GoGreenNation news

US Agency to End Use of 'Cyanide Bomb' to Kill Coyotes and Other Predators, Citing Safety Concerns

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management has halted the use of spring-loaded traps that disperse cyanide powder to kill coyotes and other livestock predators

RENO, Nev. (AP) — The U.S. Bureau of Land Management has halted the use of spring-loaded traps that disperse cyanide powder to kill coyotes and other livestock predators, a practice wildlife advocates have tried to outlaw for decades due to safety concerns.The M-44 ejector-devices that critics call “cyanide bombs” have unintentionally killed thousands of pets and non-predator wildlife, including endangered species, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Wildlife Services. They have a scented bait and emit a poisonous cloud when triggered by a physical disturbance.The Bureau of Land Management quietly posted a notice on its website last week that it no longer will use the devices across the 390,625 square miles (1,011,714 square kilometers) it manages nationally — an area twice the size of California — much of it where ranchers graze cattle and sheep. Other federal agencies — including the National Park Service, and the Fish and Wildlife Service — already prohibit the devices. But the Forest Service and 10 states still use them in some form.Eight unsuccessful bills have been introduced in Congress since 2008 to ban the the traps on federal and/or state lands. Sponsors of legislation pending in the U.S. House and Senate that would ban them on both say they're optimistic the bureau's new position will help pave the way for broader support. Brooks Fahy, executive director of the Oregon-based watchdog group Predator Defense, has been working for 40 years to ban the use of sodium cyanide in the traps. He emphasized that it's registered under the Environmental Protection Agency as a Category 1 toxicant, the highest level of toxicity.“I can’t believe they’re still being put on the landscape and they continue to harm people,” Fahy said. “I’ve seen M-44s set right on the edge of a trail.”M-44s consist of a stake driven into the ground with a spring and canister loaded with the chemical. Marked inconsistently and sometimes not at all, humans have mistaken them for sprinkler heads or survey markers.Federal agencies rely on Wildlife Services to deal with problem animals — whether in remote areas or airports across the country — using lethal and non-lethal forces. The change on Bureau of Land Management land came under a recent revision of a memorandum of understanding with Wildlife Services obtained by The Associated Press on Monday. It's effective immediately but can be canceled by either side with 60 days' notice.Wildlife Services has used M-44s to control predators, mostly in the West, since the 1930s. The American Sheep Industry Association and National Cattlemen’s Beef Association were among 100 industry groups that wrote to Congress this year, stressing the importance of the program. They said predators cause more than $232 million in livestock losses annually.About a dozen people have been seriously harmed over the past 25 years by M-44s on federal lands, according to Predator Defense.Between 2000-16, Wildlife Services reported 246,985 animals killed by M-44s, including at least 1,182 dogs. From 2014-22, the agency said M-44s intentionally killed 88,000 animals and unintentionally killed more than 2,000 animals .Public outcry over the devices grew after a family dog was killed in 2017 in Pocatello, Idaho, and Canyon Mansfield, then 14, was injured after accidentally triggering a device placed on public land about 400 feet (122 meters) from their home. In 2020, the federal government admitted negligence and agreed to pay the family $38,500 to resolve a lawsuit. “We are so happy to finally see one federal government department banning another’s reckless and indiscriminate actions,” Canyon Mansfield's father, Mark Mansfield, said last week.Democratic Rep. Jared Huffman, of California, who is the lead sponsor of the bill that would outlaw use of M-44s on all state and federal lands, has named the current version “Canyon's Law,” after Mansfield.“Cyanide bombs are a cruel and indiscriminate device that have proven to be deadly for pets, humans, and wildlife – and they have no business being on our public lands,” Huffman said last week in praising the bureau's move.Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley, of Oregon, who is the lead sponsor of companion legislation in the Senate, said he’s encouraged the Biden administration is “taking a positive step forward to keep cyanide bombs off of our public lands.”Fahy acknowledged efforts in Congress to ban the use of M-44s have gained little traction over the past 15 years. But he said publicity over the Mansfield case has changed the political landscape more than anything he's seen since 1982 when President Ronald Reagan revoked an executive order issued by President Richard Nixon in 1972 that had banned use of all poisons by federal agents on federal lands.Several weeks after Canyon Mansfield was poisoned, Fahy said Wildlife Services agreed to stop using M-44s in Idaho. Two years later, Oregon banned them statewide and a partial ban soon followed in New Mexico where some state agencies can still use them.Colorado, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Texas, West Virginia and Wyoming also still allow M-44s.Fahy said the new policy at the Bureau of Land Management — which specifically referenced the Mansfield case last week — “is a big deal” that should help build on the momentum for a nationwide ban.“This is the most that the needle on the use of federal poisons has moved in over 40 years,” he said. “I think M-44s' days are numbered.”Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

How 2023 scorched our dinner plates

2023 saw some of the hottest temperatures ever recorded, and they’re eating into food production. | MHJ/Getty Images Are your holiday meals pricier this year? Blame the record-breaking heat around the world. It’s the time of year when many are thinking about food. A lot of food. Thinking a lot about a lot of food. In 2022, Americans spent an additional $2.8 billion on food for Thanksgiving compared to a typical week. Supply chain disruptions and inflation pushed the cost of a Thanksgiving dinner to record highs, according to a survey from the American Farm Bureau Federation. The survey finds costs are down this year but still higher than they were prior to the Covid-19 pandemic. Those higher prices are due in part to disruptions in the global food supply, and while overall global production is up, zooming into different countries and regions reveals many people are having a harder time securing their next meal. Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine, a major corn and wheat exporter, is continuing to send shocks into grain markets. Inflation remains high in many countries, further threatening food security. This year added another spicy ingredient: Some of the hottest temperatures ever recorded on Earth. Extreme heat in 2023 diminished wheat yields in India, while drought took a bite out of rice in Indonesia. Disasters worsened by rising average temperatures also took a toll. Cyclone Freddy tore up fields of corn, rice, and beans across Malawi in March, the brunt borne by small subsistence farms. Severe weather also took a toll on livestock. Heat and drought stressed cattle herds across the US, Heads of cattle were already at their smallest numbers since records began in 1971. It’s even making cows produce less milk. Still, there’s a lot to be grateful for at the dinner table this year: Farmers have continued to push up crop yields to feed the growing, hungry planet. Technologies like mechanization, improved breeding, genetic engineering, and fertilizer have helped farmers reap more from the land. This year, global grain production is projected to reach an all-time high. In countries like the US, farmers planted more acres of crops like soy, corn, and wheat to take advantage of higher prices. The US is now reaping a record corn harvest. But that doesn’t necessarily mean big gains for the sowers and reapers. “The percent of a food dollar that goes to the farmer is really small,” said Anne Schechinger, Midwest director for the Environmental Working Group and an agriculture researcher. In 2022, it was less than 15 cents per dollar for US farmers, according to the US Department of Agriculture. In addition, because there was such a bumper crop of corn and soy, the amount that US farmers are projected to make per bushel is poised to fall. So 2023 has created a situation where consumers are paying more for food but some farmers will get paid less. Add to that the fact that farms often operate on narrow margins and smaller operations are particularly precarious. More than 90 percent of farms in the US are considered “small,” meaning a farming income of $250,000 or less per year, according to the USDA. The US government created a crop insurance program in the 1930s to help farmers hedge against forces of nature. The program is government subsidized but run by private companies. Farmers pay a premium and receive a payment if their yields or their revenues fall below a given threshold. The program insures 82 percent of eligible acres. But because a handful of farms hold the biggest tracts, only 20 percent of the total number of farms are covered. More than 73 percent of federal crop insurance payouts are due to weather: heat, drought, excess moisture, hail, and frost. “Last year had the highest crop insurance payments in the history of the program,” Schechinger said. Payouts totaled $19.13 billion, up from $2.96 billion in 2001, according to the Environmental Working Group. In addition, the USDA is providing more than $3 billion in disaster relief to farmers. It will take a few more months to tally the insurance payouts this year, but 2023’s raucous weather is already raising the price of what’s on the plate. Here is a sampler platter of the foods scorched, drenched, or dried out from the weather this year, raising prices for stalwart staples and delectable delicacies alike. Marco Bertorello/AFP via Getty Images Searing temperatures across olive-growing regions have sent olive oil prices skyward. It may be good for your heart, but olive oil’s soaring price this year may give you palpitations. Searing heat and scant rain across the Mediterranean, from Spain to Morocco to Greece to Italy, damaged olives this year, making olive oil more valuable than crude oil. Global olive oil production is projected to fall by half this year. Yulia Reznikov/Getty Images Heat waves in Peru have led to a spike in blueberry prices in the US. If you had blueberry pie on the menu, you may have had some sticker shock at the grocery store, if you could find them at all. Peru is the world’s largest exporter of blueberries, and it’s right in the crosshairs of El Niño, the warm phase of the Pacific Ocean’s temperature cycle. It fueled record-breaking heat across Peru, even during its winter. Blueberries need cool weather, and now half as many blueberries from Peru are making it to US shelves. Prices have gone up 40 percent since July. Francois Nascimbeni/AFP via Getty Images Extreme weather has brought grape production to its lowest levels in decades. Grapes are notoriously fussy about the weather, and their terroir shapes the quality and quantity of their products, like wine, so 2023 probably won’t make for a great vintage. The extremes in 2023 have driven global wine production to its lowest levels in 60 years. “Once again, extreme climatic conditions such as early frost, heavy rainfall, and drought have significantly impacted the output of the world vineyard,” according to the International Organization of Vine and Wine. Hector Quintanar/Bloomberg via Getty Images While the US is having a bumper corn harvest, countries like Mexico have seen diminished yields as extreme heat stunted growth. US farmers are harvesting a record amount of corn, a.k.a. maize, but they faced tough conditions. Upward of 70 percent of corn-growing regions were in drought by June. “For the remainder of the summer, roughly 40 to 60% of the corn production area was considered to be in drought,” a USDA spokesperson wrote in an email. Other regions did see declines. In China, intense heat in some regions and torrential downpours in others reduced the overall harvest. The majority of the corn in the world is field corn, a.k.a. dent corn, which is not for direct human consumption like the sweet corn used in elote or cornbread. Rather, it’s grown as animal feed, as well as the raw material for biofuels, sweeteners, starches, and industrial uses. Li Weichao/Xinhua via Getty Images Extreme heat, drought, and flooding reduced soy yields in countries like China and Brazil. Nearly two-thirds of soy-growing regions were in drought in the US by June. While some rain did eventually fall, the area in drought “never fell below 38% for the remainder of the summer,” according to the USDA. Soy crops also faced hail damage in parts of the country. The agency anticipates the harvest will be down 3 percent compared to 2022. Meanwhile, in Brazil, the world’s largest soy producer, drought forced farmers to delay or replant their crop, eating into the harvest. As with corn, the majority of soy is grown as animal feed, so losses show up on dinner plates as more expensive steaks, eggs, chicken, and cheese. Samsul Said/Bloomberg via Getty Images A farmer walks through a rice paddy in Malaysia during a heat wave earlier this year. More than 20 percent of humanity’s calories come from rice. It takes 200 liters of water to grow a kilogram of corn, but it takes more than 2,000 liters to grow a kilogram of rice. So hot, dry weather has an outsized effect on rice production, and this year’s extremes are raising prices of dishes ranging from risotto to khao pad. China, however, faced the opposite problem, with heavy rains and flooding damaging its rice paddies. Rice prices in Asia have surged to the highest levels in 15 years. Jongho Shin/Getty Images/iStockphoto Higher feed costs and extreme heat reduced dairy production this year. Cattle eat many of the grains we grow, so higher corn and soy prices from extreme weather increase the cost of cattle products, including milk and beef. Per cow, milk production fell by nine pounds this year compared to 2022 due in part to the hot, muggy weather. But hot cows aren’t happy cows either. They are more vulnerable to disease and produce less milk. This year, the USDA has begun to implement the Milk Loss Program to compensate dairies that had to dump milk due to extreme weather. The total cost of all this spilled milk isn’t clear yet, but dairy farmers can take a slice of $13 billion in assistance. Under extreme heat, cattle struggle to put on weight, and the combination of high heat and humidity can turn lethal. Hundreds of cattle died this summer across Iowa, Kansas, and Nebraska as they roasted in some of the hottest weather ever recorded in the region. Ongoing drought has convinced many ranchers not to expand their herds, which were already at their smallest in decades. Together, these factors are driving up beef prices. The USDA raised its payouts this year for ranchers who lost cattle due to extreme heat under its Livestock Indemnity Program. Climate change means that averages are changing too. That has good and bad effects on our food supply. Though 2023 has been a year of weather extremes, climate change is also altering the averages, and the impacts on agriculture aren’t always straightforward. Higher average temperatures mean that heat waves are becoming more frequent and intense, but it also means