With holiday feasts and Black Friday sales around the corner, Walmart’s leadership knew it needed to address supply chain upheaval, according to company statements to shareholders. There were three options: one was to simply pay a premium to skip the queue.

“There was some of that that went on with L.A. and Long Beach,” said Captain Kip Louttit, executive director of the Marine Exchange of Southern California, who helped direct traffic at the ports at the time.

According to Louttit, some retailers chose to go to a different, smaller port to unload, often at a higher cost. Walmart could have also chosen to do the same.

Or, for a hefty sum, it could bypass the system entirely and hire its own ships. And that’s exactly what Walmart did.

“Our merchants continue to take steps to mitigate challenges, including adding extra lead time to orders and chartering vessels specifically for Walmart goods,” Walmart’s then-CFO Brett Biggs later said during a 2022 earnings call. In the interim, Walmart had pushed more than $1 billion in additional capital toward supply chain costs, investments in ecommerce, and other tech and customer-facing initiatives.

During the initial food shocks of COVID, when food was wasting in fields and some people experienced increased food insecurity, Walmart had another plan. Rather than transporting food, clothing, electronics, and toys via containers on massive ships servicing multiple retailers, Walmart chartered its own ships to carry goods for only its stores. The decision to pay for private vessels combined with the COVID aftermath to increase sales, allowed Walmart to increase all inventory by more than 20 percent, ultimately muscling other, smaller retailers aside and sidestepping the choked container terminals altogether.

“Nobody was overtly trying to throw a cog in the wheel,” said Louttit. “They just might be trying to maximize profitability for their piece of the system.”

And maximize Walmart did. While independent retailers and mom-and-pop shops faced shortages and even empty shelves during the 2021 holiday season, Walmart’s sales grew more than 8 percent. And, despite its logistical challenges, the pandemic overall had already proved to be a boon for the retail giant. Long one of the biggest retail businesses in the world, with $572.8 billion in annual revenue, Walmart’s gross profits jumped 7.33 percent by the end of 2021, hitting $138 billion.

Walmart did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

That the company thrived in the face of the pandemic and the ensuing supply chain disruption, however, illustrates its enormous influence over world trade and global pricing for goods, and how that influence is squeezing other retailers, which further weakens the global supply chain, including for food.

Walmart’s strategy at the ports also showcases how the company supports a network of lobbyists that work to expand its interests. Experts say the combination leaves supply chains too rigid to respond to disruption and makes prices, particularly for food, vulnerable to inflation.

The ‘Elephant in the Room’

“The pandemic and ‘containergeddon’ was putting these small and medium-sized mom and pops out of business,” said Steve Ferreira, CEO of shipping consultancy Ocean Audit, referring to a term he coined to describe the ocean shipping slowdowns during the pandemic.

Exporters also struggled. American dairy producers, for example, faced unprecedented challenges in exporting goods during the pandemic’s first year. In 2021, the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) was tasked with assessing the supply chain crisis by surveying industries most impacted. As part of that survey, the National Milk Producers Federation and the U.S. Dairy Export Council submitted public comments to the DOT, saying the increased cost of shipping was “significant and damaging” to dairy producers “and the thousands of workers they support throughout the supply chain.”

“There has been a change in behavior by the ocean carriers that is severely harming shippers, including American dairy exporters,” the public comment read.

Even a year later, in 2022, massive disruption remained for many U.S. producers, including the seafood industry—which includes many small businesses.

“Although the story has been driven off the front page, and the nation’s attention has turned to other challenges, supply chain disruptions at U.S. ports continue to cause severe problems, imposing significant and unnecessary costs on American seafood businesses still trying to recover from the pandemic, lockdowns, food inflation, and other obstacles,” reads a public comment submitted in December 2022 by the National Fisheries Institute in a subsequent Congressional push for reform.

Ultimately, the high cost of shipping also trickled down to American consumers via record-high inflation. According to the International Monetary Fund, the increase in global shipping costs in 2021 caused inflation to increase by more than 2 percentage points.

But Walmart not only bucked those high shipping costs, it turned them into an opportunity.

“Because of Walmart’s sheer size and the fact that they’re the 800-pound elephant in the room, they were prospering during the pandemic,” Ferreira said.

Walmart is the largest importer in the U.S., having imported nearly 1 million 20-foot shipping containers full of goods just last year. Amazon, by comparison, brought in about 3 percent of that, or roughly 33,000 containers. And yet, Ferreira estimates that during the pandemic, Walmart paid less than half what the average importer paid for shipping.

“It all has to do with the leverage that they have in terms of the amount of spend and containers that they have,” he said.

In other words, ocean shippers couldn’t say no to their biggest client.

“Flexing that market power over the supply chain is a way to elbow out the competition,” said Stacy Mitchell, co-executive director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR), who has studied Walmart extensively. “They’re able to demand special treatment from suppliers who are looking at Walmart thinking, ‘Well, you’re a quarter of my revenue. I cannot say no due to the threat of losing you as a customer, which would capsize my company. So, therefore, I have to give you the special deal. And the way I’m going to make up for that is I’m going to raise prices on your smaller competitors.’”

Walmart did not respond to a request for comment about whether the company commanded special treatment from suppliers, or whether consumers inherited the cost of its dealmaking. But the advantage larger companies had in the pandemic marketplace was part of the reason COVID took such a drastic toll on small businesses across the U.S., according to one study by a consortium of economy and business experts. Not only were larger retailers commandeering their own ships and supplies, but they were also leveraging the marketplace in their favor.

Port Reform

More specifically, the bipartisan bill, introduced by Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota) and John Thune (R-South Dakota), aims to crack down on ocean carriers and shipping companies taking advantage of a largely unregulated international shipping system.

The act prohibits retaliation by ocean carriers, requires increased public disclosure by the Federal Maritime Commission—which oversees the shipping industry—and protects U.S. importers and exporters from being denied cargo space when it’s available.

The goal is to “ensure an efficient, competitive, and economical transportation system in the ocean commerce of the United States,” the legislation reads.

In his 2022 State of the Union address, Biden touched on the need for such legislation, saying, “When corporations don’t have to compete, their profits go up, your prices go up, and small businesses and family farmers and ranchers go under. We see it happening with ocean carriers moving goods in and out of America.”

He later applauded members of Congress for supporting legislation that “will help lower costs for American retailers, farmers, and consumers” when the Ocean Shipping Reform Act passed later in the year.

Lobbying disclosure reports reviewed by Civil Eats show Walmart was active in lobbying on the Ocean Shipping Reform Act of 2022, as well as other iterations of the legislation. Between 2022 and 2023, Walmart spent nearly $9.7 million lobbying the federal government on ocean reform and other efforts.

The company annually spends such sums to advance and protect its interests. In the last 10 years, Walmart has deployed lobbyists to affect agriculture policy, labor law, market competition, food safety, trade, climate solutions, and other legislation that affects the company’s bottom line, supply chain, and other interests in the federal arena.

Since 2013, Walmart has spent more than $70 million lobbying. It’s one of the top lobbying retailers in the U.S.

The company is similarly active in state politics. For example, Walmart was involved in a court battle in California over a ban on big-box stores. And the company regularly spends hundreds of thousands of dollars on lobbyists in its home state of Arkansas.

Walmart did not respond to a request for comment on the legislation or the company’s lobbying goals. Therefore, it’s not clear exactly how Walmart lobbied on the legislation. But Ferreira said it’s not surprising that Walmart was active on the issue on Capitol Hill.

“What Walmart is trying to do is say, ‘Hey, let’s let the free-market play this out.’ And it’s great for them, right? They really want that because they are the market,” he said. “The less bureaucracy and rules in the way makes them a better player.”

