“Born here, raised here, processed here,” the rodeo stars state matter of factly, explaining a revised label plan for some U.S. products.

The heavily produced video was intended to raise awareness for the revamped “Product of the USA” label for meat, poultry, and egg products. That label, finalized under the Biden administration in 2024, closed a loophole that could boost competitiveness for smaller meatpackers and ranchers and was celebrated for providing more transparency to consumers.

The calls to close the loophole largely come from smaller ranchers who struggle to compete with cheaper beef from large, consolidated meatpackers. But the initiative is also facing criticism that it does not go far enough, along with a push for the return of mandatory labeling.

‘Product of the USA’ Origins

Previously, the label could be used on beef raised and slaughtered in a foreign country, as long as it was packaged or minimally processed domestically.

Rollins told reporters that the Biden administration never put any marketing behind the policy. She is now in talks with “big food companies” to push them to buy beef from American ranchers, she said. “The goal is to be able at the end of the day to wholly subsist and to rely on American ranchers, American born, raised, harvested, processed beef.”

U.S. cattle herds hit a 75-year low in 2026, according to USDA reports, contributing to high beef prices for consumers and increased pressure on domestic cattle ranchers.

As the industry works to improve domestic herds and markets, Rollins said, consumers should know where their food is coming from.

The labeling, which is currently voluntary under the USDA rule, is most likely to benefit smaller meatpackers that are local or regional, said Bill Bullard, CEO of R-CALF, a group that supports independent cattle producers.

Four of the largest meatpackers control over 80 percent of the U.S. market, but they largely import their beef, he said. The labeling allows the smaller packers that represent the remaining 20 percent to differentiate themselves.

These packers hope the new label will correct consumer misconceptions about food origins. For example, Bullard said, consumers erroneously think that beef with a USDA inspection sticker is also produced domestically. That label simply notes that the product was deemed safe by USDA inspectors, but does not mean anything about where it was produced.

“The more the ‘Product of the USA’ label is used in the marketplace, consumers will be better informed and will better understand that there’s a difference between an origin label and a food safety inspection label,” Bullard said.

The label could have an outsized effect on the domestic organic beef market as well, said Alicia LaPorte, communications director at Niman Ranch, a network of farms focused on humane and sustainable practices.

About 95 percent of organic beef is imported, but consumers may be unaware of that, she said, and organic shoppers tend to have more room in their budget to pay for more expensive domestic products.

Consumer research from grocery and meat industry groups also demonstrates that organic shoppers prefer domestic products.

“It could make a meaningful difference for domestic ranchers having that [labeling] more upfront, because I do think it could really shift what shoppers choose to buy,” LaPorte said.

Calls for Mandatory Label

The World Trade Organization has meanwhile ruled that U.S. labeling for beef and pork violated trade obligations by discriminating against cattle and hogs imported from Canada and Mexico. The rulings allowed Canada and Mexico to impose retaliatory tariffs against U.S. exports and prompted lawmakers to remove the requirement for these products.

R-CALF’s stance is that the WTO “overreached” in its ruling and that the COOL law applied to domestic and imported products the same.

“We are not concerned that mandatory country of origin labeling in any way violates our trade agreements or trade standards,” Bullard said. “The fact that virtually every product in America is subject to a mandatory country of origin label suggests to us that the ruling by the WTO was purely political.”

Bullard said R-CALF is encouraging Congress to revive the COOL law for beef products in the upcoming farm bill.

During a recent announcement about domestic beef, Rollins said she is a “big supporter” of COOL, which she said promotes transparency, but action on COOL is ultimately in the hands of Congress.

“For me, it’s black and white,” she said. “Everyone in America should know where their food is coming from.”

The post Will ‘Product of the USA’ Give Cattle Ranchers a Boost? appeared first on Civil Eats.

My first concrete lessons in food inequity came from eleven- and twelve-year-olds. When I finished my undergraduate degree, I moved to Atlanta to teach at Coretta Scott King Young Women’s Leadership Academy, a predominantly Black single-gender public school that was founded the year I joined the teaching staff. Most of our students came from neighborhoods that had some of the highest poverty and crime rates in the city. They also experienced some of the highest rates of food insecurity, and had the least access to fresh, healthy food—a trend that persists, according to a 2023 study conducted by Megan Winkler and her colleagues at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health.

On one occasion, I took a few students to a grocery store and then served them dinner at my home. While we sat at the dining room table together, they changed the whole trajectory of my life by simply pointing out that the food they had access to in their neighborhood was significantly inferior to what I had in my neighborhood less than five miles away.

Those students asked a number of questions: Why does your neighborhood have the nice grocery stores? Why do you have so many more kinds of fruits and vegetables than we do? They also had critiques: It’s like they don’t care if we have options? and How are we supposed to eat healthy if everything around us is unhealthy? Gathered around a table on a random school night, we mused about what it means to be healthy, to feel confident and nourished, to feel included in society.

Their questions became my questions, and their critiques were guideposts for my own curiosity when I returned to graduate school to study anthropology. I became obsessed with learning how cities work, and how macro-level forces shape the everyday realities of people like my students and their families. I took an internship at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Disparities Solutions to understand the relationship between residential segregation and health outcomes, and I sought mentorship from sociologists who were experts in urban design and inequities. I learned that my students’ observations were not an anomaly.

Predominantly Black urban neighborhoods in the U.S., regardless of income, have fewer food resources than their white counterparts. As I’d learn, this lack of provisioning has major impacts on long-term health. Sometimes referred to as obesogenic environments, neighborhoods with less access to fresh produce and grocery stores, or that lack sidewalks and green space, are risk factors for obesity, diabetes, and hypertension. When people have easier access to fast-food chains and liquor stores than grocery stores or farmers markets, that impacts the decisions people make about what they’ll eat.

For example, my middle school students in Atlanta could walk to a corner store with burglar bars on the window or a fast-food restaurant in the same amount of time it would take me to reach my choice of four grocery stores. Relatedly, many of their parents worked long hours and weekends, making time a factor in how and when they shopped for groceries. In contrast, while I was in graduate school, I supported myself by babysitting for wealthy families in the Washington, D.C. area. After school, there was one place that these kids always wanted to go: McDonald’s. There was one place that parents almost always said it was okay for me to take them: McDonald’s. These kids, mostly wealthy and mostly white, were never the poster children of the childhood obesity epidemic. They weren’t the imagined victims of the fast-food industry. They, unlike the students I taught in Atlanta, were just kids with choices.

What I learned from these experiences was that there wasn’t anything inherently different about the kind of choices kids would make if given the opportunity. The main difference was the range of choices they had. For my students, that landscape was limited. The experiences of my students directly challenged the myth that poor people and people of color are more inclined toward unhealthy foods. Instead, the structures that shaped their world—the facts that healthy grocery stores were further away, their parents often worked overtime at low-wage jobs, and fast food was the least expensive option—funneled them toward foods that weren’t the healthiest options.

To convey that these problems are structural and not caused by individual choices, activists and scholars use the term “food apartheid,” which they define as the system of racialized inequality in food access. The idea of food apartheid forces us to zoom out and consider how many systems are deliberately built to work against certain consumers based on race and geography.

Karen Washington, longtime food justice activist and cofounder of Black Urban Growers (BUGs), plainly stated that food apartheid “looks at the whole system, along with race, geography, faith, and economics. You say ‘food apartheid’ and you get to the root cause of some of the problems around the food system. It brings in hunger and poverty. It brings us to the more important question: What are some of the social inequities that you see, and what are you doing to erase some of the injustices?” This question is at the heart of the food justice movement, a movement that aims to expose inequalities that shape our food world and to work toward equity.

Food justice has received a lot of attention and support over the past twenty-five years, though its origins are arguably much older. Some point to the Black Panther Party’s Free Breakfast for Children program and Fannie Lou Hamer’s Freedom Farms Collective in Sunflower County, Mississippi, in the 1960s as early experiments that formed a foundation for the food justice movement. In Food Justice, the first full-length book about the subject, published in 2010, Robert Gottlieb, cofounder of the Urban and Environmental Policy Institute at Occidental College, and Anupama Joshi, cofounder of the National Farm to School Network, characterized food justice as “ensuring that the benefits and risks of where, what, and how food is grown and produced, transported and distributed, and accessed and eaten are shared fairly.”

Inherent in their definition is a sense of shared fate—a counter to a version of food consumption that overemphasizes individual choice. Gottlieb and Joshi helped us understand that a justice orientation toward food requires us to shift the benefits and risks such that the blessings and burdens are more equitably shared. Many organizations and researchers have built on this approach, with most diagnosing the problems in the food system as stemming from the prioritization of profits over people’s wellbeing while also providing direct aid and access to impacted communities.

For over fifteen years, I’ve witnessed this work in real time. In D.C., the Green Scheme established gardens at housing projects so that residents could build self-sufficiency. When money was low, one of the residents would pick whatever was left in the garden to make a huge pot of soup to share with others. In Atlanta, a group of Black farmers founded the Southwest Atlanta Growers Cooperative (SWAG), to provide more produce in southwest Atlanta. All over the country, I’ve encountered individuals and organizations who haven’t waited for food environments to change on their own. Instead, they’ve set out to change things themselves.

What was once a grassroots movement rooted in principles that emphasized growing community control over food systems is now firmly mainstream, with thousands of organizations across the country. Mainstream means more people listening, more people paying attention to the problem, more opportunities to address the inequalities we so desperately want to eradicate. But there’s also a risk for cooptation, with the most radical components of the movement being sidelined either because of pragmatism (prioritizing the work that can get funded) or discomfort. For the early architects, food was always political and thus, so too was food justice—a direct affront to unfair systems.