that cold snaps and freeze events — which can be damaging to crops like apricots, peaches, apples, and nectarines — are less likely. Extreme cold is also lethal to cattle. Almost 3,000 head of cattle died in Brazil this year due to cold weather. Warmer winters have also extended the length of the growing season. In the 48 contiguous states, the growing season is now two weeks longer than it was at the beginning of the 20th century. That gives farmers more flexibility in when to plant wheat, corn, and soy and can allow them to squeeze more plantings out of a given plot of land. EPA The growing season in the US is now two weeks longer than it was at the beginning of the 20th century. Rising averages mean that minimums are climbing as well. In fact, overnight temperatures are increasing twice as fast as daytime temperatures in the US. This can further stress crops and reduce their yields. For every 1.8°F increase in nighttime minimum temperature, rice experiences a 4.6 percent drop in yield. Carbon dioxide, the byproduct of burning fossil fuels, is also a critical nutrient for plants. As carbon dioxide concentrations in the air rise, the growth rate of crops can speed up. But that acceleration can lead crops like rice to have fewer nutrients like protein, zinc, iron, and B vitamins. Unless we turn down the heat, climate change will continue to overcook our food supply Most scientists now expect climate change to have a detrimental effect on food production on balance — through changing climatic averages and due to more weather extremes — though the scale of the damage will vary by crop. “Overall, the risks climate change poses to agriculture are expected to outweigh any potential benefits due to CO2 fertilization or other factors such as longer growing seasons and expanded crop ranges,” according to the Fifth National Climate Assessment released by the US government earlier this month. There are ways to mitigate the losses. Better seasonal forecasting and planning can help farmers take precautions or decide what to plant to take advantage of expected weather. But there are limits. “To a certain extent, the growers have to plan for adverse conditions and hope for the best,” said Nicholas Bond, the Washington state climatologist and a research scientist at the University of Washington. For instance, crops that are planted each year like grains can take advantage of more favorable growing conditions after a year of extremes. However, perennial crops that take years to grow like grapevines and apple trees can suffer lasting or permanent damage from severe heat, flooding, or drought. Farmers have to invest in protecting their crops even if they aren’t expecting much of a harvest. “You’ve got to keep the trees alive even if it feels like you’re going to lose a year’s worth of production,” Bond said. “If your trees die, you have to start over.” And while 2023 is shaping up to be the hottest year humanity has ever witnessed, a year like this will become more common as global average temperatures continue to rise. Farmers have largely managed to maintain production for now, but extreme weather and challenging economics are making it harder to keep up. That means humanity must halt greenhouse gas emissions to stop the planet’s temperature from climbing indefinitely. We must be grateful to the people planting, picking, and transporting our food, and we can’t take this cornucopia for granted forever.

Editorial Roundup: South Dakota

Yankton Press & Dakotan. November 20, 2023.

Yankton Press & Dakotan. November 20, 2023. Editorial: Crop Insurance And Climate ChangeFarmers are more directly reliant on — or at the mercy of — the vagaries of the weather than perhaps any other component in the Midwest economy. (However, many of those components rely on a strong farm economy to thrive.) Thus, farmers are on the front line of climate change and the impact it has on or lives.A South Dakota News Watch story in Saturday’s Press & Dakotan reported that this is becoming an increasingly expensive proposition.Since 2001, South Dakota farmers have received $8.3 billion in payments from the Federal Crop Insurance Corp. “specifically due to weather disasters rising significantly during that time,” News Watch said. In fact, South Dakota was among the top states in the nation in receiving such payments due to weather disasters such as floods and drought.According to environmentalists, this reflects the rising economic toll of climate change.U.S. farmers received a record $19.1 billion in crop insurance payments in 2022, well above the $3 billion paid out in 2002, according to the Environmental Working Group (EWG).(Also, EWG estimates that about one-third of crop insurance payments goes to “dozen or so big insurance companies and their agents that sell policies and not to farmers who work the land and absorb the risk,” News Watch reported.)This cost is generally supported by U.S. taxpayers, with “nearly 65% of the premiums for the crop insurance program run by the U.S. Department of Agriculture … subsidized with federal funding,” News Watch noted.Could that level of support change?With a new Farm Bill under consideration, some critics of the current structure believe that less federal funding should be devoted to this effort. They say that lessening that support would compel more farmers to alter their operations in coping with the long-term impact of climate change. With the current safety net, critics imply, farmers may have little incentive to do so.That argument may make sense to a degree, but it also points to a conundrum.Without question, the impact of climate change is challenging farmers, so reducing the amount of federal backing of crop insurance may ultimately undercut the nation’s ability to feed itself.“It’s so vitally important for the ability of farmers and ranchers to manage their risk,” said South Dakota Farm Bureau Federation president Scott VanderWal. “When you’re so totally depending on the weather for your livelihood, you have to be able to manage that risk.”In this discussion, “risk” is the operative word, because that’s what farmers are facing increasingly as the weather becomes less predictable — when a flood year is followed by a drought year, when farmland that was once reliably productive becomes a gamble year after year.If farmers don’t adjust to changing climate patterns, they become increasingly reliant on insurance payments unless they change. But what significant adjustments can be made when the weather becomes increasingly unpredictable and prone to dramatic outbursts?Thus, risk is becoming an even greater variable, and that unpredictable variability is a big reason for rising crop insurance payments.Any action lawmakers consider with these payments must also factor in the heightened risk and variability that comes as climate change increases. Balance is vital, although it may be stubbornly elusive.Ultimately, crop insurance is “the investment the American public is making to ensure that the industry that raises our food, fiber and fuel remains viable and strong so we don’t find ourselves depending on other countries for our food like we do for energy a lot of the time,” VanderWal said. “… Because we can feed ourselves, we don’t have to worry about getting our food from other countries. That’s so incredibly important and part of our national security.”Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Op-ed: Walmart’s Outsized Catch

Portions of this essay were previously published as “Walmart’s Ocean: Certifications, Catch Shares, and the Ripple Effects of Corporate Governance on Marine Environments” in Big Box USA: The Environmental Impact of America’s Biggest Retail Stores. Eds. Bartow Elmore, Rachel Gross, and Sherri Sheu. 2023. Colorado University Press. The lawsuit alleged that “as Walmart knew or […] The post Op-ed: Walmart’s Outsized Catch appeared first on Civil Eats.

