food waste,” says Dr. Tammara Soma, director of research for Simon Fraser University’s Food Systems Lab.

Too Good to Go

Too Good to Go’s app is a location-based service free for download in every Canadian province and in 30 cities across the US from New York to Phoenix. “What users in one community will see differs from what someone 40 miles away in another city will see,” says Sarah Soteroff, senior public relations manager for Too Good to Go Canada and the United States.

The app user finds restaurants, grocery stores, bakeries, and donut shops within their own neighborhoods that, at the end of the day, find themselves with a surplus. The retailer may not want to store the food overnight, and, sometimes, food regulations prevent the reheating of day-old restaurant meals that makes those three leftover slices of pizza unsaleable. 

“It’s based on the surplus of that day and what the store has. It’s unpredictable, so we make it a surprise bag,” says Soteroff. It could, for example, be three dozen donuts divided into four to a bag. Too Good to Go makes $1.99 from the purchase of each bag, and it recommends bags sell for between $3.99 and $9.99. The products in the bag are usually, according to Soteroff, discounted by a third of the original price. 

The app keeps track of how much money the user has saved by buying food destined for the landfill as compared to what it would cost at full price. “Apps like these,” says Soma, “may help restaurants reduce the amount of food that is wasted at the end of the day, especially when people are motivated by cheaper prices.”

The app launched in Denmark in 2016, and it now has 90 million users globally. It has saved American consumers an estimated $127 million on food they otherwise would have bought at full price, and it has earned $41 million for businesses that otherwise would have tossed food away. 

Every time a surprise bag is sold, 2.5 kilograms of Co2 equivalent (Co2e) is diverted from the landfill and atmosphere, with approximately 35 million kg of Co2e diverted in the US. The app personalizes this for the user, by providing a running tally of the CO2e they’ve kept out of the landfill through the purchase of surprise bags and, subsequently, the difference they’ve individually made to global warming. 

Food Rescue US

In 2011, one in seven Connecticut households was experiencing food insecurity, while more than 36 million tons of food was being tossed out across the US. This didn’t make sense to Jeff Schacher, a software developer, and Kevin Mullins, a local pastor, from Fairfax County, Connecticut. They founded Community Plates (now Food Rescue US) and created a model of food rescue that depicts the true meaning of the adage “waste not, want not.”

“We were born out of a problem and a solution,” says James Hart, development director for Food Rescue US.

Businesses agree to donate food, and not-for-profit social service organizations such as shelters, soup kitchens, and food pantries agree to take it. The app’s secret to success is the volunteers who sign up to rescue food and deliver it to the organizations in need. The app gives detailed instructions on where to pick up the food and where to take it. Anyone can sign into the app and claim a food recovery in their area.

For Jenna von Elling, a parent volunteer at Luther Jackson Middle School in Falls Church Virginia, Food Rescue US has made a huge difference to her school community. “At the start of the pandemic, we wondered how we were going to keep the school pantry stocked for families,” she says. After a quick Google search, she discovered Food Rescue US and the pantry has not been without food since.

Twice a week, von Elling and her fellow food rescuers fill two SUVs full of food they claim and recover from the local Target grocery store. What they bring back to the school pantry includes produce that is nearing the end of its grocery store shelf life but is still edible. There are also chicken breasts and other meat nearing best-before dates to boxes of diapers that are damaged. 

Since its founding, the organization has expanded to 23 states, provided 152 million meals to those in need, kept 183 million pounds of excess food out of landfills, and boasts 20,000 volunteer food rescues.

Misfits Market

Misfits tackles food loss at the beginning of its life cycle, including, what Rose Hartley, head of sustainability for Misfits, calls “cosmetically challenged” produce. 

“What we have been hearing from farmers,” she says, “is that they need an outlet to be able to sell this produce.” 

Misfits buys the twisted zucchini, the sunburnt cauliflower, and the pepper that’s grown into a cylinder instead of a bell, and makes the produce available via the app in the form of a food box delivered directly to the user’s doorstep. Subscribers can expect a 30-percent savings compared to food bought at the grocery store.

Sign into the app, anywhere in the contiguous US, and subscribe to a weekly or bi-weekly box, or choose a flex plan to shop as needed. Boxes also contain rejected shelf products—maybe the packaging is crinkled, or the printing of the label is slightly off-center, and, therefore, rejected by the store.

“We are trying to fill that gap that buyers back out of,” says Hartley. “The hope and the dream is that we create a different conception of what good food looks like.”

She admits though that change of this scale could take decades. In the meantime, Misfits continues to recover unwanted food. In 2023, it prevented 26, 444,000 pounds of food from going to waste across the US.

The post On the Ground With Apps Preventing Food Waste appeared first on Modern Farmer.

If you live anywhere in or near suburban or urban America, chances are you have personally encountered—or at least heard about—sightings of carnivorous mammals such as coyotes and bears in your neighborhood. As we take over more of their territory, they enter ours, often looking for food. 

The starkest evidence of unwanted human-wildlife interactions happens on our roadways. Every year in the US, vehicle-animal collisions result in 200 or so human fatalities, millions of animal fatalities, tens of thousands of injuries, and billions of dollars in damage to cars and other property. 

That’s just the roads. There are also broader issues of connectivity. While there are large swaths of protected wildlands across the country dedicated to keeping grizzlies, wolves, pronghorn, wild cats, and other large animals safe, they are often isolated in those protective zones, unable to reach other individual animals or packs in other protected areas, leaving these groups vulnerable to inbreeding, not to mention stymieing their natural rhythms of hunting and migration. 

A bipartisan infrastructure bill passed in 2021 contained $350 million for wildlife road crossings. The structures are built under or over roads, with fencing that guides animals to safety, and they are thought to reduce wildlife-car run-ins by up to 97 percent. 

These crossings, constructed over or under human-made incursions in the landscape like roads, can include underpass tunnels or viaducts for mammals and amphibians of all sizes, or bridges, generally for larger mammals. These crossings provide safety and connection for animals whose habitats have been fragmented by roads and buildings. (The largest one ever made is currently being constructed in California. See its progress here). 

Now, a network of activists and policy makers are working to both help heal and create links between wild areas across the US for commuting critters, and ease animals’ way under and over major roads that cut through their ranges. 

Working for wolves

“We are really lucky to have a partner in North Carolina’s Department of Transportation,” says Will Harlan, southeast director and senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity. “The team there understands that building wildlife corridors across Highway 64 will potentially save the species, help other wild animals, and prevent human death and property loss.” 

There are fewer than 25 red wolves in the wild right now, and Harlan says that five have died in the past year along that stretch of highway, which is the longest in the state, running from 604 miles from the Tennessee state line to the Outer Banks. Red wolves used to range from Texas to New York. Today, the only place red wolves still exist in the wild is in the 3,200-square-mile Abermarle Peninsula in North Carolina. 

“In North Carolina, we have a super high rate of vehicle accidents, and seven percent of all road accidents are wildlife collisions,” he says.In 2010, the Department of Transportation considered widening the highway; it identified five major animal crossing areas. Harlan is currently in the midst of a major fund-raising effort to get the crossings built, with the goal of raising $2 million by August 1. 

“Wolves are my personal priority, but, of cours,e I will be thrilled to see other species like [the] 700-pound black bear, rare snakes and turtles, beavers, bobcats ,and dozens of others able to safely get across the road.”

Recreating landscape links

Grizzly bears, wolverines, lynx, Mexican wolves, and bull trout are particularly vulnerable to death or extreme isolation due to the loss of natural links between landscape areas in the Northern Rockies, New Mexico and Arizona, where WildEarth Guardians focuses its efforts on restoration and safety. 

