#food systems

[chamerionwrites]

Nearly a dozen children were working shifts cleaning meat processing equipment used at an Iowa pork plant’s so-called kill floor over a four-year period, the US Department of Labor announced.

Eleven children were using corrosive chemicals to clean as well as perilous “head splitters, jaw pullers, bandsaws, neck clippers and other equipment” at a Seaboard Triumph Foods pork processing plant in Sioux City, according to officials. This is the second time federal investigators have found children working at that particular Sioux City meat processing plant.

The most recent settlement comes with Qvest LLC, an Oklahoma-based cleaning company hired by Seaboard from 2019 to 2023. The company was fined $171,919 for violating federal law.

In September 2023, Seaboard hired a new cleaning contractor: Fayette Janitorial Services, headquartered in Tennessee. Investigators found Fayette hired 24 children to work overnight shifts – some as young as 13 and carrying glittery school backpacks – including some of the same minors who were employed by Qvest, the previous cleaning company. In May, Fayette was fined $649,304.

“These findings illustrate Seaboard Triumph Foods’ history of children working illegally in their Sioux City facility since at least September 2019,” said wage and hour midwest regional administrator Michael Lazzeri. “Despite changing sanitation contractors, children continued to work in dangerous occupations at this facility.”

The federal investigation comes after a 2023 New York Times report on migrant child exploitation, in which the paper documented children working dangerous jobs and overnight hours.

Children who arrive at the US’s southern border alone often stay in the country for years before their cases are adjudicated. While they wait, they live with sponsors. As of 2023, only one-third of migrant children went to live with their parents, a sea change from a decade ago. That can leave children vulnerable to exploitation or trafficking.

[reasonsforhope]

"A global shift to a mostly plant-based “flexitarian” diet could reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help restrict global heating to 1.5C, a new study shows.

Previous research has warned how emissions from food alone at current rates will propel the world past this key international target.

But the new research, published in the Science Advances journal, shows how that could be prevented by widespread adoption of a flexitarian diet based around reducing meat consumption and adding more plant-based food.

“A shift toward healthy diets would not only benefit the people, the land and food systems,” said Florian Humpenöder, a study author and senior scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, “but also would have an impact on the total economy in terms of how fast emissions need to be reduced.” ...

The researchers found that adopting a flexitarian diet could lower methane and nitrous oxide emissions from agriculture and lower the impacts of food production on water, nitrogen and biodiversity. This in turn could reduce the economic costs related to human health and ecosystem degradation and cut GHG emissions pricing, or what it costs to mitigate carbon, by 43% in 2050.

The dietary shift models also show limiting peak warming to about 1.5C can be achieved by 2045 with less carbon dioxide removal, compared with if we maintain our current diets.

“It’s important to stress that flexitarian is not vegetarian and not vegan,” Humpenöder says. “It’s less livestock products, especially in high-income regions, and the diet is based on what would be the best diet for human health.”

In the US, agriculture accounts for more than 10% of total GHG emissions. Most of it comes from livestock. Reducing meat consumption can free up agricultural land used for livestock production, which in turn can lower methane emissions. A potent greenhouse gas, methane is mainly expelled from cows and other animals raised for livestock. Animal production is the primary contributor to air quality-related health impacts from US food systems.

“This paper further confirms what other studies have shown, which is that if we change our diets to a more flexitarian type, we can greatly reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” said Jason Hill, a professor in the University of Minnesota’s department of bioproducts and biosystems engineering.

According to the study authors, one way to achieve a shift toward healthier diets is through price-based incentives, such as putting taxes on the highest-emitting animal products, including beef and lamb. Another option is informing consumers about environmental consequences of high meat consumption."

-via The Guardian, March 27, 2024

[simplefoodsmallfarmz]

We have had 3 hard frosts and the veggies still pull through. It pays to save your seeds as seeds have a memory.

Booking tours now through mid April 2025.

[soilthesimpletruth]

Numbers! It’s all in the numbers. How many more pollinators can you attract and feed? How many more worms can you support? How many more people can you convince to convert their lawns to productive pollinator beds and hyper local food access?