But as the movement has grown, what is considered justice in regard to food is increasingly nebulous. Sometimes, the urgency of providing healthy food eclipses the equally important need to build new infrastructures such that one day, food inequalities will no longer exist. That is a huge, daunting task that won’t happen overnight. But we can’t lose sight of it even as we meet the needs of communities who require immediate support.

There’s also a risk that those who are creating visions for what they believe food justice is do so without relationships with or input from the communities they want to serve. This disconnect might prioritize “healthy food” while wholly missing the mark on the reality that justice is a collaborative effort that must include vision and leadership from the communities being served. As food justice has firmly taken its place in the mainstream, “food” and “justice” aren’t always in alignment. In fact, sometimes they’re at odds. Radical dreams also cost a lot of money and require a lot of effort. But what if the challenges we face are invitations to redefine where and how we seek value?

In almost every class I teach, I tell students that part of what we’re experiencing in an unjust food system is a crisis of scale. Our current, corporatized food system prioritizes increasing size and reach, consolidation, monopolization, and standardization not only across the country but across the world. The industrialized food system has grown too big and requires inequality to sustain itself. The challenge with scaling up is that the bigger the scale at which something operates, the harder it is to infuse it with values that everyday people espouse and the harder it is to make it accountable for the lives it touches. On the other side of the equation, the further away something is from people’s bodies and lived experiences, the harder it is for them to imagine that they can have any impact on it. The produce in our grocery basket is often grown across the world, picked by people we’ll never meet in places we’ll never go, and the problems of hunger and access seem unimaginably vast. Even if we wanted to change those systems, where would we start?

Thinking at a large scale can feel overwhelming. Luckily for us, that isn’t the only register at which we can find inspiration or practice our values. Our everyday lives present unlimited opportunities to construct justice and liberation in our food system and otherwise. No matter the size of the action, the point is that liberation doesn’t just happen. We have to work toward it in everything we do. If nothing else, that is what I hope you learn from the people and gatherings in this book. The values we practice and the rituals we build in our everyday lives hold keys to how to transform our food system. People like my grandmother understood the power of togetherness. We must take the lessons they offer us more seriously.

***

The answers aren’t neat or easy, but I think we’re closer to them than we think. One of the core arguments of this book is that everyday ways people get together to meet the physical and social needs of others comprise a masterclass for how to hone the values that are less quantifiable. Who better to learn from than the experts themselves—everyday people who put nourishment into practice as a way of life.

It is imperative that we put nourishment at the center of food justice movements. We can take inspiration from organizations like the National Black Food and Justice Alliance (NBFJA), which is leading some of the most exciting, expansive work right now, ranging from offering direct support to Black farmers to establishing centers for the study and practice of Afroecology at historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs). Each year, they celebrate this work with an annual gathering, an event that nourishes everyone to continue the arduous work of building better infrastructures.

We must also take inspiration from everyday people like those featured in this book. It is a loving calling in, an invitation for us to reconsider what we are fighting for, how we’re fighting for those things, and how those people’s knowledge and ways of being are embedded in our visions for the future. I’m not saying our food justice movements have failed. I’m saying we’re at an impasse, and we’ve got to look beyond the echo chambers that currently define what is important and what is at stake.

I turn toward Black gatherings to reframe our understanding of what is possible in the food world, by looking at what is already happening when Black people gather around food. It is an attempt to write about a belief I hold deeply, a belief that has held me deeply: there is no inherent deficit in Black people. In fact, if we look closely enough, if we are curious enough, much of the magic and creativity that happens when Black people gather can be transformative not only for us but for the entire world. Gather starts from the premise that death, destruction, and denial are not the only ways to index Black life. By looking at the spaces where Black people gather, we can also witness the beauty of Black aliveness—in all its goodness, contradictions, love, and capaciousness.

Visit Blackgathering.net to listen to the interviews recorded for Gather and to see photos and videos of the gatherings featured in the book. 

The post Excerpt: ‘Gather: Black Food, Nourishment, and the Art of Togetherness’ appeared first on Civil Eats.

Michael Strickland is no stranger to such unearthings. A microbial ecologist, he often goes into the field to collect soil samples, or cores, to study in the lab. Usually, he’s probing to a depth of about a foot. This dig will go 10 times deeper.

As the press nears the 8-foot mark, the soil layer, which is likely near 10,000 years old, is heavily compacted and does not budge. Watching nearby, Strickland catches his breath as the machine grinds to a halt. “I’m thinking, ‘Is it going to happen? Are we going to get this core out of here?’” he says. The work slows to a creep, but with some coaxing, the land opens up centimeter by labored centimeter.

Over the course of three weeks, the process continues until finally, six soil-filled cylinders are ready to be capped, strapped onto a truck, and driven to their new home: The University of Idaho’s Deep Soil Ecotron, where Strickland is the director.

This new research facility, opened in May 2025, provides a rare chance to study deep soils—largely uncharted domains that are at once remnants of the past and potential harbingers of the future for agriculture and climate science.

Why Study Deep Soils?

Scientists have paid less attention to deep soils for another reason: They’re relatively stable. Deep soils start roughly 30 centimeters (about a foot) below the surface and are lower in oxygen than topsoil, limiting their microbial turnover, gas exchange, and plant activity. Topsoils, which are constantly shifting in response to environmental conditions, offer a more dynamic field of study.

In the last few years, however, emerging research has suggested that the hidden realms of deep soils are worth exploring. Deep soils, for example, could play an important role in climate change mitigation by storing carbon deep underground. While carbon sequestered in topsoil—once hailed as a solution to the climate crisis—is anything but permanent, carbon at deeper depths appears to be more stable and protected. Beyond their carbon-sequestering capacity, the way that deep soils cycle and store other compounds, like nitrogen and water, could prove relevant to farmers looking to maximize yields.

Deep soil also seems to be teeming with novel bacteria that don’t exist anywhere else, and could be just as rich in microbial life as surface soil. The intact soil cores collected here will give Strickland and his team a glimpse into what types of organisms have adapted to these dark, dense, low-oxygen environments, and how they impact the wider ecosystem.

“The interaction between roots, minerals, and microbes going beyond the topsoil is really fascinating and can help us better understand the soil, our climate, and how changing conditions above ground are driving dynamics below ground,” says Ashley Keiser, a DSE science advisor and soil ecologist at UMass Amherst.

Deep soil has been compared to outer space and the depths of the ocean: a “dark forest” that is mysterious and relatively unchartered. The new Idaho facility offers a look into an otherwise unseen world—and the possibilities that come with it.

A New Type of Laboratory

A soil pit at Sandpoint Organic Agriculture Center after a Deep Soil Ecotron excavation exposes the levels of deep soil. (Photo credit: Michael Strickland)

Since the first ecotron facility opened at Imperial College London in the early 1990s, about a dozen others have been built, mostly in Europe. Many of these facilities research how climate changes affect the functioning of different ecosystems, from heathlands to freshwater ponds.

Idaho’s Deep Soil Ecotron (DSE) is the first in the world dedicated to deep soils. The DSE, mostly funded by a $18.95 million grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation, houses 24 of the gigantic columns. Six are filled; the remainder will house soil from Idaho and beyond.

These “ecounits” are notable not only for their size and depth, but also for their scientific controls. They are equipped with heat exchangers for adjusting soil temperature and ceramic suction cups for modifying water content. Scientists can also tinker with the light, humidity, and greenhouse gas (methane, carbon dioxide, and nitrous oxide) concentrations at the surface of each unit. “We can essentially mimic almost any climate conditions, barring extreme cold,” says Strickland. At the top of each soil column rests a “grow chamber” where researchers can interact with the topsoil, growing crops or applying soil amendments depending on what they’re studying.

Sensors are installed throughout each column to deliver continuous information about how the soil is responding to the changes happening below and above the surface.

All six of the filled columns contain soil from the Sandpoint site. Three have intact soil cores that were extracted with the hydraulic press and represent natural, untouched soil environments. The other three have “disturbed” soils that were filled manually and exposed to oxygen, likely affecting their structure and function. These different sample types are now undergoing data collection and proof-of-concept work before the facility opens up to the broader scientific community in the next six to 12 months.

Deep Soil’s Potential for Farmers

At the Deep Soil Ecotron, a soil cylinder equipped with sensors that monitor soil conditions like temperature and moisture content. (Photo credit: Michael Strickland)

Once he learned about the DSE through his role on a university advisory board, he started digging into ways it could help him prepare for and respond to unpredictable weather events like drought so they wouldn’t hurt his yields and margins as much.

“This [facility] can allow us to simulate different climatic events—from a really wet year to a drought year—not only in the top at the grow chamber, where the crop is, but throughout that soil profile,” Blair says. “Once we know what the moisture levels are 2 feet, 3 feet, 10 feet down, we as farmers may be able to better manage our crops based upon those findings.”

Beyond providing information on deep soil moisture, Stickland and DSE co-director Zachary Kayler say the facility could help predict how soils will respond to temperature extremes like heat waves, which can be simulated in each column.

Using the data constantly collected from the ecotron sensors, the DSE team may even be able to develop hyperrealistic computer models of each soil system, which Kayler refers to as “digital twins,” and run tests on these ahead of forecasted weather events to predict how soils might be affected in real life.

Data from the DSE could help farmers better manage soil nutrients to maximize yield—and reduce fertilizer costs, too, Strickland says. Nitrate, for example, is a highly mobile compound that can easily move through the soil profile and become stored in deeper layers. “Rather than applying more nitrogen, you might be able to [one day] mine the deeper nitrogen pools within ecosystems,” he says.