“That often means protecting important areas from logging projects and pushing the agency to remove roads and motorized trails instead of building and punching in new ones.” says Adam Rissien, rewilding manager with WildEarth Guardians. 

This kind of work often requires the covert monitoring of trails. Last winter, WildEarth discovered illegal activity in Northern Idaho’s Kaniksu region with the help of LightHawk, a nonprofit conservation aviation organization that sponsored a monitoring flight. Using aircraft as an asset in conservation has been on the rise, especially with volunteer-based groups such as LightHawk, which taps into its network of more than 300 pilots who donate expertise, time, aircraft, and fuel to support investigative flight campaigns with organizations like WildEarth. 

Volunteers also contributed photographs documenting over-snow-vehicle tracks in essential habitat for wolverines, grizzly bears, lynx, and mountain goats. This kind of disturbance can imperil the viability of all of these species, especially as many will abandon or move dens, reducing reproductive success. 

WildEarth is currently in the process of “evaluating the potential for a lawsuit to protect the habitats,” says Rissien. 

The organization has also moved to challenge a Forest Service logging project outside of Yellowstone National Park on the Custer-Gallatin National Forest that it says will reduce habitat security for grizzly bears. Last year, 50 grizzly bears died within the natural park. If the project goes through, more than six square miles will be clear-cut, and another six square miles of mature forests will be logged. 

“The Yellowstone grizzlies need more habitat to recover, not less,” says Rissien. 

Using science to drive policy 

Development isn’t the only foe of wildlife safety. Climate change, and the manner in which it is affecting where animals can and want to live, is intensifying the challenges faced by wildlife. 

“Protecting and improving wildlife connectivity will help us fight against the extinction and climate crisis,” says Tiffany Yap, PhD, senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity’s Urban Wildlands Program. “As climate change intensifies and resources on the landscape shift, connectivity will give wildlife a chance to find the resources they need to survive and keep our ecosystems healthy.” 

Enhancing connectivity across roads and through landscapes is most effectively accomplished through science-driven policy, says Yap. 

In 2022, the Center co-sponsored AB 2244, the Safe Roads and Wildlife Protection Act with the Wildlands Network. California Governor Gavin Newsom signed the act into law, which received bipartisan support and requires Caltrans to identify barriers to wildlife on roads and build crossing structures when building or improving roadways. 

The center also co-sponsored AB 1889, aka the Room to Roam Act with the Wildlands Network, which aims to reconnect fragmented areas for wide-ranging pumas and slow-moving newts. 

“Overdevelopment and careless development along with our roads have fractured the habitat so much that animals are unable to find food, shelter, and unrelated mates,” says Yap. “This act requires local governments to consider and minimize impact to wildlife movement and habitat connectivity as part of the conservation element of their general plan.”

The legislation encourages wildlife-friendly fencing, reduced light pollution, and the planting of drought-resistant native plants that will attract native pollinators. (Wildlife-friendly fencing is highly visible to animals and birds and allows for the safe passage of animals over or under fences; typically, this means a 40-inch-tall fence with a minimum of 12 inches spacing between wires. Light pollution can be reduced by minimizing light installations, using LED lights, pointing lights downward, and using shades or covers on lights.) 

“By keeping ecosystems healthy, we can better maintain the co-benefits people receive from them, like clean air and water, buffers from extreme weather, crop pollinators like bees and pest control like bats, which hunt crop-eating insects,” says Yap. 

The post On The Ground With Groups Creating Wildlife Corridors appeared first on Modern Farmer.

That’s 17 million households experiencing food insecurity in a country that throws out more food than any other country in the world—120 billion pounds every year, equivalent to almost 40 percent of the entire US food supply. That’s 325 pounds of wasted food per person.

In other words, no one in the US should be going hungry. There is plenty of food to go around. It’s just a matter of getting it to hungry people before it gets to the dump to rot and, in the process, produces large quantities of methane that contributes an estimated eight percent to global carbon emissions. 

While we all wait (not holding our breath) for the government to creak into action, a network of community activists has emerged in small towns and huge cities alike to help get food to the people who most need it. Every community has different needs, and there is no one-size-fits-all solution, which makes this highly individualized approach more effective than many of the larger-scale, generic, government-sponsored options out there. 

Seacoast Fridge partners with local farms and food trucks

“A colleague told me about the growth of community fridges that offer free food to anyone who needs it, no questions asked,” says Whitney Blethen, recalling the early months of the pandemic, when it was becoming increasingly clear that people were getting hungrier and resources were getting leaner. “I work in a nonprofit that combats childhood hunger, and I’m married to a chef, so it felt like a natural outgrowth.”

Together with Katie Guay and Dave Vargas, Blethen founded the Seacoast Fridge in Kittery, Maine in 2021. 

“We discovered that the Good Samaritan Food Donation Act protects people operating free fridges, which made us feel like there was no risk and only benefits,” says Blethen. 

They reached out to the local rotary club so that they could “piggyback” on their general liability insurance, which covered a wide range of potential injuries or accidents that could occur when picking up or delivering food. Eventually, they partnered with Red’s Good Vibes, a free mobile food truck and nonprofit based in Portsmouth, N.H., which aligns with their mission and has expanded their reach.

“That has been a game changer,” says Blethen. “They already had a network of farms, and because we all have backgrounds in food safety and liability, we began labeling foods early on with ingredients and use-by dates to prevent any issues.” 

In the beginning, their one fridge would be emptied in about 72 hours. Now, they have plans for 24 fridges this year, with turnovers currently at up to four times per day per fridge. Their mission has grown along with the size of their operation, and it now includes 150 volunteers. They’ve also started food rescue programs with farms and restaurants, where “some farms allow CSA members to add $5 to their order. They use that to fund additional drop-offs for us.”

In addition to the fresh food, Seacoast offers seasonally appropriate pantry items, from sunblock and tick spray to socks and gloves. 

“We also work with our local Land Trust, and they have kids tending gardens,” says Blethen. “All of the food then gets donated to fridges or pantries. It’s great for everyone, including the kids.”

To learn more, donate or find a free fridge in Maine or New Hampshire, follow Seacoast on Instagram at @seacoastfridge. 

Sweet Tooth Community Fridge takes advantage of tax credits to pay farmers

“In Iowa, our legislature is hostile to poor people,” says Monika Owczarski. “With the city doing nothing substantial to fight poverty and our own situation, we knew we had to do something.”

Starting in 2016, Owczarski operated a pop-up food stand near her urban farm, Sweet Tooth Farm, in Des Moines. As soon as she could get authorized, she began accepting food stamps. During the pandemic, Owczarski saw a noticeable increase in need and a decrease in formal support. Then, in 2021, the city changed the rules about farming and Owczarski went from having more than an acre in production to having about three city blocks.

“We were left with one-tenth of the space, which meant we couldn’t produce enough for our restaurant clients and our weekly CSA,” says Owczarski. “Then, a soup kitchen near us got shut down.” That was the last straw for Owczarski. 

She reached out to other nonprofits, farmers and food organizations and began giving out free food to anyone who wanted it, no questions asked, with one fridge. It was the first fridge in the state. And it actually helps Owczarski pay the bills after her CSA and farming model got turned upside down.

“The [Farm to Food Donation Tax Credit] program pays farmers for the food they donate,” she explains, adding that they also get donations from restaurants, caterers and others with an excess of food that might otherwise get tossed in the landfill.

Now, the network has 16 fridges, but it is totally decentralized.

