In Montclair’s Third Ward is a tiny farm with big community value.

In the summertime, Montclair Community Farms transforms its less-than-10,000-square-foot lot into a space with something for everyone: a garden education program for children, a job training site for teens, and a pop-up produce market for Essex County residents.

“People really love being here,” said Lana Mustafa, executive director of Montclair Community Farms. “It’s really developed into something really beautiful and productive and community-oriented.”

On a breezy afternoon in early June, bunches of lettuce, bok choy, parsley, and garlic scapes begin to sprout and ripen. Some are even ready to harvest. Mustafa and her team are preparing inventory for their Monday farmers market, where several dozen shoppers use their SNAP or WIC benefits to buy fresh produce.

READ: How to apply for food aid and assistance in New Jersey

But Mustafa said serving Essex County residents isn’t easy when governments don’t consider urban farming as a viable solution to bring affordable, fresh food to food-insecure communities.

To do so, the state must confront its complicated history of farming and pair it with long-term municipal investments – steps that some argue New Jersey has yet to take.

“We need the state of New Jersey to take urban [agriculture] seriously,” said Mustafa.

Again and again, Mustafa says, red tape has hindered her small farm’s ability to serve its community. Because she doesn’t have at least five acres, her application to join the federal Senior Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program – which would have enabled her to accept food vouchers from low-income seniors – was denied four times. It was only after extensive advocacy with other community groups that the U.S. Department of Agriculture approved her application in 2023.

The high cost of a permit (up to $5,000 annually) forced her to end her composting program this spring.

“What happens to this food waste now that we can’t accept it? It has to go back to the landfill,” said Mustafa, whose farm collects more than 8,000 pounds of food waste annually.

Emilio Panasci, co-founder and executive director of the Urban Agriculture Cooperative, said it’s no coincidence that urban farms located in and around Essex County’s seven food deserts get little to no municipal support.

READ: How Essex County falls short on food access (and how you can help)

“Consumer food access mirrors our patterns of segregation in this country, and that is a political as well as economic choice,” said Panasci. “It’s no accident that outside of a few struggling small farms and pop-up markets in the South Ward of Newark, there is very little if any high-quality, fresh food options – and those are available at premium prices – in our neighboring Maplewood or South Orange.”

A photo of Montclair Community Farms’s garden beds, storage sheds, and community gathering area. Lana Mustafa said her farmer’s markets have grown from serving ten to hundreds of residents on federal food assistance programs in recent years. Photo by Kimberly Izar

Segregation in farming

While the practice of growing food can be traced back to Indigenous and Black agricultural practices, it was white farmers in New Jersey who benefitted the most from an agricultural economy built on slavery.

In the 1700s and 1800s, farmers in the “Garden State” relied on enslaved people to herd and slaughter animals, grow crops, maintain their meadowlands, and construct their farms. Even after slavery was abolished in New Jersey in 1866, white farmers created their own form of sharecropping called “cottaging,” where former enslaved Black people would provide labor in exchange for shelter and crops.

In her book Farming While Black, Leah Penniman details what happened next for farmers of color after Jim Crow and the passage of civil rights legislation.

“Urban farmers of color removed rubble, planted trees, installed vegetable beds, and built structures for community gatherings,” wrote Penniman about the rise of Black and Latinx farmers reviving agricultural traditions in the 1960s and 1970s.

Still, the legacy of segregation persists. A 2022 report from Rutgers University showed that urban farms in New Jersey tend to be clustered in areas with higher SNAP participation, where residents are more likely to be Black or Latinx. And in a county where white people make up less than one-third of the population, they own three-quarters of all urban farms in Essex County, according to a 2022 U.S. census of agriculture.

Fallon Davis, chair of the Black & Brown, Indigenous, Immigrant Farmers United (BIFU), said these inequities are “systemic by design.”

“We have to understand the system was never designed for Black and Brown people to live this long. It was never designed for us to thrive, survive, have families, and be these beautiful land beings.”

They explained the lack of support for urban farmers disproportionately targets Black neighborhoods in Essex County and perpetuates segregation.

“New Jersey hasn’t prioritized advocacy for urban farming, which would protect and feed Black folks,” they said.

Farming with no water on borrowed land

Several miles from Montclair Community Farms, Keven Porter’s farm in Newark has faced a slew of setbacks typical for urban farmers. For starters, he still lacks basic farming infrastructure – like running water.

More than a decade after establishing Rabbit Hole Farm, Porter is still trying to get the city of Newark to supply consistent water. For years, he’s had to call in favors from neighbors or ask the fire department to deliver water gallons.

“They’re just ignorant to the fact that we are a benefit,” said Porter, a Black farmer and Newark resident.

Porter and his partner co-founded Rabbit Hole Farm in 2013 through Newark’s Adopt-A-Lot program. Today, Rabbit Hole Farm is a 6,000-square-foot community hub in Newark’s South Ward that provides herbal education, wellness programs, and cooking classes to Newark residents, where more than half of its public school students are eligible for free or reduced lunch programs.

Porter’s farm faces another common challenge: he doesn’t own his farmland. Through Newark’s Adopt-A-Lot program, residents can use the city’s vacant lots but not own them, regardless of how long they’ve been tending to them.

Fallon Davis of BIFU also has a farm in Newark, run by their youth education nonprofit STEAM URBAN. They said Adopt-A-Lot is “a flawed system because [the city] can take it whenever they want.”

Both farmers have been working with the Trust for Public Land to explore how they can acquire their lots in Newark.

“If we figured out how to get people land ownership, if we taught people how to grow their own food, if we taught people how to advocate for themselves, it would single-handedly change our communities and they don’t want that,” Davis said.

Herbalist Yaquana Williams hosted a Juneteenth plant exploration class at Rabbit Hole Farm in June 2024. Image from Rabbit Hole Farm’s Instagram.

Solutions focused on permanency

Panasci of the Urban Agriculture Cooperative said that long-term solutions that allow for food growing and local food markets in an urban environment are key.

“Our zoning is different here. Our density is different. When you combine that with the fact that we lack a cohesive urban agriculture policy at the local level.. it’s very hard for a farmer or farmer’s market to maintain land over time and … build infrastructure on it,” said Panasci.

On Fridays, Panasci and his team prepare farm boxes filled with kale, escarole, mushrooms, honey, and eggs. His organization sources inventory from more than 30 growers across the state before the team distributes the boxes to schools, food pantries, hospitals, and senior centers with limited access to fresh foods.

Urban Agriculture Cooperative staff prepare its farm-to-family boxes one afternoon in June 2024. Photo by Nikki VIllafane

Panasci emphasized that municipal support is critical for urban farms, which are especially vulnerable to gentrification and displacement from developers.

“Farming is hard in general, but urban farming when there’s not necessarily a real city system for it… it’s almost set up to not work [and] to really undermine you,” said Panasci.

Urban Agriculture Cooperative distribution bags are loaded onto a pickup truck at their warehouse in Irvington, N.J. in June 2024. Photo by Nikki VIllafane

In the past few years, several bills have been introduced aimed at formalizing urban agriculture policies and sustaining the sector.