Portions of this essay were previously published as “Walmart’s Ocean: Certifications, Catch Shares, and the Ripple Effects of Corporate Governance on Marine Environments” in Big Box USA: The Environmental Impact of America’s Biggest Retail Stores. Eds. Bartow Elmore, Rachel Gross, and Sherri Sheu. 2023. Colorado University Press. In March 2023, consumers filed a class action lawsuit against Walmart. This is not unusual—Walmart gets sued about 20 times per day. What was unusual was the reason: The lawsuit alleged that Walmart misled consumers by selling seafood products “certified sustainable” by the nonprofit Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), advertised with a prominent blue checkmark in the shape of a fish. The lawsuit alleged that “as Walmart knew or should have known, MSC hands out this certification to those who use industrial fishing methods that injure marine life as well as ocean habitats with destructive fishing methods . . . Reasonable consumers believe the fisheries providing these products are maintaining healthy fish populations and protecting ecosystems.” Walanthropy: Walmart and the Waltons Wield Unprecedented Influence Over Food, Policy, and the Planet.Read all the stories in our series: Overview: The Long Reach of the Walmart-Walton Empire In this ongoing investigative series, we take a detailed look at Walmart and its founding family’s influence over the American food system, over the producers and policymakers who shape it, and how its would-be critics are also its bedfellows. Walmart’s ‘Regenerative Foodscape’ Walmart’s efforts to redefine itself as a regenerative company are at odds with its low-cost model, and combined with the Walton family’s vast investments in regenerative agriculture, have the potential to remake the marketplace. Walmart and EDF Forged an Unlikely Partnership. 17 Years Later, What’s Changed?: We talk with Elizabeth Sturcken for an up-close look at the sustainability alliance between the environmental nonprofit and the retail behemoth. In fact, the MSC standards themselves promise such protections for the oceans, marine life, and humans. However, the suit also alleged that MSC-certified fisheries engage in the suffocation and crushing of dolphins caught in fishing nets, the killing of endangered sea turtles caught on hooks, and entangling critically endangered whales in fishing gear. “Walmart failed to ensure that the fisheries only sourced using sustainable means, making its promises meaningless,” the lawsuit claimed. The litigation is unlikely to result in a massive payout for Walmart shoppers. Walmart has moved to dismiss the lawsuit and has stated that “the MSC URL included on the product packaging . . . informs a reasonable consumer what ‘sustainable’ does and does not mean in this context,” while the MSC—which has responded to similar criticism in the past—has not issued a statement. As a historian of science researching the history of fisheries science, sustainability, and ecosystem and food system management, I believe that this litigation, and similar critiques, raise questions about the Marine Stewardship Council’s rapid rise to prominence and its unique relationship to the world’s largest retailer. MSC’s influence extends far beyond Walmart. Perhaps the most prominent sustainability certification label for sustainably caught wild fish, it can be found at restaurant chains from McDonald’s to Red Lobster and Olive Garden, and on canned tuna brands including Bumblebee and Chicken of the Sea. Retailers from Costco and IKEA to Whole Foods increase MSC’s credibility among shoppers. “Walmart’s support has been essential to the development and scaling up of MSC’s certification, and perhaps also key to what critics view as the certification’s weaknesses.” But it turns out that Walmart’s support has been essential to the development and scaling up of MSC’s certification, and perhaps also key to what critics view as the certification’s weaknesses. To understand the rise of MSC, we need to look back into the history of Walmart. The Story Behind This Story What began as a single general store, “Walton’s 5-10,” in 1950, has become almost incomprehensibly vast, operating on a scale that is larger than that of many countries. Each week, 265 million people shop at Walmart somewhere in the world. By 2018, Walmart controlled 26 percent of the grocery market in the U.S. (as much as 90 percent in some locations), and was called the largest fish retailer in North America by 2015. In 2006, however, Walmart faced two serious problems, one relating to supply and the other to demand. On the supply side, Peter Redmond, Walmart’s vice president for seafood and deli, fretted over insecurity in Walmart’s supply chain as the retailer rapidly expanded into the grocery sector. “I am already having a hard time getting supply,” he reported. “If we add 250 stores a year, imagine how hard it will be in five years.” Walmart’s business model requires suppliers to be consistent, reliable, transparent, and agreeable to changes, particularly price reductions. A complex seafood supply chain where a single fillet might change hands half a dozen times met none of these criteria. Redmond was concerned about receiving inferior products—or possibly none at all. Over the prior two decades, several huge, historically stable fisheries, including the famed Newfoundland and Grand Banks cod fishery, had collapsed, and a controversial but widely reported scientific paper warned that all commercially fished stocks could collapse by 2048. On the demand side, put simply, Walmart had an image problem. Once considered “America’s Most Admired Company,” Walmart had begun receiving a torrent of negative publicity on issues ranging from alleged bullying tactics over a proposed store location to allegedly encouraging employees to rely on Medicaid and food stamps (and in one case, holding a food drive for its own food-insecure employees) to compensate for Walmart’s low wages. Into this breach stepped Rob Walton, son of founder Sam Walton, whose family remains Walmart’s most influential investors. Rob was growing concerned with both the company’s image and the planet’s environmental trajectory. He arranged for his close friend and diving buddy Peter Seligmann, chairman of environmental nonprofit Conservation International, to meet with Walmart’s then-CEO Lee Scott. Seligmann helped convince Scott that a commitment to sustainability would provide much-needed good publicity, while helping secure the stability of volatile supply chains like seafood. The Rise and Rise of the MSC In August 2006, Walmart announced a multi-faceted campaign to go green. For seafood, the corporation began selling seafood products with the Marine Stewardship Council MSC-certified label. They started with 10 products from Beaver Street Seafood and AquaCuisine but had bigger ambitions: “We have set a goal to procure all wild-caught seafood for North America from fisheries certified by the MSC within the next three to five years,” Redmond announced. Founded in 1997, MSC allowed fisheries to apply to receive its signature blue checkmark by hiring a third party to assess the fishery according to 23 principles. Those principles included priorities such as helping overfished stocks recover and avoiding overfishing and practices that degraded ocean habitat. The assessment was then opened to public comment and objections, redrafted, and the fishery certified or rejected. Certified fisheries undergo