“In the last 30 days alone, we have rescued 200,000 pounds of food that would have otherwise been thrown out,” says Owczarski. “Every neighborhood’s needs are different, with some needing no pork for religious reasons and others needing more of one thing or another just because of the community they’re serving.”

The biggest challenge, says Owczarski, has been the climate. 

“We had to figure out a way to prevent the fridges from shorting out on days that are -40 degrees,” says Owczarski. “We insulate the fridges, build shelters and even have safe fireproof infrared heaters that turn on when the temperature gets below a certain threshold.”

To learn more, donate and find fridges around Des Moines, follow @sweetthoothfarmdscm on Instagram. 

Free Food Fridge looks to the nonprofit world 

Jammella Anderson founded Free Food Fridge Albany during the pandemic.

“Access to fresh foods and produce has been an issue for years in Albany and beyond because of structural racism and redlining,” says Anderson. “The pandemic made that worse for everyone, and people who were managing to get by before but were residing on an income cliff suddenly found themselves without options during the pandemic.”

If someone makes just $10 above the cutoff for receiving SNAP or other income-based benefits, they are out of luck, they explain. That means “a lot of people going hungry,” says Anderson. 

Seeing what was happening in Albany, the part-time doula and yoga instructor went into action, putting out a call to followers on Instagram and snagging a free fridge from Lowe’s and a location for their first fridge on Elm Street in Albany in the process. 

Free Food Fridge has grown considerably since 2020, and by the end of the summer, there will be 21 fridges around Albany. Donations roll in from individuals and farmers. Some contributions are regular, others are one-time only, some are in the form of food and others are in the form of money. 

“Our next phase is officially becoming a nonprofit because we are volunteer run and creating a mobile grocery that can shuttle around Albany, travel to all of our fridge locations and serve as a pop-up at farmers markets and food justice organizations,” says Anderson. 

They are also trying to change the way we discuss food access. 

“You can’t say that a hungry person looks like this or underserved communities look like that,” says Anderson. “We need to change that dialogue because, just like there isn’t one solution to hunger, there isn’t one type of hungry person or underserved community.”

To learn more, donate and find fridges in Albany, follow Free Food Fridge Albany on Instagram. 

RVA Community Fridge for Kids gathers on social media 

“I grew up with community fridges in New Orleans, but that wasn’t really done here,” says RVA Community Fridges founder Taylor Scott. “And I saw SNAP Benefits getting cut in Richmond, and all of these historically redlined areas without access to a grocery store or other resources, and I knew I had to do something.”

The project started small, as a literal overgrowth of tomatoes threatened to take over her apartment during the pandemic. She looked for a community fridge to which to donate her bounty, in the hopes that her fresh-grown produce could help provide fresh produce to underserved areas. 

But Scott couldn’t find any community fridges. She reached out to a neighborhood bakery in Church Hill and it agreed to host a fridge. It went up in January 2021. “As soon as we filled it, it would empty out,” says Scott. “Now, we have 14 fridges, and the entire community is involved. We have more than 300 volunteers helping us buy food and operate, not counting people who just drop stuff off at fridges.”

Scott communicates with the volunteers, farms, caterers and chefs who donate food that might otherwise go to the landfill through the communication platform Discord and the social media groups she has set up. Their fridges and the pantries with household goods attached sometimes empty out in as little as 30 minutes. 

“I love seeing how these fridges are bringing our community together,” says Scott. “Some neighborhoods are in absolute food deserts, and raising awareness among people in Richmond who wouldn’t otherwise realize what has been going on in these neighborhoods, while feeding people and fighting food waste, has been incredible.”

Scott says the group is in the process of applying to be an official nonprofit. To learn more, donate and find a fridge, follow RVA Community Fridges on Instagram. 

The post On the Ground With the Volunteers Running Community Fridges appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Sam Rudman, one of the first-year farmers of Friends Farm in Lafayette, Colorado, says covering a field with fertilizer shortly before 60-miles-per-hour winds started up was definitely one of his many “rookie mistakes” as a new farmer. He clearly remembers the day in February 2024 when winds threatened to blow away hundreds of dollars in supplies and hours of hard work as a big wakeup call. 

“We got lucky,” he laughs. “And that is going to be our strategy for the rest of the year going forward, to remain lucky in regards to Mother Nature.”

But the Friends Farm team isn’t counting on luck alone. The three team members—Rudman, Oliver Aurand and Kevin Reiss, who met in 2023 on a nearby farm—bring backgrounds in soil science, anthropology and just over a decade of combined field hand experience. They have also tapped into an innovative community network to find land and mentorship. “Land access is the top challenge cited by current farmers, aspiring farmers and those who have stopped farming,” writes the National Young Farmers Coalition in a 2022 report.

Friends Farm is not technically located on agricultural land. The two-acre vegetable operation is owned by Nyland Cohousing Community, a 42-house community established with the aim of creating connection and supporting sustainable ideals. A former member started the farm a decade ago but became disillusioned by the inability to make a profit. In 2023, Waves of Grain Food Coop leased the land to continue the organic farm in support of its mission to provide fresh and affordable produce to communities along the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains. 

“Solo full-time farming two acres is an insane thing to do,” says Waves of Grain co-owner Red Clifford , especially while also running a coop. Around that time, Clifford learned of the Friend Farm crew, who were looking for land to farm at the same time Clifford was trying to find help.

It was a serendipitous moment that helped inspire Waves of Grain to use its resources to establish an incubator farm. The coop continued to lease the acreage from the cohousing community and subsidized rent for Friends Farm. It would also help sell a portion of the farm’s produce at regional farmers markets.

Waves of Grain also started mentoring the new farmers, sharing insights about the particularities of the land, preparing the produce for market and helping build the relationship with Nyland residents. The farmers appreciate the practical knowledge Clifford shares from their own mistakes the previous season.

Waves of Grain also hopes to supplement some of the supply chain aspects of a farmer’s job, so the farmers can focus more on farming. During the growing season, a farmer is often focused on the small space of ground before them. Their “view is a 36-inch bubble,” says Clifford. “It’s like basically where they’re looking on the ground to weed.” So far this season, Friends Farm has had particular success selling its salad greens and hakurei turnips.

But Friends Farm was also founded on the idea that farming is about more than cultivating vegetables. Aurand’s background in anthropology helped create a focus on nurturing community. So far this season, the farm has hosted nine classes covering topics such as edible landscaping and native gardening as well as community farm days, during which Nyland residents and others help work the farm and learn about growing food. In addition, the farm provides a CSA program to 20 of the Nyland residents.

Friends Farm has thrived because of help from its community, but even with support, it has learned that farming always comes with challenges. The farmers were spreading fertilizer on that windy day in February to amend a clay soil that had been compacted by years of heavy machinery use. A large weed seed bank caused problems in past years, such as the bindweed that consistently outcompetes crops. And the farm relies on municipal water for much of the season, resulting in water bills in the thousands of dollars, says Rudman.

“The concerns are not that you’re going to do a bad job and you’re going to run a bad farm,” he says. “It’s that things can go wrong. The weather can screw you over. Small mistakes can be very costly.”

The learning curve remains a challenge, the farmers agree. So far this year, they’ve explored more efficient ways to run the farm and fine-tuned their use of tools such as the Jang seeder, which helps speed up and space out seeds. They’ve also tried relay cropping experiments such as planting tomatoes and peppers before the other was finished growing to help optimize their planting space. Their efforts have yielded varying degrees of success. They consider the support from Waves of Grain and Nyland a leg up. Just having the buildings and irrigation set up was helpful, says Rudman. And Nyland residents have often helped fix problems with the water system.

