It’s one small example of the many ways that the country’s powerful meat companies have exerted control over the farmers that raise the animals they sell. In the chicken industry, farmers looking for economic opportunities have long been locked into contracts that require them to pay for expensive facilities, compete with other farmers for pay even though the quality of chicks and feed is dependent on the companies, and make costly upgrades whenever companies say so. And as the meat industry has become more consolidated over the last few decades, the companies have continued to gain power over farmers.

However, that contract privacy provision is also an example of something that has recently changed in favor of farmers.

“We had to get that done away with so I could show [the contract] to my accountant, so I could show it to a lawyer, so I could show it to my wife,” Watts, who became a famous poultry industry whistleblower after leaving the business, said. “Technically, I couldn’t even show it to her.”

In February 2024, after decades of advocacy that Watts played a key role in, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) under President Biden finalized the first of three rules related to the Packers and Stockyards Act, a century-old law that was intended to protect farmers from abuse by meat companies. In addition to requiring that chicken companies disclose much more information with farmers in terms of the income they can expect, the first rule protected the farmer’s right to discuss the terms of the contract with family members and legal and financial advisors.

The other two rules, now also finalized, created enforceable definitions of discrimination, retaliation, and deception and put limits on how much of a farmer’s pay could be based on the competitive ranking system that companies use.

All three rules were historic, because the Packers and Stockyards Act had no enforceable regulations until the Biden administration. Watts, who now works with the Socially Responsible Agriculture Project to help struggling chicken farmers, was “elated” by the progress, but said it’s too early to tell whether the rules will make a big difference; some provisions haven’t even gone into effect yet.

Even so, meat industry trade groups are already working to stop or overturn these rules.

In October, several groups—including the National Chicken Council and the North American Meat Institute, which represents the country’s largest meat companies—sued the USDA to overturn the second rule, called “Inclusive Competition and Market Integrity.” In the initial complaint, the groups claim the rule is unlawful and that it will harm meatpackers by forcing expensive “compliance and recordkeeping obligations” on them and that companies “may be forced to modify contracting practices merely to avoid the possibility of litigation.”

Now, a critical moment in the legal fight has arrived.

Four groups that represent farmer interests—the Alabama Poultry Growers Association, R-CALF, Latino Farmers and Ranchers International, and the Western Organization of Resource Councils—have asked the court to allow them to intervene in the case to defend the rule. They’re doing so at a time when they’re unsure if the USDA itself will choose to fight back, since during Trump’s first administration the USDA worked to weaken and eliminate Packers and Stockyards protections. To date, there has been no indication from the current leadership as to how they’ll approach the issue.

“Some of these groups have been working on improving these rules since the 1990s. It’s literally been decades, and finally, actual rules were finalized that have meaningful protections, and it’s just too precious a fight,” said Tyler Lobdell, an attorney with Food & Water Watch who is representing the farmer groups in their effort to intervene. “It simply makes sense that they’re at the table.”

Adding to the weight of the case is the fact that the industry’s argument challenges a fundamental piece of Packers and Stockyards enforcement across the board—whether every farmer that brings a case against a company should have to prove that not only were they harmed, but that the company’s actions caused broader “harm to competition.” In other words, while the lawsuit only targets one of the rules, the outcome of the case could impact the others as well.

In response to questions from Civil Eats about the lawsuit but also the agency’s broader approach to the rules, a USDA spokesperson said, “We will not comment on matters relating to litigation.”

A Meat Institute spokesperson declined Civil Eats’ request for interviews on behalf of both the Meat Institute and the National Chicken Council, saying “the lawsuit [to overturn the second rule] speaks for itself.”

What’s at Stake—In Court, and On Farms

“We think that it is essential in order to reduce the abuse of market power,” he said. “There’s a huge disparity in bargaining power between the producers and the meatpackers.” Producers—the farmers and ranchers who are responsible for raising the animals that meatpackers slaughter and bring to market—are also often susceptible to unfair practices, he said.

The rule in question explicitly defines the kind of unfair practices the Packers and Stockyards Act prohibits on three fronts: discrimination, retaliation, and deception. For example, it states that the prohibition on discrimination means a company cannot treat a grower differently based on race, religion, or sex. It says companies cannot retaliate against farmers for participating in associations or for speaking up about their rights under the law. Under “deception,” it prohibits companies from “employing false or misleading statements or omissions of material information” when entering into contracts, ending contracts, or refusing to contract with a farmer.

Among ranchers selling cattle, Bullard said, fear of retaliation is real. Because if a producer complains about a packer and that packer decides to retaliate, alternative buyers are few and far between.

“Pushing back on this rule sounds so ridiculous, because what they’re saying is, ‘We don’t want this rule because for our model to work and our industry to survive, we must be allowed to discriminate. We must be allowed to retaliate,” Watts said. “You know it’s bad when you have to prohibit retaliatory practices in a regulation, but here we are.”

In the lawsuit, which the Meat Institute spokesperson asked Civil Eats to quote from in lieu of interviews, the lawyers write that meat companies “maintain robust controls to prevent such discriminatory practices, root out such discrimination where it exists, and ensure that it finds no home in their industries.”

Why the Rules Matter to Chicken Farmers

Nguyen realized quickly how little control he had over the entire endeavor, he said. If he didn’t immediately do something a Simmons field tech requested, his next flock of birds might be delayed. “Every time when we thought we have some savings, they would come in to tell us to make updates,” he said. “Either we do it, or we lose the contract.”

Nguyen ran into worse trouble in 2022 when his brother lost his contract raising chickens for a different regional company and went bankrupt. Because Nguyen had put his farm up as collateral for his brother’s property, he took on his brother’s debt as well. In the meantime, his wife’s chronic kidney disease was getting worse.

“I told the manager [at Simmons] in hopes that they would help me out. I told them about my wife’s condition,” he said. “The only way for me to get out is to sell the farm so I can pay off my farm debt and my brother’s as well and hopefully start somewhere new.”

To sell the farm, Nguyen needed Simmons’ cooperation if he wanted to get a fair price for the property. Even though Nguyen financed and built the chicken houses, about three-quarters of an industrial chicken farm’s property value is tied to having an active chicken contract, according to an industry insider who has been working with and for both chicken companies and growers for more than 20 years and has intimate knowledge of farm real estate. (Civil Eats granted the source anonymity because talking to the press could significantly damage their business interests.)

So, if a grower like Nguyen wants to sell a farm, he needs the company to provide a letter of intent confirming they will contract with the new owner to grow chickens. In Nguyen’s case, Simmons was also requiring upgrades that any buyer would have to agree to make in order to secure that contract.

Throughout process, Nguyen felt Simmons was putting up roadblocks and delaying the sale. He believes the company was dragging it out until his contract ended.

“They’ve been giving us false promises. After everything happened, from the start to the end, it seemed like they don’t want me to sell my farm,” he said. “The last time I called and talked with the manager, he told me that he would not let anybody buy my farm or let me renew my farm. They don’t want anything to do with my farm anymore.”

Simmons did not respond to Civil Eats’ request for comment on these claims.

When Simmons decided it wouldn’t provide a new contract to a buyer, the value of Nguyen’s property dropped from close to $2 million to less than $500,000, so selling the property won’t come close to covering his debt.

It’s impossible to know whether having stronger rules against discrimination, deception, and retaliation could change Nguyen’s situation or others like his. But the industry insider said a big reason many situations play out this way is that in the end, companies like Simmons have “little to lose.” If rules on the books made them liable to USDA investigation or lawsuits, that could change.

As Bullard put it, “This rule protects the producer’s ability to address some problems they may have with a packer. Without it, they would have no recourse.”

Nguyen is incensed that the industry is trying to get the rule thrown out. “That’s just going to make things worse for the farmer,” he said. “The farmer should have more protection than the integrator because they are the one that’s putting their all into it . . . sweat, tears, money. They’ve been out in the cold, the heat, the rain. It’s hard work. It’s no joke. And we’re doing this to support our families.”

Why the Meat Industry Opposes Packers and Stockyards Regulations

That’s illegal, according to their argument, which boils down to this: Because the Packers and Stockyards Act’s primary purpose is “to assure fair competition and fair trade practices in livestock marketing and in the meatpacking industry,” any violation of the act has to threaten not just an individual producer’s livelihood, but competition in the industry.

In other words, the USDA can’t regulate discrimination under the law unless that discrimination somehow makes the whole system less competitive for all growers.

Some courts have upheld that interpretation over the years. However, the USDA, under both Republicans and Democrats, has always maintained the opposite: Individual harm is enough to activate Packers and Stockyards protections. As the farmer groups seeking to intervene in the case wait to see how the agency’s new leadership will handle the lawsuit, a big question is whether that will still be the case.

“If Secretary Rollins changes the agency’s position on harm to competition, it will be a shocking move,” Lobdell, the attorney for the farmer groups, said. “What it would amount to is a massive handout to the largest corporate interests in our agriculture and food system, directly in opposition to the interests of farmers and ranchers.”

For now, everyone’s waiting to find out how the USDA will proceed, and whether the court will grant the farmer groups’ motion to intervene.

In the original complaint, the meatpackers say they will suffer “concrete and imminent harm” if the law remains in place. “The Final Rule . . . requires a wholesale reevaluation of contractual relationships and communications between regulated entities and producers,” they write.