[hylianengineer]

Today I went to the farmer's market and met a guy who sold me spinach from his garden. He told me it had been picked at 10:30 this morning, which is awesome in the sense that it is very fresh and tasty, but also in the sense that it's just nice to KNOW exactly how my food got to me.

There's this concept called "food from somewhere," which my spinach is, but to explain it I first need to tell you about "food from nowhere." It's not literal - food doesn't just appear out of thin air. But in industrial food systems, you're supposed to act like it does - to never consider who grew or raised your food, if they get paid and treated well, if they're being kind to the environment, if livestock animals were treated well, etc. That's food from nowhere - it doesn't just appear in the grocery store, but it might as well for how much most consumers know about its origins. And this works out really well for companies that want to do unethical things like treat their workers badly, exploit the environment, be cruel to livestock, etc.

It's not just customer apathy that makes the origin of most of our food a mystery - in many cases that information is just not available. In my sociology of food class last year, we had a project where you had to write down everything you ate for three days and as much information as you could find about where it came from. I was lucky if I could narrow a given item down to the country one ingredient was grown in. The information is very hard to find, and for many foods I was just taking guesses, like "well, these are the countries that export most of the world's coconuts."

Food from somewhere as a movement is both a reaction to food from nowhere and a return to older and more traditional foodways - it means food you do know the origins of. Like my spinach: I met the man who grew it, he told me about his garden. I know where it came from, and if I wanted to ask that man all about his gardening methods, I could, and he'd probably tell me all about that, too. Heck, a lot of small and local farms have visitor days! The information isn't hidden behind ten layers of supply chain chaos, it's readily available and frequently handed to you before you even need to ask. Because people who grow food well are generally pretty damn proud of it.

[moldypeachfaygo]

[mauricesmall]

Remembering my father.

[wachinyeya]

Our soil is degrading, droughts increasing and once fertile land turning into desert (www.decadeonrestoration.org ). But there are glimmers of hope:

Sometimes the biggest global changes are driven by local communities and their leaders, Africa’s smallholder farmers, for example. Hundreds of thousands of people are now coming together to revive their lands – by turning dried up monoculture plots into forest gardens. Learn how it works!

African Farmers Restoring Food Systems, led by Trees for the Future, has been recognized as a World Restoration Flagship under the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration.

[justalittlesolarpunk]

hello! I've just found your blog and that's AMAZING, but I have a question: what do you think about industrial food? it's super low quality, and furthermore, they produce a lot of trash as plastic (unnecessary) packaging! It would be easier just to say "starting eating organic food", but for poor people, buying grapes or apples, even not organic, costs more than buying cookies full of fat, sodium and carbohydrates (not talking about all the chemicals). I personally, think about non conventional food plants as an alternative since most of them are super resistant to weather changes and easy to rise. I wanna know what you think about

Hi! Thanks for getting in touch. The long and short of it is, I hate industrialised farming. It pollutes the air, soil and water, poisons and impoverishes farmers, increases the likelihood of zoonotic pandemics, reduces the genetic diversity of plants and encroaches upon wildlife territories. We need a massive return to local, small-scale regenerative agriculture if we are to feed everyone and equitably share the earth with other species. But you’re right, it has to be done in a way that’s just and fair for people who can currently only afford plasticked, pesticided and processed food, as well as making a living for farmers. We’re all on the same side here, but people often don’t realise that. I also think we need to massively diversify our food plant range - a system that relies on just a few staple crops is insanely vulnerable, especially with more and more extreme weather coming our way. So many plants I was raised to think of as ‘weeds’ are not only edible but highly nutritious and often medicinal. Where are the dandelion farmers? The mycologists selling turkey tails? And foraging should be taught in all schools so kids can feed themselves in the wild and pass these skills on to future generations. As with most climate solutions, I don’t think it’s an either/or - I’d welcome pretty much any solution as part of a wider melting pot of alternatives. The only thing I won’t budge on is that we have to change, because the way we in the North and West farm right now just isn’t sustainable.