The relationship between Nyland, Waves of Grain and Friends Farm works because of its reciprocal model, says Clifford. Nyland exchanges its land for a secure food source, and Waves of Grain provides its resources for a supply of food today and an investment to support the farming community and the food they will grow into the future.

This story is part of our Future Farmers series, highlighting the joys and hurdles of a career in agriculture today. You can read more of this series here. 

The post Young Farmers Dig Into Land appeared first on Modern Farmer.

That’s a tall order. In 2021, approximately 33.8 million Americans were living in food-insecure households and approximately 600,000 Americans died annually from diet-related disease.

But across North America is a growing cohort of hospitals taking on the challenge and turning hospital food from a blob of green Jell-O to a fresh and tasty meal. Working with FIM, hospitals are filling doctor referrals for farm-share boxes of fresh produce and supplying hospital kitchens with organically grown crops. 

These farms are not simply growing kale. They are producing medicine. 

BMC’s Power Plant Farm

At Boston Medical Center (BMC), sustainability matters. On the roof of BMC’s natural gas-powered heat and electrical power plant, there is a 2,658-square-foot outdoor container farm, aptly named Power Plant Farm. Growing more than 30 varieties of crops, including cucumbers, peppers, tomatoes, squash, herbs and leafy greens, the farm harvested 4,000 pounds of organically grown produce last year.

“[This] represents a more holistic approach to care,” says Sarah Hastings, farm manager. “We are starting from square one, making the message clear that fresh foods help us heal and maintain our well-being.” 

The Preventive Food Pantry is the anchor of BMC’s FIM initiative. “We have more than 1,600 families, who receive about four days worth of food with each visit,” says Hastings. Used by cancer patients, those with heart disease, diabetes or other chronic health conditions, they are referred to the food pantry by their primary caregivers, who write prescriptions for foods promoting physical health, recovery from illness or as a preventative for future health issues. 

Throughout the hospital, patients and families are continually connected to the farm, reinforcing the message that healthy food matters. A large glass window in the waiting area of one of BMC’s buildings allows patients and their families to see the farm. “There is an especially heartwarming connection when patients or their families make it down to the farmer’s market in the foyer after observing the crops from the waiting area,” says Hastings. The farmer’s market operates once a week, with the produce sold at subsidized prices to staff, patients and their families. 

BMC’s Teaching Kitchen also incorporates farm produce into recipe tutorials for patients and their families to help them learn healthy ways of preparing food. For example, patients can attend a class at the Teaching Kitchen before bariatric surgery to help them learn simple ways to prepare food that will help their stomachs heal post-surgery and prevent nutritional deficiencies. 

“The farm brings a lot of excitement to the hospital,” says Hastings. 

The Farm at Trinity Health Ann Arbor

Established in 2010, the Farm at Trinity Health Ann Arbor in Ypsilanti, MI is one of the oldest hospital farms in the US. Leaders of Ann Arbor hospital, according to farm manager Jae Gerhart, started to see an increased rate of diet-related chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease, cancer and diabetes. They decided to use a small portion of the hospital campus to grow nutritional food and act as a community and educational resource geared towards disease prevention. The farm sits on five acres, four of which are used as community gardens or for events. One acre produces food that is designated for FIM’s programs. 

During the growing season, the farm hosts school field trips and summer camps for children aged four to 10. There is a farm-share box program that runs for 36 weeks over the growing season, for which anyone can sign up. For those struggling to afford fresh food, there is the option to sign up for the Farm Share Assistance Program or the Produce Prescription program at no cost. 

“Doctors love the program,” says Gerhart. “More and more, they are asking those social needs questions at a patient’s appointment.”

Gerhart says FIM and farm programs can reduce overall health-care costs associated with diet-related health conditions. “More and more data supports that,” she says.

Researchers at the FIM Institute at Tufts University concur. A 2023 report suggests that FIM interventions, such as medically tailored meals, could eliminate 1.6 million hospitalizations in the US annually and save $13.6 billion in health-care costs per year. Traditionally, individuals experiencing food insecurity spend an extra $1,800 per year in health-care expenditures. Farm share assistance programs could help reduce those costs. 

Salish Sea Regenerative Urban Farm

Changing the paradigm that hospital food has to be mushed peas and frozen carrots, the seven-acre Salish Sea Regenerative Urban Farm (SSRUF) sold organically grown cucumbers, tomatoes and 1,000 pounds of potatoes to British Columbia’s Sechelt Regional Hospital in 2023.

The American Medical Association has long advocated for adding a variety of healthy food choices, including plant-based meals and foods low in fat, sodium and added sugars to hospital menus to assist in better outcomes for patients.

But providing better hospital meals is not as simple as it sounds. The cost of local, sustainably grown foods can be more expensive than tins of marinara sauce or bags of frozen peas, especially for small hospitals with limited budgets. Large hospitals prepare food for hundreds of patients daily, with little turnaround time between breakfast, lunch and dinner. It takes time to chop, wash and cook fresh produce as opposed to opening and plating a bag of prepared salad mix. Many hospitals also have contracts with outside vendors, which makes it hard to incorporate other sources.

The SSRUF was aware of all of these concerns when it approached the small 38-bed hospital with its offer to sell its organically grown food from a farm 30 yards away from the hospital’s kitchen. But, according to Dave Ryan, a board member for the farm society, both the hospital and the regional health authority were very receptive. 

Surveys of the kitchen and care staff at the hospital were done to gauge the response of having local produce available to patients. “The kitchen staff were really excited,” says Barbara Seed, another board member of the farm society. 

The head of hospital food services also did a waste audit with preliminary results indicating that, when the fresh produce was added to meal trays, less food was thrown away. More audits will be needed to provide reliable data, but SSRUF is positive that it will concur with them about the benefits of farm to hospital food.

“It’s obvious,” says Ryan, “where nutrient-dense quality food should be—in a hospital where people have metabolic issues and should be served nutritious food to help recover.” 

The post On the Ground With the Farms Feeding Hospitals and Their Patients appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, the class of chemicals more commonly known as PFAS, are everywhere, not just in the world of agriculture. Since the 1940s, chemical companies such as Chemours, DuPont and 3M have developed more than 14,000 PFAS compounds for use in products as varied as nonstick cookware, electric-vehicle batteries and refrigerators. Because all PFAS contain bonds between carbon and fluorine, among the hardest to break in chemistry, they’ve earned the moniker “forever chemicals” for their remarkable persistence in the environment.

The problems with PFAS are daunting, but people are now mobilizing to reduce the dangers they pose. At the federal level, the EPA recently enacted its first enforceable limits for six PFAS in drinking water, as well as placed two PFAS on the list of hazardous substances covered by the Superfund law. And in communities across the country, researchers and local officials are testing out innovative approaches.

Beth Valentine’s inaugural fund

The leading edge of state-level responses to agricultural PFAS can be found in Maine. In 2022, its legislature became the first in the US to ban the field spreading of PFAS-containing sludge, and earlier this year, its Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry opened applications for the country’s first fund to help farmers deal with PFAS pollution on their land—with $65 million allocated so far.

“There are still many unknowns concerning how PFAS travel through [different substances] and to what extent they are taken up in various food products,” says Beth Valentine, the fund’s director. Because of this uncertainty, Valentine says farmers need time to identify and implement strategies to deal with PFAS.

The bulk of the fund will give farmers financial and technical backing as they plan for changes in their business. About $20 million is also set aside to purchase and manage land that’s too contaminated to work, with the goal of eventually making it suitable for farming again.

While the fund’s initial allocation is expected to last for five years, Valentine says it will seek additional money from state and federal governments, as well as through litigation against PFAS manufacturers, for ongoing operation. “PFAS are nicknamed ‘forever chemicals,’” she say. “Agricultural producers are likely to need support for years to come.”