That kind of wholesale reevaluation is exactly what many farmers want. “The contract poultry system will never work for the farmer . . . never, until contracts are done in a way that there is good-faith bargaining, and even then the companies will always still have the upper hand,” Watts said. The most they can hope for, he said, is that the new rules will “be a deterrent to curb some of the most onerous practices companies use against the farmers they contract with and make income at least a little more predictable.”

For Nguyen—and so many others with strikingly similar experiences—it’s too late for that. He’s working through bankruptcy paperwork and driving for Uber to pay his bills while he figures out his next steps. At one point, he had family around to help care for his wife, but they’ve all moved to find work. Looking out at the 10 empty chicken houses with no way to pay off the debt or sell them for what they’re worth, he cries a lot. Thankfully, his wife and his two daughters, especially a “very cheerful” eight-year-old, he said, keep him going.

He thinks maybe, if he tells his story, it will help make the case that more regulation of the industry is needed. That farmers need more protection, not less. “If we give up, no one’s going to be standing up,” he said. “We want to pave the way for other farmers to fight back.”

The post Livestock Producers Seek to Defend Packers and Stockyards Rules from Industry Attack appeared first on Civil Eats.

In February, she opened Griot Gardens, her restaurant in Houston, going into business with her mother, a seasoned restaurateur. But growing food in Hempstead, a remote agricultural town outside the city, has proven tougher than she and Lilly anticipated, with numerous losses in the past year.

First came Hurricane Beryl, knocking down trees and two 50-foot sunflower beds that Lilly planted solely for the joy they added to her kitchen window view. Shortly after, the winds from a tornado-strength derecho damaged their well, and then the generator broke down, leaving them without water for six months. A rare snowstorm wiped out their winter greens just a few months ago. To add to their woes, a beloved cow and its calf died during labor.

Speaking about her mental health, Dolcine named isolation, burnout from the daily grind of farming, and the “heartbreak” of their repeated losses among her challenges. “I’ve felt really hopeless at a few points this year in a way that I haven’t felt before,” Lilly said, as she expressed feeling “lonely” and “depressed” while struggling financially. Living in a remote town, and in a world rife with homophobia, she and Dolcine never know if revealing their queer identity will jeopardize their safety, adding another layer of stress to their lives.

They’re not alone in this experience.

A study released last year by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign revealed that LGBTQ+ people in farming are “over three times more likely to experience depression and suicidal intent and about two and a half times more likely to experience anxiety than the general population.” According to the researchers, not conforming to the gender and sexuality norms of farming culture while navigating potentially hostile social environments increases stress and may lead to poor mental health outcomes.

For Dolcine and Lilly, community building and cultivating a sense of belonging are crucial for maintaining their mental well-being. In October, the couple hosted the “South Side Queer Farmer Convergence,” the Queer Farmer Network’s first gathering of queer and transgender Black, Indigenous, and people of color in Texas.

For three days, 50 farmers camped out at Lillyland Farm in Hempstead, invited to shift their focus from caring for the land to tending their own mental and emotional health. Dolcine and Lilly found the gathering “healing,” both for them and those who attended.

A lot has happened in the months since then that threatens to diminish the mental health benefits they experienced.

With President Trump back in office, multiple reports have called attention to the mental health risks for LGBTQ+ Americans amid his efforts to revoke their rights, signing executive orders that recognize only two sexes, end discrimination protections for LGBTQ+ people, restrict access to gender-affirming care, and attempt to erase queer and trans people from public life and history.

On social media, Trump’s newly appointed Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke Rollins, praised the termination of grants meant to support queer and trans as well as BIPOC farmers and consumers, implying this funding represented “waste, fraud, and abuse.”

None of this is stopping Dolcine from organizing another queer farmer gathering this year.

“People are struggling in this line of work,” she said, highlighting the additional difficulties that queer Black, Indigenous, and people of color face in accessing farmland and resources. “I want them to be connected and know they’re not alone in this journey.”

Building Community in the Trump Era

It was created “to provide a space of respite for farming and rural queers who may experience isolation . . . and who may be particularly vulnerable to the mental health struggles well known to both farmers and LGBTQ+ community members,” its website states

First held at Humble Hands Harvest, a worker-owned cooperative farm in the northeast corner of Iowa, the QFC has branched out over the years to include gatherings in Virginia, Michigan, and New Hampshire. The QFC took place at locations in Texas and Wisconsin for the first time last fall, both of which focused on bringing together queer farmers identifying as Black, Indigenous, or people of color—a change Dolcine suggested when she attended her first QFC two years ago.

Originally from Miami, Dolcine was living in Iowa temporarily, working as an independent insurance adjuster. That’s where she met Lilly, a Des Moines native who co-founded the now-closed urban farm Radiate DSM. “On a whim,” Dolcine joined her at Humble Hands for the QFC and found a glaring lack of racial diversity. Organizers told her the network had reserved one-third of tickets for BIPOC farmers, waiving their registration fees and providing travel stipends to attend the QFC, but had limited success.

To Dolcine, moving the gathering to a region with greater diversity and organizing a BIPOC-centered event where people of color would feel safe attending seemed like viable solutions.

But BIPOC gatherings had been a long-term plan of the Queer Farmer Network. Securing a grant for farmer mental health and well-being allowed the network to finance the gatherings and assemble a team to organize them. Dolcine joined that team and agreed to organize a QFC herself, naming it to reflect its location in the South and her own Southern origins.

On the first day of the South Side QFC, farmers hailing from Houston, Dallas, El Paso, Fort Worth, Florida, Tennessee, Atlanta, Iowa, Minnesota, California, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey gathered at Lillyland Farm in a welcome circle that lasted “hours and hours,” Lilly said. As the farmers went around introducing themselves, Dolcine and Lilly heard many express gratitude for the chance to be on land where they could “be themselves and be queer,” not having to mask their identities or code-switch.

“It seemed extremely needed,” said Dolcine, who co-organized the event with Cyd Keel, a queer trans farmer and herbalist living in Memphis, Tennessee.

For the rest of the weekend, the group followed a loosely planned itinerary that included printmaking, natural plant dying, beading, and yoga while leaving space for spontaneous activities like a nighttime dance party around a bonfire and communal nap in a field. Although the event was held three weeks before the election, Dolcine felt it was important not to make it all about political or environmental crises or attacks on bodily autonomy.

“At what point can we turn that all off and just say, ‘OK, I deserve peace of mind,” she explained, fighting back tears. “I deserve not to have these things on my mind for just a moment. I deserve not to think about next month. I deserve just to hear the earth as it is: the water running, the birds chirping. People deserve to just be at ease.”

Brooklyn Gordon, a queer, Black preacher, licensed therapist, and new farmer based in Dallas, attended the South Side QFC not to counsel attendees but to be in the company of other queer folks. “What was most powerful was seeing love prevail,” she wrote in an email to Civil Eats. “We dreamed together of futures for queer farmers, queer families, queer love. We dreamed of being in community with one another again and growing . . . Regardless of the mental state that everyone may have come in with, we all left better.”

Gordon has observed in her therapy practice that managing the complex interplay of racial, gender, and queer identities presents “a constant challenge to being seen, valued, and safe.” From familial and religious beliefs to social conditioning and mistreatment, “it all poses a risk for mental and emotional health,” she said. Recent studies by The Trevor Project and the Center for American Progress echo this point: Mental health risks for LGBTQ+ people stem not from their gender or sexual identity, but from stigma and discrimination.

Like Gordon, Lilly was uplifted by the gathering and the attendees’ reassurance that she was still a farmer, even though her vision of abundance hasn’t yet materialized. “I cried when people were leaving,” Lilly said. “They are my family now.” From her perspective, “family, community, and chosen family” are essential not only for the mental well-being of LGBTQ+ farmers but particularly for LGBTQ+ Black women like her and Dolcine, who face the added stress of anti-Blackness.

Living Free on Black-Owned Land

“I think about it every day,” Lilly said, sitting in her camper surrounded by lush starter plants. “There is not a single day that I leave the farm that I’m not on edge. Anytime a police officer is driving behind me, I am terrified.”

Lilly feels safest at Lillyland, a 32-acre parcel that’s been in her family for eight generations. She picks up a thick stack of paper, slightly curled at the edges, that she calls “The Lilly Bible,” as it lists every member of her family, all the way back to an ancestor who arrived from Africa in 1818.

A local university conducted the genealogical research, though Lilly’s family knowledge also comes from oral histories. She learned from her great-uncle, who also lives on the farm, that when their ancestors were freed from chattel slavery, they came across a field of lilies and adopted the flower as their surname, rejecting the family name of those who enslaved them.

As Lilly walked the property, four adult dogs and six mixed-breed puppies ran behind her. She stopped for a moment to greet Corotha, a horned cow that lives on the land, before moving through the pasture. With each step, she shared the rich history of Lillyland, a legacy that dates to the Reconstruction era, when Black families, denied the promise of 40 acres and a mule, bought whatever land they could.

Based on county records, Abraham Lilly, Sr., acquired 10 acres from Leonard Waller Groce, his former owner’s eldest son, in 1867. His father, Bowie Lilly, bought several plots in the area, amassing at least 82 more acres in the town. But, at some point, the Lillys’ property shrank to 50 acres and then to 32.

“What I’ve heard is that one of my aunts missed a payment,” Lilly explained. “Back then, they were trying to take land from Black people anywhere they could.”