The facility could also assist farmers in pest detection and management. Since each soil unit is contained, researchers will be able to introduce pests without worrying about contaminating nearby environments. This would allow them to run experiments that would be difficult in the field and potentially identify early signs of a pest problem so farmers can stop infestations before they begin. The units could also serve as a testing ground for new agricultural products like GMO crops and microbial inoculants—soil amendments made with bacteria—to help ensure they work as intended before being released into the field.

Earlier this month, Kayler hosted a conference with local growers, producers, and farm industry affiliates to unveil the new facility, discuss how it could best meet their needs, and get the word out about its potential.

“Until the University of Idaho started this project, I had no clue what an ecotron was,” says Blair. “I think it’s a hidden secret that needs more publicity in agriculture circles.”

Digging Deeper on Carbon

Soil organic carbon, formed by decaying plant and animal material, gets pulled deeper underground through precipitation, root transfer, animal activity, and certain microbial processes. The deeper the soil organic carbon (SOC), the less likely it is to be released into the environment due to a variety of factors, including reduced microbial disruption. But research suggests that it can still be unearthed under certain conditions.

“Some of this deeper soil carbon is more stable, but we don’t necessarily know what could change that,” says Gabrielle Feber, a third-year Ph.D. candidate at the University of Idaho who is part of a DSE student research team.

The DSE could help demystify deep soil carbon cycling and storage in a few ways. First, it allows researchers to manipulate different environmental conditions like temperature and precipitation to get a better idea of how deep soils might retain or release carbon as climate conditions change. Researchers will also be able to manipulate the surface of each ecotron column and could study how different land management practices, like planting perennials, impact the carbon activity of deeper soils below. Findings from the facility could help inform future strategies to keep stored carbon deep underground and out of the atmosphere as climate conditions change.

This information will be just as relevant to farmers, who rely on soil organic carbon as an essential nutrient for crop growth, as it will be to environmental scientists, who cite uncertainties about soil carbon storage as one of the main barriers to accurate climate modeling.

“Deeper soils have the potential to be our ally or foe when it comes to mitigating climate change, depending on whether they can be managed to actively sequester SOC or whether global changes increase the decomposition of deep SOC, causing it to be respired to the atmosphere as CO2,” according to a 2023 paper in the Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics.

Now that major construction on the DSE facility is complete, funding must be secured to keep it up and running. This will likely come from a mix of federal funding, grants, and scientific partners who pay to conduct their research there.

The ultimate vision is to fill the remaining columns with soils from around the country and potentially the world—a sprawling tapestry of the Earth and an arena for diverse science.

“This is not a University of Idaho-only facility,” says Strickland. “It’s something anyone who has ideas can come in and potentially utilize.”

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https://civileats.com/2026/04/13/more-than-just-their-work-a-farmworker-advocate-on-those-who-feed-us/ https://civileats.com/2026/04/13/more-than-just-their-work-a-farmworker-advocate-on-those-who-feed-us/#respond Mon, 13 Apr 2026 08:00:13 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=72519 In 2022, she received a James Beard Leadership Award for a project she launched there, “The Humans Who Feed Us,” a series of first-person stories about food-system workers. In February, she won the Elevate Prize for her work to end gender-based violence and promote gender equity. Ramírez’s multigenerational, migrant farmworker family inspired her life’s work. […]

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Mónica Ramírez has dedicated most of her life to broadening public understanding of who migrant women are and how often they are overlooked. A civil rights attorney, Ramírez is the founder and president of Justice for Migrant Women.

In 2022, she received a James Beard Leadership Award for a project she launched there, “The Humans Who Feed Us,” a series of first-person stories about food-system workers. In February, she won the Elevate Prize for her work to end gender-based violence and promote gender equity.

Ramírez’s multigenerational, migrant farmworker family inspired her life’s work. She often points to how her family’s story changed when farmers offered them a chance to stay in the rural Ohio town where she was born. That stability helped her parents move into work outside the industry and enabled Ramírez to attend school without having to do field labor herself, like her parents, grandparents, and uncles.

“Just being able to break that migrant cycle made a big difference in terms of my life choices,” she says.

Ramírez believes the most effective way to bring people together is not through confrontation, but by building common ground.

At 14, she began writing for her local newspaper about issues affecting farmworkers and Latinos in her hometown. After college at Loyola University of Chicago, she earned a J.D. at the Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law and a master’s in public administration from the Harvard Kennedy School.

Having grown up in a place where people get to know one another in school hallways, church pews, and grocery store aisles, Ramírez believes the most effective way to bring people together in today’s rural America is not through confrontation, but by building common ground.

Civil Eats spoke to Ramírez about how her work has evolved, the importance of humanizing food system workers, and the challenges facing farmworker activism today.

What was the narrative you wanted to shift by launching “The Humans Who Feed Us”? 

I didn’t want to highlight the problems the farmworker community or immigrants face. I wanted to focus on their dreams, because that’s something that everyday people can relate to. My hope was that in creating the project that way, by having these portraits where you can see the individual and read some of their dreams on the cards alongside the portraits, the public would be able to connect with these individuals beyond their work, as people, and be able to say, “I share that dream.”

As you were learning their stories, what themes kept coming up? 

Whether they’re fleeing violence or poverty, there was this idea that if they could come to the United States, it would be better. There’s a lot of gratitude. People are very grateful for the opportunities they’ve been given.

But there’s also this underlying theme that they want people to see them. They hear what people are saying about immigrants, and they want their neighbors to know that what they’re doing is for the good of many. They want to be seen and they want to be valued. A lot of them live in invisibility. They’re people who are going to work every day, doing work that literally sustains us. Whether they’re working in a grocery store, at a restaurant, a food truck, or far off in the fields, it’s like society has made them invisible.

What would you want the public to understand about the farmworkers and other communities behind our food? 

That they are critical to our everyday lives. And that they’re more than just their work. These are whole people. They contribute in many ways.

Also, if you’re only focusing on their work, you fail to see all the other things that [as human beings] they need support with.  It’s important for people to understand [their] struggle right now. There are so many rights that farmworkers and others who are employed in the food supply chain don’t have.  Waiters and waitresses still have tipped wages. Members of the farmworker community still don’t have the right to overtime or the right to unionize under federal labor law.

We need consumers to see themselves as partners in this work. They need to be invested in improving the conditions. It’s been almost 90 years since the farmworker community and other food workers were denied the basic rights of other working people under the Fair Labor Standards Act. At the highest level of government, the decision has been made not to improve their rights over all these decades. We have to understand that as consumers and be partners in making the change. It’s not going to change if everyday people don’t get involved.

Mónica Ramírez at the Raizado Festival in Aspen, Colorado, in August 2025. Founded by Ramírez in 2020, the festival is a project of Justice for Migrant Women and celebrates Latine culture, leadership, and community. (Photo courtesy of Justice for Migrant Women)

How do you create common ground when having this discussion with someone who thinks differently? How does doing this advocacy work in rural America differ from in cities? 

It really resonates when I talk about what it means to be a good neighbor. It doesn’t matter what your political affiliation is; that kind of language brings people together. We always look for words and ways where we can find common ground and bring people together, trying to connect human to human. That has been at the heart of what’s been successful in our work.

When you’re in a big city, it’s easier to find like-minded people. There’s just more people, and there’s a certain level of anonymity. Here in small-town Ohio, people I see at church or in the grocery store are people who we interact with every day. That’s a big difference between rural America and big cities, because we are not anonymous; people very much know who we are. That makes us a little bit more careful and thoughtful about what we say and do—and makes it a little bit easier to bring people of different political views together. We have had those kinds of bonds for years.

A challenge we have is that we are very isolated. We have to be creative in how we reach people because of the isolation and the information gaps that exist here. But the opportunity is that we have these close, longstanding relationships.

You’ve spent years advocating for migrant women and farmworkers. How has your work evolved? 

I think it’s come full circle. I started as a 14-year-old activist telling the stories of my community, and today, many years into my career, I still tell the stories of my community. There is urgency around that because one of the biggest struggles we have is the dehumanization of farmworkers. When you dehumanize a person, it makes it easier to exploit them because you no longer see them as deserving respect or fairness.

What has always been urgent for my work has been addressing the issue of sexual violence. It’s a major problem in the farmworker community. Because of the recent news related to César Chávez, that issue is front and center again. It should have always been front and center, but now it’s reemerged in the public eye. That is a longstanding problem, and there have not been sufficient supports needed to address sexual violence in the farmworker community.

What was your first thought when you learned about the allegations against César Chávez?

My very first reaction was confusion. I just could not have ever imagined that César Chávez would have caused that harm. It took me a little while to try to understand it. I felt shocked and hurt and sad. Mostly, I felt sad for the survivors. When I read about Dolores [Huerta] experiencing sexual violence, I had no idea. I’ve known Dolores for many years and just felt heartbroken. Like in grief, I’ve been through waves of emotions.

When you have a situation of sexual violence, there’s a ripple effect of harm. There’s no way to completely heal that harm, certainly not immediately. From the perspective of someone who’s focused on this work my entire career, what does this process need to look like? What does it mean for what I believed my whole life about the foundation of this movement?

Has this changed how you see leadership and the movement?

One person is not a movement. There are millions of people that have been part of the farmworker movement from all around the world. It has been farmworker community members who have been the heart and the center. Why do we have people that we put in a kind of hero status? People need people to look up to, but there is a danger when you have a singular hero and not his full story.

You can have a visionary [leader], but there are many people that implement that vision. This is an opportunity to say to ourselves: Are we living up to the standards that we are setting? If we’re not, what can we do to change that? How do we make sure that the movements we’re part of, and lead, are spaces with opportunity for many people to rise to the top in leadership?