[chamerionwrites]

This is also why it really (perhaps unduly) rubs me the wrong way when people immediately assume that I am a mostly-vegetarian because I’m an animal lover. Yeah obviously cruelty to animals is also bad, and I do find it reassuring on a number of levels to know exactly where my meat and eggs come from, but…idk the prevalence and pervasiveness of that assumption is just really telling. Something something Upton “I aimed at the public’s heart and hit it in the stomach” Sinclair writing The Jungle about the plight of exploited migrant workers but getting everybody outraged about food safety. Something something legions of internet commenters on any post or article about someone who even vaguely harms a (cute, fluffy) animal gleefully opining about how that person should be dismembered/burned at the stake/other graphically cruel punishments, and not seeing any kind of contradiction in terms. Something something it’s easier for military officers to adopt dogs from overseas than for eg Afghan translators to get refugee visas

[cognitivejustice]

As the General Coordinator of La Via Campesina International, Morgan Ody works for the human rights of peasants and rural workers worldwide, promoting food sovereignty and agrarian reform.

La Via Campesina International, founded in 1993, is committed to defending peasant agriculture for food sovereignty and is called the ‘global voice of peasants.’ Morgan Ody, a vegetable farmer in Brittany, France, is the movement’s General Coordinator. Justice is a keyword within the work of the movement, as Ody explains:

“Most peasants and rural farm workers have come together because they face discrimination and lack of access to basic services and human rights. Struggling for justice is a significant reason peasant organizations like La Via Campesina were formed.”

Agroecology and Collaboration

At Terra Madre, Morgan Ody will represent La Via Campesina International at the conference Agroecology. To Ody, agroecology is more than agricultural practices.

“Agroecology is not only a set of agriculture practices; it is a complete change in the mindset compared to the mindset of the new capitalist world system, established in the 16th century, which was very much based on a vision to dominate and extract nature, seeing nature as a machine for humans to dominate.”

La Via Campesina International and Ody demand greater equality between human society and other living beings. Ody highlights the difference between industrial agriculture and peasant practices, pointing out, for example, the relation to animals.

“How peasants work with animals involves a sort of friendship in daily life, taking into consideration the animals’ emotions. This differs greatly from industrial agriculture, where animals are seen as machines, and there is no relationship between farmer and animal.”

[simplefoodsmallfarmz]

In the tradition.

When you operate a small farm, stuff happens and ya gotta stop and repair, replace or recycle what’s broken. It’s not always easy and it definitely is a time commitment, however, it still remains a blessing because during the downtime, lessons are learned.

What have you fixed recently?

[wordforests]

The Inuit community of Inukjuak in northern Québec has long fought to preserve the traditional culinary practices that define them, but climate change is a threat unlike anything they've faced before.

by Craig LaBan, March 6, 2025

INUKJUAK, Nunavik— The choppy gray waters of the Hudson Bay are numbingly cold in the days before the season’s first snow in the Canadian Arctic. As our speeding canoe slams against the rolling waves, sending frigid sprays of salt mist across my face, I grip the wooden seat bottom with all my might.

“I used to be afraid of canoe surfing, too,” says Willia Ningeok, 40, the captain and leader of this mid-October hunting expedition. He stands in the stern of the 24-foot motorized canoe, opposite two young hunters with rusty rifles and harpoons. As he weaves between the maze of shifting swells toward nearby Harrison Island, where the waters teem with beluga, walrus, seal, and arctic char, he breaks into song. “It’s the most wonderful time … of the year!”

There is palpable excitement this week in Inukjuak. This Inuit community of about 1,800 in Nunavik, the northernmost region of Québec, is preparing to celebrate the premiere of A Century After Nanook with a village feast. The film is a collaboration between residents and Kirk French, an assistant professor of anthropology, film production, and media studies at Pennsylvania State University. It looks at how life has changed in Inukjuak since the world’s first feature-length documentary, Nanook of the North, was filmed here in 1922 on the frozen banks of the Ungava Peninsula...

[soilthesimpletruth]

You can do it!!! Be like nature and push through.