Kennady Lilly and Ariana Dolcine’s dog Sugar happily feeds her six puppies. (Photo credit: Nicole J. Caruth)

Lillyland Farm provided an idyllic backdrop for the South Side QFC, its thick, prickly woods gradually giving way to open fields where cattle graze in the sun. A large pond covered with lily pads sits at the heart of the landscape, a feature added by Lilly’s great-grandfather. A partially submerged boat at the pond’s edge, left there by the youngest of his thirteen children, reads “The Other Woman” on its side.

Lilly’s grandfather grew up on the farm but left Hempstead to work for the United States Department of Agriculture in Iowa and returned after retirement. After he died, he left two acres to Lilly’s dad, which she and Dolcine now tend. Lilly’s great-uncle wasn’t exactly welcoming when they arrived. “His first words to me were, ‘I know about your lifestyle and I don’t agree with it,’” she said, walking past his house. “He still makes a point to say that all the time, but now he loves me. I’m his favorite niece.”

Texas is known for its particularly hostile stance toward queer and trans people, with recent legislation reinforcing this reputation. The American Civil Liberties Union is tracking 88 anti-LGBTQ bills in Texas, the highest number of any state in the U.S. Meanwhile, the Trans Legislation Tracker shows 128 anti-trans bills in Texas, compared to 33 in Oklahoma and three in Louisiana, its neighboring states.

“I had it in my body and mind not to be gay here,’” Lilly said, reminiscing about the summer when she and Dolcine first visited Hempstead. “It just didn’t feel safe.” But she momentarily forgot and kissed Dolcine at the town’s annual Watermelon Festival in July. “The second we kissed, I heard someone [holler].” A cowboy came up to them and shared that he had a gay brother. “Just be yourself,” he told them. “People are gonna’ hate, but you have the right to be yourself.”

Making LGBTQ+ Farmers’ Mental Health Needs Visible

“I really wanted to understand better what’s going on with mental health for LGBTQ+ folks and how might that be related to the environment within agriculture,” said Courtney Cuthbertson, who led the study of LGBTQ+ farmer mental health at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. “I was kind of surprised when I was starting to tell people about this project idea: Some of the reactions I would get were, ‘I didn’t know LGBTQ+ farmers were a group of people who existed.’”

Cuthbertson’s research team received 148 survey responses from LGBTQ+ farmers in 36 states. About 7 percent lived in Texas. “Most participants were white,” the study said, with 58 percent identifying as queer and 38 percent as trans. From this data, they surmised that poor mental health experiences for LGBTQ+ farmers may be connected to, among other things, the family farm model.

The idea of “family” being defined as a married male and female is codified in the American Farm Bureau’s 2024 policy book, which states, “A family should be defined as persons who are related by blood, marriage between a male and female, or legal adoption,” excluding all other forms of kinship. The impact of this on queer farmers includes reduced likelihood of securing loans and other support necessary for their success and survival.

When the USDA attempted to broaden the gender and sexual identity options on its census, it encountered pushback. “The survey asks questions including whether farmers identify as transgender, the gender they were at birth, and their sexual orientation,” Missouri Senator Josh Hawley posted on X in 2022. “For Joe Biden, even farming is about advancing his woke agenda.”

Cuthbertson warned that their team’s survey didn’t ask about legislation but about LGBTQ+ farmers’ experiences in general. Still, “We’ve seen historic year-after-year increases in anti-LGBTQ+ legislation,” Cuthbertson said. “I think it’s a fair thing to say that when you hear a lot of negative things about a group you’re a part of, and then there’s legislation proposed, that is going to have a personal impact.”

Although the study found high depression and anxiety rates among those surveyed, somewhat encouragingly, suicide risk was “much lower” for LGBTQ+ farmers than for the general LGBTQ+ population. The research team suggested that future studies investigate whether agricultural work offers some level of protection.

Living the Dream and Finding Hope

The song “Sonia” by the Haitian Canadian musical group Black Parents streams from a large portable speaker as couples and families eat and chat across tables. A uniformed police officer who moonlights as a DJ walks to each table, striking up conversations in Haitian Creole while waiting for his to-go order

This is the restaurant Dolcine dreamt of when she and Lilly moved to Texas. She opened it in February in collaboration with her mother, Pricia La France, who cooks most of the food. “I’m hoping for a good harvest this year,” said Dolcine, who still aspires to grow all the vegetables for the restaurant. For now, she sources them from Miami and Haiti.

Dolcine runs the restaurant seven days a week, while Lilly gears up to launch a personal chef business and manages the farm, where she has planted eggplant, tomatoes, okra, cantaloupe, watermelon, blackberries, sweet potatoes, lemongrass, and a variety of medicinal herbs. Lilly arrived at the restaurant in mud-covered boots, pitching in to help wait tables. Reflecting on their recent struggles, Lilly said, “There are also good things: There is also beauty and hope.”

Plans for the next South Side QFC are slowly developing. Dolcine and Lilly say their biggest obstacle isn’t the political climate, but rather finding time to organize the event with everything else they have going on. “I try not to let these shifts in power influence my state of mind and cause me to be worried or scared,” Dolcine said. “If I want to do a QFC, then I’m gonna’ do it however I can do it.”

The post This Queer Couple Supports LGBTQ+ and BIPOC Farmers’ Mental Health appeared first on Civil Eats.

• Columns and Newsletters, for three issues of our members-only newsletter, The Deep Dish—“Indigenous Foodways,” “Revitalizing Home Cooking,” and “Food on the Ballot” by the Civil Eats staff; and
• Health and Wellness, for “Florida Banned Farmworker Heat Protections. A Groundbreaking Partnership Offers a Solution” by former Staff Reporter Grey Moran.

We’re also celebrating the nomination of “Black Earth,” a profile of a North Carolina farmer that we cross-posted from The Bitter Southerner, written by Civil Eats’ Associate Editor Christina Cooke.

Columns and Newsletters

Civil Eats has been nominated for two 2025 James Beard Journalism Awards.

Once we’ve settled on a topic, and created a mesh of stories that amplify and resonate with one another, we assign reporters, research photos, and identify potential art. This intense work is deeply gratifying, allowing us to go deep on a topic, and we see newsletter open rates of 80 to 90 percent—far exceeding the industry average.

For “Indigenous Foodways,” we delved more deeply into a topic we cover year-round, and invited Civil Eats contributor Kate Nelson, an Alaska Native Tlingit tribal member, to guest-edit. Nelson also wrote a piece herself, about the connections between tribal food sovereignty and the Land Back movement.

Other stories touched on tribal issues in the endlessly delayed farm bill, Navajo water rights, a prized fish called the Clear Lake hitch, and an interview with ethnobotanist and food sovereignty activist Linda Black Elk. These stories, we felt, had much to teach us about Indigenous foodways and how to begin to decolonize our experiences with food and agriculture.

With “Revitalizing Home Cooking,” we enlisted a star-studded group of experts to help address many of our home cooking challenges, and in the process, help remind us that cooking can be both joyful and a meaningful way to support a good, fair, and just food system. Cookbook author Kim O’Donnel spoke to us about why cooking is the cornerstone of sustainability; we got tips on meal prep from cookbook author Nik Sharma; we went shopping with author and climate consultant Sophie Egan; we learned the best ways to preserve and store food from San Francisco’s Civic Kitchen and how to handle leftovers with writer Tamar Adler; and got inspired by some seriously ambitious dorm-room cooks. 

We are especially glad that “Food on the Ballot” was recognized by the Beard Foundation, given the profound impact of the 2024 presidential election. The issue examined the candidates’ approaches to immigration, climate change, corporate farming, and food prices (we hosted a related member salon on the topic of inflation and groceries). We also scrutinized AcreTrader, a farm real-estate investment platform that counted then-vice-presidential candidate J.D. Vance among its investors. That reporting remains among the top read stories on our site. 

The elections issue was probably the longest we’ve ever published, and our members responded with enthusiastic open rates and click-throughs. Their engagement helped support our decision, this year, to launch the Civil Eats Food Policy Tracker, entirely focused on federal policy action in Washington, D.C.

We’ve also been nominated and won additional accolades for the Deep Dish from other organizations beyond the Beard Foundation. Last year, we won a 2024 Excellence in Newsletters, Single Newsletter from the Online News Association, and in 2020, we received the digital media award for best newsletter from the International Association of Culinary Professionals.

Health and Wellness

After the story was published, more coverage followed extolling the Fair Food Program as a solution to Florida’s heat protection ban, including at NPR, an NBC affiliate in Southwest Florida, USA Today, and the national Latino radio network Radio Bilingue. Moran also discussed the story on two radio programs: KALW Public Media and Food Sleuth Radio. A few months after the article was published, the Fair Food Program was awarded a $15 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, helping it expand to more farms.

“There are models like the Fair Food Program that offer a way forward even under governments that are hostile to workers,” Moran said. “I’m honored by this nomination, and also hope it shines a light on this critical model for workers’ rights.”

For “Black Earth,” about North Carolina farmer Patrick Brown’s purchase of the plantation where his ancestors were enslaved, Cooke wove family history into a lyrical story of reclaiming land and community. “Over my multiple visits to Patrick’s farm over the course of a growing season, I came to appreciate the depth of his story, which stretches back generations, and understand why people I spoke with described him as a ‘north star’ and a ‘guiding light’—someone who is finding a better way and reaching back to bring others along,” she said.