In January 2024, Assemblywoman Annette Quijano reintroduced a bill to establish an urban farming pilot program for emerging urban farms. Senator Teresa Ruiz and Senator Nellie Pou also reintroduced a bill that would establish an urban farming grant and loan program. Neither bill has made it out of committee for further consideration.

Jeanine Cava, executive director of the NJ Food Democracy Collaborative, points to the Massachusetts Healthy Food Incentive Program (HIP) as a potential model for what’s possible in New Jersey. This state-funded program reimburses SNAP users when they buy food from eligible HIP vendors.

“Right now, we don’t have dedicated state funding specifically for those kinds of incentives that incentivize people to buy locally produced food,” she said about the lack of permanent funding.

Davis of BIFU emphasized that Black and Brown farmers need to be at the center of any urban farming solution. BIFU’s statewide collective of 40 members plans to release their policy resolutions later this summer, which will include recommendations for land ownership and state funding for BIPOC farmers.

“We also need to give [politicians] some of the language of our ask… the community does need to do some work,” they said. “If you want your community to change, you gotta also advocate for your community.”

Learn more

Learn more about Montclair Community Farms and Rabbit Hole Farm’s upcoming programs and events.

You can also get involved with Urban Agriculture Cooperative, Black & Brown, Indigenous, Immigrant Farmers United, and NJ Food Democracy Collaborative via programming and advocacy opportunities.

The post Urban Farms are a Lifeline for Food-Insecure Residents. Will New Jersey Finally Make Them Permanent? appeared first on Modern Farmer.

One week later, Alabama passed a similar ban, and Arizona and Tennessee are also poised to follow suit. A long list of other states, meanwhile, have banned the word “meat” from cultivated meat packaging.

Yet the movement to ban lab-grown meat isn’t confined to the U.S. Italy became the first country to criminalize cultivated meat in 2023, as well as banning the use of words like burger and sausage on packaging for alternative proteins. Meanwhile, in the Netherlands, the same farmers struggling with the effects of climate change, like drought, are revolting against stricter regulations on pollution from livestock manure.

Conspiracy Theories and an Ongoing Culture War

Dozens of peer-reviewed studies have shown that livestock accounts for anywhere between 11 and 20 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, much of which comes from land use and cow burps. As part of the solution, groups like the World Resources Institute have suggested that consumers in countries with higher per capita meat consumption — like the U.S. — could reduce their food-related emissions by shifting 40 percent of their meat-based diet (cows, sheep, goats) by 2050 to meat alternatives, whether plant-based or lab-grown, or a mix.

Photography by Shutterstock/tilialucida

Unsurprisingly, DeSantis is not on board, and his speech that day was littered with misinformation. He denied that meat is making climate change worse, and presented the alternatives to be banned as a plot against the meat industry. “One of the things that these folks want to do, is they want to eliminate meat production in the United States,” DeSantis said at his press briefing. “The goal is to get to a point where you will not be raising cattle.” While that may be the goal of cultivated meat backers, the reality is the industry is a fraction of the size of Big Meat. A more realistic hope might be that one day cultivated meat could be one way out of many to reduce how much meat we consume.

And of course, the public still has a choice in the matter. “This is not about forcing people to eat cultivated meat,” Nico Muzi, co-founder and managing director of Madre Brava, a food and environment advocacy organization, tells Sentient. “This is about allowing a technology to be developed and potentially marketed.”

DeSantis did not shy away from the most common misinformation, including jabs at Bill Gates, the “global elite” and the campaign to make the world eat insects. Many of these points echo the “Great Reset” conspiracy theories promoted by far-right political and media figures dating back to the pandemic, Nusa Urbancic, CEO of the Changing Markets Foundation, an advocacy group favoring sustainable markets, tells Sentient. (Perhaps not coincidentally, Jeff Bezos invested a reported $60 million into lab-grown meat in Florida just before DeSantis signed the ban into law.)

These conspiracy theories are baseless, but they are also practically endemic in some online spaces. In a Changing Markets report analyzing anti-alternative protein messages on social media over a 14-month period, the majority of posts were linked to various aspects of the Great Reset conspiracy theory. For example, when a 2022 heatwave killed thousands of cattle in Kansas, some people falsely suggested they were purposely killed to boost Bill Gates’ lab-grown meat business — steamrolling over the scientific evidence for extreme heat spurred by climate change. Indeed, the mocking “Save Our Beef” sign at the DeSantis press briefing echoed the idea that the World Economic Forum, Bill Gates and other forces have an agenda to take over.

“Florida’s ban and soon Pennsylvania’s ban of cultured meat clearly demonstrates the prevailing ignorance of science among consumers at large and policy makers (often backed by deep-pocket science doubters),” wrote Kantha Shelke, founder of a food science firm called Corvus Blue, LLC and lecturer at Johns Hopkins University, in an email. These bans hinder innovation rather than seek protocols for vetting new technologies in food science, she added.

Proponents of this narrative also point to a non-peer reviewed 2023 University of California, Davis, study that claimed lab-grown meat was 25 times worse for the climate than traditional beef. Though the study was a preprint and vigorously contested by scientists who work in the cultivated meat field, many media outlets printed the headline of the study, and the damage was done.

That might be part of the reason why misinformation about meat and climate change isn’t limited to people who believe conspiracy theories. A shocking 74 percent of respondents to a Washington Post poll said cutting out meat would have little or no impact on climate change, despite the bulk of evidence showing the climate impacts of livestock farming, especially beef.

Photography by Shutterstock/Lukas Guertler

The Chewy Science of Cultivated Meat

Even as the 18th-largest cattle ranching state, Florida’s cattle history has deep roots dating back to Spanish colonization in the 16th century. Among the long legacy of cattle ranchers is Dusty Holley, director of field services for the Florida Cattleman’s Association and a seventh-generation Floridian whose family has been cattle ranching since the early 1800s. “We know that meat is something that people eat that’s from a muscle of an animal,” he said. “We’re not really sure what this lab-grown protein is.”

In actuality, cultivated meat is not that mysterious. Lab-grown meat made its public debut in 2013, when researchers at Maastricht University served the first lab-grown beef patty on live television. It became known as the $325,000 burger, one that needed salt and pepper, according to one taster. Since then, technological advancements have skyrocketed, bringing the average cost estimate — as of today — down to about $10, which is still more expensive than standard beef.

Although opponents like to say it’s not real meat — and shouldn’t be labeled as such — it’s near-identical to the beef and chicken coming out of slaughterhouses. “There’s no ingredients we’re bringing to the process that’s any different than what an animal uses to grow,” says David Kaplan, a biomedical engineer who leads a cellular agriculture lab at Tufts University. He argues that it’s as safe as traditional meat. Indeed, the FDA and USDA have protocols in place to regulate cultivated meat approved for sale in the U.S.

Photography by Shutterstock/Sameer Neamah Mahdi.