And not every organization was interested in reform. The shipping industry, for example, lobbied hard against the legislation. The World Shipping Council, which represents the world’s largest shipping companies, spent at least $300,000 and hired a lobbyist known for strong ties in the Senate in order to prevent the legislation from being introduced at all. The Council called an early iteration of the Ocean Shipping Reform Act “unworkable, unnecessary, and duplicative.” It declined to answer specific questions from Civil Eats about opposition to the legislation.

Ultimately those lobbying efforts helped keep things mostly unchanged for large shippers and retailers like Walmart. Despite the legislation being signed into law last year, Ferreira said the legislation contains so many exceptions for the ocean shipping industry that it’s ineffective in moving the culture of an ocean shipping system he likened to a “cartel.”

“It really hasn’t had much of an impact or effect, if any,” he said. “It’s a very broken industry and system, and OSRA did nothing to help it. The bottom line is it doesn’t really have any teeth.”

And with the pandemic and supply chain disruptions largely behind us, combined with the fact that container shipping rates are so low right now, it’s unlikely the issue will garner attention again until the next shipping crisis.

Consequences of Concentrated Power

“During the height of the supply chain bottlenecks, a lot of independent grocers did not have basic products on their shelves because Walmart had commandeered those products,” said ILSR’s Stacy Mitchell. “So, people were walking into the independent grocer and there’s no baby formula, or whatever it may be. But it’s on the shelf at Walmart, and so that drove business to Walmart.”

Walmart’s tendency to vacuum up business from smaller retailers even has a name: the Walmart Effect, a colloquialism since a book by the same name documented Walmart’s impacts on smaller retailers in the communities it serves. Through its command of the global marketplace, as well as its ability to commandeer its own ships for importing goods, the Walmart Effect deepened retail divides during the pandemic, as Walmart raked in profits and even more market share.

During the pandemic, Walmart dominated sales in almost every category—from groceries to retail goods. Its online sales increased as much as 74 percent.

Mitchell said Walmart’s size and massive market share drove food companies to further consolidate, forcing them to “bulk up,” or merge in order to hold their own against a powerful buyer. That helped craft a highly consolidated market where production has been largely driven overseas and supply lines are consolidated, tenuous, and vulnerable to collusion, Mitchell said.

And Walmart is now one of only a handful of retailers that are able to maneuver that system. That consolidation—both on the grocery and food production level—has contributed to high food prices and inflation overall.

“I would argue that Walmart is actually the primary culprit behind the set of changes in the supply chain that actually led to all of these supply chain problems and to inflation,” she said. “We are so wholly dependent on a small number of corporations who are so top heavy that they’re very brittle, they’re not terribly adaptable. They don’t have any reason to be nimble because there’s no competitor that’s going to come along and eat their lunch.”

In a truly competitive market economy, retailers and supply chains should be nimble, she said. Nothing should be able to cause shortages and bottlenecks to the extent we saw the last few years—not even global pandemics, climate catastrophes, or worker shortages.

U.S. lawmakers are aware of this problem. Last year, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law held a series of antitrust hearings, one of which focused entirely on the food supply chain for goods, though not specifically on Walmart. Throughout the hearing, committee members heard from workers, farmers, low-income families, and small businesses.

“With very few companies in the lead, the long, complex supply chains that we rely on to eat daily are extremely vulnerable to disruption by health and environmental disasters—and a problem in a single location can ripple rapidly across the nation,” testified Allison Johnson, senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council. “Local and regional food supplies can be more nimble and resilient in the face of adversity, but small businesses struggle to compete in a marketplace skewed toward the largest players.”

President Biden has also been active in combating consolidation in the food sector, including by providing resources to state attorneys general to “crack down on price-gouging and other anticompetitive practices” and by preventing large corporate mergers.

Ocean Audit’s Steve Ferreira adds that, on the other hand, Walmart’s immense power grants it the ability to offer low prices to American consumers. It boils down to a matter of preference, he said.

“Is it better for Walmart to have the lowest prices and protect American savings accounts, or is it better to have Walmart and then a hundred mom-and-pop competitors that give the American people more choice?”

Suzi Parker contributed research.

The post Walmart’s Pandemic Port Squeeze appeared first on Civil Eats.

Climate change is emerging as a central theme of the 2023 Farm Bill negotiations. Some farming groups are asking Congress to prioritize young farmers and Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) farmers in those climate provisions, given the historic discrimination they’ve faced, coupled with the fact that BIPOC communities bear disproportionate impacts of climate change.

According to the National Young Farmers Coalition, which surveyed over 10,000 people under 40 years old, lack of access to land and capital are the core issues young farmers face across the U.S., and the challenge they would most like to see addressed in the next farm bill.

We spoke to Mazariegos-Anastassiou recently about the challenges she faces and how the 2023 Farm Bill could better support farmers like her in recovering from the effects of climate change.

Is climate change impacting your farm?

(Photo courtesy of Veronica Mazariegos-Anastassiou)

The short answer is yes, in the sense that there have been fluctuations in what we should expect. There was the drought, and then there was a deluge of water. In 2020, we were directly affected by the CZU Lightning Complex fires. We understand there are many causes of wildfires, like the warming weather and the drought. But it’s also a land management problem; [people] haven’t been maintaining certain land, and therefore you have these very devastating effects of fire. We felt that directly impacting our operation. I think when you go into farming, you know that things are sometimes out of your control, but you do expect patterns. Now, those patterns are changing at a faster pace than past generations experienced.

During the CZU Lightning Complex fires, did you have support—financial or otherwise—from the federal government to get through?

Absolutely not. But we were supported by our community—family, friends, our customers . . . that’s where we felt supported.

One of the biggest conversations around this latest set of floods is how inaccessible federal support is. The Farm Service Agency, which is the main point of contact for a farmer at the local level, is so bureaucratic. Its products and supports are not geared toward the kind of agriculture that we and other BIPOC farmers are doing. We’re farming in a very different way than what these programs are designed for, so you automatically feel like you don’t even qualify.

There’s also a staffing shortage problem; there are just not enough people to address all the issues. And when you’re talking about smaller, diversified producers, we are all the way at the bottom of the list of whoever gets assistance.

It does seem like there are some improvements. The Inflation Reduction Act started to acknowledge the role that farmers like us play in climate change mitigation and the need to support us in adapting to these inevitable climate change impacts. But we have a long way to go.

Why do you feel like you don’t qualify for federal assistance programs?

When you look at some of the assistance programs, like the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program (CFAP) or the Noninsured Crop Disaster Assistance Program (NAP), you apply based on the acreage you’re growing of a particular crop. The payout is a very small fraction. In that calculation, if you’re growing very small quantities, there is no point. Filling out the application is actually more work than what I will get out of it. Because the programs are not designed for diverse systems, it feels like they don’t really apply to you. That has been my experience.

With the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), there is a lot of funding for management of a property, but they tend to favor you heavily when you’re the landowner. It’s much harder to access the support when you’re a tenant. And when you’re thinking about BIPOC-owned farms, the reality is that you have a lot less land ownership in that group. We’re subleasing one of our properties, so we’re not able to access the support that’s available, because it really is for folks that have complete agency over their property.

What climate provisions would you like to see in the farm bill?

There are three things I think about. How do we help farmers of all sorts deal with the effects of climate change? And that comes in [the form of] insurance, lower interest loans, and even grants to deal with something that’s unforeseen.

The second thing is the role that farmers and ranchers play in mitigating the effects of climate change. When we’re talking about cover cropping, composting, managing riparian areas, maximizing biodiversity . . . can we have more support to do that work? Because right now we’re doing it because we know it’s important, but it’s not a revenue stream. Federal programs need to provide concrete support for those farmers who are implementing those practices.

The third and probably most important is that you need to have programs that help farmers stay in business and do their work. If we can’t stay in business, forget climate change; we’re not going to be able to do this work, period. And being able to stay on a piece of property long term is very important. What programs can make that easier? Supporting first-time land buyers with down payments or incentivizing landowners that are leasing land to farmers to have really good terms and co-invest in a property. Right now, for example, we are in a year-to-year lease situation, and that’s very difficult when you’re planning a business with long-term ramifications. So that’s another way the farm bill can support beginning farmers and BIPOC farmers.