Jessica Ray’s selective carbon

Scientists know that one widely available technology is pretty good at removing PFAS: activated carbon, a processed charcoal that captures chemicals in countless tiny pores. The issue, says civil and environmental engineer Jessica Ray with the University of Washington, is that activated carbon is even better at removing everything else.

Because PFAS chemicals are usually present at much lower concentrations in wastewater than other pollutants such as drugs and pesticides, Ray explains, those more common contaminants can fill up activated carbon’s filtration capacity first. She and her colleagues have thus been working on a way to make carbon choosier.

Ray describes her approach as “kind of a lock-and-key mechanism for PFAS removal, where we’re building the lock and the PFAS molecule is the key.” She allows a reusable plastic polymer to form around a specific PFAS in the lab, then washes away the chemical, leaving behind microscopic impressions in the polymer like footprints in wet concrete. When the polymer is joined to activated carbon, its tailor-made molecular slots filter out PFAS while snubbing other pollutants.

After proving the concept in a paper published last year, Ray hopes to develop a polymer that targets the six PFAS the EPA now regulates in drinking water. That solution could then be layered atop existing activated carbon filters, making it easier to adopt at scale.

Susie Dai’s friendly fungi

“Human beings are good at producing many new problems,” says Susie Dai about the spread of PFAS. As the associate professor of environmental sciences at Texas A&M University points out, however, the most pernicious part of PFAS chemistry—the “forever” carbon-fluorine bond—is also produced in nature, as part of the toxins made by a handful of mostly tropical plants.

Since those bonds are mirrored in nature, a natural solution also exists to break them, through the decomposing powers of bacteria and fungi. As described in a 2022 paper, Dai’s team took corn harvest wastes and processed them into a material that both filtered PFAS from wastewater and provided a substrate for Irpex lacteus, a fungus also called white rot, which is typically found on hardwoods. After adding PFAS to the medium and letting the fungus grow for two weeks, Dai confirmed that it had started to break down the pollutants. 

But the process needs to happen at a much greater scale and speed to deal with the ubiquitous PFAS pollution introduced by humanity. Going forward, Dai plans to study the biological mechanisms white rot uses to destroy PFAS, with the goal of picking up the pace. “We’re adding an acceleration pedal,” she says. 

An online community 

Today, nearly all Americans have measurable PFAS levels in their blood.

“We’ve all been signed up for the study without our consent,” says Laurel Schaider, PhD, senior scientist at the Silent Spring Institute, a nonprofit research organization dedicated to understanding the links between chemical exposures and health. “We’re all part of this.” 

PFAS-REACH (Research, Education and Action for Community Health) is a collaboration between research partners Silent Spring Institute, Northeastern University and Michigan State University, and community partners Testing for Pease, Slingshot and the Massachusetts Breast Cancer Coalition. The initiative has developed the PFAS Exchange, a free resource for communities affected by PFAS and anyone who wants to learn more about the chemicals.

Among the site’s resources is the Connecting Communities map, led by the PFAS Project Lab. The map is an ArcGIS tool that allows people to see locations of known PFAS contamination, sites of presumed contamination, which states have passed PFAS regulations and conducted testing, locations of health and exposure studies as well as regional advocacy with whom people can connect. 

PFAS Exchange also features the What’s My Exposure? tool. This is for people who have had their water or blood tested for PFAS. Schaider says it’s important to give people not only results but also enough context to understand what those results mean. The What’s My Exposure? tool allows people to enter in their test results and see how they compare to other people and areas.

“They can understand what their results mean—as well as anyone can—and they feel empowered to take action.”

This story is part of our ongoing PFAS series, The PFAS Problem: Demystifying ‘Forever Chemicals’

The post On the Ground with Initiatives Responding to PFAS appeared first on Modern Farmer.

In part, this is due to the dearth of American-made tools. While John Deere and some other tractor brands are manufactured in the US, their tractors are notoriously expensive. And for many years, farmers were obligated to buy only licensed parts and use only certified repair shops to work on their equipment. For cash-strapped farmers, the inability to service their own equipment was often a crushing financial blow. Although there have recently been reforms to this policy because of “right-to repair” advocacy, many farmers are still distrustful of these large manufacturers. There are also precious few locally made options for hand tools that are more suited to a homestead or small human-scale farm. 

If we want a future with more farmers, more fresh, healthy food and stronger local economies, we need infrastructure that supports small growers. Locally made tools, from hoes to tractors, are an important part of that support system and confer many of the same advantages as locally grown food. Meet three US-based toolmakers who want to change the landscape of tool buying and making to better support their local farmers and communities.

Conor Crickmore, Neversink Tools, Claryville, NY

Conor Crickmore is a farmer, first and foremost. At Neversink Farm, he works 1.3 acres of highly productive organic vegetables with help from a handful of part-time employees. Many folks know Crickmorefrom his popular series of farming instructional videos. These videos grew out of projects that were started for fun and, eventually, spurred on by positive feedback, grew into extensive informational courses. Crickmore described a similarly organic progression when establishing his tool business, which started in his garage. “On my farm, there were just certain tools we needed. We were not intending to start a business; we just wanted to cover the costs of making them,” he says. But demand for his tools was high and, six years later, Neversink tools employs seven people in a shop outfitted with specialized equipment such as composite molds and a metal-stamping setup. 

Because Neversink Tools manufactures the tools it sells, it has e the flexibility to constantly tinker with design and update tools quickly. One of its most popular tools, the patented Mutineer hoe, features a system of interchangeable heads so farmers can choose the one best suited to cultivate in every condition. The lightweight heads can be carried on a carabiner, making it ideal for human-scale farms. 

The Neversink team focuses on improving or upgrading existing tools or making specialized tools that fill a need on small intensive-production farms. “If we are going to make something that’s already out there, we are solving a problem. We don’t make something just because.”

All the work at Neversink Farm is guided by the ethos of constant improvement. There is a beautiful optimism in all of its content that tells farmers that they, too, can be successful and run a profitable business. “Farmers are creating incredible businesses and complicated infrastructures that support their hard work,” says Crickmore. 

Seth Pauley, Red Pig Tools, West Linn, OR

Pauley is a blacksmith who forges his tools with an anvil and hammer, using equal parts artistry and strength. Pauley makes all the Red Pig products by hand with help from a couple of apprentices who are learning the art of smithing. Many of the designs are taken from old-world tools that are hundreds or thousands of years old, although Pauley also makes custom orders upon request.

Red Pig tools are designed to withstand the hard work of producing food. Handles for its hoes and other tools can be chosen to match the user’s height and can be easily replaced. Pauley hopes to disrupt the disposable consumer mindset and empower folks to service their own tools and take pride in artfully made objects, just as they take pride in their gardens. He recognizes that his tools are more expensive than the same item from a box store, but he says that, over time, the value is greater. “You can get a good tool that can last you a lifetime… You can sharpen it. You may even learn to use a welding rig… There’s a lot of things you can learn to do to make a good tool last.” To support folks along this journey, Pauley makes himself available for phone calls and shop visits and tirelessly educates folks at garden shows and other venues.

He emphasizes that well-designed, well-built hand tools can help reduce the barrier to entry for small farmers, for whom tractors and power equipment can be financially out of reach. “You don’t have to be limited by the cost of the equipment,” he says. “You don’t have to play the same game as the bigger farms.” 

He, too, is optimistic about the future of sustainable farming. “I am seeing a lot of younger people who are more interested in growing things and doing something outside of a traditional 9-5 office job,” says Pauley. “There’s a lot of people who are interested in doing things or making things and that’s only gaining traction.” 