The reason cultivated meat is virtually identical is that it’s made from meat cells. First, scientists take a small biopsy of muscle, which causes little to no harm to the live animal. To get those initial cells to grow, scientists “feed” them a growth serum. Initially, companies used what’s called fetal bovine serum — the blood of cow fetuses after the mother is slaughtered — to keep these cells alive. The cells need some sort of scaffold to latch onto, like stripped-down broccoli or spinach, and then will grow in large tanks called bioreactors to become burger, pork shoulder or chicken thigh. The process itself isn’t entirely new; it’s similar to how scientists grow human organ cells for medical purposes, Glenn Gaudette tells Sentient. Gaudette is a biomedical engineer at Boston College who has grown human heart cells for cardiovascular diseases, and is now applying his research to cultivated meat.

The potential to make meat, only without the ranch, has felt like a blow to generational farmers like Holley. “You build this, one, great track record of consumer safety, and two, strong consumer confidence,” he says. Seeing the USDA stamp on meat packaging in the grocery reassures people it’s safe for them and their families, he added. “It’s been that way my whole life,” Holley tells Sentient. “A product that we’re not really sure what it is — it should not step right in and be labeled as meat.”

In reality, there is a very long way to go before cultivated meat could really cut into the meat industry. There are a slew of challenges to scaling production in a way that makes it economically viable. For one, the process is water- and energy-intensive, so researchers are looking into ways of using renewable energy to fuel the process. It also requires completely sterile and temperature-controlled environments, which are expensive. Compared with the global meat production, cultivated meat is still in its infancy. The budding industry has raised $3.1 billion in investments compared with the meat industry’s revenue of $1.3 trillion.

Stoking Fear Among Farmers

Although the science is relatively straightforward, narratives about the safety of lab-grown meat persist, especially among farmers and their powerful lobbies. Beyond states like Florida and Texas, where cattle ranching groups have an influential voice in state politics, farm lobbies in Italy and the Netherlands have stalled critical climate and environmental policies.

In reaction to the European Union’s Green New Deal, which proposed reducing pesticides, restoring nature and planting more climate-resilient crops, Dutch farm groups have pushed back. “Politicians in Europe are really concerned that these farmers will move too far right if they don’t give them whatever they want,” says Urbancic, the Changing Markets CEO.

Photography by Shutterstock/Ground Photo.

In Florida, appealing to farmers is a well-worn political tradition. “I’ll bet many of you didn’t know that I’m a farmer’s kid,” Senator Jay Collins, who introduced the bill banning lab-grown meat, said at the May 1 press briefing. “Our family struggled coming out of the ’80s. It turns out that Democratic policies weren’t good then either, and our family ended up losing our farm.”

No matter the perception of reality, animal agriculture is still the second-largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions behind fossil fuels and is the number one cause of deforestation and biodiversity loss. It also uses about a third of global grain production at a lower output; 25 calories of cattle feed, for example, produces just one calorie of beef, according to Yale’s Center for Business and the Environment. Beef is considered the least efficient type of meat.

Maybe it doesn’t have to be one or the other. Integrating cultivated meat technology with more traditional forms of agriculture could also help reduce the impacts of meat production and its drain on natural resources, Gaudette suggests. “What if we were to grow more meat from the same number of cattle, or grow more meat from fewer cattle, so that now we can have more water?” he said, adding that the approach should be collaborative. “There are farmers that are hard workers that are concerned about losing their livelihood,” he said. “So can we involve them in this process?”

A cultivated meat collaborative just like this is underway in the Netherlands, in fact. The argument that cultivated meat threatens agriculture is paradoxical, says Madre Brava’s Muzi, whose parents are Argentinian ranchers. “This push against cultivated meat is the work of a very specific way of producing meat,” he said, adding that it favors industrialized agriculture that keeps big farmers in power while pushing out small and medium-sized ones. It perpetuates a global, resource-intensive system where animal feed like soy is causing deforestation in parts of South America. “In a world where we need to feed a lot more people, meat…will still be demanded and exacerbating climate change and deforestation,” Muzi said.

He adds that alternative proteins would help farmers. “An important shift to this type of alternative proteins could free up a lot of farmland to allow for more agroecological farming,” he says, such as incorporating rewilding projects to mitigate emissions.

Kaplan says he sees the knowledge gap about the science of cultivated meat — and it’s a responsibility he places on himself. “We don’t do a great job of educating the broader public,” he says. “But I think it’s also just symptomatic of the world today. It’s a very polarized set of constituencies out there.”

Still, Kaplan hears a more positive outlook on the future from his students. “The younger population is clearly invested in this (cultivated meat),” he tells Sentient, and for all sorts of reasons. “It could be for sustainability, population, food equity, healthier foods, animal welfare. It all comes into what drives them.”

Update: This piece has been updated to clarify the cultivated meat industry’s value in terms of investments.

This article originally appeared in Sentient Media.

The post Inside Florida’s Ban on Lab-Grown Meat appeared first on Modern Farmer.

It’s no wonder, then, that longtime Maine senator and eventual governor Edmund Muskie helped to craft and pass the legislation that became the Clean Water Act of 1972, establishing regulations for discharging pollution into rivers and streams. But that legislation had unintended consequences. 

As regulations restricted the dumping of waste into waterways, states found themselves with a buildup of sewage and excrement. Municipal sewage plants have to process human waste, food particles and any chemicals, medicines and trace particles that make their way into their systems when we flush them down the drain. The resulting slurry is referred to as “sludge.”

Sludge returning to a wastewater treatment pool . Photography via Shutterstock/TadeasH

“It’s what comes out of our wastewater treatment facilities, so it is anything we flush down the toilet, anything we flush down the drain,” says Sarah Woodbury, from Defend Our Health, a Maine-based nonprofit advocating nationally for equal access to safe and clean drinking water and food. “What is left over [after cleaning the wastewater] is like a mound of brown, sludgy material that is a combination of mostly human waste, and then whatever else ends up in that facility.

“They euphemistically call it biosolids,” says Woodbury, “because sludge doesn’t sound good—even though that’s what it is.”

Songbird Farm property, which was affected by sludge spreading. Photography via Maine Farmland Trust.

Following the Clean Water Act and other environmental legislation in the 1970s and 1980s, the United States had a buildup of sludge and a newfound optimism in slogans such as  “reduce, reuse and recycle”. Since sludge is incredibly high in nitrogen, it seemed like the best way to reuse it was to spread it on farmland, where the chemicals in our waste could help our crops grow. Government pamphlets from the 1990s promoted sludge spreading to farmers as viable and safe, and municipalities offered to spread it for free on farmer’s fields. Sludge application has been practiced nationwide on farmland since the 1980s.

“It was used on many types of farmland,” says Shelley Megquier, with the Maine Farmland Trust. “It really makes sense to a lot of farmers to use it as a low-cost fertilizer and a way to add nitrogen and other nutrients to their soil.”

But there are more than just nutrients seeping in the soil from all of that sludge. While the sludge has gone through treatment facilities, which do filter out some heavy metals, many chemicals remain. They are the chemicals that wash off our non-stick pans, water-resistant fabrics and in our cleaning products. All of these contain PFAS—perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances—or forever chemicals. These are chemicals that are known to cause cancers, birth defects and fertility issues in humans; chemicals that do not dissolve or disintegrate over time but instead can leach into groundwater and crops, ending up in the food we eat.