Why is it important to prioritize BIPOC farmers in the farm bill?

BIPOC communities in our country are more vulnerable to the effects of climate change, food insecurity, and a lot of the issues that are tied to agriculture. Yet, we’ve also been essential and crucial in agriculture because we have often been the farmworkers, the ones actually doing the work, but we have not had the agency to lead those projects.

I am a first-generation American. I’m also a first-generation farmer. A lot of the motivation I had to farm is because I saw how challenging it is to provide healthy food for a family of limited means. And this is not just about food; it’s about our environment. My communities are being more affected by environmental degradation. We’ve largely been left out of the picture when we’re talking about agriculture in the United States.

We have heard ad nauseum about the average farmer’s age, race, and background. Now I think there is an interest in [seeing] these other communities play a role and influence the direction the agriculture industry takes. We’re moving away from a monoculture. There is a wave of young farmers and ranchers that are seeing this as the way forward for agriculture. I think that’s an important perspective to support. We know that certain communities have been historically discriminated against by institutions like the [USDA’s] Farm Service Agency, so I think we are a key group to listen to and support, since we have historically not been afforded that opportunity to lead.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

The post Why BIPOC Farmers Need More Protection From Climate Change appeared first on Civil Eats.

But those price drops will likely only go so far. That’s largely because, over the last few years, the small handful of food corporations controlling the sector have been charging premiums for their products, blaming supply chain disruptions. They’ve raked in record profits as a result, and nothing is stopping them from continuing to do so.

It’s well known that the triple threats of the pandemic, Russia’s war on Ukraine, and the effects of climate change have done a number on the supply chain. Then came avian flu, adding to the pile in 2022 and early 2023.

This series of supply chain disruptions has led to the highest food prices ever, leaving many families unable to afford their groceries. But that’s not the whole story.

Food corporations are thriving. Between 2021 and 2022, the food and beverage industry recorded more than $155 billion in profits, according to Forbes. Nestlé, the world’s largest food company, increased its gross profits last year by almost 3 percent to $46 billion. Cargill recorded a 23 percent jump in revenue last year to $165 billion—$6.68 billion of which was profit. Tyson Foods, the largest meat producer in the U.S., nearly doubled its profits in the first quarter of 2022 due to soaring meat prices.

That profit windfall is making its way to corporate food executives and their shareholders. Last year, Tyson Foods’ CEO’s salary increased by 33 percent to $12 million. Cargill doled out $1.21 billion in its fiscal year 2022 to shareholders—an all-time record.

How is the corporate food world flourishing amid a global food crisis? Can these two realities be reconciled? And what does it all mean for food prices going forward? We spoke with experts to help explain what’s going on.

Pricing Food

“When food supplies are disrupted in times of crisis, people are willing to pay a premium,” said David Ortega, food economist and associate professor at Michigan State University.

And not only has supply been low, but, over the last few years, demand has been very high. According to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), consumer spending on food outpaced pre-pandemic levels, even after accounting for inflation.

“Some of this can likely be attributed to some of the excess savings that households accumulated during the pandemic,” said Ortega. A surplus of savings has increased demand from some consumers, typically younger ones, who are willing to pay premium prices for foods that are grown or raised ethically and in an environmentally sustainable manner.

“I think that’s what the grocery industry is really grappling with now, because they do not live in a world of true cost accounting” said Errol Schweizer, who led the national grocery program at Whole Foods for almost a decade. “They live in [a world with] a lot of externalities where the real costs of these products are paid by our future generations, but also by the environment, by communities of color—particularly farmworkers and low-income rural folks who live in heavily polluted agricultural areas.”

Right now, the price of food doesn’t reflect any of those factors. In fact, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute, corporate profits accounted for 54 percent of food price increases between 2020 and 2021. For the four decades prior, only 11 percent was attributed to corporate profits, the rest to the cost of labor.

When avian influenza recently wiped out more than 58 million birds in about a year and egg prices dramatically shot up, Cal-Maine, the largest distributor of eggs in the U.S., increased its gross profit margins five-fold. That raised questions for farmer-led advocacy group Farm Action, which penned a letter to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in January asking the agency to investigate Cal-Maine for price gouging and collusion.

“Contrary to industry narratives, the increase in the price of eggs has not been an ‘Act of God’—it has been simple profiteering,” the letter states.

Farm Action pointed to the USDA’s analyses of egg prices throughout 2022, in which researchers consistently noted prices were “significantly higher than expected.” The fact that no other egg producer stepped in to sell their eggs for less “can be evidence that there is tacit collusion in the marketplace,” said Farm Action’s co-founder and president, Joe Maxwell.

And it’s not just the egg industry that has been accused of price gouging over the last year.

“Basically, what corporations have been able to do—and they brag about this constantly in earnings calls—is that they’ve taken these cost increases and they passed all of that onto consumers,” said Chris Becker, senior economist at Groundwork Collaborative, a progressive economic think tank. “But they’ve been able to go well beyond that and jacked up prices by so much that they’re actually having skyrocketing profit margins. On every unit they’re selling, they’re making a higher share of profits relative to what they’re paying in labor input costs.”

Researchers at Groundwork have been listening in on corporate earnings calls to hear what food company executives are telling their shareholders regarding profits. “They don’t use the word ‘profiteering,’ but they’re talking about the ways that they can get away with much higher prices than they normally would be able to,” said Becker.

The shareholder system further incentivizes these price hikes.

“Corporations are not being run to benefit everyone in society,” Becker said. “We’ve seen a shift in the last several decades towards the very shareholder-dominant organization of corporations. And so we’ve also seen real effects of that that have amplified the incentives for this profiteering.”

Plus, over the last decades, the U.S. Supreme Court has dramatically expanded corporate rights. And, it seems, corporations are taking those rights and running with them.

For example, in a recent earnings call for food giant General Mills, which owns brands including Annie’s, Betty Crocker, and Pillsbury, the company’s CFO confirmed that price increases were outstripping cost inflation. Executives at Tyson Foods recently cited “pricing initiatives” for increased profits. PepsiCo’s CFO claimed the company is “capable of taking whatever pricing we need.”

Food prices are only so elastic, however; if prices go up too high, consumers start buying less—and visiting food pantries instead. That’s already starting to happen, evidenced by long lines at food banks and retailers going over their recessionary playbooks in recent earnings reports.

But, Becker said, even when the cost of producing food goes down, it typically takes longer for prices to drop than it does for them to shoot up in the first place. “As the cost goes down, they keep the prices high to kind of extract a little bit more profit margin while they still can,” he said.

Price gouging is a difficult thing to prove, but the current makeup of our corporate food system is certainly ripe for it.

How the Hyper-Concentrated Food Sector Shapes Prices

But in our current food system, companies have the power.

Right now, only four companies control more than half of the market for nearly 80 percent of grocery items, according to an investigation from the Guardian and Food and Water Watch. Food retailers are also extremely concentrated, with only four companies—Walmart, Costco, Kroger, and Ahold Delhaize—controlling 65 percent of the market. Supermarket giants Kroger and Albertsons are currently planning a merger which, if it takes effect in 2024 as expected, would make them the second-largest food retailer in the U.S.

“These firms control such a large segment of the market that the basic supply and demand market dynamics cannot function,” said Farm Action’s Joe Maxwell.

This hyper-concentration dates back to the 1970s, when then Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz told farmers to “get big or get out.” In the years since, corporations have taken that advice and run with it. Mergers and acquisitions have resulted in an agricultural supply chain that is dominated—from seed to grocery store—by a small handful of companies. And now consumers are paying the price.

It also gives corporations the power to keep prices high in tandem with their rivals. Not necessarily through explicit collusion, but rather a wink and nod, tacit agreement. It’s even easier to do that during emergencies, such as a global food crisis.