Hoping for Another Beard

In 2023, Cooke, former Senior Reporter Gosia Wozniacka, and Driver won a Beard Award for excellence in investigative reporting for our 2022 series on animal agriculture workers, Injured and Invisible.

We’re thrilled to be heading to Chicago this June for the award celebration, and to be among many other talented journalists from across the country. As always, we will be thinking of you, our readers—for whose support we are always grateful. Wish us luck!

The post Civil Eats Nominated for Two James Beard Journalism Awards appeared first on Civil Eats.

We also grow flax, yellow peas, alfalfa, and durum; you might have seen our peas and durum in Annie’s mac & cheese. Our flax is grown for seed and also ends up in bulk bins at grocery stores, our durum is made into pasta, and our alfalfa keeps organic dairy cows producing delicious milk, butter, and cream.

When I started my first-generation farm in 2004, I dove head first into regenerative practices, partly out of interest in the fascinating agronomy, but mostly out of necessity. If I was going to make a career in farming, producing high yields without expensive inputs would be my only way towards profitability.

As regenerative agriculture has gained steam in recent years, I’ve been thinking about its potential and how important it is that we direct the energy behind it towards real solutions. Since there’s no set definition of the term, I’ve seen “regenerative” increasingly being used to describe practices most farmers can agree don’t regenerate much soil.

The idea of “no-till” has become nearly synonymous with “regenerative” agriculture, the farming practice of reducing tillage and plowing. A new report from Friends of the Earth sheds some light on why this is concerning. It shows that, while no-till can be done without harmful chemicals, most no-till systems are so dependent on herbicides to manage weeds—since a key reason farmers till their soil is to get rid of weeds—that a full one-third of the U.S.’s total annual pesticide use can be attributed to no- and minimum-till corn and soy production alone. (The term “pesticide” includes herbicides, insecticides, and fungicides.)

A tractor sprays pesticides on a farm. (Photo credit: sircco, Getty Images)

This impacts a lot of land. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) data shows that 107 million acres—about 60 percent of both corn and soy—are under no- or minimum-till management. The report’s analysis of USDA data shows that 93 percent of those acres use herbicides linked to health and environmental risks, like Roundup.

This means the majority of no-till farming in this country is focused on herbicides, not regeneration. These chemicals devastate soil life—the microbes and bugs that farmers need to regenerate soil and to build resilience to droughts and floods. And they threaten our health, with scientists linking them to cancer, birth defects, infertility, and more.

No-till corn also uses a massive amount of synthetic fertilizers that can harm soil life and our health—about 7.6 billion pounds each year.

On top of that, the report shows conventional no-till farming is not scientifically linked to increasing carbon in the soil, despite most investment in no-till as “regenerative” being based on the faulty assumption that it is.

If conventional no-till is not regenerative, then what is? The key question is not “to till or not to till.” A narrow focus on single practices like tillage is misleading. Truly regenerative agriculture works with the farming system as a whole. Research shows that careful tillage in holistic farming systems can achieve better soil outcomes than chemical-intensive no-till systems.

Reducing tillage has its benefits and should be a target in all farming systems. Tillage tools available today are vastly improved over those available to farmers in the 1980s. Reducing tillage also saves time, steel, and fuel, helping improve farmers’ bottom line. Less tillage means less soil erosion and greater soil water-holding capacity. But as a farmer for more than two decades, I can say that in order to truly address soil health, supporting organic farming is a better path than a sole focus on no-till.

When I purchased my first cows at age 12 as an offshoot of a 4H project, I quickly realized that I needed to find a market that adds value. As I built my operation and found markets, the demand for certified organic crops and beef offered a consistent premium I couldn’t ignore.

Later, as I expanded from 10 acres to over 1,000, I was able to grow my operation not only because of premium markets, but also because I didn’t have to navigate the expense of high fertilizer and herbicide bills—these synthetic inputs are prohibited in organic production. Not only do I have a healthy business, I have a healthier community, because my neighbors, my employees, and I have avoided exposure to many known toxic chemicals.

Some people have the misconception that organic can’t be regenerative because organic farmers use tillage to manage weeds and soil fertility. As the term “regenerative” has gained ground, many have lost sight of the fact that organic is the oven-ready set of standards to define regenerative ag. The organic standard includes pillars of soil health and provides an enforcement mechanism to ensure regenerative practices are actually implemented on the farm.

Decades of research shows that organic farming is one of the most comprehensive and time-tested ways to build healthy soils and protect the natural resources we need to grow food for ourselves and future generations, from helping pollinators thrive to preserving clean water. And unlike “regenerative,” the definition of organic is enforced through a rigorous legal standard.

This is a critical moment for agriculture here in Montana for my farm, and across the country. The fact that so many farmers have adopted no-till practices is indisputable evidence they’re interested in protecting their soil. It’s not farmers’ fault that chemical-intensive agriculture predominates in the U.S.—that’s what our public policies and markets support.

If we’re serious about regeneration and making America healthy, companies and policymakers need to help farmers thrive by investing in reduction of harmful, expensive inputs in conventional farming systems while expanding organic agriculture in our country.

The post Op-ed: Why Most No-Till Agriculture Is Not Actually Regenerative appeared first on Civil Eats.

https://civileats.com/2025/05/07/a-proposed-change-to-the-endangered-species-act-could-expose-habitats-to-pesticides/ https://civileats.com/2025/05/07/a-proposed-change-to-the-endangered-species-act-could-expose-habitats-to-pesticides/#respond Wed, 07 May 2025 08:00:24 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=64122 In a proposed rule change announced on March 17, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service want to change the way they interpret the Endangered Species Act (ESA), which they collectively administer, by rescinding the definition of “harm.” “We are undertaking this change to adhere to the single, best meaning […]

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The Trump administration is proposing a significant change to one of the country’s most important—and contentious—environmental laws, which could give farmers more leeway to use pesticides without regard to their impact on critical habitats.

In a proposed rule change announced on March 17, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service want to change the way they interpret the Endangered Species Act (ESA), which they collectively administer, by rescinding the definition of “harm.”

“We are undertaking this change to adhere to the single, best meaning of the ESA,” the agencies say.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service want to change the way they interpret the Endangered Species Act (ESA) by rescinding the definition of “harm.”

Under the proposed rule change, habitat would not be protected, which could have huge consequences. It would open more of the United States to drilling, logging, and other industries. And it would represent a significant development for farmers, ranchers, and other food producers, affecting the ways they use land, make decisions about conservation, and treat crops. That’s especially true of pesticide use.

“Redefining ‘harm’ to not include habitat would really have a lot of impact,” said Nathan Donley, environmental health science director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Pesticides are habitat-destroying chemicals. They kill plants. They destroy water quality and soil health. If you’ve ever driven through the rural Midwest, it quickly becomes apparent that that the only living things allowed to thrive there are corn and soy and wheat, and that’s brought to you by pesticides. So habitat and pesticides really go hand in hand.”

The move comes just a few years after the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finally began regulating pesticides’ impacts on endangered species and the habitats that support them—and after 50 years of the agency’s failure to address that responsibility under the ESA.

Narrowing the Scope of Law

The Endangered Species Act prohibits the killing of protected species under the term “take.” Under the current law, that term means to “harass, harm, pursue, hunt, shoot, wound, kill, trap, capture or collect or to attempt to engage in any such conduct.”

The agencies say that there is a “well-established, centuries-old understanding” of the word “take”: to kill or capture a wild animal. But the agencies argue that federal regulations have since expanded the reach of the law, and the meaning of “harm,” to include habitat modification. The best reading of the statute would mean adhering to a stricter definition of “take” and “harm,” to exclude what they call “habitat modification.”

Conservation groups say that such an interpretation would impair a key feature of the law, habitat protection, because it is an essential part of the preservation of endangered or threatened species.

Wild salmon migrating upstream in the Columbia River, Oregon. (Photo credit: DaveAlan, Getty Images)

“I think it changes the equation, because it removes concerns about one of the biggest impacts to listed species, which is loss of habitat,” said Mike Leahy, senior director of wildlife, hunting, and fishing policy at the National Wildlife Federation. “So, in the grazing or ranching context, a rancher could allow cattle or sheep to destroy spawning grounds for salmon, to graze all over it and trample through it, and they wouldn’t have to worry about ‘take.’ They’re saying, ‘Well, my cattle are not actually stepping on the head of the fish, so they’re not actually killing any fish.’ And if harm to habitat doesn’t count as take, then they don’t have to worry about that.”

In their proposal, the agencies cite a 2024 decision by the Supreme Court that put less emphasis on agencies’ expertise—a legal doctrine called Chevron deference—and more emphasis on the reading of a statute. The agencies are arguing that the best reading of the Endangered Species Act should not include interpretations of harm to a species through habitat loss.

Impact on Farmers and Ranchers

The Fish and Wildlife Service, which is under the Interior Department, and the National Marine Fisheries Service, which is under the Commerce Department, are the agencies in charge of implementing the Endangered Species Act. And while some of their decisions directly impact farmers and ranchers, often through the use of public land, they also influence the way the Environmental Protection Agency manages chemicals.