reassessment every five years. The process is similar today. Photo credit: Giordano Cipriani, Getty Images; Illustration by Civil Eats At the time, MSC publicly rejected the role of governments, centering the roles of consumers, environmental groups, and industry instead. A 1996 paper by MSC founder Michael Sutton featured a prominent epigraph from the Secretary General of the U.N. Environment Program (UNEP) stating simply, “The market is replacing our democratic institutions as the key determinant in our society.” “Walmart’s partnership with MSC turned certifications from a value-added product to a necessity for its seafood suppliers. Those businesses now had to pay for the MSC certification process.” Despite UNEP’s warning tone, Sutton saw this not as a problem, but as an opportunity; the state had failed to manage fisheries sustainably, so it was time to let market forces work their magic. “Government, laws, and treaties aside,” Sutton wrote, “the market will begin to determine the means of fish production.” This pro-market belief fit well with their future partners at Walmart: the Walton family, who own a controlling share of Walmart and whose eponymous Walton Family Foundation was garnering a reputation in the early 2000s for supporting free market causes, including charter schools and school vouchers. Walmart wasn’t the first retailer to adopt MSC certifications, but it was the biggest, and where Walmart went, other industry players followed. Walmart’s partnership with MSC turned MSC certifications from a value-added product to a necessity for its seafood suppliers. Those businesses now had to pay for the MSC certification process (a cost MSC estimates between $15 to $120,000 in consultant fees), if they wanted to keep selling to Walmart (as well as an additional 0.5 percent in royalty fees to MSC if they want to use the MSC logo). Within the decade, many other major retailers including Aldi, Carrefour, IKEA, and Tesco, and restaurant chains like McDonald’s and Darden, the owner of Olive Garden and Eddie V’s Prime Seafood, had partnerships with MSC. MSC also received money from the Walton Family Foundation, run by the children and grandchildren of Sam Walton, including Rob Walton, who helped convince Walmart’s CEO to embark on the conservation program in the first place. In 2010, the foundation was MSC’s largest single donor, contributing $4.5 million. Walton Family Foundation donations to MSC fluctuated over the next decade but often exceeded seven figures, including a 2021 grant of $1.05 million. “In 2015, 73 percent of the organization’s income, or $14 million, came from charging seafood companies 0.05 percent of the wholesale value of sales to use its label, according to a leaked WWF report.” In 2010, in the same newsletter announcing their partnership with Walmart, the MSC also announced a “new strategic plan [that] sets out how we will scale up our activities and accelerate the delivery of our mission.” After “an intensive planning process generously funded by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation,” MSC accelerated development. Their budget increased from a little over $2 million in 2005 to nearly $20 million in 2013, and the number of certified fisheries increased seven-fold from 2006 to 2013. But scaling rarely comes without turbulence, and an enlarged MSC quickly found itself navigating rougher seas. An increasing number of scientists and conservation groups, from Greenpeace to Pew Environmental Group to MSC’s co-founding organization, World Wildlife Fund (WWF), found fault with MSC practices. Some were concerned with MSC’s objection process, in which any outside organization concerned about a pending certification—often environmental groups or fishers from adjacent fisheries—paid up to £15,000 to lodge complaints (in August 2010, the maximum fee was lowered to £5,000). Those objections were also handled by lawyers who were explicitly instructed not to consider biological critiques, and objections almost never succeeded. Others were concerned that MSC had a significant, and increasing, financial interest in certifying fisheries: In 2015, 73 percent of the organization’s income, or $14 million, came from charging seafood companies 0.05 percent of the wholesale value of sales to use its label, according to a leaked WWF report. The MSC thus had direct financial incentive to certify more fisheries and allow larger catches. “MSC’s definition of sustainable fishing was loose enough to justify the certification of fisheries that were overfished or where overfishing was ongoing. Those words—overfished and overfishing—don’t have a universally agreed-upon definition.” WWF characterized MSC as having “aggressively pursued global scale growth” and said it had “begun to reap very large sums from the fishing industry.” MSC Science and Standards Director David Agnew denied “any conflict of interest with his organization’s logo licensing or financial model,” while WWF characterized the report as an unofficial working document that was part of an “ongoing dialogue that we are having with the MSC to drive positive change in the marine environment.” But there was an even deeper critique. MSC’s definition of sustainable fishing was loose enough to justify the certification of fisheries that were overfished or where overfishing was ongoing. Those words—overfished and overfishing—don’t have a universally agreed-upon definition. So, MSC, critics say, set the bar low, using one of the most permissive definitions. Under a more stringent definition, a third of its certified fisheries failed to meet the mark in a scientific review. And MSC-certified fisheries can also do enormous environmental damage. Even though MSC’s principles clearly state that certified fisheries should not damage ecosystems, the only fishing techniques that are explicitly banned are dynamite, poison fishing, and shark-finning. Other fishing methods that have been attributed to high rates of bycatch and ecosystem damage—including bottom trawling and longlining, the standard practices of well-capitalized, wealthy countries like the U.S.—are not considered inherently unsustainable but run against its principles, although they are still permitted under the certification. For instance, the MSC-certified Northeast Arctic saithe fishery uses bottom-trawling, and therefore catches endangered golden redfish, too. “Proponents of the MSC argue that it serves as an incentive for those in certified fisheries to avoid overfishing, no matter how large or industrialized, while detractors suggest that it can greenwash unsustainable and damaging fisheries, all while keeping demand high among unsuspecting consumers.” This is just one way MSC certification has benefited wealthier fishers and their industries. Smaller-scale fishers, often from heavily fishing-dependent communities, are also less able to afford the certification fees and never get certified in the first place. In a marketplace saturated with MSC’s blue checkmark, they lose market leverage, even if they use more environmentally friendly techniques, are more sustainable, and provide greater employment and food security. Even so, small-scale fishing vessels were alleged to disproportionately feature on MSC’s promotional material in a 2020 study in PLOS, the nonprofit academic journal. MSC disagreed with this analysis, in particular defending the potential sustainability of large industrial fisheries, but also affirmed that as of 2020, “the