“In the context where all firms are facing these cost shocks, collusion isn’t really necessary because when you know that all other firms are facing the same conditions as you, you can raise your prices,” said Evan Wasner, a graduate student at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst who has recently co-authored multiple papers on the topic with economist Isabella Weber. In the latest, they wrote, “Sellers’ inflation generates a general price rise which may be transitory, but can also lead to self-sustaining inflationary spirals under certain conditions.”

Records show that many companies announce exactly how much they’ll raise prices on their public earnings calls, deeming explicit collusion unnecessary.

The Biden administration has been outspoken against a monopolistic marketplace, though little has been done in practice to crack down on corporations. But the issue has garnered some attention in Congress recently. In February, Senator Cory Booker (D-New Jersey) and Representative Ro Khanna (D-California) re-introduced the Farm System Reform Act which, among other things, would target concentration in the meatpacking industry.

Putting Power Back in the Hands of Consumers

Legislation introduced last year by Representative Jamaal Bowman (D-New York) proposes creating a task force to monitor price changes in food and other goods and investigate corporate profiteering. In a GOP-controlled Congress, however, it’s unlikely the legislation will get very far.

Some states are taking matters into their own hands, including New York, where the Attorney General recently proposed rules against price gouging. Changes would include prohibiting corporations with large market shares from increasing their profit margins during market disruptions.

Crackdowns on price gouging are extending beyond food, too: In California, Governor Gavin Newsom introduced a proposal in response to excessive gas prices, which would create a watchdog group and set a price-gouging penalty for the oil and gas industry.

Another approach is to implement price-gouging laws for upstream sectors—that is, goods that are used as inputs, such as fertilizer, oil, steel, and shipping materials. In general, price-gouging laws target consumer goods. Tracing price increases through the supply chain all the way back to the source could help tamp down inflation.

Experts are also predicting supply chain shocks in the future. As the effects of climate change ramp up around the world, we can expect more extreme disasters and geopolitical tension. University of Massachusetts-Amherst’s Evan Wasner argues we should prepare for that future the way we prepare for war: by keeping buffer stock reserves.

“When oil prices really skyrocketed in the beginning of 2022, the Biden administration started releasing oil onto the market and that really brought prices down pretty significantly,” he said. The same could be done for other supplies, such as grain and wheat.

Ultimately, workers and consumers need a bigger seat at the table, said Groundwork Collaborative’s Chris Becker. Several recent bills aim to do just that, including one in California that would establish a council that dictates working conditions and wages for the state’s fast-food industry, with fast-food workers sitting on the council.

“Without empowered workers and consumers, corporations exist primarily to benefit their own executives and shareholders. That’s the root of the problem,” said Becker.

“What purpose are they serving? Are they serving the interests of wealthy investors?” he asked. “Do we regulate corporations so that they care about paying their workers well, and care about not raising prices to these unsustainable levels that consumers can’t afford?

The post Food Prices Are Still High. What Role Do Corporate Profits Play? appeared first on Civil Eats.

https://civileats.com/2023/03/14/all-eyes-on-california-as-fast-food-worker-rights-land-on-the-2024-ballot/ Tue, 14 Mar 2023 08:00:12 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=51121 Vilorio works at a Jack in the Box near her home in Hayward, California. When she told her manager she was sick, her manager told Vilorio that she wouldn’t be paid for any of the days she missed. So, eight days later, Vilorio went back to work. “They needed me to come back, and I […]

The post All Eyes on California as Fast-Food Worker Rights Land on the 2024 Ballot appeared first on Civil Eats.

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When Ingrid Vilorio tested positive for COVID-19 in March 2021, she wasn’t worried about her symptoms or even ending up in the hospital. She was worried she wouldn’t be able to make rent.

Vilorio works at a Jack in the Box near her home in Hayward, California. When she told her manager she was sick, her manager told Vilorio that she wouldn’t be paid for any of the days she missed. So, eight days later, Vilorio went back to work.

“They needed me to come back, and I needed to pay my bills,” Vilorio said in Spanish during a recent interview.

“In an industry where it’s very hard for workers to unionize because of the franchise model, it creates a way in which workers can have a collective voice in the process of setting the standards.”

Until one of her coworkers told her, Vilorio didn’t know that, under California law, she was entitled to sick pay for the days she missed. And with a son at home, she needed that pay. So, with the help of the workers’ rights group Fight for $15, she and a group of her coworkers went on strike, demanding not only the sick pay they were entitled to, but also basic health safeguards like hand sanitizer and masks.

“I was scared,” she said. “I didn’t want to have problems with my employer.”

After five months, the restaurant’s management finally agreed to pay Vilorio for the eight sick days. She was frustrated by the fact it took going on strike to receive the money she was owed.

Jack in the Box did not respond to multiple requests for comment, nor did any other fast-food restaurant mentioned in this story.

Vilorio is one of 550,000 fast-food workers in California, and her story is not unique.

“Wage theft is really rampant in the fast-food industry, as are health and safety hazards,” said Ken Jacobs, chair of the U.C. Berkeley Labor Center. Jacobs also points out that Vilorio fits the core demographic of fast-food workers in California: Two-thirds are women, and 60 percent are Latin American.

Recent state-level legislation, A.B. 257 or the FAST Recovery Act, aimed to protect workers like Vilorio by convening a council made up of workers and corporate and franchise representatives to “establish sector-wide minimum standards on wages, working hours, and other working conditions related to the health, safety, and welfare” of fast-food workers.

“In an industry where it’s very hard for workers to unionize because of the franchise model, it creates a way in which workers can have a collective voice in the process of setting the standards in their industry,” said Jacobs.

The bill passed the California Assembly last January and Governor Gavin Newsom signed the measure on Labor Day. However, in December—just a month before the law was set to go into effect—it was put on hold. A coalition led by the International Franchise Association (IFA), a group whose members include McDonald’s and Arby’s, announced it had collected enough signatures to put a referendum on the ballot in the next election (despite recent allegations that voters were misled by signature-gatherers telling them they were helping to raise wages for fast-food workers).

“Fortunately, now more than 1 million Californians have spoken out to prevent this misguided policy from driving food prices higher and destroying local businesses and the jobs they create,” said IFA President and CEO Matt Haller in a statement in late January. IFA did not answer specific questions about their opposition to the bill nor the allegations of fraudulent petitioners.

The passage of the FAST Recovery Act was seen as a watershed moment for workers who have long been striking and demanding better pay. Now, all eyes are on the battle in California at a time when fast-food workers around the nation still work for minimum wage and the federal tipped minimum wage—the rate tipped workers are paid in addition to tips—is $2.13. Industry experts say similar legislation could pass in other states with Democratic legislatures and governors, like New York and Michigan.

Flags are flown at a car caravan and rally of fast food workers and supporters for passage of AB 257, a fast-food worker health and safety bill, on April 16, 2021 in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. (Photo credit: Mario Tama/Getty Images)

Upset But Unsurprised

Jimmy Perez, a Papa John’s employee in Los Angeles, doesn’t buy the argument that the FAST Recovery Act would destroy local business.

“That’s just fear-mongering,” he said. Instead, he thinks corporations don’t want to give their workers any seats at the bargaining table. “They want to just turn it off and put it out like a cigarette. We’ve worked hard to get to this point to have a seat finally, and now they want to shut it down, which is very frustrating.”

During the pandemic, Perez said he and his colleagues faced increasingly unsafe working conditions, mostly due to irate customers.

“I’ve had objects thrown at me before. Our drivers have been robbed at gunpoint or threatened with weapons,” he said.

According to a 2022 report from the UCLA Labor Center, nearly half of fast-food workers experienced verbal abuse in the workplace and more than a third experienced violence.

“There’s been a crisis of workplace violence, which was exacerbated by COVID,” said Jacobs, who contributed to the UCLA report. “During COVID, there were a lot of customers who were unhappy about masking and the enforcement fell to workers.”