Horace Green, Ronnie Baugh Tractors, Paint Rock, AL

At 89 years old, Horace Green sees his tool company as a part of a wider picture that can help bring back small, productive rural economies. Growing up in rural Alabama, Green remembers how the transition from mule to mechanization helped small farmers. But he also keenly recalls how the “go big or go home” era of ag policy decimated rural communities. He emphasizes finding the right tool for the right scale. Ronnie Baugh offers lightweight, tractors that can be customized by their width, height and center of gravity. 

Even in the US, the price of a full-size tractor is still out of reach for many small-scale farmers. Smaller, two-wheel tractors as well as hand-push tool carriers are in development at the shop. A former software engineer, Green firmly believes in open-source design and is committed to the right to repair. The new products are made using common parts such as bicycle wheels, which will allow farmers to source, build and repair components themselves. These push-driven cultivators can be upgraded using a bicycle motor and the adjustable toolbar can be swapped over to a larger two-wheel tractor. While the barrier to entry is low, the company still prioritizes quality. “We build for the life of the farmer, not the life of the product,” says Green. 

The post On the Ground With Toolmakers Helping Small Farmers Keep it Local appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Yet much of the time, the local food economy ultimately depends on big farms thousands of miles across the country or even overseas: the seed producers who provide planting stock for the growing season. The resulting seeds, developed under very different environmental conditions, aren’t always a great agricultural fit for the farms that grow them. And mistakes by large seed farms can reverberate widely, as with last year’s “Jalapeñogate,” where stores across the United States sold peppers that had been mislabeled by an international grower.

Phil Howard, a professor of community sustainability at Michigan State University, has estimated that more than 60 percent of the global seed market is now controlled by four multinational companies after decades of consolidation through corporate acquisitions. Even regional seed distributors often get supplies from those centralized sources.

Aware of that disconnect, some growers are trying to keep things local all through the supply chain—including seed farming. Their efforts could make their local food systems more resilient, with seeds better adapted to regional climates and soils. 

Chris Smith’s Appalachian collective

Since 2018, Chris Smith has been working to promote agricultural biodiversity through his nonprofit Utopian Seed Project, based in Asheville, North Carolina. He’s explored and promoted obscure cultivars of southern staples such as Turkish Yalova Akkoy okra and colorful Ole Timey Blue collard greens, as well as experimented with creating new genetic potential through “ultracrosses” of many existing varieties.

“We’ve been talking about these seeds as ‘the seeds that know the South,’” says Smith. “They understand the heat, the humidity, the diseases and can respond better to that because they’ve been grown locally.”

To get those types of seeds into more hands, however, Smith knew he’d need a broader coalition. In 2022, he partnered with fellow farmers Leeza Chen and Shelby Johnson to reach out to regional growers and discuss what a local seed initiative might look like. They knew they wanted an approach radically different from the centralized model that dominates the market.

“It all has to be built on relationships; we have to know the people and trust the people that we’re working with,” says Smith. The group held monthly meetings with local farmers, many in-person around boxes of pizza, to establish shared values and goals.

What emerged was the Appalachian Seed Growers Collective. About a dozen members agreed to grow 11 regionally adapted crops in 2023, with the collective using a $25,000 grant from the Ceres Trust to invest in a mobile trailer that can visit each farm and process seeds using a “Winnow Wizard” and a threshing machine. 

Varieties on offer during the collective’s first season this year included Coral Sorghum, a cultivar Johnson is developing for both grain and syrup production; Blue Ridge Butternut, a squash resulting from 15 years of breeding by Western North Carolina farmer Matt Wallace; and Living Web Ventura Celery, which has naturalized and diversified over a decade of self-seeding.

Smith admits that the economics of seed work can be challenging, with global suppliers able to leverage scale and lower labor costs. But on the consumer side, the collective is working to boost demand by educating area distributors and gardeners about the added value of local seeds. Asheville’s Sow True Seed, where Smith worked prior to starting the Utopian Seed Project, is paying a premium for the seeds as part of its mission to support local growers.

On the production side, the collective guarantees farmers payment based on the amount of land they dedicate to seeds regardless of yield, which reduces the financial risk of a bad harvest. Smith says that approach can encourage more sustainable growing and shift attitudes away from regarding seeds as pure commodities. “We’re distributing the seeds, but what we’re really valuing is the people’s land and labor in producing them,” he explains.

Melissa DeSa’s seeds at work

Although Melissa DeSa grew up amid the snows of Western Canada, she took the first chance she got to move somewhere with a bit more sunshine— Sarasota, Florida—to work as a wildlife ecologist. 

A friend there got her involved in the local chapter of Slow Food, where she became passionate about the connections between agriculture and the environment, and after graduating from an ecology masters program at the University of Florida, DeSa cofounded the nonprofit Working Food in Gainesville in 2012. She soon became convinced that the long-term success and sustainability of Florida’s agriculture depended on locally adapted seeds. 

“Florida seems like a great place to grow stuff, and we do have a nice year-round growing season,” says DeSa. “But we also have poor, sandy soil and a lot of pest and disease issues that never get knocked back by freezes. We can’t just open up these big, beautiful heirloom seed catalogs, pick things, throw them in the soil and have them do well.”

DeSa established Working Food as a regional seed hub around north-central Florida, supplying local gardeners and market farmers with thousands of packets of suitable varieties. The bulk of those seeds are grown in Gainesville in partnership with GROW HUB, a nonprofit nursery that serves adults with disabilities. Others are raised by the University of Florida’s Field & Fork teaching farm or gardeners with a row to spare.

One local cultivar DeSa has championed is the Seminole pumpkin, long grown by the state’s Native communities. They’re robust against squash vine borers, taste pleasantly sweet and keep extremely well—a key quality in the humid Florida climate. “Having a pumpkin that can sit on your kitchen counter at 75 degrees for six, eight, 10 months? That’s pretty awesome,” she says.

Last year, Working Food scored a $41,000 grant from the US Department of Agriculture’s Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education program to help encourage seed farming among local market gardeners. By building a network of local seed suppliers, DeSa says Florida can become more prepared for an uncertain future.

“I truly believe that if, say, during the pandemic, more growers already had these decentralized seed systems and food distribution systems in place, it wouldn’t have felt so crazy and scary,” she says. “We can’t depend on those big institutions or companies that are centralized to always be able to come through for us.”

Edmund Frost’s research and resilience

Edmund Frost’s job involves eating a lot of cucumber. As a member-owner of Common Wealth Seed Growers, he’s led the Louisa, Virginia-based project’s efforts to breed and produce regionally adapted vegetable seeds since 2014, and the cucurbits are a major focus.

“You’re looking for sweetness, crispness and a kind of cucumbery aromatic flavor, while avoiding bitterness and excessive astringency,” says Frost of his taste-test checklist. “Some plants will produce a lot, they’ll look good, but the cucumbers aren’t really inspiring.”

Just as importantly, his two leading varieties—South Wind Slicer and Common Wealth Pickler—can stand up to the heat and downy mildew pressure of late summer in Virginia, when most other cucumber cultivars have already petered out. Many breeders for the big seed catalogs are based in the Northeast, says Frost, and while their varieties often grow quickly and productively, they haven’t taken the conditions of the South into account.

Beyond breeding cucumbers, butternut squash, pumpkins and melons, Common Wealth has helped introduce varieties previously unknown to the South, such as a Guatemalan green ayote squash, that do particularly well in the area. Frost says the goal is to get market farmers and gardeners thinking more deeply about how to match the seeds they select with their regional realities.