Like all federal agencies, the EPA has a legal obligation to adhere to the Endangered Species Act. That includes approving or reviewing the use of pesticides, herbicides, insecticides, rodenticides, and fungicides. Under a traditional reading of the Endangered Species Act, the EPA should protect against the loss of habitat, cover, or food sources for protected species, in consultation with Fish and Wildlife or National Marine Fisheries.

Essentially, the EPA ends up doing “homework” for those agencies during chemical registrations and reviews, said Hardy Kern, director of government relations at the American Bird Conservancy.

But the new rule raises questions about this process, Kern said. “If ‘harm’ no longer encompasses habitat, is EPA to consider pesticide impacts on habitat anymore? Do they only consider direct impacts to species (ingestion, direct exposure, etc.)?”

Kern also questioned whether, under the new interpretation, EPA would consider matters related to drift and runoff, or attempt to identify habitat impacts from chemicals, and if it does, whether the two agencies would also consider those impacts.

Conservation groups have long claimed that the EPA fails in its ESA obligations, leading to a raft of lawsuits. In 2002, for example, the Center for Biological Diversity sued the EPA, alleging it had not considered impacts to the California red-legged frog, a threatened species, during the registration review of 66 active pesticide ingredients. The EPA has faced similar lawsuits for protected species of salmon and trout, and many others.

Under the Biden administration, the EPA overhauled how it regulated thousands of chemicals, to streamline the process and to come into closer compliance with the ESA. The agency signed a legal agreement in 2023 and has been working with industries, conservation groups, and others to develop a process of “strategies” aimed at aligning its chemical reviews with the ESA and clearly communicating with people who use chemicals.

Conservationists and industrial groups alike are watching the proposed rule change, to understand whether a new reading of the Endangered Species Act would disrupt this process—across the federal government. If the rule goes through, said Donley at the Center for Biological Diversity, “quite a bit more agency actions are just not going to be analyzed at all under the Endangered Species Act.”

If habitat destruction is not an issue under the law, farmers may be less inclined to join conservation programs.

As of now, the EPA is still relying on a traditional interpretation of the law. On April 29, the EPA issued a major update intended to streamline the regulation of insecticides and curb their impacts on endangered species. The agency said it has a responsibility to ensure that pesticide registration doesn’t jeopardize protected species, “or result in the destruction or adverse modification of their designated critical habitats.”

EPA released a similar strategy for herbicides last August. In that strategy, habitat protection is even more central, since weedkillers tend to also kill plants that various species depend on.

Under the interpretation proposed by Fish and Wildlife, critical habitat would not be considered. Farm groups are watching to see whether that new interpretation will impact the EPA’s strategies and process going forward.

“It’s something we’re keeping close tabs on,” said Kyle Kunkler, senior director of government affairs for the American Soybean Association. “We don’t feel that these ESA strategies are where we want them to be yet. But the other thing is, we want to make sure that there isn’t going to be anything that overturns the apple cart as well, that would completely disrupt those processes. If there is some major, disruptive factor, some sort of rule-making, or something that comes along that could jeopardize that path that we’re on, that’s something that we’re going to have to really think long and hard about.”

EPA officials were not available for direct comment by press time.

Beyond the EPA, taking habitat loss out of the Endangered Species Act could have other implications. It could change the way species are protected on private land. An agricultural producer may be less inclined to enroll in government land conservation programs, which sometimes provide legal protections against accidentally killing endangered species.

The monarch butterfly, for example, is currently proposed as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act, and agencies and others are looking for ways to incentivize farmers to protect milkweed on their properties, since it’s the only food source for monarchs. If habitat destruction is not an issue under the law, farmers may be less inclined to join conservation programs.

“For a pollinator like the monarch, that habitat is just really widespread, that’s part of the problem,” said Lekha Knuffman, a senior agriculture program specialist at the National Wildlife Federation. “So how does this play out in that scenario?”

Broadly speaking, she said, the proposed rule change “weakens or significantly narrows the ability of Fish and Wildlife Service to make ‘take’ determinations or require consultations of EPA, since habitat modification is a pretty significant portion of those determinations.”

Threats Beyond Habitat

The proposed rule change could have broad implications beyond habitat. Currently, both Fish and Wildlife and the National Marine Fisheries Service seek to prevent incidental acts of harm under the law—the striking of endangered birds by wind turbines, for example. But under the proposed change, the agencies say they want to interpret harm to require an “affirmative act” that is “directed immediately and intentionally against a particular animal.”

“Ninety-six percent of birds that live in North America eat bugs at some point in their life.”

That could mean the loss of legal protections for many species interwoven in ecological systems that often include farms, fields, and pastures—birds, especially.

“Ninety-six percent of birds that live in North America eat bugs at some point in their life,” Kern, at the American Bird Conservancy, said. “Most birds rear their chicks on bugs. They need them to fuel up during migration. Even birds like hummingbirds, which we think of as nectar eaters, feed their babies primarily spiders and small flies.”

A rule that changes the definition of harm might change the way federal agencies think about habitat, he said, but it also could change the way they think about the protection of other crucial elements of a species’ survival.

“That can include feeding, sheltering, and breeding,” he said. “So, we’re talking about more than just the places that birds and other species live, we’re talking about the actions that contribute to their survival. And if you talk to anybody, of course that should constitute harm.”

The public comment period for the rule change ends on May 19. Kern believes this is the moment for the public to speak up: “This is a fabulous opportunity for people to weigh in and say, ‘I stand up for the Endangered Species Act; I think that it is an important law, and I understand that habitat is just as important as direct attacks on individuals of a species.’”

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]]> https://civileats.com/2025/05/07/a-proposed-change-to-the-endangered-species-act-could-expose-habitats-to-pesticides/feed/ 0 https://civileats.com/2025/05/06/opponents-of-prop-12-ask-congress-to-overturn-it-again/ https://civileats.com/2025/05/06/opponents-of-prop-12-ask-congress-to-overturn-it-again/#respond Tue, 06 May 2025 08:00:25 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=64111 Soon after, Gary Malenke’s phone started ringing. “There were a lot of customers looking for product and a lot of concern about, ‘Hey, where’s my supply gonna come from? Are my shelves gonna be empty?’” he said. As senior vice president of pork operations for Perdue Premium Meat Company, Malenke oversees a mid-size pork processing […]

The post The Pork Industry Asks Congress to Overturn Prop. 12, a Divisive Animal Welfare Law, Yet Again appeared first on Civil Eats.

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In May 2023, nearly eight months after hearing a case brought by the National Pork Producers Council (NPPC), the Supreme Court upheld a California law that banned the sale of pork from systems that confine mother pigs in small crates.

Soon after, Gary Malenke’s phone started ringing. “There were a lot of customers looking for product and a lot of concern about, ‘Hey, where’s my supply gonna come from? Are my shelves gonna be empty?’” he said.

As senior vice president of pork operations for Perdue Premium Meat Company, Malenke oversees a mid-size pork processing plant in Iowa. The pork processed there—for brands including Niman Ranch and Coleman Natural Foods—already meets Prop. 12’s requirements, since gestation crates are not used in their systems. So, he was a logical contact for buyers suddenly concerned about finding pork to sell.

But, Malenke said, after about six months, the calls mostly stopped. On the ground, he’s heard little talk about the law, and from his vantage point, the market has met the moment. “California seems to have aligned with their suppliers in a way where the balance between what’s coming in the pipeline for Prop. 12 product seems to be aligning relatively well with what the demand is,” he said.

That’s not how the NPPC sees it.

The week of April 7, NPPC members, who represent the country’s biggest pork companies, arrived in Washington, D.C. to try once again to convince Congress to overturn Prop. 12. They started the week with an advertising takeover of Politico’s influential Weekly Agriculture newsletter, in which ads pleaded with lawmakers to correct Prop. 12’s “damaging consequences nationwide for both farmers and consumers.”

A screenshot of one of four advertisements from the National Pork Producers Council in the April 7 Weekly Agriculture email newsletter from Politico.

On April 8, Iowa’s Republican U.S. Senators, Joni Ernst and Chuck Grassley, and Senator Roger Marshall (R-Kansas), introduced the Food Security and Farm Protection Act, which, if incorporated into an upcoming farm bill, would overturn Prop. 12 and prevent other similar bills in the future.

The new act is essentially a renamed version of the Ending Agricultural Trade Suppression (EATS) Act, which was first introduced in 2023. The NPPC praised the senators’ “efforts to avert [a] pork industry crisis.”

While the battle over Prop. 12 has been raging for nearly a decade, this is the first time it’s possible to look at the impacts the law has had on farmers and the market for pork. The law’s requirements were phased in starting in July 2023, and were fully implemented in January 2024, a little over one year ago.

Looking for Signs of Crisis

More time is needed for price and farm data to catch up, so analysis is still limited. But based on Civil Eats’ reporting and research, it’s hard to find signs of the crisis NPPC describes, and some available evidence points the other way.

Experts say the premiums being paid to farmers who changed their systems more than cover the cost of the upgrades required. Brands like Niman Ranch, which supports a network of independent small farms, have increased their sales. Many of the country’s biggest corporations, which experts say shouldered more of the costs associated with the transition, increased the performance of their pork segments in 2024 compared to 2023.

Price data is harder to parse: the price of the pork covered by the law has increased in California, but economists say more and better data is needed to definitively say how much of the jump is attributable to the law (versus other factors that impact prices) and whether the initial disruption is starting to ease.