percentage of small-scale fisheries achieving MSC certification [was] . . . around 16 percent,” while “small-scale fisheries account for roughly 90 percent of fishers.” MSC also called attention to a new initiative, the Ocean Stewardship Fund, which has dedicated over $4.9 million to over 106 diverse fishery improvement projects in small-scale and developing nations fishing programs. Walmart-Scale Sustainability Standards Have Mixed Results But did MSC actually improve the stocks of the fisheries themselves? Proponents of the MSC argue that it serves as an incentive for those in certified fisheries to avoid overfishing, no matter how large or industrialized, while detractors suggest that it can greenwash unsustainable and damaging fisheries, all while keeping demand high among unsuspecting consumers. Walmart’s own shifting sustainability goals fed detractors’ concerns: It amended its initial goal of only stocking certified sustainable fish to include fisheries “on their way” to earning a sustainability label. By 2017, Walmart’s official Seafood Policy claimed that by 2025 all seafood would be sourced from fisheries that are “third-party certified” by the MSC (or some other certifier recognized by the Global Sustainable Seafood Initiative), or “actively working toward certification.” Photo credit: Digipub; Illustration by Civil Eats The MSC itself has also issued certifications for fisheries aspiring to, but not yet achieving, sustainability. WWF, no longer affiliated with MSC, raised the alarm, arguing that the certification of fisheries targeting endangered bluefin tuna by Japan and France at the time was premature. Wasn’t the MSC supposed to certify fisheries that were already sustainable, not reward aspirations alone? Now Walmart’s “100 percent sustainable” seafood department could stock products from fisheries “on their way” to receiving a certification that said they were on their way to sustainability. MSC later claimed that WWF’s concerns had been addressed, arguing, “The assessor’s recommendation for the MSC to certify the fishery is informed by the latest scientific advice,” with contributions from marine scientists and NGOs, including WWF. “Walmart’s partnership with MSC has helped make the concept of sustainable fish—the concept of sustainability itself—into a commodity, sellable through a blue checkmark.” Nevertheless, this is how Walmart’s partnership with MSC has helped make the concept of sustainable fish—the concept of sustainability itself—into a commodity, sellable through a blue checkmark. In some cases, MSC certification may have saved thousands of seabirds and other marine life, while in others it may have greenwashed unsustainable fishing practices and hurt other conservation efforts. It also has a clear effect on the fishing industry, which now must navigate an expensive new market of certification consultancies that favors large industrial fisheries over small community-based ones. MSC has heard this criticism, and has worked toward getting smaller-scale fisheries in poor countries certified. Unknown, however, is whether those fisheries can still support local communities once they are part of an MSC program. The programs are, after all, market tools for global supply chains, and can untether local fisheries from their otherwise protein-sparse communities when the resources of poor countries are used to feed rich ones. The Limits of Stateless Corporate Governance Despite Walmart’s success in shaping the narrative of sustainability, Walmart’s seafood policy demonstrated the limits of stateless corporate governance. Twenty years later, Walmart may be discovering what other observers believed from the start: Markets have not shown themselves singlehandedly capable of enforcing sustainable fishing. Only governments can enforce the compliance that certifications generally call for. So, while for decades, Walmart, the Walton Family Foundation, and its partner, the MSC, advocated for market-based environmentalism, all have since had to turn to traditional governing bodies to meet their sustainability commitments and call for more action from regulators. In an interview with me in 2021, Teresa Ish, Walton Family Foundation’s oceans initiative lead and senior environment program officer, said, “It is kind of ironic that it all comes back to that management side, but that’s where we are now.” “For decades, Walmart, the Walton Family Foundation, and its partner, the MSC, advocated for market-based environmentalism, all have since had to turn to traditional governing bodies to meet their sustainability commitments and call for more action from regulators.” What this means in practice is that MSC and the Walton Family Foundation, both historic advocates for free-market environmentalism and limited regulation, have recently been in the position of “asking” the governments of countries where Walmart buys fish to bolster their fishery management and regulatory efforts. This can take the form of open letters like the one signed by Walmart, Carrefour, Nestlé, Publix, and Tesco in May 2020 calling on governments to allow electronic monitoring of tuna vessels during the COVID-19 pandemic so that the retailers could still meet their product commitments while the human observers who keep tuna fishing sustainable were off-duty for safety reasons. Or devising fishery improvement plans (FIPs)—in which certifiers or industry or others call for a rearrangement of fishery management in exchange for funding—which the Walton Family Foundation’s own consultants have found “must compel governments to adopt changes” in order to succeed and often still result in adverse outcomes for local communities. For its part, MSC has announced, “Governments must cooperate to seize the opportunities of a blue revolution.” This while its Ocean Stewardship Fund is providing research for international fishery management agencies and hoping to influence multinational fishery management regulations—important work, but not easily classifiable as market-based environmentalism. “It’s just a definition of sustainability compatible with late-stage capitalism, unlikely to be compatible with complex ecosystems, unpredictable population fluctuations, and a changing climate.” In some ways, we have come full circle, back to traditional environmental strategies like government regulations that use lawsuits to enforce them. And yet Walmart’s corporate governance strategies have allowed it to rely on MSC’s debatable sustainability criteria in such a way that, combined with charitable giving from the Walton Family Foundation and other philanthropic partners, Walmart can achieve its sustainability goals without fundamentally changing its business model. This reformulated sustainability doesn’t solve the problems associated with producing low-cost disposable goods and shipping them across the world, or relying on the continued, predictable harvest of wild animals with naturally fluctuating population dynamics. It’s just a definition of sustainability compatible with late-stage capitalism, unlikely to be compatible with complex ecosystems, unpredictable population fluctuations, and a changing climate. This contradiction at the heart of a sustainable Walmart is elided by the company’s rhetoric. By declaring that MSC certification means a fishery is sustainable, Walmart is shifting the burden of proof onto anyone who says their products are not sustainable, or who has a different, perhaps more rigorous, definition of