Songbird Farm property, which was affected by sludge spreading. Photography via Maine Farmland Trust.

In 2016, milk from a dairy farm in Arundel, Maine tested positive for high levels of PFAS. The Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry began investigating PFAS contamination, and more dairy farms were found to have dangerously high levels of PFAS in their milk. It did not take long for the state to match up the farms with contaminated milk to the map of farms where sludge had been spread as fertilizer. Further testing has revealed the problem extends to all manner of crops throughout the state, as well as drinking water wells and irrigation systems. More than 60 farms were affected in Maine, a number that could continue to grow as testing continues. Nationwide, nearly 20 million acres of farmland have been treated with sludge, but it’s hard to find the level of contamination without extensive testing; some farms were treated multiple times with sludge and some only once. 

The state of Maine, along with  several organizations, including the Maine Farmland Trust and Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association, jumped into action for impacted farmers. The group created the PFAS Emergency Relief Fund to help shoulder the costs of PFAS testing, remediation and filtration and the temporary farm closings caused by PFAS discoveries.  While more than 40  farms have been found to be impacted so far, less than a dozen were shut down due to the chemicals, thanks to the group’s work. However, Maine’s testing efforts are only the tip of the iceberg across the United States.

As a fertilizer, sludge provides farmers with an inexpensive way to enrich acres of soil. Only Michigan requires testing of sludge for PFAS contamination before it is used for farmland, although there are many state and federal efforts to ban PFAS at the source,which is the only guaranteed way to ensure they do not find their way into our food systems. 

Maine passed a state ban on the spreading of sludge as fertilizer in 2022, and Connecticut is currently working on similar legislation. But what might seem like a simple fix has a series of domino effects, forcing farmers to spend large amounts on other fertilizers and pressuring municipalities to find other ways to safely dispose of their waste. 

“Now, what is happening is all of the sludge [in Maine] is being landfilled,” says Woodbury. “It’s not a great option, it’s the best of a bunch of bad options. There’s not infinite space in a landfill. And, so, eventually, they’re going to have to figure that out, and what we need are destruction technologies. We desperately need destruction technologies.”

While sludge is the leading cause of PFAS contamination on farmland, the chemicals are also found in areas where firefighting foam has been spread and near Department of Defense sites. PFAS can leach into the groundwater and affect farms near sites such as these, not just land where the chemicals were directly applied. And some farms, particularly dairy farms, can be impacted by bringing in contaminants unknowingly. Misty Brook Farm in Albion, Maine purchased hay to feed its  dairy cows from an outside farm and later found out the hay was heavy with PFAS, resulting in the cows’  milk being contaminated.

If you suspect or know that sludge has been spread in your area, Sarah Alexander, executive director of the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association, recommends starting with a water test. “There are relatively simple, cheap tests, and so, for the homeowner or a farmer who is interested in understanding if this is something they need to be concerned with, we think that can be a good first step.”

A federal ban on the chemicals that end up on our fields is the most straightforward way to stop PFAS, and MOFGA is pursuing this end.

Songbird Farm property, which was affected by sludge spreading. Photography via Maine Farmland Trust.

“We have filed our notice of intent to sue the EPA under the Clean Water Act,” says Alexander. “There has to be a known contaminant that is shown to be in sludge, and that contaminant causes human health impacts—which is well documented for PFAS. [The EPA] is required to take action under the Clean Water Act. And so, our notice of intent is to tell them they should have been taking action already and force them to regulate PFAS and sludge.”

Testing and the cessation of sludge spreading help to control the spread of PFAS in our food systems, but stopping PFAS at the source is the only way to remove them from our water and soil entirely.

“At the end of the day, the folks that have caused the problem should be on the hook for it,” says Woodbury. 

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

The post Why Maine is Taking the Feds to Court Over Sludge appeared first on Modern Farmer.

We are closely following PFAS regulations and researching ways to protect ourselves in the meantime. Please reach out to our staff writer Lena Beck directly with questions about PFAS, to tell us what you want to know next, or to share your story. Email: Lena@modfarmer.com 

Photo by Shutterstock

Asked & Answered: PFAS Q&A with Kyla Bennett

by Lena Beck

PFAS expert Kyla Bennett answers Modern Farmer reader questions about forever chemicals. Here’s what it means for you.

Songbird Farm property, which was affected by sludge spreading. Photography via Maine Farmland Trust.

Why Maine is Taking the Feds to Court Over Sludge

by Kirsten Lie-Nielsen

Maine was the first state in the nation to ban the use of sludge as a fertilizer. Now, the Maine Organic Farmers And Gardeners Association plans to take the EPA to court over farmland lost to forever chemical contamination. Read the story.

Photo by Shutterstock

On the Ground with Initiatives Responding to PFAS

by Daniel Walton

Researchers and advocates around the world are looking for ways to help address the PFAS problem. Here is a quick look at some of these projects in their various stages of development.

The post The PFAS Problem: Demystifying “Forever Chemicals” appeared first on Modern Farmer.

PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are chemicals that are used commercially for their nonstick or waterproof properties. The problem is that they don’t readily break down and have been associated with harmful health conditions. Today, these chemicals can be found everywhere. As a result of both direct chemical pollution from manufacturing facilities and exposure through everyday household items, PFAS can be in our water, soil and even the blood of most Americans. 

In our previous PFAS coverage, we’ve brought you in-depth looks at the efforts to regulate PFAS, stories of communities on the frontlines trying to protect themselves, as well as consumer guides for how to reduce your own exposure. 

Through these stories, we connected with Kyla Bennett, science policy director at Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). Bennett is a PFAS expert and knows this issue inside and out. Last week, we asked you, our Modern Farmer community, what questions you had for Bennett, and you delivered big time. Below, find our community questions with Bennett’s responses.

Modern Farmer: Who is most at risk for PFAS exposure?

Kyla Bennett: We are all at risk because PFAS is so ubiquitous, but fenceline communities (i.e., people living immediately adjacent to industries using PFAS, Department of Defense facilities, firefighting training facilities, conventional farms using biosolids and airports) are likely exposed to higher levels of PFAS than the rest of us. Moreover, infants, children, the elderly and pregnant people are at higher risk as well.

Firefighting foam contains harmful levels of PFAS. Click here to learn how farms located near facilities that use this foam are endangered by PFAS. (Photo by Shutterstock)

MF: Who profits from forever chemicals? Please name the companies.

KB: The top 12 companies responsible for most of PFAS pollution are: AGC, Arkema, Chemours, Daikin, 3M, Solvay, Dongyue, Archroma, Merck, Bayer, BASF and Honeywell. 

MF: We hear that PFAS are harmful to human health, but what kind of specific health issues are they associated with?

KB: PFAS cause a variety of health impacts, including thyroid disease, high cholesterol, lowered immune response, obesity, developmental issues, heart disease and cancer, especially kidney and testicular cancer.