Many people also say the scrambled political landscape that exists around Prop. 12 seems to have shifted more toward support for keeping the law in place. While the Biden administration, Trump’s past and current U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), and many farm-state lawmakers have all sided with the NPPC in favor of overturning Prop. 12, groups from across the political spectrum are dedicated to preserving it.

One coalition working to stop legislation that would nullify Prop. 12 includes diverse organizations concerned about a broad range of issues, from animal welfare and the environmental impacts of meat production to corporate consolidation and state’s rights.

“I think we have done a really good job making the case against the [former] EATS Act on so many different levels. We’ve got very far-right members of our coalition and we’ve got left members of our coalition,” said Christian Lovell, the senior director of programs at Farm Action Fund, a nonprofit focused on anti-monopoly policies and a leader of the effort to protect Prop. 12. “There’s also a lot of market opportunity for producers that do want to meet these standards. That to me is just incongruent with what the industry is describing.”

However, House Agriculture Committee staff said in an email to Civil Eats that they have heard from “over 900 federal, state, and county agricultural stakeholders” asking lawmakers to overturn Prop 12.

“There’s also a lot of market opportunity for producers that do want to meet these standards. That to me is just incongruent with what the industry is describing.”

As a result, Committee Chair G.T. Thompson (R-Pennsylvania) plans to again include language that does so in the next draft of the farm bill, as he did in 2024. Thompson’s provision is narrower than the language in both the former EATS Act as well as the new bill introduced in April, and only applies to livestock (as opposed to nullifying state laws that regulate the production of all agricultural products).

“The threat to producers goes way beyond NPPC and the pork industry,” Thompson said in a statement provided to Civil Eats. “States like California must be held accountable. They cannot be allowed to enact mandates that dictate production standards to producers outside of their borders.”

The NPPC declined a request for an interview, and the organization’s spokesperson did not respond to detailed questions that Civil Eats sent asking for their perspective on multiple points laid out in this story.

More Data Needed on Price Increases

One of the messages the NPPC is featuring most prominently is how much more Californians are now paying for pork. Back in 2021, the industry created the “Food Equity Alliance” to push the message that the animal welfare law would hurt low-income Californians due to price increases. Then, they commissioned and publicized an analysis that said bacon prices would rise 60 percent in Los Angeles due to a 50 percent reduction in supply. That didn’t happen. (Longtime opponents of animal rights groups are also behind another new campaign Politico reported on yesterday that includes a website filled with misinformation on price increases in both pork and eggs.)

On its current website dedicated to the issue and in some of its ad campaigns, the NPPC has emphasized that Prop. 12 caused a 41 percent “surge in certain pork prices” and a 20 percent average increase.

Those numbers come from an analysis conducted by USDA economists and published by the Giannini Foundation of Agricultural Economics at the University of California. Using proprietary retail data, researchers attributed a 20 percent average price increase in pork covered by the law in California to the implementation of Prop. 12. (Pork products covered by the law include fresh cuts and bacon; ground pork and cooked products like sausages and hot dogs are not covered. It’s unclear why the law was written to only cover certain products.) Price increases ranged depending on the cut, with pork loin (a category that is mostly pork chops) increasing the most, by that 41 percent. Those increases significantly outpaced average price increases across the country.

However, the analysis comes with many limitations. The data only applied to a seven-month period—the first six months of the law as it was being phased in, plus just one month where it was fully in effect.

It also was not a peer-reviewed study, and Daniel Sumner, a professor of agricultural and resource economics at U.C. Davis and the director of the Giannini Foundation, said that the data acted in a strange way that warranted additional scrutiny. He published it, he said, primarily “because it was the only data available.”

If the average 20 percent jump is accurate, the price disruption would also likely be higher at the start, since costs to upgrade housing for pigs, for instance, occur once at the beginning of the process and markets need time to adjust, said David Ortega, a professor of food economics and policy at Michigan State University. “You would expect the immediate shock and then a bit of a decay as things adjust and you spread costs over more product,” he explained.

But researchers have not yet analyzed more recent data on what has happened in the year and a half since Prop. 12’s full implementation. In response to an inquiry from Civil Eats, USDA Chief Economist Seth Meyer, who was involved in the original analysis, said there was no public data he could provide but that his team had since looked at “subsequent periods” and “the story remained consistent with the initial findings.”

Other numbers provided to Civil Eats that relied on the same source of retail price data between January 2024 (when the law went fully into effect) and December 2024 showed an average price increase for covered pork that would be closer to 10 percent higher than the rest of the country. But the data is limited in a way that doesn’t allow for a one-to-one comparison or more significant, definitive conclusions. It’s also hard to isolate Prop. 12’s effect from other factors, since California’s pork consumption is not identical to other states.

The retail data Sumner works with is on a two-year delay. “I’m anxious to see what actually happened,” he said.

Companies Take on Costs, But Still Post Profits

As of the end of April, 387 companies have chosen to distribute Prop. 12-compliant pork products in California, according to the California Department of Agriculture. Those include food-service distributors, like Sysco, and the country’s biggest pork processors, like Cargill.

One of the things Sumner emphasizes is that debates on Prop. 12 always focus on the cost of upgrading the barns that house mother pigs to comply with the law. However, he said, it turns out that the cost of separating Prop. 12-compliant pork from the other pork being produced accounts for much more of the price increases than those upgrades. “Most of it has to be traceability, because the costs at the farm level aren’t that high,” he said. “Everybody agrees on that.”

The bulk of the extra costs, then, fall on the pork processing and distribution companies, Sumner said.

Since the law went into effect, Smithfield, Tyson, and Seaboard, the three biggest public corporations that produce American pork and therefore provide detailed financial accounting, reported increasing profits in their pork segments. (Of course, there are many other pork companies that do not share financial data, and those could show different impacts.)

Since the law went into effect, Smithfield, Tyson, and Seaboard, the three biggest public corporations that produce American pork and therefore provide detailed financial accounting, reported increasing profits in their pork segments.

Tyson reported “significant improvement in profitability” across the company in 2024 compared to 2023. While its pork segment operated at a loss, it reduced its loss by about $100 million last year. Smithfield reported about a billion dollars in operating profits in 2024, nearly four times its 2023 profit.

“This strong rebound reflects our resilient business model, led by another year of record profits in our Packaged Meats segment, our third consecutive year of profit growth in our Fresh Pork segment and a more than $600 million increase in Hog Production segment profitability,” President and CEO Shane Smith said in a statement.

Some of those improvements could be attributed to the fact that the company had a very bad 2023, shuttering dozens of hog operations in Missouri and Utah. But the company attributed the closures to oversupply, not Prop 12. In one of its 2024 financial filings, the company mentioned being an “early industry mover” on Prop. 12-compliant pork.

Neither Tyson nor Smithfield responded to requests for interviews.

That aligns with Malenke’s observation that companies seemed to be catching up and even benefiting from the transition. “As you’ve seen some people convert facilities and supply and demand start falling into place, I’d say there’s not as much of a unified voice against [Prop. 12] maybe as there was two years ago,” he said. “It’s a little more mixed today, because there are people that have made investments, and they’re capitalizing on the market opportunity as well.”

In 2023, Seaboard said it would shift its sales away from California so it wouldn’t have to make changes to its housing for mother pigs. However, the company is now on the list of certified distributors. It reported an increase in operating income in 2024 attributable to “higher margins on pork products and market hogs sold, primarily due to higher sale prices and lower hog production costs.”

That supports Farm Action Fund’s Lovell’s argument around any industry-led effort to blame high food prices on a factor like Prop. 12. “Time and time again, these big corporations really take the opportunity, whenever there’s a ‘supply chain disruption’—whether that’s a change like Prop. 12 or that’s avian flu where yeah, prices go up a little bit—to tack on their own premium,” he said.

Seaboard did not respond to a request for an interview.

Farmers Get Paid a Premium

Aside from the prices Californians pay for bacon at the grocery store, the pork industry’s other main argument for overturning Prop. 12 is that “small family farmers will be crushed” by the law. On the website, NPPC displays a statistic: 5,000 hog farms lost in the U.S. from 2017 to 2022.

Those numbers are from the USDA Agricultural Census and show the tail end of a trend that started in the 1990s. At the same time the pork industry was shifting to a Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) model and the companies raising and buying animals became more consolidated, farms began disappearing and the ones that remained got bigger to survive. Since the implementation of Prop. 12 began in July 2023, after the end of the available stats, it’s unclear what the numbers from 2017 to 2022 are intended to show.

Farm Action credits the industrialization and consolidation of industries like pork for much of the decline in farms and sees Prop. 12 as an opportunity for farmers that work within that system to get a higher price for their animals. “We’ve seen farmers either changing their operation or just flat-out getting into a new type of system where they’re raising pork that meets the standards.”

After Prop. 12 went into effect, the USDA began tracking the premium paid to farmers. It’s hovered around $5 per 100 pounds of pig, which Sumner says is enough to make the transition worth it. In October of 2023, a group of Missouri and Illinois farmers sent a letter to House and Senate agriculture leadership asking them to reject overturning Prop 12.

Sows at the Willis Free Range Pig Farm in Thornton, Iowa, which was operated by Paul Willis, founder and manager of the Niman Ranch network of 500 farmers. Gestation options for sows in the network include hoop barns, larger open-sided barns, and pastures with huts. (Photo courtesy of Niman Ranch).