What gives you hope for the future? 

The people we have the honor to serve give me so much hope. With all the odds stacked against them, the rhetoric about immigrants, the negative things that are happening that directly impact their lives, they just keep moving forward, with the single goal of making things better for their families. My hope is that people in society start to understand how much power and vision they have. They know what they need, what needs to change, and we should listen to them and never undermine their power.

The post ‘More Than Just Their Work’: A Farmworker Advocate on Those Who Feed Us appeared first on Civil Eats.

]]> https://civileats.com/2026/04/13/more-than-just-their-work-a-farmworker-advocate-on-those-who-feed-us/feed/ 0 https://civileats.com/2026/04/09/usda-finalizes-rollback-of-environmental-permitting-regulations/ https://civileats.com/2026/04/09/usda-finalizes-rollback-of-environmental-permitting-regulations/#respond Thu, 09 Apr 2026 17:48:57 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=72508 April 9, 2026 – The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) this week finalized a rule that will overhaul how the agency implements a key environmental law. The new rule will significantly pare back environmental impact requirements, eliminate opportunities for public comment, and remove climate change and environmental justice considerations. It represents a major change in […]

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]]> April 9, 2026 – The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) this week finalized a rule that will overhaul how the agency implements a key environmental law.

The new rule will significantly pare back environmental impact requirements, eliminate opportunities for public comment, and remove climate change and environmental justice considerations.

It represents a major change in the way the USDA implements the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which was signed into law in 1970 and requires the government to identify and assess the environmental impacts of any “major federal actions significantly affecting the quality of the human environment.”

At the USDA, NEPA compliance can mean environmental assessments of grazing infrastructure on public lands or of plans to eradicate crop pests or to manage wildlife impacts on farms and livestock.

Last spring, the Trump administration rescinded NEPA regulations that applied across the government and directed agencies to make additional changes.

In a press release, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins said the USDA’s approach will reduce the volume of NEPA regulations by 66 percent and will lead to faster, more efficient reviews. “Those savings benefit the American people, and quicker reviews mean the loans, critical infrastructure, and forest health projects our farmers, ranchers, and rural communities depend on can move forward sooner,” she said.

But representatives of environmental groups including the Sierra Club and the Center for Biological Diversity, who have a lawsuit in process against the USDA opposing the rule change, said the final rule could shut the public out of important decisions.

“It really takes away our right to know what’s going on on our public lands,” said Wendy Park, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, who said she is also concerned about the USDA’s “vast” expansion of “categorical exclusions”—instances in which environmental assessments are not required. “There will definitely be more rubber stamping of projects,” she said.

In comments on an earlier proposed version of the rule, Earthjustice attorneys argued the removal of climate change and environmental justice considerations is not consistent with the law.

House Democrats on the Natural Resources Committee also objected to the proposed changes in a letter sent to Rollins last August. “Public comment is not a barrier to efficiency; it is how government agencies gain a full understanding of the environmental, cultural, and social consequences that their decisions will have on the public they serve,” they wrote.

In the letter, they argued insufficient staffing and funding, not NEPA regulations themselves, were responsible for issues with efficiency. “Enhancing permitting office budgets, increasing staffing levels, and investing in workforce training would significantly improve the efficiency and timeliness of NEPA reviews, while preserving the rigor and public accountability the law requires,” they said. (Link to this post.)

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]]> https://civileats.com/2026/04/09/usda-finalizes-rollback-of-environmental-permitting-regulations/feed/ 0 https://civileats.com/2026/04/08/food-companies-backslide-on-promises-to-reduce-pesticides/ https://civileats.com/2026/04/08/food-companies-backslide-on-promises-to-reduce-pesticides/#respond Wed, 08 Apr 2026 08:00:59 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=72490 More than six years later, the webpage that outlined that plan redirects visitors to a page on regenerative agriculture, where the word “pesticide” does not appear. “They are no longer aligning their regenerative agriculture program with pesticide reduction at all, which is obviously concerning, because what the soil science points to is that regenerative without […]

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Article Summary

• In an annual report, As You Sow awarded lower scores to 10 out of 17 major food companies on their approach to mitigating pesticide risks.
• Companies are making little progress in reducing the volume of pesticides used in the U.S. food system, despite the increase in public awareness.
• An increase in consumer pressure could push companies to improve; many companies that scored poorly in the report are also seeing their stock prices decrease.

More than six years later, the webpage that outlined that plan redirects visitors to a page on regenerative agriculture, where the word “pesticide” does not appear.

“They are no longer aligning their regenerative agriculture program with pesticide reduction at all, which is obviously concerning, because what the soil science points to is that regenerative without significant pesticide reduction is not regenerating soil health,” said Cailin Dendas, the senior coordinator of As You Sow’s Environmental Health Program.

Dendas is the author of a new report that found General Mills is not alone: It’s one of several food companies moving away from earlier promises to reduce pesticide use.

The annual report ranks the country’s biggest food companies on their commitments to disclosing pesticide use and reducing it in their supply chains. This year, report authors awarded lower scores to 10 out of 17 companies, concluding that “the food industry is not stagnating on pesticide risk—it is actively reversing progress it had already made.”

The report lands at a time when evidence on the health and environmental risks of many common pesticides is rapidly mounting, with Americans increasingly concerned about those risks.

In the past month alone, Iowa researchers put out a report concluding that in their state “the impact of pesticide use on cancer incidence may be similar to that of smoking.” Food & Water Watch published a map showing that rates of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma are elevated in Midwest counties where glyphosate use is highest. And a new study from researchers in Peru published in Nature found that the risk of developing cancer in areas where pesticide exposure was more likely was 150 percent higher on average.

Following a Seattle symposium at the end of March to review glyphosate research, leading experts from around the world declared that the evidence is now strong enough to definitively say the use of world’s most ubiquitous weedkiller is causing widespread health harms. In the midst of it all, the Center for Food Safety and Center for Biological Diversity released two analyses showing that even for pesticides that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has determined may cause cancer, the agency almost never includes a warning.

Attributing long-term health harms to pesticide exposure is notoriously complicated, because it’s impossible to isolate exposure to any one chemical from other environmental exposures and risk factors. And the EPA maintains that its processes ensure the pesticides it approves are safe when used as directed.

Nevertheless, Dendas said all of this makes the As You Sow report’s findings on companies moving away from goals to reduce pesticides even more important. “It feels like a time where companies really need to step up, and we’re seeing them turn their backs.”

‘Pesticides in the Pantry’

For the annual “Pesticides in the Pantry” report, Dendas explained, her teams spend a few months digging into publicly available documents, such as Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) reports. They compile preliminary scores for 17 companies across 27 metrics, including whether the company has stated goals to reduce pesticide use, whether it collects and monitors data from its suppliers, and whether it publicly discloses any of that data on pesticide use. Then, they send what they’ve found to the companies and give them an opportunity to respond before updating and finalizing the scores.

This year, fewer companies than usual—about half—responded, Dendas said.

The best possible score is 27, though most companies are far from that. From 2023 to 2026, the average score fell from 4.5 to just 3. Four companies’ scores improved in that span, but 10 saw their scores fall. And while in 2023 only one company got no points at all, five were awarded zero points this year. (Nestlé scored the highest—with just 10 points, up from 6 in 2023—based on practices including publicly disclosing pesticide data and requiring some farms to reduce pesticide drift.)

General Mills, known for iconic brands including Cheerios, Bisquick, and Annie’s organic, fell the furthest. Having scored 10 points in 2023, the company received zero points this year. In other words, it has no publicly stated goals to reduce pesticide use, no collection of pesticide use data, and no specific policies to protect farmworkers from exposure, among other shortcomings in the report’s rankings.

“They were, for many years, publicly disclosing the pesticide reduction of their supply chain achieved through their organic brands and have since even taken that down,” Dendas said. Similarly, ADM, one of the world’s largest buyers and processors of commodity crops like corn and soybeans, declined by 6 points in the report’s ranking after eliminating a goal it had previously set to “reduce the usage of chemical pesticides in our key agricultural supply chains by 2030.”

Neither company responded to Civil Eats’ requests for interviews related to the As You Sow report.

Experts note that little progress has been made in reducing the volume of risky pesticides used across the U.S. farm landscape, despite the increase in public awareness.

In commodity crops, for example, Bill Freese, science director at the Center for Food Safety, said herbicide use has been increasing, especially because the now long-term, widespread use of herbicides has led many weeds to develop resistance. That means farmers may now have to apply several chemicals to kill all their weeds.

At the end of March, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) released its annual Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides in Produce, which includes the Dirty Dozen list of the most commonly contaminated fruits and vegetables.

The 2026 report found 75 percent of conventional produce samples tested positive for pesticide residue.

Every year, critics of the report point to the fact that the levels that EWG finds are generally far below what the EPA considers dangerous. The most recent USDA testing, for example, found that while the majority of its produce samples contained residues, 99 percent of those were at levels below EPA’s limits for health risks.

Regardless of the risk implications, EWG’s data points to trends in use: That 75 percent number, like most of the measurements the researchers compiled, was very similar to what they’ve been finding for years, said EWG’s science analyst, Varun Subramaniam.

“The bottom line is a lot of the stats and the findings that we put out remain pretty consistent,” he said. “A reason for that is the main driver of changes is regulation, and unfortunately regulations at the national scale for pesticides are pretty few and far between.”

Will More Attention to Health Risks Spur Companies to Change?