Perez said when he brings up safety concerns to his managers, nothing is done about it, and that has led to a lot of turnover and empty positions at his workplace.

“We got single mothers working here. We got kids trying to get through college. We need this money.”

“We’re doing the jobs of two people, three people. So, that causes more stress on us, which then creates more errors at work, which then creates more irate customers and an increased chance of violence. It’s a domino effect.”

The council established by the FAST Recovery Act would consist of a balanced roster of fast-food workers, worker representatives, franchisors, and franchisees, as well as two representatives of the governor’s administration. Any proposal would need six votes to go forward.

One of the potential proposals Perez is most excited about—should A.B. 257 ultimately go into effect—is a minimum wage hike.

“We got single mothers working here. We got kids trying to get through college. We need this money,” he said.

The council would have the authority to raise the minimum hourly wage to $22. Right now, Perez makes $16 an hour, which he said is barely enough to survive in Los Angeles. A wage increase would give him some financial wiggle room and also dignify the job he feels proud to do.

“For many of us, it’s not just a job. It’s doing what we love. Many of us, it’s our passion and our craft,” he said. “Like a city worker or a government worker, we want that level of respect.” A higher wage, he said, would command a higher level of respect.

For Jack Slavsky-Fode, who works at an Arby’s in Hollywood, a higher wage would mean being able to get a place of his own. The 20-year-old currently lives in a two-bedroom apartment with his mom. “I still can’t even afford a studio apartment here,” he said.

But, for Slavsky-Fode, it’s not just about the potential wage increase. It’s also about giving workers like him a seat at the table.

“That way we could actually open up a line of communication so we can talk about these problems and discuss how we can actually fix this,” he said, referring to issues like verbal and sexual harassment and discrimination.

Slavsky-Fode said he’s one of the rare fast-food workers who has had a generally positive experience. His manager is supportive and he feels respected.

“I am very thankful to be working with that crew, because you hear how often somebody gets discriminated against based on their race or their gender or their orientation, and you hear how often they have to deal with horrible customers and all that.”

While he’s upset the law didn’t go into effect on January 1, he’s not surprised. “Knowing how much power and control a lot of fast-food corporations have, I’m not surprised,” he said. “It’s disheartening, but it ain’t going to stop us.”

The Fight Forward

Now, with the fate of the FAST Recovery Act in the hands of California voters, fast-food workers and labor unions are preparing for a fight leading up to the 2024 election. Food-focused labor unions have won myriad rights and benefits for workers in the past, including higher wages and even access to healthcare.

“I believe the power of the workers and the voice of the people is our competitive advantage,” said Tia Orr, executive director of California’s Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which pushed for the legislation. “I think workers are coming together in ways that we haven’t seen in a while. I mean, you see the support for unions and workers growing day by day.”

“Once we get this for fast-food workers, we can also get this for retail workers. And then everybody . . . That’s how progress works.”

In recent weeks, SEIU has also supported new legislation aimed at holding corporate franchisors jointly liable for franchisee violations. Dubbed the Fast-Food Corporate Franchisor Responsibility Act, the act was authored by California Assembly Member Chris Holden, who also authored the FAST Recovery Act.

“This bill will destroy tens of thousands of local restaurants by eliminating the equity they have built over decades of franchise small business ownership,” said IFA president Matthew Haller in a statement.

Another recent bill, authored by state senator Monique Limón, would change a current California law that requires fast-food workers to pay for a mandatory food-safety training, instead requiring employers to pay for the training and the workers’ time for completing the training. A recent investigation from the New York Times revealed the company offering the training course is closely associated with the National Restaurant Association, which has spent decades lobbying against raising the tipped minimum wage.

Orr is also looking at how to reform California’s referendum process, which she said is being abused by corporations with deep pockets. “We want to be sure that we’re not circumventing our democracy through a referendum process, but we’re actually encouraging it and we’re being honest and truthful and not deceitful in our behavior as we try to overturn laws in the state of California,” she said.

But Orr hasn’t given up hope on the FAST Recovery Act. She urges Californians to vote in next year’s election with fast-food workers in mind. “It’s time for us to stand up to corporate power,” she said. “We won’t be deceived into believing something is hurtful to workers when it actually is beneficial to workers.”

The legislation has already had ripple effects outside of California, with copycat bills cropping up in states including Virginia and New York. Arby’s worker Slavsky-Fode hopes the fight will also ripple out to other industries.

“Once we get this for fast-food workers, we can also get this for retail workers. And then everybody . . . That’s how progress works,” he said.

Over the past year, Jack in the Box worker Vilorio has gone on strike, made several trips to Sacramento to press legislators to back the bill, and has even slept on the steps of the Capitol building, demanding attention. Her motivation to keep up the fight is simple: She wants to spend more time with her son, whom she rarely gets to see while he’s awake.

“Many of us don’t have enough time to dedicate to our kids because we’re working multiple jobs,” she said. “This bill would give us the opportunity to spend a little bit more time with them.”

The post All Eyes on California as Fast-Food Worker Rights Land on the 2024 Ballot appeared first on Civil Eats.

]]> https://civileats.com/2023/02/07/an-ancient-grain-made-new-again-how-sorghum-could-help-u-s-farms-adapt-to-climate-change/ Tue, 07 Feb 2023 09:00:12 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=50715 But there was one crop that suffered less. “It doesn’t take a whole lot of rain to make a good yield for the sorghum crop,” said Rendel, who plants about 1,000 acres of grain sorghum each year on his 5,000-acre farm. While he did lose some of his grain sorghum, or milo, to the drought, […]

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Last year’s drought took a severe toll on Zack Rendel’s farm. Like many of the neighboring farms in his northeast corner of Oklahoma, his corn crop practically shriveled up due to the lack of moisture. During a normal year, he typically harvests about 150 bushels per acre of corn. Last year, he averaged only 22 per acre. His soybean and wheat crops were also impacted.

But there was one crop that suffered less.

“It doesn’t take a whole lot of rain to make a good yield for the sorghum crop,” said Rendel, who plants about 1,000 acres of grain sorghum each year on his 5,000-acre farm. While he did lose some of his grain sorghum, or milo, to the drought, the loss was minimal compared to corn. “[Sorghum] helps offset our risk,” he said.

“Sorghum was relatively cheap to put in the ground, it had a very good yield to it, and it could withstand some hot, dry summers.”

Farmers in drought-prone areas are increasingly relying on crops that require less water to help them adapt to the effects of climate change. The Great Plains is currently facing exceptional drought, and agricultural hub states like Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma are dealing with long-term consequences. Sorghum is looking especially appealing as a solution.

Rendel, a sixth-generation farmer, said sorghum has a long history on his land, dating all the way back to his great-great-grandfather’s time. He is a member of the Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma and said his predecessors primarily planted sorghum for their own subsistence.

“Back then, everybody had a farm. You had to grow food for your family. Sorghum was relatively cheap to put in the ground, it had a very good yield to it, and it could withstand some hot, dry summers,” Rendel said.

As those hot, dry summers become the norm, Rendel can’t rely on Mother Nature to consistently irrigate his crops.

“[Rain] seems to come either all at once or at the absolute wrong time of the year. So that’s where sorghum begins to fit into our operation very well,” he said.

Sorghum has multiple properties that make it drought tolerant. The leaves and stems of some sorghum varieties are coated in a waxy substance, an adaptation to low-moisture landscapes. It also has uniquely deep roots that can stretch up to 2.5 meters underground.

“It has a deep and fibrous root structure that really digs down to get that water,” said Adam York, sustainability director for National Sorghum Producers (NSP), which recently secured a $65 million Climate-Smart Commodities grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to increase production and develop the sorghum marketplace. According to York, sorghum’s robust root system also gives it a Kernza-like ability to store more carbon deep in the soil than the average plant.