MF: Are there any known commercial products that filter out PFAS in our drinking water that consumers can purchase on store shelves? 

KB: The National Sanitation Foundation (NSF, nsf.org) certifies filters that remove PFAS from drinking water. The NSF website has a list of certified filters that anyone can purchase.

MF: What is the best way to find out if my water has been tested?

KB: Many states require municipalities to test drinking water for PFAS. Moreover, the EPA is also requiring public water systems to test for PFAS over the next few years. If you are on town/city water, the best thing to do is reach out to your water department and ask them for any PFAS test results (although many of these are available online). Note that private well testing is done by well owners, so there is far less information on PFAS in private wells. 

MF: Where can we send soil and water samples for testing?

KB: There are many commercial labs around the country that do PFAS testing. Look for a lab that is accredited by the EPA. However, this testing can be very expensive. There are some at home test kits available for water testing, but be aware that these are not accredited by the EPA. 

Your closest lab will vary depending on where you are located. Search based on your state or region. For example, this lab will test soil and water samples in the Northeast US region.

The What’s My Exposure? tool through the PFAS Exchange will help you contextualize your water test results by comparing them to others.

You can have your soil samples tested for PFAS. (Photography by Shutterstock)

MF: If the new drinking water PFAS limits put the burden for monitoring mostly on the municipalities and not directly on the polluters (companies), will that have an impact on my personal taxes? Am I paying the cost of these continued polluters?

KB: When municipalities construct water filtration, those costs are often shifted to the consumers (through higher water rates, etc.). However, many towns and cities have joined class action lawsuits suing PFAS manufacturers to try and recoup some of that money. 

MF: Companies know that PFAS cause health issues and don’t break down. They’ve paid out huge settlements. How are companies still allowed to produce them?

KB: Unfortunately, the EPA only regulates six PFAS in drinking water, and the states that regulate PFAS also only regulate a handful. The chemical industry has a very rich and powerful lobby. Contact your state and federal representative and urge them to define PFAS broadly and regulate them as a class. 

MF: Are there non-toxic alternatives or methods these companies could use instead of PFAS? 

KB: The vast majority of PFAS uses are for convenience and are not essential uses. Industry is coming up with alternatives to PFAS, and there are lists of PFAS-free consumer products, including for items like rain gear! You can view that list here.

MF: How might the momentum on PFAS regulation be impacted by the upcoming election season? Is there anything I should be considering or looking for when casting my vote?

KB: The previous federal administration was much more industry-friendly than the current administration. The EPA’s new drinking water regulations, which came out in April of this year, were a good but small step forward. It is important to research local, state and federal candidates and ensure that they have public health and the environment in mind. Vote for the candidates whose values align most closely with your own.

The post Asked & Answered: PFAS Q&A with Kyla Bennett appeared first on Modern Farmer.

In previous coverage, we’ve told you about PFAS—per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances that don’t readily break down and can accumulate in humans, causing serious health problems.

We’ve also told you about how the EPA recently passed its first-ever regulations on a handful of PFAS in drinking water, and how these rules leave a lot to be desired.

And then we told you about some of the ways you can reduce your own personal exposure to these chemicals while you wait for the slow wheels of government to turn. And if you read that article, you know that making shrewd decisions while you shop can help reduce the amount of PFAS with which you come into contact. 

“I think the best thing that people can do is be educated consumers,” says Kyla Bennett, science policy director for Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).

Many items in the retail sphere won’t have information about PFAS use because it’s not required. To make matters more complicated, a PFAS-free label doesn’t necessarily give you all the information you need. Potential PFAS-free greenwashing may or may not be intentional, but regardless, that label might need closer inspection. We consulted some experts to help you understand how to find PFAS-free items in the marketplace.

Start with a trustworthy list

Verifying if something is PFAS-free can be tough, so don’t reinvent the wheel if you don’t have to. Here is a trustworthy list of brands and products that you can buy knowing they are PFAS-free, as well as a comprehensive buying guide.

This list from PFAS Central is a good source for outdoor gear, apparel, kitchenware and more. Food & Water Watch recently released a thorough buying guide to help you side-step PFAS in everything from paint to menstrual products to furniture.

Know the laws where you live

More than a dozen states have passed some kind of legislation restricting the use of PFAS in consumer products such as foods, packaging, apparel and carpeting. We do not yet have the ability to test for all of the thousands of PFAS, so one way to screen for PFAS is by testing for the total amount of fluorine in a product. This test can serve as a good indicator of whether there is PFAS in a product, although it’s not yet clear exactly what level of PFAS is present from directly adding PFAS versus unintentional PFAS contamination.

“It’s an imperfect method, but it’s one of the better methods that are out there, especially when you couple it with more in-depth testing,” says Mike Schade, director of the Mind the Store Program for Toxic-Free Future. 

Washington State has been a leader on this front, and Schade points to the state’s Safer Products for Washington Act, which gives the state regulatory authority to ban chemicals that are hazardous.

“Raise your voice for policy change,” says Schade. “We know that the federal government is slow at making change around chemicals like PFAS. There’s been a lot more progress at the state level.”

You can use this bill tracker from Safer States to find out what states have either introduced or enacted legislation to ban PFAS in different product categories. 

Ask the right questions

When you have the time and opportunity to ask a company about its products, asking the right questions is key. Inquiring whether something is PFAS-free might not cut it.

Here are three key questions you can ask:

Does this product use nonstick or waterproof properties?

PFAS specifically are used for their waterproof and nonstick qualities, so those are good flags.

“Every time I’m going to buy something, like if I’m buying a kitchen appliance, I call and I say is there nonstick on there? Because if it is, I’m not going to buy it,” says Bennett.

Raincoats can contain PFAS because they are waterproof. (Photo by Shutterstock)

Does this product use fluorinated chemistry?

This is a good catch-all question, because while we do not yet have the ability to test for all PFAS, if there is fluorinated chemistry in a product, this is a reliable indicator that there will be PFAS in the product.

Sometimes, companies will call out a certain PFAS by name. The specificity is helpful, but at the same time, it’s important to understand what this means. Just because the product doesn’t contain one specific PFAS doesn’t mean that it doesn’t contain another that is just as dangerous.

“[Companies] say oh, we have no PFOA,” says Bennett. “That means they have no PFOA, but they could have 11,999 other PFAS in them. So, they really have to ask the right questions like ‘Is there any fluorinated chemistry at all in your product?’ And that kind of covers the whole thing.”

What alternatives to PFAS do you use?

“PFAS-free is good, but it’s not enough,” says Schade. “And if I’m a consumer, what I would do is I would ask companies ‘How are you ensuring the alternative that you’re now using is safer? What are you doing to evaluate the safety of alternatives?’ Getting into the nuances of 100 parts per million versus 50 parts per million, I think that’s too challenging of an area for most consumers to navigate, quite honestly. But I think asking questions about how are you vetting the safety of alternatives, I think that is a more productive and useful question to ask, because most companies are not thinking about it.”