sustainability. Walmart is relying on both certification itself and whatever ecological results it has as positive environmental outcomes—as sustainable. This is an important aspect of corporate greenwashing: moving the goalposts. Now, this mismatch between reality and rhetoric could get even more problematic: In 2020, Walmart President Doug McMillan announced that Walmart aims to become “a regenerative company—one that works to restore, renew, and replenish in addition to preserving our planet.” But how can a company whose business model depends on moving cheap goods and extracted resources be, on net, ecologically regenerative? Barring a substantial shift in that business model, which may entail higher prices on consumer goods, it seems more likely that regenerative, like sustainable, will become a word whose meaning is determined by Walmart. For additional reading on this subject: Charles Fishman, The Wal-Mart Effect: How the World’s Most Powerful Company Really Works and How It’s Transforming the American Economy (New York: Penguin Press, 2006); Nick Copeland and Christine Labuski, The World of Wal-Mart: Discounting the American Dream, (London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2013); Anthony Bianco, The Bully of Bentonville: How the High Cost of Wal-Mart’s Everyday Low Prices Is Hurting America  (New York: 2006); Carolina Bank Muñoz, Bridget Kenny, and Antonio Stecher, Walmart in the Global South: Workplace Culture, Labor Politics, and Supply Chains (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2018); Gary Gereffi and Michelle Christian, “The Impacts of Wal-Mart: The Rise and Consequences of the World’s Dominant Retailer,” Annual Review of Sociology 35, no. 1 (2009): 573–91; Adam Levy, “Walmart’s Lead in Groceries Could Get Even Bigger,” The Motley Fool, October 11, 2018; Nelson Lichtenstein, ed., Wal-Mart: The Face of Twenty-First-Century Capitalism, 2006; Bethany Moreton, To Serve God and Wal-Mart: The Making of Christian Free Enterprise, (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2010); Sandra Mottner and S. Smith, “Wal-Mart: Supplier Performance and Market Power,” Journal of Business Research 62, no. 5 (2009): 535–41; Bob Ortega, In Sam We Trust: The Untold Story of Sam Walton and How Wal-Mart Is Devouring America, 1st ed. (New York: Times Business, 1998). The post Op-ed: Walmart’s Outsized Catch appeared first on Civil Eats.

Building a Case for Investment in Regenerative Agriculture on Indigenous Farms

The Brewers run cattle and grow some alfalfa across 12,000 acres of grassland that’s a combination of owned land, leased tribal land, and federal trust land. This complicated arrangement isn’t unusual for Indigenous producers, who experience unique hurdles such as financial lending discrimination, limited land ownership opportunities, additional governance requirements, and disproportionately high poverty rates […] The post Building a Case for Investment in Regenerative Agriculture on Indigenous Farms appeared first on Civil Eats.

For three generations, Fanny Brewer’s family has been ranching the same land in South Dakota’s Ziebach County. Encompassing part of the 1.4-million-acre Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation, where she grew up, the county is among the poorest areas in the United States. But for Brewer, her husband, and their four kids, it represents prosperity. The Brewers run cattle and grow some alfalfa across 12,000 acres of grassland that’s a combination of owned land, leased tribal land, and federal trust land. This complicated arrangement isn’t unusual for Indigenous producers, who experience unique hurdles such as financial lending discrimination, limited land ownership opportunities, additional governance requirements, and disproportionately high poverty rates as a result of colonialism. “Some Native families never develop that generational wealth, whereas our non-Native neighbor, whose family has owned their land since the late 1800s, has been able to grow their business.” Despite these systemic obstacles, the Brewers plant cover crops between alfalfa rotations and use fewer chemicals on their crops than most conventional operations. They’d like to use more regenerative ranching practices, including adaptive, multi-paddock grazing, on more land and help prove that those practices are worth investing in. For those reasons, the ranch is one of 14 operations participating in a three-year study from the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and the Intertribal Agriculture Council (IAC) that is examining the benefits and barriers of regenerative agriculture among Indigenous ranchers and farmers in North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Montana. “The volatility of leasing land and how it affects your borrowing power with banks has always been a struggle for Native producers,” says Brewer, who also serves as the IAC’s Great Plains technical assistance specialist. “Some Native families never develop that generational wealth, whereas our non-Native neighbor, whose family has owned their land since the late 1800s, has been able to grow their business. Those are the hard realities we have to face.” She points to a recent example when a desirable plot of land came up for sale. Compared to a local non-Native rancher who could leverage her owned land and secure a bank loan quickly to purchase that real estate, Brewer needed to put up her livestock, machinery, and other material assets as collateral since her family doesn’t own all their land—and it took weeks to assess. “I don’t hold anything against her, but I didn’t realize until then how differently we approach things,” Brewer says. “At that time, I chose to pull out some of our land that was in trust with the U.S. government and put it in deed status so that the next time I walk into the bank, I have more power. Some people have questioned my moves, but these are choices I have had to make for my family so we can take control of our own destiny.” This is an all too common experience among Indigenous entrepreneurs, says Skya Ducheneaux, also a member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe and the founder of the Native-focused community development financial institution (CDFI) Akiptan. “Many Native producers aren’t able to list their land on their balance sheet, so they can’t leverage that value,” she explains. “When you don’t have as much equity to leverage, lending institutions deem you risky, and because of that, you get shorter repayment terms and higher interest rates. You end up stuck in this cycle of just surviving.” Regenerative practices—most of which are already in Indigenous farmers’ and ranchers’ wheelhouses because they align more closely with, and are often based upon, their traditional practices—are much harder to employ because they’re more expensive and labor-intensive. Brewer chose to participate in the EDF/IAC study because it will yield quantitative data about both those costs—including financial investments and loan terms—as well as the benefits of investing in regenerative practices, such as profitability, soil health improvement, forage quality, and livestock growth. To gather that information, the pilot cohort is receiving technical assistance from the IAC team and participating in the Minnesota Farm Business Management Program. Offered through the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system, it provides one-on-one financial education such as record keeping and