However, sorghum in the U.S. is primarily turned into ethanol fuel and livestock feed—two of the most fossil-fuel intensive agricultural products.

“If we grow double the acres of sorghum in America to feed more livestock, there is no way that is a climate-friendly approach,” said Silvia Secchi, a sustainability professor at the University of Iowa. While she supports the expansion of sorghum production in the U.S., Secchi said there has to be a systematic approach to ensure it has a net positive climate impact.

“Are we producing sorghum in systems that reduce overall fossil-fuel use? And are we then using it to promote a food system that is lower in carbon emissions?” she asked.

Animal agriculture contributes a significant amount of global greenhouse gases. Meanwhile, corn ethanol—which dominates the biofuel industry—is more emissions-intensive than traditional gasoline, and, furthermore, promoting biofuels ultimately delays the electrification of the U.S. transportation system, Secchi argued.

Last year, NSP signed a letter to Congress expressing support for year-round E15—gasoline blended with 15 percent ethanol that has limited availability during the summer months because it worsens air quality. NSP also plans to use a significant portion of its USDA Climate-Smart Commodities grant to bolster the biofuels market.

Sorghum requires less fertilizer than corn (resulting in fewer emissions of the powerful greenhouse gas nitrous oxide), and there is some evidence that suggests the production of sorghum ethanol might result in fewer overall emissions, but further research is currently underway at Kansas State University.

“They knew that once the sorghum is milled, it’s a sweetener, a seed, a feed, and it’s got multiple resources that would help a household.”

York said sorghum’s role lies more on the adaptation versus the mitigation side of climate change.

“It’s an improvement journey, right?” he said. “Certainly, technology today has made agriculture more climate resilient than where we were yesterday, and I think sorghum has a key and positive story to play in that,” he said.

Sorghum’s African Roots

Sorghum is a truly ancient grain, with records of production dating way back to 8,000 B.C. The grain originates from northeastern Africa and remains a staple crop in many semi-arid African countries including Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, and Mozambique. It’s also grown and consumed in India and some East Asian countries.

Unlike the U.S., however, most African and Asian countries use sorghum as food. In fact, more than 500 million people in 30 countries consume sorghum, and the crop is the fifth most important cereal grain in the world. In Ethiopia, for example, it’s used in staple foods including injera, a fermented, spongy flatbread.

Martha Mamo, agronomy and horticulture department head at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, has done extensive research on sorghum production in Africa. Most sorghum producers there operate small-scale farms on just a few acres of land, she said, and sorghum is an ideal crop for them. It’s an especially valuable crop as the Horn of Africa is currently experiencing its worst drought on record, causing mass food shortages and exacerbating famine.

“When I think about the many farmers that I have interacted with in Ethiopia, they always think about risk aversion,” said Mamo, who believes the U.S. could learn a thing or two from African agricultural regions. “It could be a [farm] saving crop,” she added.

Diversify the Farm, Diversify the Farmers

Rendel calls sorghum the “red-headed stepchild” of commodity crops. “It’s like, yeah, it’s there. Nobody likes it, though, because it’s itchy at harvest time.” (The plants release small particles that can irritate farmers’ skin when they go through a combine.) Beyond that short-term challenge, however, Rendel said sorghum may be best for adventurous farmers who are willing to experiment.

And yet, experimenting with sorghum is fairly low risk. In addition to needing less fertilizer, it’s less likely to require large acreage and expensive machinery than corn and soy, making it popular among beginning farmers and farmers of color, who often have fewer resources to work with.

On average, Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) landowners operate significantly smaller operations than white landowners, and many BIPOC farmers rent or lease their land. Because a farm’s acreage largely determines what it grows, cash crops with a high upfront cost often make less sense for small-scale farmers.

“To grow mainstream cash crops like corn and soybeans, you have to have the know-how. You have to have a large enough size to really compete and thrive,” said Mamo. Smaller farmers often lack land and resources, she said, making sorghum an easier choice.

It’s no accident that sorghum is particularly popular among both Indigenous and Black farmers. “Our Indigenous brothers and sisters are the ones that have helped us survive from day one,” said JohnElla Holmes, executive director of the Kansas Black Farmers Association. “They knew that once the sorghum is milled, it’s a sweetener, a seed, a feed, and it’s got multiple resources that would help a household. I think that was one of the most important reasons it became an important crop for Black farmers.”

It’s also possible there are simply more BIPOC farmers in drought-prone regions due to racist land giveaways in the 19th century, such as the Homestead Act of 1862, which overwhelmingly favored white farmers and left some Black farmers with marginal land.

“Even though sorghum is an ancient grain, it’s gained more traction lately and has a huge opportunity to be a bigger part of the puzzle.”

The Trouble With Markets

Most Americans have never eaten a baked good made with sorghum flour or a steaming bowl of sorghum breakfast porridge. That’s because sorghum lacks a robust consumer market in the U.S. That lack of a market is why sorghum production is much lower than corn, soy, and wheat; there were around 6 million acres harvested in the U.S. in 2021, compared to 84 million acres of corn and 86 million acres of soybeans.

In fact, sorghum production in the U.S. has fallen over the past decade, raising questions about its domestic market viability. But some foresee that trend reversing as the climate continues to dry out in certain agricultural regions.

NSP is working on expanding the market, according to York. The USDA recently added sorghum to its Food Buying Guide, which schools across the country use to plan their meals. It’s being brewed into gluten-free beer ranging from Anheuser-Busch’s Redbridge to craft brews like Bard’s. There are a number of sorghum flour mills that see consumer potential in gluten-free and non-GMO markets. And York sees potential in younger generations that are making increasingly climate-conscious decisions.

“Whether that be greenhouse gases, water, or, importantly, biodiversity . . . they could be looking to sorghum as one of those products that has the metrics and the story to tell behind it,” said York.

Verity Ulibarri, a sorghum grower in New Mexico, agrees its future is bright. “Even though sorghum is an ancient grain, it’s gained more traction lately and has a huge opportunity to be a bigger part of the puzzle,” she said.

As drought conditions worsen on her small farm, Ulibarri thinks sorghum could eventually take center stage, rather than acting in a supporting role for other crops. “I see it not just as a substitute option, but a primary option in certain areas,” she added.

The post An Ancient Grain Made New Again: How Sorghum Could Help U.S. Farms Adapt to Climate Change appeared first on Civil Eats.

]]> https://civileats.com/2022/12/12/its-not-enough-snap-recipients-struggle-amid-high-food-prices/ https://civileats.com/2022/12/12/its-not-enough-snap-recipients-struggle-amid-high-food-prices/#comments Mon, 12 Dec 2022 09:00:11 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=50075 Dominguez has suffered three such grocery store panic attacks in the past year, as food prices have reached levels not seen in decades. And, with the holiday season in full swing, the $425 she receives each month through SNAP isn’t keeping up. In October, SNAP recipients across the country received a 12.5 percent increase—the largest […]

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Gilma Dominguez watched quietly as the grocery store clerk scanned each item, her total ticking up with each beep. She was only buying the necessities—meat, milk, beans, rice—but the numbers on the screen were higher than usual. Her heart started beating faster and her palms started to sweat. Even with her Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) allotment, she couldn’t afford all this food. When the clerk finally read out her total, Dominguez was breathless and sweaty. She was having a panic attack.

Dominguez has suffered three such grocery store panic attacks in the past year, as food prices have reached levels not seen in decades. And, with the holiday season in full swing, the $425 she receives each month through SNAP isn’t keeping up.

In October, SNAP recipients across the country received a 12.5 percent increase—the largest in decades—in order to account for food inflation. But with grocery store prices up nearly 13 percent since last year, families are still struggling to make ends meet.

“It’s like a bad dream,” Dominguez said in an interview in Spanish. “Every week, the prices increase and increase and increase.”