Beware suspect alternatives

In manufacturing, it’s possible to substitute one well-known PFAS for an alternative that is simply another, less common PFAS. Known as “regrettable substitutions,” these swaps can be just as harmful to your health.

But you also want to be sure that PFAS aren’t being changed out for another type of chemical that is just as bad. Schade recommends looking for certifications or policies that are specific about what types of alternatives are allowed. 

“Most laws that are out there and most company policies that restrict PFAS don’t do a good enough job ensuring that companies are utilizing truly safer alternatives,” says Schade. 

Schade points to GreenScreen Certified as an example of a third-party standard that not only restricts PFAS but also restricts other chemicals of concern—not all third-party standards will cast this wide of a net.

Want more choices? Schade also recommends EPA Safer Choice and Cradle to Cradle.

Start conversations with retailers

Businesses and retailers can be huge forces for change, says Schade. “Another thing that consumers can do is reach out to the retailer’s businesses that you support, that you shop at and ask them whether or not they’re taking action on PFAS.”

Campaigning has compelled major retailers including Whole Foods, REI and Dick’s Sporting Goods to take some action on PFAS. According to Schade, it really does have the potential to start a conversation within the company.

Visit Retailerreportcard.com to learn which companies are leading and which are lagging when it comes to addressing PFAS. You can even use this site to contact the companies at the back of the pack and ask them to prioritize safer chemicals.

Kyla Bennett is the science policy director at PEER, and she wants to answer your questions about PFAS. Submit your question to contact@modfarmer.com

The post PFAS: Behind the Label appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Last month, the EPA passed its first-ever legally enforceable drinking water standards on a handful of PFAS—a group of chemicals used to make non-stick coatings and products that resist heat, oil, water and more. Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances are toxic chemicals and are often referred to as “forever chemicals” because of their tendency to not break down.

The regulations state that all public water systems have three years to complete testing for these chemicals and must implement solutions to reduce PFAS in five years. Under the new laws, the public must be informed of the level of PFAS measured in their drinking water.

In a lot of ways, the EPA decision is a ground-breaking move. PFAS have been used commercially since the 1940s, and it has long been known that these chemicals are toxic to people. Big chemical companies, such as  3M, have known about the harmful qualities of these toxic chemicals for decades but intentionally hid the evidence. 

The scary thing about PFAS is they are simultaneously very close to home and unsafe. They’re used in everyday household products such as raingear, nonstick pans and mascara and the EPA admits that “exposure to PFAS has been linked to deadly cancers, impacts to the liver and heart, and immune and developmental damage to infants and children.”

Despite the known risks, there’s a reason it has taken so long to get even one rule passed at the federal level to regulate these chemicals in drinking water. Extensive lobbying efforts by chemical companies have helped keep restraints off these substances. You can read our coverage of this lobbying here.

So what does this mean for you? 

Here are five essential takeaways for you to know about the new drinking water regulations, along with expert insights from Kyla Bennett, science policy director for Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). 

These laws apply to only six PFAS

Of the at least 12,000 existing PFAS, the EPA issued regulations for only six of them. This new regulation dips a toe into the water of regulating them. It sets maximum contaminant levels (MCLs) in drinking water for two of the oldest and most pervasive PFAS, called PFOA and PFOS, of four parts per trillion. The EPA has said that there is no safe level of exposure for PFOA and PFOS. 

“It’s a good first step. I think it’s too little too late given that it’s only for six PFAS and there are 12,000 to 14,000 of them,” says Bennett.“It alleviates the stress a little bit, but not a whole lot…Nobody should relax.”

Food & Water Watch recently released a thorough buying guide to help you side-step PFAS in everything from paint to menstrual products to furniture.

This is only for public drinking water systems

Public water systems have to complete initial water monitoring within three years, and if the levels are too high, take steps to reduce them within five years. For example, this could mean shutting down a contaminated water source or installing a filtration system. Data about public drinking water systems is available online. Private wells, common in rural or farm areas, won’t automatically be tested for PFAS. 

“[This regulation] does not apply to private wells,” says Bennett. “And I know a lot of farmers do have private wells. However, there is money available for private well owners if they are contaminated, to get a filter put in or to get it fixed. So, that’s good news for private well owners.”

Installing a filter at your kitchen sink can help reduce your exposure if there is PFAS in your water. Bennett recommends looking on The National Sanitation Foundation website for filters that will reliably reduce total PFAS in your water.

Private wells will not automatically be tested for PFAS. (Photo by Shutterstock)

The burden is on municipal drinking water systems, not directly on polluters

The drinking water regulation puts the burden of fixing high contaminant loads on public drinking water systems and municipalities, not the polluters themselves. This also means that, under this law, there is no direct lever for polluting companies to change their practices.

However, this regulation could start a domino effect—municipalities that don’t want to be on the hook for installing very costly filtration systems might begin putting more pressure on polluting companies in their jurisdictions.

“States are going to want to help the municipalities within their states, and they are going to then start putting in PFAS limits in the effluent, which will help reduce the amount of PFAS going into the public drinking water,” says Bennett.

Is there PFAS pollution in your area? Consult the Environmental Working Group’s interactive map.

A still image of the Environmental Working Group’s Interactive PFAS pollution map. The light blue dots show where drinking water PFAS levels are known to be above the new limits, and the dark blue dots show where it is known to be below the new limits. (Image courtesy of the Environmental Working Group)

The EPA should regulate PFAS as a class, not individually

There are at least 12,000 known PFAS, and we can only currently test for about 70 of them. Bennett says that the EPA should define PFAS broadly, and then regulate them as a class, instead of doing more of this “whack-a-mole regulation,” where they only deal with a handful at a time. And then, she says, we should ban all non-essential uses, such as cosmetics.

It’s important to regulate PFAS broadly, says Bennett, because addressing only a handful of PFAS does nothing to protect people from what are called “regrettable substitutions”—where companies using PFAS just swap restricted ones for other PFAS that remain unregulated (remember, there are hundreds of these chemicals out there). 

While the federal government moves slowly, individual states have made more moves restricting PFAS. You can use this bill tracker to find out what states have either introduced or enacted legislation to ban PFAS in different product categories.

You still need to protect yourself from PFAS

The EPA’s working assumption right now is that 20 percent of your PFOA and PFOS exposure comes from drinking water. Even if all “forever chemicals” were eliminated from your water, it’s still critical to eliminate other sources of exposure. While PFAS is a large, systemic problem, and solving it should not be on the individual’s shoulders, taking action now can help protect you while we wait for legislation to hopefully catch up. 

“It shouldn’t be this way,” says Bennett. “But right now, because the states and the federal government are acting so slowly, we have to take it upon ourselves to reduce our risk as best we can. So, education can go a long way in getting people to realize what they should and should not be buying, what they should and should not be using, what they should and should not be eating…It sucks that the government isn’t taking care of us. But people assume that if something’s legal, it’s safe. And that’s simply not true.”

Kyla Bennett is the science policy director at PEER, and she wants to answer your questions about PFAS. Submit your question to contact@modfarmer.com

The post The EPA Just Passed the First-Ever Federal Regulations for ‘Forever Chemicals’ in Drinking Water. Here are the Top Five Things You Need to Know. appeared first on Modern Farmer.