Meanwhile, deregulation remains a key priority of the Trump administration, especially at the EPA. Trump’s EPA moved more staff into the pesticide office to speed up approvals of new chemicals. In some cases, new chemicals may be safer than the ones they’re replacing, but public health groups are already suing the agency over the 2025 approval of the insecticide isocycloseram, claiming the EPA did not factor in human health risks to organs, including the liver and testicles.

Getting the EPA or any part of the federal government to regulate pesticide use and push the industry toward reductions is unlikely without a mandate from Congress.

“Very few companies will actually do the right thing without regulations because their job is to make money for their stockholders,” said Danielle Fugere, As You Sow’s president and chief counsel. “I really do believe that we need much stronger regulations, but where there is no regulation, investors can also work to say, ‘Hey, we want to have strong, long-term companies that are resilient.’”

Fugere and others said increasing consumer attention to the issue means companies that fail to act could lose customers and, therefore, profits. At the end of the “Pesticides in the Pantry” report, for example, the researchers show that many of the companies that scored poorly on their metrics were also seeing significant decreases in stock prices.

It’s not possible to draw a direct correlation between the two issues, but Dendas said the decline is in contrast to increases in stock prices for some companies that focus on organics. “Sprouts is one of those that over the last five years experienced a 416 percent increase in their stock price,” she said.

Freese, at the Center for Food Safety, said companies should be concerned about the increasing numbers of Gen Z and health-focused shoppers, who care deeply about avoiding pesticides.

According to EWG, about 2.8 million people viewed its Shopper’s Guide last year.

“Using [the guide] as evidence for lobbying, for advocating for changes in regulation is super important,” Subramaniam said. But in the meantime, he added, “We believe that consumers have a right to know what’s on their food.”

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https://civileats.com/2026/04/07/op-ed-usda-canceled-300-million-in-contracts-to-support-first-generation-farmers-im-one-of-them/ https://civileats.com/2026/04/07/op-ed-usda-canceled-300-million-in-contracts-to-support-first-generation-farmers-im-one-of-them/#comments Tue, 07 Apr 2026 08:00:08 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=72470 The funding came through the Increasing Land, Capital, and Market Access Program (ILCM), the result of years of advocacy. It was the federal government’s most ambitious effort to address the compounding barriers that young, underserved, and first-generation producers face in starting and sustaining a farm. In March, the USDA ended those projects, terminating the ILCMA […]

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In 2023, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) awarded $300 million to 50 community-based, locally led projects in an effort to support small farmers.

The funding came through the Increasing Land, Capital, and Market Access Program (ILCM), the result of years of advocacy. It was the federal government’s most ambitious effort to address the compounding barriers that young, underserved, and first-generation producers face in starting and sustaining a farm.

In March, the USDA ended those projects, terminating the ILCMA contracts and effectively abandoning the next generation of farmers.

I have spent nearly a decade fighting for that generation, while trying to realize my own farm dreams. I’m the manager of the Land, Capital, and Market Access Network, so the USDA’s decision to end the contracts hits me twice: as an advocate and as a farmer.

I own and operate Maple Urban Farm in Saint Paul, Minnesota, producing eggs, vegetables, fruits, and herbs to feed my family and my neighbors. I’m a homeowner, the owner and operator of two successful businesses, and a graduate of a farm business management course. I have the skills, drive, and commitment to grow my urban farm into a robust, profitable operation.

“The USDA’s decision to end the contracts hits me twice: as an advocate and as a farmer.”

Despite all of the advantages I have, I don’t have the capital to purchase farmland. Across the country, including here in Minnesota, that barrier is nearly insurmountable without help. And I am far from alone.

It provided grants and low-interest loans for farmland down payments, on-farm infrastructure, and agricultural equipment; farm business management training and technical assistance; programming to build relationships between retiring landowners and new farmers seeking access to land; and more.

The program served farmers and ranchers facing the steepest barriers: Black, brown, Indigenous, immigrant, refugee, LGBTQ+, limited-resource, women, and veteran producers. People without inheritable land or generational wealth.

The need was overwhelming. According to the National Young Farmers Coalition, applications submitted in 2022 totaled over $2.5 billion in requested funding—more than eight times what was awarded, proving how real and widespread the crisis is.

On March 23, the USDA sent termination notices to 49 of 50 ILCMA projects, with just two business days’ notice. Termination letters cited a lack of progress, “DEI preferences,” and accusations of waste, though without evidence.

The termination letters omitted how USDA leadership, under the Trump administration, spent over a year systematically undermining the program. They froze funding for nearly four months in 2025. Even after funds were unfrozen, USDA Farm Service Agency (FSA) program officers were unable to respond to awardees’ inquiries for several months, stating that they were awaiting further guidance from leadership. And most impactfully, USDA stalled providing required pre-approvals for awardees to move forward with planned land acquisitions, micro-grants to producers, low-interest loans, and other core project activities.

“The termination letters omitted how USDA leadership, under the Trump administration, spent over a year systematically undermining the program.”

Over the past year, I witnessed this play out first-hand as I have provided grant management, advocacy, communications support, and guidance to a cohort of most of the program’s awardees across the country. Awardees didn’t fail to make progress. The USDA prevented them from making progress, then cited the absence of progress as grounds for termination.

In termination letters, USDA called the projects wasteful, but the waste here was theirs. As a brand new program, the USDA Farm Service Agency (FSA) staff—funded by taxpayer dollars—took a couple of years to properly design, fund, and launch the ILCMA program. Awardees also spent years building partnerships, hiring staff, and laying the groundwork—work that will now go unrealized.

Moreover, a leaked internal USDA memo revealed that staff were given a list of banned words, including “Black,” “Indigenous,” “underserved,” and “equity,” that would flag a grant for cancellation. But labeling it a DEI issue masks how widespread the consequences are.

Consequences Across Communities

According to the USDA’s 2022 Census of Agriculture, the average age of U.S. farmers is just over 58. Over a third of all farmland in the U.S. is estimated to change hands in the next two decades, according to American Farmland Trust. The average farm costs close to $2 million—just for the land. Land access is already the number one reason young people are leaving agriculture, according to the 2022 National Young Farmers Survey, and Black and Indigenous farmers in particular have been systematically locked out of land ownership for generations.

ILCMA was the only federal program specifically designed to meaningfully address these challenges.

“The terminations don’t just cut off individual grants, they sever relationships built over years between farmers, landowners, lenders, and the community organizations that made those connections possible.”

Terminating it now, in the midst of record farmland costs, a gutted USDA workforce, and an extremely fragile farm economy without a single meaningful alternative plan isn’t fiscal responsibility. It is abandonment. The consequences ripple across our communities and economies: farmland consolidating into fewer and fewer hands, a farming workforce aging out with few people able to replace it, and communities losing access to local food. The consequences are already being felt by real farmers and real communities across all 40 states and territories where ILCMA projects operated.

“We have six farmers who were waiting for down payment assistance to purchase small farms, and now that opportunity may never come to fruition,” said JohnElla Holmes, who is the CEO and president of the Kansas Black Farmers Association and an ILCMA awardee who received a termination letter. “We come from a legacy of resilience forged through hardship—generations who endured injustice and yet still built, cultivated, and contributed so much to this country. Still, we find ourselves fighting for access to the very opportunities that others are encouraged to pursue freely.”

Her words belong to farmers in nearly every state where these projects operated. The terminations don’t just cut off individual grants, they sever relationships built over years between farmers, landowners, lenders, and the community organizations that made those connections possible.

Projects held up their end of the bargain. They built the partnerships, hired the staff, laid the groundwork. The federal government signed the contracts. Taxpayer dollars were already invested. Cancelling mid-project doesn’t save money, it wastes everything that came before and puts our entire future in jeopardy.

Congress has the power to act, and the responsibility to do so. Members of Congress, regardless of party or geography, should step up by exercising their full oversight authority and demand that USDA honor its signed contracts.

Congress should pass the Honor Farmer Contracts Act, which would require USDA to honor all signed agreements and prohibit the agency from unlawfully terminating contracts. They should also pass the bipartisan New Producer Economic Security Act, which would codify a pilot version of the ILCMA program and protect this work going forward.

We are still here, farming, dreaming, and fighting for young, underserved, and first-generation producers. But we’re running out of time.

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]]> https://civileats.com/2026/04/07/op-ed-usda-canceled-300-million-in-contracts-to-support-first-generation-farmers-im-one-of-them/feed/ 1 https://civileats.com/2026/04/06/for-aquaculture-will-ai-be-a-net-positive/ https://civileats.com/2026/04/06/for-aquaculture-will-ai-be-a-net-positive/#respond Mon, 06 Apr 2026 08:00:04 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=72090 Some AI models try to predict disease outbreaks or track when nets need repairing. Some are also programmed to act without human input—for example, administering laser energy to kill sea lice, a major problem in the salmon industry. Most, however, focus on improving feed efficiencies, since feed averages 60 percent of a fish farm’s costs. […]

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Finfish aquaculture, particularly in the oceans, faces a slew of challenges, including disease outbreaks, high mortality rates, water pollution, fish escapes, and feed problems. AI systems are being introduced to tackle these issues, particularly in the U.S., but the solutions are newly emerging and not yet widely adopted.

Some AI models try to predict disease outbreaks or track when nets need repairing. Some are also programmed to act without human input—for example, administering laser energy to kill sea lice, a major problem in the salmon industry. Most, however, focus on improving feed efficiencies, since feed averages 60 percent of a fish farm’s costs.

The models often combine computer vision, which gives cameras the ability to detect and analyze images just as a human would, with machine learning, which enables machines to learn from data and improve over time without further programming.