The single mom lives in Los Angeles with her son, JP, who is on the autism spectrum. He eats the same thing every day, and Dominguez says she tries not to switch up the menu to substitute in cheaper items.

“At first, the food stamps only covered two or three weeks. But now it’s the second week and I don’t have enough for the rest of the month,” she said.

Quantifying the Need

Dominguez is far from alone in the struggle to afford food. According to a November survey conducted by Propel, a financial assistance app designed for low-income Americans, one-third of respondents—most of whom receive SNAP benefits—reported eating less in the last 30 days due to budgetary constraints.

“It’s like a bad dream. Every week, the prices increase and increase and increase.”

Black and Latino households consistently report higher levels of food insecurity than their white counterparts. And that’s a sign that SNAP isn’t doing its job, say anti-hunger advocates.

SNAP benefits are calculated through the Thrifty Food Plan, a mathematical model that determines the cost of a budget-friendly, balanced, healthy diet. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) designs theoretical “market baskets” for different age and gender groups and uses the results to determine monthly SNAP allotments.

Some say that model is flawed.

“The Thrifty [Food Plan] is the wrong thing to calibrate the benefits to,” said Ellen Vollinger, SNAP director at the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC). “It’s not really the right mix of products to give people a basic standard of living.”

For example, according to a 2012 FRAC report, a market basket for a family of four that year allotted “approximately 0.64 ounces of ‘frozen or refrigerated entrees’ and approximately 2.1 ounces of ‘all cheese’—which, respectively translates to about two-thirds of a fish stick and two slices of cheese for a family of four for a week.” While the market baskets have been updated since then, Vollinger said they’re still inadequate.

The Thrifty Food Plan underwent a modernization last year, and as a result, SNAP recipients began receiving an additional $36.24 per month on average in October 2021.

“Kudos to the administration for taking this long-overdue step,” said Diane Schanzenbach, director of Northwestern University’s Institute for Policy Research. “If it weren’t for that, families would have been struggling even more.”

Now, the market baskets include mostly whole, minimally processed foods including fruit, vegetables, bread, meat, cheese, and yogurt. Relying on such ingredients can be difficult for low-income folks, who often work long hours and have minimal time to cook.

In addition, there are also fundamental flaws in the system’s design. While SNAP benefits are adjusted for inflation annually, there’s a significant lag time between calculation and implementation. For example, this year’s cost-of-living increase was calculated in June and then went into effect in October. It will stay in effect until September 2023. “That’s a long time,” Vollinger said.

In a written interview, a USDA spokesperson acknowledged that many families “have been hurting lately due to inflation and increasing food prices.” They touted the Thrifty Food Plan’s “ability to adapt in changing economic conditions,” and said the agency will re-evaluate the plan every five years.

Why Is Food So Expensive?

Getting the SNAP formula right is especially important at the moment, given the prices shoppers like Dominguez are seeing at the grocery store.

“Everything is so expensive right now. Meat, milk, beans, rice, vegetables, fruits . . . all the basics,” said Dominguez. Every morning, her son eats cereal, the cost of which is up 16 percent since last year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The cost of the milk for that cereal? Also up 16 percent.

There are a number of factors contributing to those unusually high numbers; chief among them are the climate crisis and the ongoing war in Ukraine. The conflict is putting the global wheat supply at risk, driving up the price of wheat and, subsequently, the price of bread, pasta, pastries, and cereals.

“[The Russia-Ukraine conflict] is equivalent to a war between Saudi Arabia and Iran when it comes to oil. That would invoke an oil crisis. In this case, it invokes a wheat crisis,” said William Spriggs, professor of economics at Howard University and chief economist for the AFL-CIO.

“If, after the hurricane destroyed much of Florida this year, you swooped down and said ‘I’m taking bottled water down there to sell it at $20 a bottle,’ we’d arrest you. Because we have regulations that prevent such price gouging,”

At the same time, climate change is wreaking havoc on growing conditions across the globe, including more intense heat waves in Europe, drought in China and flooding in Pakistan. That’s depleting the global supply of staple crops like rice and corn, and it’s impacting the entire global food supply, including meat and dairy.

“All of these things are tremendous shocks to supply. And the result is that the price of food goes up,” Spriggs said.

Meanwhile, big food companies—including Tyson, General Mills, and Cargill—are making record profits amid price hikes for their products. Prices are largely not tracking with worker wage growth, meaning companies are lining their pockets at the expense of customers.

Spriggs likens the situation to price gouging in the aftermath of a hurricane.

“If, after the hurricane destroyed much of Florida this year, you swooped down and said ‘Oh, I’m taking bottled water down there and I’m going to sell it at $20 a bottle,’ we’d arrest you. Because we have regulations that prevent such price gouging,” Spriggs said. “This is no different.”

Most of these factors are not only contributing to the price of food, but to the cost of goods overall, Spriggs said. That’s stretching SNAP households’ budgets even tighter.

It’s not just food Dominguez is struggling to afford, for instance. It’s medicine, too. She is a cancer patient and Medi-Cal—California’s Medicaid—doesn’t cover all of her medications. This month, she couldn’t afford the out-of-pocket expense, so she had to forgo taking her medicine.

“I had to take time off of work because I was experiencing so much pain from skipping my medication,” she said.

Lifelines for Food Assistance Recipients

Dominguez has been visiting her local food pantry to help make ends meet. It has been helpful, she said, especially when they provide items that JP likes to eat.

She’s just one of the millions of Americans that rely on food banks and pantries every year. And due to inflation, some food banks are seeing demand return to early-pandemic levels.

At the height of the pandemic, the San-Francisco Marin Food Bank, for example, was serving approximately 60,000 households per week across northern California. That number eventually tapered off, but now the food bank is back up to serving nearly 56,000 households per week.

“We don’t ask people why they’re coming to us, but it seems pretty obvious based on that timing that inflation is hitting our folks really hard,” said Keely Hopkins, the food bank’s communications manager.

Meanwhile, the food bank is having a harder time stocking its shelves. Every year, for example, the San Francisco-Marin Food Bank provides a special holiday menu for its visitors that includes things like chicken, Brussels sprouts, and sweet potatoes. This year, that menu cost the food bank 35 percent more than it had in years prior, largely driven by the price of chicken—which has doubled.

“It is something that our supply chain team is acutely aware of and definitely nervous about as we look forward,” Hopkins said.

The food bank also dedicates resources to helping SNAP recipients like Dominguez. And while Alex Danino, the food bank’s CalFresh program manager, sees SNAP as “the most effective tool to end hunger because it puts money directly into people’s pockets,” she adds that it’s not enough on its own.

There has been some momentum in Congress to (re)modernize SNAP, including the Closing the Meal Gap Act of 2021, championed by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Representative Alma Adams (D-NC). The bill would move away from the Thrifty Food Plan as a basis for SNAP, using the USDA’s Low-Cost Food Plan instead. It would also increase the benefit baseline, which is now set at $23 per month, and expand access to U.S. territories including Puerto Rico, American Samoa, and the Northern Mariana Islands. The bill currently has 111 co-sponsors in the House.

There have also been efforts in recent months to tamp down inflation by creating a congressional subcommittee dedicated to analyzing the costs of goods (including food) and investigating corporate gains. Representative Jamaal Bowman (D-New York) introduced the bill, dubbed the Emergency Price Stabilization Act, in August.

For her part, Dominguez is doing what she can to bring the issue to her local politicians, including newly-elected Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass. Dominguez said food insecurity should be a top concern for Mayor-elect Bass, who ran on a platform to combat homelessness in the city.

“I’m doing everything I can to avoid ending up in a homeless shelter with my son,” she said.

The post ‘It’s Not Enough.’ SNAP Recipients Struggle Amid High Food Prices. appeared first on Civil Eats.