performance analysis. Fanny Brewer, IAC technical assistance specialist for the Great Plains region, discusses the regenerative agriculture projects with Jess Brewer. (Photo courtesy of Intertribal Agriculture Council, www.indianag.org) All of the producers in the study raise livestock, and some also grows crops. Many are in the process of transitioning from more extractive conventional methods to regenerative practices, with data being collected from 2022 through 2024. Although full results will not be available until the project’s completion, researchers are developing intermediate case studies, including one that should be released before the end of the year. The researchers hope the study encourages producers to adopt climate-smart practices, such as using adaptive grazing, planting cover crops, and reducing tillage. The larger goal, however, is to urge financial institutions to reframe their understanding of Indigenous ranchers and farmers, who are often considered high-risk given their limited equity. The shift to regenerative practices can take three to five years and reduce profitability by up to $40 per acre during the transition, according to recent research by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development’s One Planet Business for Biodiversity coalition. But farmers and ranchers can expect a 15 to 25 percent return on investment and profit growth by up to 120 percent in the long run, according to the study, which calls for public and private assistance to alleviate these burdens placed on the individual business owners. While the term regenerative agriculture hasn’t yet appeared on many food labels, a whole range of interests—including corporate marketing departments and individual producers hoping to earn a higher premium—are anticipating a wider embrace of the term in the consumer market in the coming years. Simultaneously, the U.S. Department of Agriculture is investing heavily in new and existing carbon markets designed to reward growers for the carbon they store on their farms. Although they’re not the focus of the current study, IAC Regenerative Economies Director Tomie Peterson (Cheyenne River Sioux) says, “Carbon credits are an opportunity that I would like to provide more education on to Native producers.” Ducheneaux is optimistic that the EDF/IAC study will prompt traditional lenders to better support Indigenous entrepreneurs interested in taking up or highlighting their existing regenerative practices in ways akin to how Native-focused community development financial institutions are already doing so. “We have all this anecdotal evidence about the positive impacts of regenerative agriculture in Indian Country, but we don’t have the quantitative data that the rest of the world likes to see,” she says. “This study is really groundbreaking because it will reinforce what we already know, open the doors for even more producers, and broaden the impact across Indian Country.” Although she too is eager to address these so-called credit deserts—which have notable overlap with tribal territories—Peterson wants to manage expectations about what this initiative can realistically accomplish. “The study is just trying to find the facts; I don’t know if we can overcome barriers,” she says candidly. That said, she is confident that the project findings will help cohort participants better understand if and how their practices are paying off and therefore make informed business decisions. “The food system in North America has become very brittle, so a new model of agriculture that focuses on community and connection with the natural world is really important.” This study closely aligns with the EDF’s objective to promote climate-beneficial farming practices while also helping producers prepare for and mitigate the escalating impacts of the climate crisis. “Climate change majorly affects farmers and ranchers across the country,” says EDF Climate-Smart Agriculture Manager Vincent Gauthier. “We are focused on developing solutions that allow farmers to invest in the resilience of their farms against those weather extremes and changing conditions.” Gauthier, Peterson, and the study leaders were very intentional in the language they chose to define the project, since regenerative agriculture is a hot-button topic within Indigenous communities, who used traditional ecological knowledge long before farmers and businesses started using terms like regenerative or organic. Gauthier explains that the team landed on a definition of regenerative they think transcends geographies and methodologies: a holistic approach to revitalizing land and the ecological system that focuses on improving soil’s ability to regenerate over time by involving the entire ecosystem, including humans and wildlife. Farmer-researcher Jonathan Lundgren, whose grassroots 1,000 Farms Initiative is similarly aimed at studying and quantifying regenerative agricultural systems, notes that a larger paradigm shift is crucial. He underscores how vital hard data—about soil carbon, sequestration, reversal of desertification, promotion of biodiversity, increased farm resilience, and the like—is to incentivizing financial institutions to invest in producers employing practices that many of them have never seen or heard of. “The food system in North America has become very brittle, so a new model of agriculture that focuses on community and connection with the natural world is really important,” he says. Lundgren also sees Indigenous producers as an ideal group to receive more investment, as many already have the experience and tools to spearhead efforts to bring about a larger movement toward more regenerative practices. “Traditional Indigenous food systems have a deeper understanding of why the land and the life around them is essential to the long-term happiness and resilience of their culture and community.” Jess Brewer walks alongside Fanny Brewer, IAC technical assistance specialist for the Great Plains region. (Photo courtesy of Intertribal Agriculture Council, www.indianag.org) Ducheneaux and many thought leaders agree. They contend that an embrace of Indigenous knowledge is crucial in mitigating the effects of climate change in the years ahead. After all, while Native peoples comprise just 5 percent of the world’s population, they protect around 85 percent of global biodiversity. “Native producers have been doing regenerative agriculture since time immemorial,” she affirms. “I hope there will be more research into tribal ecological knowledge so that the American agriculture industry as a whole can start to heal itself, and we can all hold ourselves to a higher standard in taking care of the land so it can in return take care of us.” Back in South Dakota, rancher Fanny Brewer wants to help usher in that shift, but she needs the U.S. food system to provide an on-ramp to make it possible. “I wish in this country you could make more money simply by doing the right thing—but that’s not how it’s set up,” she says. “I have four kids that I’m trying to raise, feed, and clothe, so I can’t be doing something just because I have a passion for it. I hope this study helps people see that you can do the right thing for the environment and for the health of human beings and animals and that you can still make it. You can be a good steward and still keep your head above water financially.” The post Building a Case for Investment in Regenerative Agriculture on Indigenous Farms appeared first on Civil Eats.