“We have invested in substantial and profitable adjustments to our operations—from modifying our production methods, to expanding our supply chain reach, and spending resources to inform consumers about our product compliance,” they wrote. “As independent farmers, product differentiation is a crucial avenue for maintaining our ability to compete and remain in the marketplace against powerful multinational corporations that control the majority of the market.”

Companies like Niman Ranch, which buys from a network of about 500 family farmers that already raise pigs according to higher welfare standards, have also benefited. A spokesperson told Civil Eats the company landed a few big accounts due to Prop. 12, and thanks to increased demand from California (and elsewhere), the company increased its hog numbers 15 percent in 2024 and expects another 10-15 percent increase in pigs in 2025.

These are exactly the kind of small family farms the NPPC claims to care about, Lovell said.

“We know small farms are the most likely to be diversified. We know that small farms are the most likely to have high welfare standards, and we know that small farms are really the most likely to use more sustainable regenerative practices, right? So, I would take issue with the premise of Prop. 12 being incongruent with supporting small farmers,” he said.

Of the pork industry’s big push on Capitol Hill, he continued, “We think their policy is wrong. We think their tactics are wrong. We think that on the merits and on the data they’re wrong. Whether or not they changed the bill name, whatever they want to call it, our coalition will be there to oppose it.”

An earlier version of this article misspelled the name of Iowa Senator Joni Ernst.

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]]> https://civileats.com/2025/05/06/opponents-of-prop-12-ask-congress-to-overturn-it-again/feed/ 0 https://civileats.com/2025/05/05/the-future-of-californias-climate-smart-farming-programs/ https://civileats.com/2025/05/05/the-future-of-californias-climate-smart-farming-programs/#respond Mon, 05 May 2025 08:00:46 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=63604 The first part of this article originally appeared in The Deep Dish, our members-only newsletter. Become a member today and get the next issue directly in your inbox. Then came a reprieve: the State Water Efficiency and Enhancement Program (SWEEP), a state initiative to help farms adapt to California’s increasingly erratic climate. Using the $58,000 grant, the […]

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]]> The first part of this article originally appeared in The Deep Dish, our members-only newsletter. Become a member today and get the next issue directly in your inbox.

In 2019, as California’s historic drought hit its peak, the well on Lilian Thaoxaochay’s 20-acre family farm, GT Florists and Herbs in Fresno County, looked close to drying up. With rows of Armenian cucumbers, budding dahlias, and blooming jujube trees at risk, the only fix, it seemed, was to dig the well deeper—at a cost of $20,000. “It almost tanked us,” Thaoxaochay recalls of the crisis that threatened her family’s livelihood.

Then came a reprieve: the State Water Efficiency and Enhancement Program (SWEEP), a state initiative to help farms adapt to California’s increasingly erratic climate. Using the $58,000 grant, the Thaoxaochays switched their farm from full-flood irrigation to a drip system fed through trenched water lines and monitored by moisture sensors.

As part of the upgrade, they also installed a flow meter to help comply with California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA), which requires farms to track groundwater use. The changes slashed not just water use, but also the energy costs of running the pump, leaving the farm far better equipped for the next drought—which arrived just three years later.

While California farmers aren’t immune to the fallout, the Golden State offers a level of support not found in much of the country.

The farm also secured a $23,000 grant through the state’s Healthy Soils Program (HSP), an initiative that helps growers integrate composting, cover cropping, and reduced tillage—practices that enhance soil health and increase its capacity to retain water and sequester carbon. In addition to boosting field productivity, the changes helped cut the farm’s reliance on synthetic fertilizers.

“It was the lifeline we needed,” says Thaoxaochay of the two programs. “We’ve been completely resilient since,” she adds, unlike many small farms that have been forced to seek emergency state relief due to erratic weather conditions.

In recent months, U.S. farmers have watched climate-related support wobble under political pressure. The Trump administration froze more than $1 billion in USDA funding for programs aimed at climate resilience and social equity, then reissued several with political strings including scrubbing references to climate change and DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion).

A federal judge has since ordered reinstatement of the funds, but the episode has only deepened the fragility of national climate policy, casting a long shadow over efforts to help farmers brace for a future of worsening droughts, floods, and wildfires.

While California farmers aren’t immune to the fallout, the Golden State offers a level of support not found in much of the country. In addition to SWEEP and HSP, the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) oversees a suite of several climate-smart agricultural programs that cut emissions and build on-farm resilience.

These include the Alternative Manure Management Program, which funds systems that dry manure into compost rather than flushing it into methane-emitting lagoons; the Biologically Integrated Farming Systems Program, to promote low-input, plant-based farming methods; and the Sustainable Agricultural Lands Conservation Program (SALCP), to fund conservation easements that permanently protect farmland, preserving them as carbon sinks. (See “California’s Climate-Smart Farming Programs,” below, for details.)

Lilian Thaoxaochay said a recent drought “almost tanked” her family’s farm. A California initiative, funded by the state’s Cap-and-Trade program, helped them switch to a drip system. (Photo courtesy of GT Florists & Herbs)

All these initiatives are funded through California’s Cap-and-Trade Program, which channels billions of dollars towards reducing greenhouse gas emissions and spurring economic growth.

Enacted in 2006 and implemented in 2013, Cap-and-Trade requires major polluters like oil refineries and manufacturing facilities to buy “allowances” at quarterly auctions to offset their carbon output. The proceeds flow into the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF), which pays for the state’s climate-smart agricultural programs—along with more than 80 other climate initiatives across transportation, housing, and energy. Together, these investments support California’s goal of achieving net-zero emissions by 2045, positioning California as a national model for integrated, climate-resilient policy.

Eleven Northeastern states also cap power-sector emissions through the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. Yet California Cap-and-Trade is the only program that directly accounts for emissions from agriculture, the leading global source of atmospheric methane and responsible for 8 percent of California’s carbon emissions.

Despite these significant emissions, the climate-smart agricultural programs designed to reduce them receive just 5 percent of Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF) allocations. That imbalance, says Brian Shobe, policy director at the California Climate & Agriculture Network (CalCAN), overlooks agriculture’s outsized potential to sequester carbon and build climate resistance: Healthy fields, pastures, and orchards enhance biodiversity, improve water retention, and help buffer farms against extreme weather.

With federal funding cuts hitting California’s farmers—and Trump’s recent executive order seeking to nullify state cap-and-trade systems—advocates are pushing for more than just a renewal of Cap-and-Trade’s existing allocations. As the program moves toward reauthorization in 2030, a coalition of agricultural and environmental groups, including CalCAN, has started urging lawmakers to lock in 15 percent of GGRF revenues for agricultural climate programs.

And, in mid April, Governor Gavin Newsom, Senate President pro Tempore Mike McGuire, and Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas pledged to extend the program, framing it as a chance to “demonstrate real climate leadership” on the national stage.

A Quick Guide to Cap-and-Trade

• California’s Cap-and-Trade Program is one of the state’s key tools for cutting greenhouse gas emissions. Established in 2006 and launched in 2013, it sets a limit—or “cap”—on total emissions from major polluters like oil refineries, power plants, and manufacturers, and steadily reduces that cap over time. Companies can buy and sell emission allowances at state-run auctions, creating a financial incentive to pollute less: The lower their emissions, the less they pay.
• Revenue from these auctions flows into the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF), which supports climate-related programs across sectors—from clean transportation and affordable housing to wildfire prevention and climate-smart agriculture. To date, the program has generated more than $25 billion for climate investments and is currently authorized to continue through 2030.

Stable funding, says Shobe, would let more farms and ranches adopt long-term climate solutions instead of scrambling for inconsistent, one-off grants tied to fluctuating auction revenues. It would also fortify the state’s broader climate strategy, he adds, and help stabilize the food system against climate-driven shocks that drive up grocery prices.

But agriculture isn’t the only sector competing for those funds. With no automatic appropriations for most climate programs, about 40 percent of Cap-and-Trade revenue is up for grabs each year, prompting fierce competition among advocates for housing, transit, energy, and agriculture.

“There’s an annual food fight over limited climate dollars,” says Zack Deutsch-Gross, policy director at Transform, a nonprofit focused on sustainable, equitable transit and land use. “It pits climate advocates against one another as they seek [stable] appropriations for their programs.”

CalCAN and its allies argue that carving out 15 percent for agricultural programs is essential to safeguarding California’s food supply in the face of relentless cycle of droughts, floods, wildfire, and heatwaves.

“This is a once-in-a-decade opportunity to secure a more stable, climate-resilient food system,” Shobe says. Given the competition for funding as Cap-and-Trade’s reauthorization deadline nears, and the added pressure of federal pullback, he and his colleagues are wasting no time in laying the groundwork for legislative support.

Climate Strain and Sticker Shock

Since its launch, the Cap-and-Trade Program has helped drive down California’s greenhouse gas emissions, with year-on-year reductions across the board. The market-based approach has spurred innovation in clean technologies and generated more than $25 billion in climate investments while boosting the state economy. Those funds support programs in agriculture, renewable energy, wildfire prevention, and air quality improvements, and amplify their reach. Though the program is authorized through 2030, reauthorization will require a two-thirds majority and substantial legislative maneuvering, which has already begun.