“The idea with starting Common Wealth was to express values of regional adaptation and research through seeds, get those out to the customers and then the customers would value and pay for it to help fund our research,” he says. 

The ideal of resilience has taken on particular resonance for Frost: In March, a wildfire tore through the Twin Oaks intentional community where he lives, consuming a warehouse that housed Common Wealth seeds. Thankfully, many seeds were in another location due to planned renovations on the building; he expects his work to recover, and he plans to back up his stocks in multiple locations for the future.

Frost says the fire highlights why a more distributed, locally adapted seed economy will be so important in a time of climate uncertainty. “There’s so much opportunity—and need—for people to do seed work in our region,” he says. “I’d love to see a dozen farm-based seed companies in the Southeast.”

Want to learn more about local seeds?

The first thing to do is shop local! Buy local seeds, ask your local nursery or garden center to stock local seeds or find growers near you who are prioritizing local varieties. 

Learn how to save local seeds yourself with our handy guide to seed saving, and connect with other seed savers on the Seed Savers Exchange, where you can find other heirloom varieties and learn more about particular plants in your area.

To find out who is working with local seeds near you, try out the Local Seed Search map. In Canada, you can use this map from the Young Agrarians to find your local seed source. 

The post On the Ground With Growers Working to Localize Seed Production appeared first on Modern Farmer.

As the owner of a multi-generational farm, Mardesen has seen industrial agriculture and factory farming take increasing control over meat production in the last few decades. With that has come the extreme overuse of antibiotics in livestock farming.

“You know, we want to produce more pounds of pork, more pounds of beef, more pounds of chicken on smaller and smaller resources. The best way they have come up with to continue with this efficiency push is to pound antibiotics,” says Mardesen. “I have never been comfortable taking an animal as intelligent as a pig and cramming them into a concrete box for the sake of efficiency.”

A recent report released by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) found that antibiotic sales for meat production increased by 4 percent from 2021 to 2022, with pigs and cattle accounting for the majority of sales. Antibiotic sales for animal use peaked in 2015, after which the FDA banned the use of antibiotics for animal growth, leading to a major decline in antibiotic sales the following year. But from 2017 onwards, antibiotic sales for livestock farming have steadily risen each year, increasing 12 percent from 2017 to 2022.

“I have never been comfortable taking an animal as intelligent as a pig and cramming them into a concrete box for the sake of efficiency.” 

About 70 percent of medically important antibiotics in the US are sold for animals, not humans. The more an antibiotic is used, the more both animals and humans develop resistance to them, which significantly lowers the effectiveness of the intervention, says Steve Roach, food program director at Food Animal Concerns Trust (FACT), an organization that advocates for humane farming. 

While antibiotics were originally used to treat sick animals, in the 1940s, farmers discovered regular antibiotic use could make animals grow faster in less time and with fewer resources. 

Although the US banned the use of antibiotics for growth, they are still used for disease prevention and disease control. If one animal gets sick, the entire group is often treated because they live in such close proximity to one another. 

Nearly a third of medically important antibiotics have no duration limit, meaning a farmer can use those antibiotics in feed for as long as they want to prevent disease. Roach says this allows farmers to keep animals in poor living conditions that are more likely to get them sick.

Antibiotic use is particularly common on factory farms, where certain practices lead to disease in animals. Cattle are often fed a corn or soy diet instead of grass, which can lead to illness. Baby pigs are weaned off their mother’s milk and fed solid foods before they’re ready, causing diarrhea. 

“Having animals close together in crowded conditions, it saves you money, but also disease can easily spread,” says Roach. “You give them a diet that causes problems, so you basically just feed them antibiotics continuously.”

Lynn Utesch, a cattle farmer in Kewaunee County, Wisconsin—a region often referred to as CAFO alley for its high concentration of factory farms—discovered early on that, with the right methods, he doesn’t need antibiotics to raise his cattle. He and his wife Nancy own a 150-acre grass-fed beef farm and use a rotational grazing method. Every two days, they move their cows to a new pasture and the animals have plenty of space from one another. In his 30 years farming, Utesch has never had to use antibiotics on his cattle, not even for treatment. 

“If you allow the animal to eat its natural diet, if you allow it to live the way that nature intended out in the open air and where it cannot be confined tightly to the other cows, then you don’t have any need for antibiotics because those animals are completely healthy,” says Utesch.

When the Utesches started farming, their customers expressed a preference for antibiotic-free, grass-fed beef. It was hard to find that elsewhere at the time. These days, it’s what many consumers look for. A 2021 poll found that “antibiotic-free” labels are important to two-thirds of Americans when buying meat.

Despite this priority, labeling is far from straightforward. From “antibiotic-free” to “no antibiotics routinely used” to “antibiotics may be used,” there are plenty of ambiguities within labeling and there is little room for nuance, says Roach. Antibiotics were designed to treat sick animals, but the overuse and lack of transparency has led to “an all-or-nothing mindset” and negated their original intent, he says.

FACT supports antibiotic use for animal treatment, but only if it is approached with transparency and communication between the farmer and the certifier. The Antibiotic Resistance Action Center at George Washington University is developing a “certified responsible antibiotic use” label, which would allow antibiotics for treatment but not for prevention.

“When you do use antibiotics for treatment, you need to report that to the certifier and let them know. And so we kind of prefer that label, but it’s harder to communicate that to the consumer,” says Roach. 

Unlike Utesch, Mardesen of A-Frame Acres does use antibiotics to treat a pig if it falls ill, but he uses a strict documentation process. He has to clearly identify the animal, what type of antibiotic was administered, the outcome of the treatment and where the animal was marketed. He cannot sell that pork to Niman Ranch, which has a strict “no-antibiotics ever” policy.

“If I do get an animal that does get sick, because I don’t routinely always throw antibiotics at these animals, when I have to treat an animal, the antibiotics that are available to use work a lot better on the farm,” says Mardesen.

Limiting antibiotic use will likely require stricter regulation from the FDA and more transparency in labeling. The USDA is considering implementing higher standards for meat to be labeled antibiotic free. But both Mardesen and Utesch say it starts with changing practices that benefit the animals so antibiotics aren’t needed for prevention or control. If there wasn’t such a focus on yield and production in the food system, fewer animals would be crammed into tight spaces and fed poor diets, says Utesch.

As a consumer, Utesch says the best thing you can do is educate yourself and learn where your food comes from. Look for organic and grass-fed meat, understand the different labels and, most of all, build a relationship with your local farmer. 

“Find a farmer, and not only just pick up the product the farmer has, but have a relationship where you say, ‘What does rotational grazing mean? Or outdoor access? What does that mean to you?’ Have a conversation about how an animal is actually raised and handled,” says Nancy Utesch. 

The post On the Ground with the Farmers Producing Antibiotic-Free Meat appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Transitioning away from a system often characterized by carb-heavy, frozen and fried food can be a multi-year process, says Dreibelbis, and it starts with an in-depth assessment. “[Is the district] cooking anything at all? Are they buying everything prepackaged?” says Dreiblebis. “Do you have the equipment that you need to start cooking from scratch, even smallwares like cutting boards and knives? Some districts don’t even have that.”

From there, small changes add up to make a big difference: More than 28 million lunches are served every day in schools across the US, and for some students, that lunch is their most nutritious meal of the day. For schools with a breakfast program, evidence suggests that students who eat breakfast at school score higher on tests. But schools are up against many roadblocks, from staffing challenges to rising food costs.

Changing a school’s lunch program takes time, resources and commitment. Modern Farmer spoke with the four trendsetting schools to find out how they’ve made changes in their school lunches, what’s working and what the kids are saying about their new favorite foods. 