More than 90 companies are developing AI tools for aquaculture, with the majority headquartered in Norway or the United States, according to new research by ReThink Priorities, a think and do tank. Seventy-six percent of the innovations focus on finfish, especially high-value species like salmon but also trout and tilapia. Most systems are used by large industrial fish farms. That is changing, though, as AI companies develop business models to accommodate smaller-scale operators.

The jury is still out, however, on whether AI applications can help the industry address its most pressing problems. And there are concerns, as in other sectors being transformed by AI, about data quality and privacy, high costs, and the impacts on labor.

A fish farm off the coast of Iceland. (Photo credit: Ed Wingate, Unsplash)

Where Is AI Deployed in Aquaculture?

Thus far, AI adoption worldwide is concentrated among a small number of large companies. Eric Enno Tamm, CEO and co-founder of British Columbia–based seafood software company ThisFish, estimated that in 2024, the seafood industry invested more than $610 million on AI-related initiatives—and that 10 of the world’s largest aquaculture companies had made 86 percent of those investments.

Many of these companies are in Chile or Norway. The latter is the epicenter for this type of AI innovation, with its super-size farms and their data-rich environment attracting AI entrepreneurs.

In the U.S., which has less than 1 percent of the world’s aquaculture, a small number of companies are using AI. Cooke Aquaculture, which produces at least 13,000 metric tons of salmon annually in Maine’s coastal waters, and Atlantic Sapphire, a land-based system in southern Florida that produced 5,096 metric tons of salmon last year, for instance, use AI systems to monitor their stock and optimize feed. Blue Ocean Mariculture, a smaller Hawaiian farm raising kanpachi (Seriola rivoliana), is experimenting with AI to measure fish weight, inventory, and behavior.

Blue Ocean Mariculture also collaborates with the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on a project using computer vision to monitor and evaluate the behavior of endangered Hawaiian monk seals frequenting the farm. After a baseline study showed where the seals were pulling fish from the pens, the company made equipment changes. This included smaller mesh sizes, a new nursery pen designed for juveniles, and a “mortality trap” with a slide and one-way door that collects and seals off dead fish from predators, Tyler Korte, Blue Ocean’s vice president of marine operations, told Civil Eats.

AI-assisted vision technology captures data points for biomass measurement at a salmon farm. (Photo courtesy of ReelData)

AI Tools for Feeding Fish

Most of the current AI innovation in aquaculture focuses on efficiencies in feeding. Unlike land farmers, fish farmers cannot see their animals to monitor their appetite levels or health status. They estimate how much feed to give thousands to millions of animals by netting out and manually weighing a few hundred fish from each pen or tank every month and working up an average, which they then apply to their total stock.

“There’s a lot of error that goes in with that sampling bias,” said Mathew Zimola, founder of ReelData, an AI company. He added, “Farmers don’t want to touch their fish, because it stresses them out.”

ReelData uses hardware and software systems that enable land-based aquaculture farmers to monitor their fish biomass and automate feeding, without having to scoop them from the water. Its systems deploy underwater cameras equipped with computer vision—a gamechanger for monitoring fish populations on farms and in the wild—to measure and analyze fish in a tank as they swim past.

“Farmers don’t want to touch their fish, because it stresses them out.”

AI tools for optimizing feed are also gaining traction in the shrimp industry, said Dominique Bureau, professor of Animal Nutrition and Aquaculture at the University of Guelph in Canada. These systems use an AI-enabled, underwater microphone, developed by AQ1, that listens for the clicking sound that shrimp make when they bite. Using machine learning, these tools can predict when the animals need to be fed.

“What we’re seeing, based on data, is a lot of overfeeding,” Bureau said. Excess food, he explained, nourishes potentially pathogenic bacteria in the water that produce toxins harmful to shrimp. “Basically you kill your crop.” Automatic feeders coupled with AI microphones are “a great improvement,” he said.

The U.S. produces a fraction of the world’s farmed shrimp. Most farms are very small, though some may use AI tools for measuring shrimp weight and length, such as those developed by Tomota, said Brian Vinci, director of the nonprofit Conservation Fund’s Freshwater Institute.

Imperfect Solutions

AI applications for aquaculture suffer from broader challenges inherent in these technologies: costliness, data quality, availability, privacy issues, and unproven effectiveness. Job loss is also a concern, though it’s too early to tell what impact these emerging systems may have on labor.

Industry insiders agree that few fish farms have robust enough data-management systems for deploying cost-effective AI tools. Uneven data quality can contribute to glitches.

“One of the problems with AI is, it sometimes gives you unpredictable results that can mess up your system,” said Rakesh Ranjan, a research scientist at the Freshwater Institute, who develops AI tools for land-based aquaculture. “There should be a human in the loop who can check and then do the final action.”

Data privacy is also a concern as fish farmers hand over sensitive business and technical data to AI companies, which sometimes anonymize and share their data with feed and pharmaceutical companies and other suppliers to help them hone their products. Regulations are needed to protect data privacy, and farmers need to be clear when they sign agreements with AI companies about how and where their data will be used, Rajan said.

“We’d love to see more peer-reviewed data, as opposed to self-reported data from the companies themselves.”

The costs can be a barrier for many farmers. AI’s high price tags have favored adoption by the biggest players. The AI hydrophone, for example, costs tens of thousands of dollars per pond, Bureau said. However, AI companies are now offering aquaculture tools for a monthly service fee, making them more accessible to a wider range of operations. ReelData’s biomass and feed programs cost a couple thousand dollars a month, Zimola said. “Any farm that’s producing at least 300 metric tons of fish a year can get value from our system.” AI-equipped cameras, which can cost a million dollars to buy, can also now be rented.

And performance claims aren’t yet backed by independent data. ReelData’s feed program increases the growth rate for fish by an average of 10 percent, “turning a 1,000-metric-ton farm into a 1,100 metric-ton-farm,” Zimola said. The program reduces the feed conversion ratio (the amount of feed going into a system versus the amount of food produced) by about 10 percent. Though he’s confident in those numbers, Zimola said, he “isn’t there yet” with publishing the data.

In fact, no independent studies yet exist to evaluate how these emerging AI systems are improving feed operations, fish health, or water quality. “We’d love to see more peer-reviewed data, as opposed to self-reported data from the companies themselves,” said Sophie Williamson, senior researcher in animal welfare at ReThink Priorities.

A Double-Edged Sword?

While AI-enabled tools may solve some industry challenges, they could also lead to larger farms—and the impacts that come with them. “Detecting earlier disease, improving water quality, reducing overfeeding are all positive things for animals,” said Williamson. But there’s a flip side, she said: “We would expect farms may want to stock more aquatic animals.”

Williamson is particularly concerned that farms may increase stocking densities if AI helps them reduce or better monitor disease, and that could have other animal welfare impacts.

Alternatively, as companies increase efficiencies and reduce costs, they may expand the size of their farms. That is likely true, according to Tony Chen, founder of Manolin Aqua, an AI service that uses machine learning to predict fish health. “When you talk to farmers, they all want to make more money [and] bring more fish to the market, but . . . the piece that created uncertainty in their businesses is fish health.”

The MARA Act, which supports deep-ocean aquaculture research, is moving through Congress. If it passes, the legislation could lead to larger fish farms in U.S. waters, and potentially a wider adoption of AI systems within the industry.

For Vinci, AI tools might help clean up some of the salmon industry’s problems. “I do think we’ll see improvements in things like identifying fish behaviors that show stress, or showing ulcers on fish or lice on fish, and having ways to quickly address that before it gets out of control,” he said.

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]]> https://civileats.com/2026/04/06/for-aquaculture-will-ai-be-a-net-positive/feed/ 0 https://civileats.com/2026/04/03/trump-budget-request-cuts-nearly-5-billion-from-usda/ https://civileats.com/2026/04/03/trump-budget-request-cuts-nearly-5-billion-from-usda/#respond Fri, 03 Apr 2026 20:27:46 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=72454 April 3, 2026 – The White House has proposed a 19 percent cut in the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) budget for the upcoming fiscal year, with an increase in spending for the agency’s reorganization efforts. President Donald Trump sent his fiscal year 2027 budget request to Congress on Friday. In theory, the request will […]

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]]> April 3, 2026 – The White House has proposed a 19 percent cut in the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) budget for the upcoming fiscal year, with an increase in spending for the agency’s reorganization efforts.

President Donald Trump sent his fiscal year 2027 budget request to Congress on Friday. In theory, the request will serve as the basis for Congressional appropriations. But during last year’s process, Congress broke with the White House in several areas, including agriculture conservation funding.

Friday’s request calls USDA a “bloated” bureaucracy with programs that are “irrelevant to supporting an America First agricultural policy.” In total, it requests $20.8 billion in discretionary budget authority for 2027, a $4.9 billion decrease from the 2026 congressionally enacted levels.

The biggest investment in the USDA included in the request is $50 million for the agency’s reorganization plan. A key part of the plan involves moving USDA employees out of Washington, D.C., to regional hubs across the country. While the administration argues this will better reach rural communities and farmers, much of the feedback to the plan has focused on concerns it will result in further staffing cuts.

Many of the programs suggested for cuts were also included in last year’s budget request. The latest proposal suggests cutting $240 million from the McGovern-Dole Food for Education Program, a foreign aid program. Under the State Department section of the budget request, it asks for $1.2 billion in cuts to Food for Peace, another foreign food aid program.

Members of Congress from farm country have fought to preserve funding for these programs, which provide a market for excess commodities.

The budget request also includes $510 million in cuts to the National Institute of Food and Agriculture Formula Grants, $82 million from the Rural Business Service, and $659 million from Community Facilities Grant Earmarks.