]]> https://civileats.com/2022/12/12/its-not-enough-snap-recipients-struggle-amid-high-food-prices/feed/ 2 https://civileats.com/2022/10/26/can-a-court-compel-the-epa-to-protect-communities-of-color-from-cafo-pollution/ Wed, 26 Oct 2022 23:41:34 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=48955 With more than 500 concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) housing millions of pigs, Duplin County is known as the “hog capital of the world.” And its residents are paying the price: Hall hasn’t gone fishing in more than 20 years. He doesn’t even drink his own tap water for fear of contamination. “It’s unbearable,” said […]

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The first time he caught a fish riddled with sores and boils, Devon Hall didn’t immediately draw the connection to the hog farms located near his home in Duplin County, North Carolina. But it didn’t take long for him to realize that the fish he had grown up catching and eating were no longer safe, likely due to the manure running off the hog lagoons located just upstream.

With more than 500 concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) housing millions of pigs, Duplin County is known as the “hog capital of the world.” And its residents are paying the price: Hall hasn’t gone fishing in more than 20 years. He doesn’t even drink his own tap water for fear of contamination.

“It’s unbearable,” said Hall.

Devon Hall, executive director of REACH, is fighting against air and water pollution from the CAFOs that surround his community. (Photo credit: Justin Cook for Earthjustice)

A petition filed today from the environmental nonprofit Earthjustice aims to help residents like Hall by changing the way CAFOs are classified under the Clean Water Act. A mountain of research over the past couple decades has shown the human and environmental health impacts of water pollution stemming from CAFOs. And yet, as many as two-thirds of the more than 20,000 CAFOs across the country are unregulated under the Act, leaving them with little to no regulatory oversight in their pollution discharge.

CAFOs and the Clean Water Act

For 50 years now, the Clean Water Act has governed water quality and pollution across the U.S. That’s done in part through an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) permit program called the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES), which caps the amount of pollution an entity—such as a factory farm—can discharge.

But because CAFOs pollute intermittently—that is, when it rains heavily and their manure lagoons overflow, or they spray waste on a field for disposal—it’s harder to monitor them through the NPDES.

“Right now, EPA is using what’s essentially a self-reporting system,” said Alexis Andiman, a senior attorney with Earthjustice. “The problem there is, it’s very hard to check the CAFOs work, because EPA and state agencies just don’t have the resources to go out and figure out whether every CAFO that says it’s not discharging actually isn’t discharging.”

State agencies often require pollution permits, too, but many state-run permitting systems don’t include protections for water that are as stringent as the federal Clean Water Act.

The EPA has tried twice before to come up with rules that would ultimately increase the number of CAFOs required to obtain Clean Water Act permits. However, courts struck down the efforts in both cases, claiming the rules went beyond the scope of the Act by classifying some non-polluting CAFOs as pollution sources.

A Petition for Change

In its new petition, Earthjustice—along with the Environmental Working Group, Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council and dozens of other environmental groups across the country—is following up on the EPA’s prior attempts with a specific legal suggestion. In order to regulate more CAFOs through the Act, the petitioners argue the agency should adopt a rebuttable presumption that large CAFOs using wet manure systems actually discharge pollutants. In other words, the EPA could operate under the assumption that CAFOs are sources of pollution—which would require them to get a permit—unless proven otherwise.

The EPA has tried twice before to come up with rules that would ultimately increase the number of CAFOs required to obtain Clean Water Act permits. However, courts struck down the efforts in both cases.

“Basically, [if this presumption is adopted,] the thumb is on the scale for getting a permit because we know that a permit is usually required,” Andiman said. “So, it flips the script a little bit.”

Requiring more CAFOs to get pollution permits would not only increase regulatory oversight—by capping the quantity of pollution they could emit and fining them if they surpass those caps—it would also increase transparency.

“Right now, it’s not always easy to find out where CAFOs are located, how close to your house they are, how many animals they confine, how they’re dealing with that manure,” Andiman said.

Under the Act, that information would become more readily available, which could help neighboring communities get a better sense of what’s impacting their water (and air) quality. It could also open the door to more lawsuits against CAFOs that are violating the terms of their permit.

The EPA declined to comment on this specific petition prior to its publication, stating in an email: “We will review the petition when we receive it.”

But it’s not the only pressure the agency is under to better regulate CAFO pollution. Last week, a group led by the nonprofit Food & Water Watch sued the EPA after the agency failed to respond to a 2017 petition to strengthen CAFO pollution oversight via the Clean Water Act.

While the Earthjustice petition is narrower in legal scope, both petitions share the goal of better protecting communities from the environmental and health hazards associated with CAFO pollution.

“I think the fact that both of these things are happening really shows how urgent this issue is,” said Andiman.

Disproportionate Impact on Communities of Color

The recommendations in the petition—if adopted—would have lasting impacts on downstream communities like Devon Hall’s.

Hall co-founded the Rural Empowerment Association for Community Help (REACH) and now serves as its executive Director. Much of REACH’s work revolves around large hog facilities in the area, and Hall said he’s tried to file complaints at the local and state level and even helped some neighbors file a nuisance lawsuit against the companies behind large CAFOs. And yet, he said his Duplin County community is still dealing with unmitigated pollution, which is causing all kinds of environmental and health hazards, including high rates of asthma, lung and heart diseases and high blood pressure.

“I just feel that there’s more that can be done,” he said.

As a mostly rural, low-income, predominantly Black community, Duplin County represents the disproportionate impact of CAFO pollution. According to a recent study, in North Carolina, the percentage of Black residents who live within three miles of a large swine CAFO is 1.42 times higher than the percentage of white residents. That trend bears out in other states with large swaths of animal agriculture, including California.

“I often tell people, for you to get a glimpse of [what it’s like to live near a CAFO], you really have to spend a day here. You hear people talking about the eyes watering and nose burning and coughing and things of that nature, but that don’t really describe it.”

“CAFO industries can have a lot of power, money, and political influence in a state,” said Arbor Quist, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Southern California who researches environmental epidemiology and helped Earthjustice conduct research for the petition. “Certain groups—often low-income communities and communities of color—unfortunately don’t have as much political power in the state government.”

Factory farms have political sway in states like North Carolina, where the legislature has frequently protected the industry from legal battles. Meanwhile, some advocates and legislators—including in Iowa and Wisconsin—are pushing for a moratorium on CAFO expansion, claiming pollution from large farms decimates water quality, but the industry is pushing back.

That leaves communities like Hall’s vulnerable. “I often tell people, for you to get a glimpse of [what it’s like to live near a CAFO], you really have to spend a day here,” Hall said. “You hear people talking about the eyes watering and nose burning and coughing and things of that nature, but that don’t really describe it.”

The smell alone is unbearable, he said. An avid gardener, Hall can’t tend to his garden if the farm nearby is spraying manure on the fields. He can’t host barbecues or even open his windows at night. It has a big impact on his mental health, too, he said.

In its petition, Earthjustice is appealing to the Biden administration’s environmental justice goals. In addition to Duplin County, it could have an impact in communities such as the Delmarva Peninsula, the region known for producing around 7 percent of the nation’s chicken, and the large swaths of Iowa where farmers raise upwards of 23 million hogs a year.

“The presumption will better allow EPA to collect the data necessary to show that CAFOs disproportionately harm environmental justice communities—and, thereby, enable EPA to act to protect human health in those communities,” the petition states.

It also appeals to the administration’s climate goals, as CAFOs emit high levels of methane and nitrous oxide—two of the most potent greenhouse gasses contributing to climate change. In a vicious feedback loop, CAFO pollution is also worsening due to climate change. With more intense and unpredictable storms, animal waste lagoons are more frequently flooding over, exacerbating toxic runoff into local waterways.

Climate change—and how it could make factory farm pollution worse—is front of mind for Devon Hall.

“I’ve got children and grandchildren. What am I going to do?” he wondered. “What kind of environment am I going to leave them?”

The post Can a Court Compel the EPA to Protect Communities of Color From CAFO Pollution? appeared first on Civil Eats.

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