There is still a lot of Farm Bill work ahead—the Senate will release its version, and then Congress will have to agree on a combined bill before the president can sign it—so nothing is final just yet. But that makes this an important time to see what is being proposed and let your representatives know how you feel about what’s on the table. The Farm Bill is expansive, but here are some of the key issues:

Undermined Climate Funding. The House version would remove the “climate-friendly” requirements from the Inflation Reduction Act and divert that funding over to conservation programs such as the Environmental Quality Incentives Program. In these programs, the funds sometimes go to large-scale industrial animal agriculture, which advocates argue are not solutions at all. 

“A Farm Bill that supports factory farming is not a sustainable, fair Farm Bill,” wrote Rebecca Wolf, senior food policy analyst for Food & Water Watch in an email to Modern Farmer. “While investment in conservation programs like EQIP can be a boon for sustainable farming, Big Ag has repeatedly hijacked limited program monies to fund dirty factory farm practices like biogas digesters instead. The next Farm Bill should include language from the EQIP Improvement Act to help ensure that climate-smart funding through programs like EQIP actually goes towards sustainable practices.”

Jeopardized Farm Animal Welfare. The House version of the bill says that states cannot enforce rules about how farm animals from other states are raised. The text reads that “no State or subdivision thereof may enact or enforce, directly or indirectly, as a condition for sale or consumption, any condition or standard of production on products derived from covered livestock not physically raised in such State or subdivision that is in addition to, or different from, the conditions or standards of production in the State in which the production occurs.” 

This would significantly hinder animal welfare protections at the state or local level, such as state laws banning the practice of housing pregnant pigs in gestation crates. This would essentially gut regulations such as Prop 12, a controversial but groundbreaking animal rights law in California. 

“If this dangerous language stays in the Farm Bill, it will create a race to the bottom that condemns millions of farm animals to inhumane confinement while further disadvantaging thousands of independent, higher-welfare farmers in an already incredibly consolidated marketplace unfairly dominated by factory farming,” wrote Kara Shannon, director of Farm Animal Welfare Policy at the ASPCA, to Modern Farmer.

A mother pig in a gestation crate. (Photography by Shutterstock)

By contrast, the Senate’s listed priorities include a provision dedicating funding to help farmers engaged in industrial animal agriculture transition out to more sustainable practices. 

“This groundbreaking language represents the first time a Farm Bill would directly support farmers looking for a way out of factory farming, acknowledging the harms of industrial animal agriculture and aligning government spending with public values and the urgent need to reform our food system to prevent further animal suffering, environmental degradation and public health disasters,” says Shannon.

Take action with the ASPCA here.

Reduced Funding for SNAP. Funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is always hotly debated in Farm Bill negotiations. This House bill curbs the growth of the program as a way to conserve spending—SNAP would lose about $27 billion over the course of a decade. 

There are some steps forward, said Kelly Horton, the Food Research & Action Center’s interim director, in a statement, such as repealing the lifetime ban on SNAP benefits for people who have received a felony drug conviction, but “these improvements should never come at the expense of cutting SNAP benefits. Senate Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow’s (D-MI) Farm Bill proposal would strengthen these programs without harming SNAP.”

Millions of people receive SNAP benefits in the US. (Photography by Jeff Bukowski)

Ashley Tyrner is the founder and CEO of FarmboxRx, a company that delivers fresh fruits and vegetables as a health intervention program under Medicare and Medicaid. A former SNAP recipient herself, Tyrner launched a program to supply good food to people affected by previous SNAP cutbacks. She says that one of the reasons SNAP is highly debated in the Farm Bill is because of differing opinions on the government’s role in addressing food insecurity.

“That being said…the program is a vital resource for vulnerable families—as I know from firsthand experience,” wrote Tyrner to Modern Farmer in an email. 

Weigh in on SNAP here.

Reducing Lending Transparency. Small farmers sometimes depend on financial loans, but there’s a long history of discrimination in public lending. Collecting demographic data from loan recipients is one way to increase transparency and identify patterns of discrimination. The House Bill includes an exemption where lenders can stop reporting demographic data to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). 

“For too long, lending institutions have discriminated against Black, Indigenous and other farmers of color, and ensuring that we have effective and fair policy requires data collection and transparency so that the public knows which farmers are being served and which may be left behind,” said the HEAL Food Alliance in a statement. 

“Fortunately, there are many other opportunities for the Farm Bill to be one that addresses discrimination in public lending and other opportunities for BIPOC producers,” wrote Maleeka Manurasada, national organizer with the HEAL Food Alliance, to Modern Farmer in an email. “For example, the Farm Bill could improve accessibility by including measures from the Fair Credit for Farmers Act that waive loan fees for underserved farmers and limit over-collateralization on farm loans.”

Manurasada also spoke to other ways that this Farm Bill could address discrimination:

• Including the provisions from the Justice for Black Farmers Act that increase funding for the Heirs Property Relending Program, which would give pro bono assistance, succession planning and support for the development of farmers cooperatives to Black Farmers. 
• Including pieces of LASO, the Increasing Land Access, Security, and Opportunities Act, which would provide funds for services that help farmers acquire land, cover closing costs and downpayments, secure clear titles and make site improvements. It would also help improve access to training and technical assistance. 
• Mandating anti-racism training for USDA agents, and ensuring language and cultural accessibility in all opportunities for training and technical assistance.

Use Your Voice

As we said before, the Farm Bill affects you, and how exactly you experience those effects will be determined by what gets passed by Congress. That makes now a good time to tell your representatives what’s important to you.

Need more context for the Farm Bill? Check out this Citizen’s Guide.

As legislators try to get a new bill ready by September, we will be covering it and bringing you stories about the real people impacted by the bill. And we want to hear from you. Do you have a story about how you’ve been affected by a past Farm Bill? Questions about the current one? Email me and let’s chat: lena@modfarmer.com

The post The House Proposed a New Farm Bill. This Will Affect Your Life—Even if You’re Not a Farmer. appeared first on Modern Farmer.

That’s just one of the slice-of-life videos Westerfeld shares with the nearly 185,000  followers of @family_farm_life. You can see the team (his family, on the family-run 8,000-acre Texas ranch) seeding corn fields, unloading hay bales or showing off truly impressive farmers’ tans. 

@family_farm_life

This kind fo stuff happens all the time on the farm…. #farming #farm #farmtok #farmlife #farmers #countrylife #farmgirl #farmboy #agriculture #country #countryboy #familyfarm #familyfarmlife

♬ original sound – Family Farm Life

The Westerfelds farm corn and wheat and run a herd of cattle as well. Through it all, Joshua films and edits videos that show what farm life is like—and he’s connecting with young people. He says roughly 70 percent of his audience is 18 to 34 years old. 