Lowering the pressure 

“I was just reading that one in six kids have high blood pressure,” says Julie Udelhofen, food service director at Clear Lake Community School District in northern Iowa. “Sodium is an issue; so is sugar. We see it every day.” 

For Udelhofen, the health of the roughly 1,450 kids in her schools is a top priority, with sodium a particular issue. To combat the rise of sodium, Udelhofen has made two major changes. First, she’s moved away from pre-packaged and frozen foods as much as possible and brought in local fruits and vegetables, conducting taste-tests with her students. “We’ve done beets, kohlrabi, rutabaga and parsnips. We had all kinds of radishes, and about 10 different varieties of peppers, and the kids go down the line and pick their favorites,” says Udelhofen. The key, she says, is to introduce these foods in a low-pressure environment, making it a game of sorts. “It’s a lot of fun, because the kids are wholly invested in it. They will stop and taste things and talk to us.” 

Behind the scenes, Udelhofen and her team have drastically cut sodium levels by making their own spice blends, which have been a big hit with the kids. “That’s one of the best things we’ve done, especially in the middle school and high school.” They offer a garlic and herb blend, along with Greek and Italian seasonings that kids can add to their meals, without the heaping helping of sodium from traditional blends. 

Broccoli at breakfast

Most adults are probably not grabbing broccoli at breakfast, but somehow, Tina Kindelberger, food service supervisor at Sandy Valley Local School District in eastern Ohio, has turned the children in her schools into broccoli fiends. 

“It’s so cute when they do that,” says Kindelberger. “I see kids walking in here with packs of broccoli, and it’s 7:30 am.”

Kindelberger started her team’s transition to scratch cooking by first just making raw fruits and vegetables available to the kids at each meal. Rather than change everything they were cooking at once, they just added in a case in the cafeteria with packages of produce such as carrot sticks, tomatoes, snap peas, bananas, apples and yes, broccoli. “The kids seem to be excited when we bring out new things and try new things. I had plums out one day, and I couldn’t believe how many kids asked me what they were. They’d never seen a plum,” says Kindelberger. But they’re now primed to try these raw fruits and veggies, which also means they’re more willing to try the cooked options as the district moves to scratch cooking.

Kindelberger and her team feed about 700 students a day, from kindergarten to high school, and each age group has different tastes and preferences. For her, the first step to changing the menu was consulting with the kids. “I meet with [students] on a regular basis, and we get a lot of feedback,” she says. One request, from the older students, was a breakfast smoothie station. So, Kindelberger got a grant for a blender, and now there are fresh fruit smoothies. “The biggest thing is getting your kids involved, getting their opinions, because it does matter. They want to be heard.”

Spaghetti and moose balls

Local food looks a lot different in parts of Alaska than in much of the rest of the US. While many school districts are working with beef and potatoes, Carlee Johnson McIntosh, the food service director in the Petersburg School District in Southeast Alaska, has a freezer full of Sockeye salmon and moose meat. For her, working with local farmers sometimes means getting food delivered by boat from neighboring island farms. 

Her commitment to eating and preparing local foods started from a young age; Johnson McIntosh has allergies and was always looking for ways to alleviate and control her symptoms, so she became interested in what she was eating. Now that she supervises 450 students at her schools, she’s especially committed to ensuring they have high-quality and freshly prepared options. She’s spent the last decade advocating for changes at the school level, from altering when kids can eat breakfast to updating the kitchen facilities to allow for more scratch cooking. 

“Previously, the mealtimes were crammed together. The breakfast was before school and almost nobody showed up. Now, we’re after the bell,” and kids actually show up for breakfast, she says. She’s also had to push the district on purchasing more raw food and getting her staff certified to do more than just reheat frozen packages. “My first step was to talk to our health authority and see where our deficiencies are. Why is it that we are not adequately meeting a restaurant standard? We are feeding an at-risk population, so we should be held to the same standards [as other facilities].” 

That required some creativity on her part. While previous frozen options might be chicken nuggets, for Johnson McIntosh, local proteins are more likely to be moose, herring eggs or Sockeye salmon. So, that’s what they have. Now, the kids are chowing down on moose stroganoff or spaghetti and moose-balls, along with a daily salad bar. 

One-bite policy

Not every new menu item is going to be a hit. Denise Tapley-Proctor, food service director at Regional School District 89 in Maine, knows that well. As she’s moved her team over to scratch cooking, there have been some fantastic wins and some less-than-stellar reviews. “We did a vegetable panini that the adults in the school system really liked and the high school kids were OK with. But the little kids were like, ‘no, don’t put vegetables in my grilled cheese.’ It was just a no go.” 

But that’s all part of the process, says Tapley-Proctor. One of the staff on her food service team introduced the “no thank you bite” policy when introducing a food of the month. You don’t have to eat the whole thing, but you have to take one bite to try it. Plus, you get a sticker if you do. 

The one-bite policy has been a great help to Tapley-Proctor and the team while they feed about 225 students a day. It’s allowed them to take a gradual approach with the changes, phasing in one new meal or even one new ingredient at a time. 

“Instead of bringing the box of instant potatoes, see how much longer it takes and how much better the flavor is [to make your own],” she says. “If we have leftover rolls from the day before that we didn’t serve the kids, if you cut them up and throw some spices on them, bake them in the oven, you have homemade croutons, and the kids are excited to put it on the top of their meal. It’s the little things that lead to the big thing.”

They’ve also started working with local farmers, teaching kids how plants grow. “We’ve learned that if the children have a stake in it somehow, like if they grow the food, they’re more apt to want to eat it,” she says. They’ve grown tomatoes in the school garden, then used the after-school program to make a salsa, which went on the menu the next day. “The kids were like, ‘this is our salsa,’” she says. 

Tapley-Proctor says it’s been a process for the staff as well. She’s helped them get training from the Chef Ann Foundation on kitchen skills and learning new recipes. But even with extra effort, she says the feedback from the kids is what makes it worth it. While serving a chicken pot pie, one of the students told them that it “made her belly happy.” Another boy was having a bad day, and then had some fresh watermelon with lunch. “This makes me think of summer and fireworks,” he said. “He had gone from a bad mental health day to a good mental health day because of the food.” 

Care about your cafeteria? Here’s how to get involved

The USDA will finalize proposed legislation around school lunches this month, with updates to its nutrition standards and exceptions for local and traditional foods. In the proposed changes, schools would have to reduce sodium levels, limit added sugars and would be allowed to use locally grown, raised or caught food that has been minimally processed in their menus. Updates will be phased in over the next five years, with the first changes coming to menus in the fall of 2024. 

If you have kids in school and are interested in helping bring about changes in your own district, everyone Modern Farmer spoke with recommended reaching out to the food service director at your school to find out what kinds of foods the school is working to introduce to kids and how. They’re the ones that feed your kids every day and can speak about their goals when it comes to nutrition. Some schools will even welcome parents to join their kids for a lunch period, to get a first-hand look at what’s on offer. 

You can also get involved at the state level, organizing around campaigns such as Healthy School Meals for All. For a list of what’s happening in your state, check out this map from the National Farm to School Network. 

And if you work in a school district, Dreibelbis advises that you make the switch to scratch cooking one step at a time. Take a cafeteria classic: boxed macaroni and cheese. You can change one element at a time, such as purchasing a pre-mixed cheese sauce but cooking your own pasta. Once that’s second nature, add one more element. “If you’re making something like a homemade cheese sauce, you’re using flour, butter, milk, cheese and salt. And right there alone, you’re going from what was probably 30 ingredients to five.”

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