• Food

Fishers Caught In Coronavirus Storm, Some Change Business Model While Others Sit It Out

• #conservationist
• fishing
• lobster
• seafood

With many fishermen all around the U.S. forced to stop fishing due to restaurant closures and lack of tourism caused by the coronavirus, many are changing their businesses to sell directly to supermarkets and other retailers for home consumption. 

Why This Matters:  Like family farms, in the U.S., family-owned and small fishing businesses almost all struggle to stay in business due to stiff competition from cheap imports, and that was before COVID -19 struck.

• Food

Food Safety Rules Being Rolled Back During Pandemic

• EPA
• FDA
• food safety
• USDA

At a time when there are growing concerns over future food shortages and food waste, the added worry of food being unsafe to eat is one more reality Americans must face in the midst of the COVID-19 outbreak.  As Civil Eats reported, the FDA, the EPA, and the USDA oversee the nation’s food safety net […]

• Food

The Food Industry Begins to Struggle with the Effects of COVID-19

• agribusiness
• conservation
• COVID-19
• environment
• farms
• food
• food waste

Farmers are being forced to destroy tens of millions of pounds of fresh food because of COVID-19’s impact on their usual markets, according to the New York Times.  Producers are depending on $9.5 billion from the CARES Act stimulus package for their farms to survive this pandemic.

Why This Matters: As the unemployment rates sky-rocket due to national shutdowns, it’s hard to imagine food going to waste.

• Food

Farms Face Challenges Getting and Protecting Workers During The Pandemic

According to The Wall Street Journal, there are growing issues surrounding seasonal workers entering (or not) the U.S., protecting farmworkers from becoming ill, and if they do, finding replacements to ensure crops are harvested before they go bad.

Why This Matters: The lack of resilience in our food system is showing.  The Trump administration has created worker shortages when in the past it restricted the H-2A visa program out of concerns over illegal immigration. The pandemic has only made this concern worse.

• Food

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly Food of Environmental Activism

• farming
• food
• food waste
• produce

by Zoey Shipley and Miro Korenha In America, 30-40% (by weight) of food goes to waste each day–which also wastes water and creates needless GHG emissions. One solution that’s been floated to combat food waste is selling more “ugly” produce to consumers. As Vox explained, venture capital-backed companies like Imperfect Produce, Full Harvest, Hungry Harvest, […]

• Food

As Climate Impacts CA’s Ag, the Mississippi Delta Could Be Our Next Bread Basket

• agriculture
• climate change
• Mississippi

California has been an agricultural powerhouse and produces more than 1/3 of the vegetables and 2/3 of fruits and nuts that are grown in the United States. However, climate change is a ticking time bomb for the Golden State’s agricultural industry and will bring changes in precipitation patterns, leading to more drought and more flooding, […]