The White House budget asks Congress to cut funding for the Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) by $61 million, which houses the National Organic Program and other initiatives to boost markets for commodities and specialty crops.

The request says the agriculture industry can support its own marketing “without deepening the Federal deficit” and suggests the industry use check-off programs, or commodity-specific marketing and research programs, rather than taxpayer dollars.

The budget request also includes investments in Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) priorities. Under the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the White House asks for $19 million to expand access to nutrition services at “Health Centers” through healthy food and nutrition education. It also includes $57 million to remove “unsafe chemicals” in the food supply, among other investments in the Food and Drug Administration’s regulatory capability.

Under the request, the Environmental Protection Agency would lose $4.6 billion from last year’s level, a 52 percent decrease. (Link to this post.)

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]]> https://civileats.com/2026/04/03/trump-budget-request-cuts-nearly-5-billion-from-usda/feed/ 0 https://civileats.com/2026/04/03/epa-and-hhs-announce-new-efforts-to-target-microplastics/ https://civileats.com/2026/04/03/epa-and-hhs-announce-new-efforts-to-target-microplastics/#comments Fri, 03 Apr 2026 16:34:12 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=72434 April 3, 2026 – Leaders of federal agencies on Thursday announced two actions they say are aimed at protecting Americans from the potential dangers of microplastics. Microplastics are widespread in water and in farm soils, where they can alter soil biology and be taken up by plants. They have been found in fruits and vegetables, […]

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]]> April 3, 2026 – Leaders of federal agencies on Thursday announced two actions they say are aimed at protecting Americans from the potential dangers of microplastics.

Microplastics are widespread in water and in farm soils, where they can alter soil biology and be taken up by plants. They have been found in fruits and vegetables, seafood, honey, beer, and other foods. The food system is also a source of contamination: Farms use plastic that can shed the particles, and food and beverage companies are a leading source of plastic pollution.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has now launched a $144 million research program—called STOMP: Systematic Targeting Of Microplastics—which will be run out of its Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H).

“Americans deserve clear answers about how microplastics in their bodies affect their health, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in a press release. “Through ARPA-H’s STOMP program, we will measure microplastic exposure, identify sources of risk, and develop targeted solutions to reduce it.”

Scientists and public health advocates have been calling for more research into microplastics and human health, since the science is new and the compounds are already ubiquitous in human bodies.

Meanwhile, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) added microplastics to a draft of the Contaminant Candidate List 6 (CCL), EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced. That would put microplastics on a list of contaminants that are not currently regulated in drinking water.

Judith Enck, the president of Beyond Plastics, called the move an “important first step.” “I applaud this decision by the EPA and urge the agency to move rapidly to not only regulate microplastics in drinking water but to also prevent microplastics from entering our water supplies,” she said in a statement.

But other experts say the listing is unlikely to lead to regulations. In March, the EPA decided not to set regulations for nine chemicals already on the list, including the insecticides tribufos and ethoprop, which are part of a highly toxic class of pesticides called organophosphates.

And over the past year, the agency has repeatedly asserted its commitment to deregulation, rolling back rules that limited other pollutants in water, including forever chemicals, waste from meatpacking plants, and mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants. (Link to this post.)

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]]> https://civileats.com/2026/04/03/epa-and-hhs-announce-new-efforts-to-target-microplastics/feed/ 1 https://civileats.com/2026/04/02/usda-pauses-rural-energy-grants-amid-anti-renewables-push/ https://civileats.com/2026/04/02/usda-pauses-rural-energy-grants-amid-anti-renewables-push/#respond Thu, 02 Apr 2026 20:23:18 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=72419 April 2, 2026 – The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has paused processing applications for a popular rural energy program, further delaying funds to farmers as high energy costs vex rural communities. On Tuesday, the USDA’s Rural Business Cooperative Service released a stakeholder announcement that it will pause Rural Energy for America Program (REAP) awards […]

The post USDA Pauses Rural Energy Grants Amid Anti-Renewables Push appeared first on Civil Eats.

]]> April 2, 2026 – The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has paused processing applications for a popular rural energy program, further delaying funds to farmers as high energy costs vex rural communities.

On Tuesday, the USDA’s Rural Business Cooperative Service released a stakeholder announcement that it will pause Rural Energy for America Program (REAP) awards until it updates regulations. The rule is being rewritten to comply with an executive order targeting wind and solar energy subsidies, which President Donald Trump signed in July 2025.

REAP has been a popular and largely bipartisan program that helps farmers lower energy costs. It provides grants and loans to farmers and small businesses in rural communities to install energy-efficient technologies, including solar and wind.

Since its creation more than 20 years ago, REAP has allowed for investments in over 22,000 renewable energy projects, according to a 2023 report by the Environmental Law and Policy Center (ELPC)—representing more than $10 billion in private investment in rural economies.

The pause in REAP processing comes as farmers and businesses struggle with rising energy costs, Matt Ohloff, an ELPC policy advocate, said in a statement.

“Failing to implement this program is only creating more hardship and uncertainty for farmers and rural small businesses,” he said.

Once the regulations are updated, the USDA intends to issue a new notice for funding opportunities, for which farmers must reapply. Until then, any applications are now on pause, the agency said.

There is no immediate timeline for updating the regulations, a USDA spokesperson said in an email.

“Bringing regulations in line with the Trump Administration’s priorities to end market-distorting subsidies for unreliable, foreign controlled energy sources is a top priority for the USDA,” the spokesperson said.

The agency did not respond to a question about how the executive order may alter projects or technologies used in REAP.  The executive order mentions ending subsidies for solar energy, but it’s unclear how the new regulations could limit REAP grants for solar installations or other technologies.

The administration has taken other efforts to limit solar energy developments on farmland through REAP. The USDA paused REAP funding in 2025 and only partially reopened the program, after instituting other program limits. But it has not returned to the level of operations prior to 2025, according to the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.

Representative Chellie Pingree (D-Maine), who sits on the House Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee, told Civil Eats that the number of applications awaiting processing is unknown. Farmers go through a lot of work to apply for these grants, given the amount of data and information needed to show compliance, so forcing farmers to reapply already is “cruelty,” she said.

“This is just one more blow to especially small- to medium-sized farmers, who are having a tough time making a living right now,” Pingree said. “You’ve got the increased cost of diesel fuel, fertilizer, tariffs on their equipment. The least USDA could be doing is helping them out, not harming their businesses.”

The appropriations process will begin soon, allowing lawmakers to question USDA leadership about this move, she added. (Link to this post.)

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]]> https://civileats.com/2026/04/02/usda-pauses-rural-energy-grants-amid-anti-renewables-push/feed/ 0 https://civileats.com/2026/04/01/usda-payments-for-organic-farmers-delayed/ https://civileats.com/2026/04/01/usda-payments-for-organic-farmers-delayed/#respond Wed, 01 Apr 2026 20:28:21 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=72409 April 1, 2026 – The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has yet to initiate the 2025 application and payment process for funds authorized by Congress to help farmers afford organic certification. Three months into 2026, the agency has not indicated when those funds might be made available. Due to rising costs of both certification and […]

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]]> April 1, 2026 – The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has yet to initiate the 2025 application and payment process for funds authorized by Congress to help farmers afford organic certification.

Three months into 2026, the agency has not indicated when those funds might be made available. Due to rising costs of both certification and other farm necessities, it will likely result in fewer farmers pursuing certification, said Kate Mendenhall, executive director of the Organic Farmers Association.

“It’s the small farms where it really makes a financial impact,” said Mendenhall, who is an Iowa livestock farmer. “I would anticipate that farms might hold off on certifying for a few years, and we’ll probably lose some smaller farms.”

Data from the Organic Trade Association (OTA) shows an increase in organic food sales, up to more than $70 billion in 2025. But that increase is primarily from imported food. Other data points to a decrease between 2021 and 2023 in the number of U.S. acres certified organic, with many existing organic farms going out of business or dropping certification.

The USDA’s cost-share program—which pays for up to 75 percent of fees up to $750 per scope–is a very small chunk of money per farm, but advocates say it’s meaningful.

“It is clear that, despite the popularity of organic agriculture in New York State, organic producers need continued support to meet increasing consumer demand,” Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-New York) said in a March 19 letter to Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins. “As farmers across the country struggle with rising costs and lower margins, every dollar is critical.”

In her letter, Gillibrand called on the USDA to release both 2025 and 2026 organic cost-share funds. The USDA did not respond to Civil Eats’ requests for more information and comment.

The funds were initially delayed because the program was not included in earlier extensions of the farm bill, said Tom Chapman, co-CEO of OTA, but Congress remedied that in the One Big Beautiful Bill, passed in July.

In several meetings since, Chapman said, staff at the Farm Services Agency (FSA), the office that administers the program, have said the funding will be released but that the priority is currently on larger payments—specifically from the $13 million Farmer Bridge Assistance Program, which is primarily for commodity crop farmers.

Former USDA officials say FSA has long struggled with its workload, especially when new programs are introduced. In 2025, the agency lost more than 1,200 employees.

Mendenhall said there may also be gaps in communication: In the fall, she submitted organic cost-share paperwork to her local FSA office. A few weeks later, the worker in her local office told her she hadn’t realized the office had not received authorization to submit the applications.

Chapman said he’s confident that FSA is working on it and he doesn’t get the sense that the agency is deprioritizing organic farmers, but “we would love to see the FSA, working at full staff capacity, able to act on these programs with gusto so they support our sector,” he said.

In the meantime, Mendenhall is worried about the ripple effects: She just found out that because fewer organic farmers have been going to her meat processor, the processor dropped its certification, meaning she won’t be able to label her meat as USDA Certified Organic if she sticks with them. “It has greater implications across the supply chain when stuff like this happens,” she said. (Link to this post.)