Westerfeld loves TikTok, and he has for a while. He started making videos for social media a few years ago, when he was still in high school. About three years ago, when TikTok began its rise as the social media platform to beat, he transitioned over and started gaining a following. For Westerfeld, the app is all about connections. “It’s a support system,” he says, noting that he seeks out other farmers’ content on the platform and they find his. “I’ve seen times where farmers will post a video with a problem, like some piece of equipment that they’re not sure how to fix, asking for help. And you’ll see the comment section is just filled.” 

@family_farm_life

Getting our spryer out of the mud. #countrylife #countryboy #farming #farm #farmtok #farmlife #farmers #agriculture #farmwork #farmer

♬ original sound – Family Farm Life

On Westerfeld’s corner of the app, affectionately referred to as FarmTok, conversations between farmers and non-farmers are  ongoing and can help people feel more connected to and conscious of where their food comes from. On his corn seeding video, viewers asked questions like “why are the seeds blue?” and “why don’t you use seeds from the previous year’s harvest?” 

But this interplay between farmers and consumers could go away soon. Last month, President Joe Biden signed a bill into law that would force TikTok’s Chinese-owned parent company, ByteDance, to either sell TikTok within a year or face a US-wide ban over fears that ByteDance could be compelled to share data on US users of the app with the Chinese government. TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew responded (in a video posted to TikTok, naturally) that the company had no interest in selling and that it  plans to fight the ban in courts. Recently, a group of eight prominent TikTok users have also launched a lawsuit against the US federal government, claiming that a ban violates their rights to  free speech. 

According to TikTok, more than  seven million small businesses in the US advertise on its platform in some way, and 90 percent of those small businesses in the agricultural space say the app has helped them reach new audiences. The hashtag “agriculture” has more than  two million videos, and the platform says it has  collectively attracted more than 23 billion views in the last year alone.

For Huey Boelen, with nearly two million followers on the app, the impact of TikTok on small farming businesses has been impressive. Boelen previously worked at both dairy and row crop farms, and he has posted videos from both. There’s a “network effect” with TikTok, he says. Many social media apps start by making an account and connecting to friends or family, people you know in real life. With TikTok, the algorithm is such that it works in the opposite fashion, feeding you videos from around the world, even if you don’t follow the person. “I leaned into that,” he says. Boelen would post videos from around the farm, such as  footage of a calf being born, and label it as educational. “That’s when people really started to interact.” Those connections led to more people viewing his videos, which led to more people clicking over to learn more about the farms. 

For Boelen, the focus from Congress on an app like TikTok seems almost wasteful. He notes that the country’s national debt is $34 trillion. “Infrastructure is not the greatest in this country. Education needs to be better,” he says. “The dollars [are not] being spent in the right places.” 

As a platform, TikTok has allowed people around the world to connect with each other, for good or ill. The French government banned the app amid violent protests in its island territory of New Caledonia, and the app has been accused of promoting anti-semitisim in how it shows videos that reference the war between Israel and Hamas. There have been concerns about the mental health of users who devote a lot of time to the app.

Still, in congressional hearings with Chew last year, it seemed as if some members of Congress weren’t even familiar with how the app worked—simply that it is connected to China. “I think Congress is pretty out of touch with [TikTok users], ” says Westerfeld, who watched that hearing. “There may be bad sides to TikTok. There are good sides, too, like the farming side. It’s helping people, giving people careers, helping small businesses … I don’t think [Congress] understands the impact.” 

If the ban does come down, both Boelen and Westerfeld say they have looked at other platforms, and they have experimented with putting videos on sites such as  YouTube. They may be able to find new audiences on new platforms. But they also express some sadness that many TikTok users could lose out on what they see as an education. “The less people understand farmers, the more likely it is that they’re not going to be on our side when [things such as  the next Farm Bill comes up,” says Westerfeld. “I’m able to learn stuff every day [from TikTok]. I can only imagine what it’s like for somebody who’s never seen farming before.”

The post Unsubscribe? FarmTok Worries About a TikTok Ban appeared first on Modern Farmer.

In the US, an estimated 77 million tons of food are wasted annually, even as one in eight American families struggles with hunger. Growing all that food that no one eats wastes financial and natural resources, while also contributing to climate change. Food is the number one item we throw into landfills, where it drives almost 60 percent of their methane emissions.

But there is an easy way to cut down a large portion of that food waste: Change the “best by” labeling system. According to new research by MITRE and Gallup, there are more than 50 different date label phrases in most grocery stores today—“sell by,” “use by,” “best if used by,” “enjoy by,” and so forth—leaving consumers confused about whether these terms refer to freshness, safety or other issues. As a result, one third of all consumers “often or always” throw away food that has passed its date label. The end result is that households and food businesses throw away perfectly wholesome food (6.5 million tons annually in the US, which is nearly 10 percent of all US food waste) and spend an average $1,500 a year per household on food that they then toss in the trash. 

The US has set a goal to halve its food waste by 2030. To accelerate progress, the Zero Food Waste Coalition (a group of nonprofits, major food businesses and communities) has come together to help advance two commonsense pieces of bipartisan legislation: the Food Date Labeling Act (FDLA) and the NO TIME TO Waste Act. Congress should pass both these acts in the upcoming Farm Bill.

The FDLA aims to establish a consistent, easy-to-understand food date labeling system, at no cost to the government. The FDLA would streamline food labeling into two simple categories: “Best If Used By” to communicate peak food quality and “Use By” to indicate the end of a product’s estimated shelf life. Most importantly, the act would launch an education campaign to help consumers understand the difference between these categories.

Simplified date labels are one of the most cost-effective strategies to reduce food waste across the supply chain—with the majority of the benefits going to consumers. The FDLA would also make more food available for donation by clarifying that food can still be donated after a quality date (which 20 states prohibit or restrict today). More than 23 industry leaders, such as Walmart and Unilever, have signed on in support of the FDLA.

In addition to the FDLA, the NO TIME TO Waste Act would establish an Office of Food Loss and Waste at the US Department of Agriculture. This office would spearhead a whole-of-government approach to reducing food waste, strengthen food waste research, create consumer awareness campaigns and support public-private partnerships and local food recovery efforts. 

These two pieces of legislation are a no-brainer for Congress to pass. Tackling food waste is good for consumers, businesses and the environment. Meeting our national goal of reducing food loss and waste by 50 percent would deliver a $73-billion annual net financial benefit (again, in large part to consumers), reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 75 million metric tons and create 51,000 jobs over 10 years. The 2024 Farm Bill is a golden opportunity to make meaningful progress in our fight against food waste, help families stretch their limited food dollars and transition to a more efficient and sustainable food system. 

Pete Pearson. Photography courtesy of Pete Pearson/WWF.

Pete Pearson is senior director of food waste with World Wildlife Fund in Washington, D.C.

The Zero Food Waste Coalition aims to inform and influence policy at the local, state and federal levels and share policy updates and opportunities with partners and stakeholders around the country to bring consumers, businesses and government together to make food loss and waste history. The Coalition was launched by NRDC, WWF, ReFE, and FLPC in April 2023, formalizing a partnership that began in January 2020.

The post Opinion: Congress Should Standardize Food Labels in Farm Bill to Curb Food Waste appeared first on Modern Farmer.