Last month, Assemblymember Jacqui Irwin, chair of the Joint Legislative Committee on Climate Change Policies, introduced a bill to extend Cap-and-Trade beyond its expiration date. While Irwin did not respond to Civil Eats’ requests for comment on the bill or its implications for agricultural funding, the move signals growing legislative recognition of the program’s role in backing climate initiatives, including those that support farmers.

Gianina Thaoxaochay harvests sigua, a luffa gourd, at GT Florists & Herbs. (Photo courtesy of GT Florists & Herbs)

Agricultural programs, meanwhile, remain among the state’s most cost-effective climate investments, says Shobe, measured by the cost per ton of greenhouse gas reductions. That includes initiatives focused on water efficiency and soil health, along with the CDFA’s Cap-and-Trade-funded climate-smart programs.

Despite their impact, most of these programs face inconsistent, boom-and-bust funding. SALCP is the only one with continuous appropriation, receiving 2 percent of GGRF revenues through the broader Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities Program. Yet even with that modest share, it accounts for 15 percent of all GGRF emissions reductions.

“These programs offer cost-effective, scalable solutions—especially for small- and mid-sized farms—to help them adapt to worsening climate extremes,” says Shobe. Yet their reach remains limited due to volatile funding. Without sustained investment, many farmers face steep barriers to adopting climate-smart practices at the scale needed in a sector already operating on razor-thin margins.

And it’s not just farms feeling the squeeze, Shobe says—consumers are, too. As human-induced climate change continues to disrupt food production, raise grocery prices, and worsen inflation, the economic strain will intensify, he adds, without greater investment in farm resilience.

“Families feel climate change at the checkout line,” Shobe says. “If we don’t invest now in protecting our food system, we’re going to see real cost impacts.”

Manure, Methane Digesters, and the Funding Divide

As a fifth-generation dairy farmer, Paul Danbom, owner of Brindeiro & Danbom Dairy Farms in Stanislaus County, has had to adapt to erratic weather and an ever-shifting economic landscape. His operation includes 900 milking cows, a small beef herd, and 500 acres of corn and almonds spread across the vast, sunbaked expanse of California’s Central Valley. Yet even with diversification, soaring fertilizer costs have whittled away his slim margins.

In 2022, Danbom received a $565,000 Alternative Manure Management Program (AMMP) grant, which funded roughly three-quarters of a system that captures manure before it’s flushed into methane-emitting lagoons, then dries it into nutrient-rich compost. According to a CalCAN report, AMMP projects have cut methane emissions by the equivalent of removing nearly 150,000 cars off the road annually.

“This is a once-in-a-decade opportunity to secure a more stable, climate-resilient food system.”

“We’re now producing about 80 percent of our fertilizer needs on-farm,” Danbom says. The compost improves soil structure, reduces pesticide use, and, once aerated, serves as soft cow bedding. “It’s totally increased my [waste] management efficiency,” he says, “and helped my bottom line.”

Despite those gains, anaerobic digesters—larger-scale systems that capture methane from manure lagoons and convert it into biogas for fuel—dominate manure management funding. Through a combination of GGRF and other programs, California has committed nearly $677 million to these dairy digesters while the Biden administration made parallel investments through projects such as the USDA Rural Energy for America Program.

Collectively, manure management projects have slashed methane emissions from California’s dairy sector by 22 percent, according to research. Yet digesters continue to receive the bulk of public funding, with supporters maintaining that they deliver the biggest methane cuts in the livestock sector and are key to hitting state climate goals. Critics, though, counter that this focus overwhelmingly favors large-scale operations, effectively incentivizing the growth of mega-dairies and potentially boosting emissions.

“We need all of the programs working together,” says Michael Boccadoro, executive director of Agricultural Energy Consumers Association. “Farmers of all sizes need solutions that work for them.” His coalition is pushing for a $75 million annual allocation for small- and large-scale manure management approaches, alongside increased funding for farming infrastructure and processing upgrades. Nevertheless, he maintains that dairy digesters provide the best return on investment, noting that they can capture up to 90 percent of methane emissions from livestock waste.

Still, digesters only make financial sense at a certain scale, making dry manure management a better fit for smaller dairies—if they can access funding. AMMP, along with healthy soil and water efficiency programs, are often the most accessible options for small-scale farms facing financial and logistical barriers. But they’re oversubscribed, Danbom says—he applied three times before securing his grant. Without consistent support, he warns, the climate-smart solutions “consumers increasingly demand” may be out of reach for the farms best positioned to implement them. 

Competition for Cap-and-Trade Funds

Meanwhile, other sectors are also calling for more reliable Cap-and-Trade support. Transportation, housing, and energy advocates are urging lawmakers to close structural gaps in the program. Deutsch-Grosse of Transform points to two key loopholes: free pollution allowances—permits granted to industries such as oil and manufacturing to encourage them to stay in-state—and carbon offsets, which let companies meet emissions targets by funding reductions elsewhere rather than cutting their own. These mechanisms “facilitate continued pollution in frontline communities,” he says, and reforming them could boost GGRF revenue while advancing environmental justice.

As the outlook for national climate policy darkens, that push has gained urgency, says Adina Levin of Seamless Bay Area, a transit equity and land use advocate. Her group, along with Transform, is part of a coalition pushing the state to direct Cap-and-Trade dollars towards affordable housing and public transit—investments that reduce emissions, improve air quality, and benefit frontline communities rather than subsidize high-polluting sectors such as industrial agriculture.

With transportation as California’s largest source of greenhouse gases—and a major contributor to particulate pollution—Levin sees transit and transit-oriented housing as essential infrastructure. And like climate-smart agriculture, these programs deliver broad, lasting returns, she says, by expanding low-cost housing, boosting transit ridership, and easing public health risks linked to air pollution.

“Without consistent funding, we’re left crossing our fingers that these programs will still be around after each funding cycle—rather than building on their success.”

“Since federal funding is likely to be unreliable in the near term, it’s essential for California to stand up for equity and climate action,” Levin says. Keeping up that momentum matters: California’s climate initiatives have become a national model, from inspiring Healthy Soils programs in eight states including New Mexico and Montana, to shaping affordable housing and transit policy in the Pacific Northwest.

And ultimately, sustaining this leadership hinges on stable funding.

Strengthening the Food System Against Climate Change

On the dry, chaparral-covered hills of California’s Central Coast, shepherd Jack Anderson runs Cuyama Lamb, grazing 1,200 sheep for wildfire prevention as well as for food and wool. His flock also cycles through vineyards and ranches supported by Healthy Soils grants. Here they graze cover crops and control brush while enriching the soil, sequestering carbon, and helping to control erosion.

Despite the layered benefits, Anderson often sees regenerative practices “stymied by the inconsistency in funding.” Having witnessed eager landowners walk away from projects when support fell through, he adds that “it really slows the adoption of something that not only meets our climate goals, but stabilizes our food system in the face of climate change.”

Thaoxaochay, of GT Florists and Herbs, agrees. As a University of California Cooperative Extension agent who works closely with small-scale farmers, she’s seen firsthand how transformative these programs can be. And she notes that once farmers adopt these techniques, they tend to stick: Research shows that 75 percent of grant recipients continue the practices well after funding ends.

“The long-term impacts . . . are greater than we could ever imagine,” Thaoxaochay says. “But without consistent funding, we’re left crossing our fingers that these programs will still be around after each funding cycle—rather than building on their success.”

California’s Climate-Smart Farming Programs

Through California’s Cap-and-Trade-funded Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, the California Department of Food and Agriculture supports a suite of climate-smart agriculture programs that promote sustainable agricultural practices and land conservation:

• Alternative Manure Management Program (AMMP) provides grants to dairy and livestock operations for capturing manure before it’s flushed into methane-emitting lagoons, and for then drying it into nutrient-rich compost.
• Dairy Digester Research and Development Program (DDRDP) funds the installation of anaerobic digesters that capture methane from manure pits and convert it into renewable energy.
• Healthy Soils Program (HSP) offers incentives for on-farm practices that enhance soil health, boost carbon sequestration, and improve water retention through cover cropping, compost application, and reduced tillage.
• State Water Efficiency and Enhancement Program (SWEEP) provides financial assistance to implement efficient irrigation systems and related equipment—such as drip lines, soil moisture sensors, and pump upgrades—to reduce on-farm water use and cut greenhouse gas emissions from energy-intensive pumping.
• Biologically Integrated Farming Systems Program (BIFS) funds on-farm demonstration projects that show how to reduce chemical pesticide use through ecological practices such as beneficial insects, crop rotation, and soil health management. These on-the-ground trials—often in partnership with university extension programs and farmer-led research groups—are paired outreach and education to help other growers adopt similar approaches.
• Proactive Integrated Pest Management (IPM) Solutions Program funds projects that develop and implement pest management strategies to prevent the spread of invasive pests, reducing reliance on pesticides and associated greenhouse gas emissions.
• Pollinator Habitat Program (PHP) provides grants to establish and maintain pollinator habitat on agricultural lands, supporting biodiversity and ecosystem health.
• Sustainable Agricultural Lands Conservation Program (SALCP) funds the protection of critical agricultural lands through conservation easements that permanently protect farmland from development, preserving carbon sinks, supporting biodiversity, and helping to curb urban sprawl.

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This article was updated to include the correct spelling of Zack Deutsch-Gross’ last name.

The post The Future of California’s Climate-Smart Farming Programs appeared first on Civil Eats.

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