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]]> https://civileats.com/2026/04/01/usda-payments-for-organic-farmers-delayed/feed/ 0 https://civileats.com/2026/04/01/a-mobile-clinic-delivers-critical-care-for-texas-shrimpers/ https://civileats.com/2026/04/01/a-mobile-clinic-delivers-critical-care-for-texas-shrimpers/#respond Wed, 01 Apr 2026 08:00:27 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=72379 Photographs by Joseph Bui He carefully rolls the cuff of his jeans to his knee and raises his foot so she can see it more clearly. Through a medical student translating her English to Vietnamese, Díaz asks about the cluster of yellow and pinkish-red sores and his history of diabetes as she wipes his foot […]

The post A Mobile Clinic Delivers Critical Care for Texas Shrimpers appeared first on Civil Eats.

]]> Photographs by Joseph Bui

Article Summary

• Texas is a major producer of shrimp in the U.S., thanks in large part to Vietnamese immigrant fishermen.
• Fishing—and shrimping in particular—is very dangerous work, with a fatality rate 40 times the national average. The Trump administration has deregulated the industry and cut safety funding, creating an even more dangerous environment.
•Meanwhile, this community has long lacked access to medical care.
• The Docside Clinic, which started in 2021 and operates monthly, provides primary medical care, food, clothing, and social and legal services at no charge.
• Clinic practitioners are planning to expand to other locations in Texas, Louisiana, and Puerto Rico.

It’s a cool February morning in Galveston, Texas. Seagulls circle overhead, and dozens of docked shrimping boats bob in the water. Next to a wooden pier, nurse Martha Díaz crouches down to examine open sores on a shrimper’s heel.

He carefully rolls the cuff of his jeans to his knee and raises his foot so she can see it more clearly. Through a medical student translating her English to Vietnamese, Díaz asks about the cluster of yellow and pinkish-red sores and his history of diabetes as she wipes his foot with gauze and a cleansing solution.

The shrimper is one of a handful of men who’ve come out for UTHealth Houston School of Public Health’s Docside Clinic, monthly pop-up events where local commercial shrimp fishermen—many of them Vietnamese immigrants—can get primary medical care, food, clothing, and social and legal services at no charge. The clinics connect shrimpers to care they would not be able to otherwise access, given many are uninsured, unhoused, and have limited English proficiency and varying immigration statuses.

Traumatic work-related injuries make commercial fishing one of the most dangerous occupations in the U.S.

“It felt like it was a population that was quite literally invisible,” said Shannon Guillot-Wright, an associate professor in the department of environmental and occupational health sciences at the school. She launched the clinics in 2021 with a one-off event to research how to reduce “slips, trips and falls,” but after the shrimpers revealed deeper health disparities, the clinics turned into a monthly commitment.

“When we went out there, everyone basically was like, ‘You’ve got the wrong story,’” Guillot-Wright said. “Many of them would talk about, ‘I haven’t had access to a physician in 10 years. I don’t have access to food; I don’t have access to housing.’” Guillot-Wright changed her approach from specifically focusing on traumatic injuries to seeing them as part of a much bigger picture, one that centered on the fishermen’s basic needs.

Now, patrons gather for a few hours each month under a pop-up canopy to seek care—for everything from work-related injuries to chronic conditions like diabetes and hypertension—from a nurse, two community health workers, a volunteer lawyer, a handful of medical and MPH students, and researcher Guillot-Wright.

Shannon Guillot-Wright, an associate professor in environmental and occupational health sciences at UTHealth Houston. Guillot-Wright launched the Docside Clinics in 2020. (Photo credit: Joseph Bui)

Traumatic work-related injuries make commercial fishing one of the most dangerous occupations in the U.S., with a fatality rate over 40 times the national average, according to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). Out in the open water, fishermen labor for long hours in all kinds of weather as they handle heavy equipment and pull in catches on wet surfaces, which can lead to falls overboard, slips, and severe injuries from machinery. On the docks, fishermen can fall or be struck by fishing gear at boatyards.

Shrimping has proven to be particularly dangerous. Compared with other commercial fishing fleets in the Gulf of Mexico, the shrimping fleet experienced the highest number of fatalities—about half the region’s total—from 2010 to 2014, according to a NIOSH report.

Despite this, the Trump administration has been working to deregulate commercial fishing and cut safety funding and resources for fishermen, creating an even more dangerous work environment—and making the work of the clinic even more vital. Additionally, healthcare costs are skyrocketing; Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace premiums are expected to more than double on average this year after Congress failed to extend the ACA’s enhanced premium tax credit.

Amidst this increased instability and need, the Docside Clinic is trying to fill the gap for fishermen who often risk their lives to put food on tables across the U.S. The clinic continues to care for its patrons while also figuring out how to ensure its long-term financial stability and expand the model to fishing communities elsewhere in the country.

The clinic pops up on the docks once a month. (Photo credit: Joseph Bui)

Establishing Care for a Marginalized Community

Since the 1950s, Texas has had one of the top-producing shrimping industries in the country, with catches of white, brown, and pink shrimp. However, in recent years, the industry has steeply declined due to a drop in prices spurred by imported shrimp, high gas prices, and other disruptions, including the COVID-19 pandemic.

Vietnamese fishermen arrived in Texas following the Vietnam War, in the 1970s and 80s, when many people fled Vietnam as refugees. They settled in Galveston and the Texas Gulf Coast, where they could use their fishing skills in a coastal environment similar to that of their home country. Many came with their families, establishing close-knit communities of Vietnamese immigrants here.

They faced intense discrimination from white fishermen, however. In 1981, after the Ku Klux Klan intimidated and harassed them by holding rallies, burning a boat, and hanging an effigy of a Vietnamese fisherman, the Vietnamese Fishermen’s Association successfully filed a lawsuit against the hate group that stopped their intimidation and dismantled their paramilitary militia.

Today, many of the shrimpers are Vietnamese men in their 60s accustomed to the grueling labor of shrimping. They are used to being at sea for four to six weeks at a time, trawling the water with thick green shrimping nets and hauling in 75-pound loads of shrimp—and only sporadically returning to shore.

Before the shrimpers had access to the clinic, many avoided seeking medical care. Guillot-Wright said her research revealed most deckhands reported that they hadn’t seen a primary healthcare provider for years—even decades—due to many barriers, such as the length of time they spent at sea, their tendency to lose important documents in the water or from boat accidents, and financial and language barriers.

A shrimper drags his nets down the dock, flanked by shrimp boats. (Photo credit: Joseph Bui)

To cope with aches and pains, fishermen are also especially prone to self-medicating with alcohol, cigarettes, and substances. Across the fishing industry, substance abuse—including a surge in opioid addiction—is a widely known issue that is intertwined with the high rate of fatal injuries.

One shrimper, who has been in the industry for 40 years, has become accustomed to hearing about and experiencing accidents. He describes his work with a dismissive wave: “No, no—it’s easy.” Yet the broken pinky finger of his leathery, tanned left hand juts out at a  90-degree angle from an accident years ago. While he initially went to the hospital, he missed followup appointments, so his finger didn’t heal properly. He also recalls slipping on the deck and hurting his ribcage, which he didn’t seek medical care for.

Still, he’s used to hearing about far worse. Offhandedly, he mentions a fatal accident that once happened on a nearby boat, when a cable came loose and hit a fisherman. “Somebody there, he [died] in the boat,” he said, pointing into the distance.

That’s why the Docside Clinic is so vital: It makes it easier for fishermen to address injuries and health issues they would otherwise be prone to brush off. “This is definitely a good opportunity to make sure that we’re trying to meet people where they are,” said Díaz, who’s worked at the clinics for over four years.

Kait Guild is the assistant director of Harvard Medical School’s Mobile Health Map, a network of mobile health clinics focused on health equity. She said the flexibility of mobile health can help rebuild trust with people the traditional healthcare system hasn’t been able to reach. “It’s providing care in accessible spaces, places where underserved and marginalized community members and patients of all backgrounds feel safe,” she said.

Sisters CucHuyen “Cecile” Roberts (left) and CucHoa Trieu, community health workers and translators at the clinic. (Photo credit: Joseph Bui)

Respecting Culture, Building Trust

The February clinic fell within Tết, the Vietnamese Lunar New Year, and the clinicians celebrated with a special themed clinic. While the fishermen take turns consulting with nurse Díaz, shrimpers lounge on camping chairs, chatting in Vietnamese as they munch on chả giò, fried eggrolls. Many hold lì xì, red envelopes stuffed with lucky $2 bills, given to them by the clinic team.

Though the dock is an unconventional spot for a health clinic, it’s where the fishermen feel most at home. Their presence permeates the space, from a note written in Vietnamese taped to a door window to a white marble Buddhist statue looking out on the water.

Given the long history of discrimination they have experienced, many of Galveston’s Vietnamese fishermen are wary of strangers, including reporters, and building trust can be complicated.

CucHuyen “Cecile” Roberts and her sister Cuc Hoa Trieu, who migrated from Vietnam to the U.S. in 1986, have worked for more than 20 years as community health workers and translators in Houston, which has the third-largest Vietnamese population in the U.S. The sisters have been pivotal in building trust with the shrimpers since the clinics launched over four years ago.

Their shared heritage with the shrimpers helps them understand the cultural stigma other health workers might miss, like the fishermen’s difficulty asking for help. “That’s culture because it’s embarrassing, it’s shameful, to say you need something. Like, ‘Oh you can’t take care of yourself,’ ” Roberts explains.

At just 4 feet 11 inches, Roberts is a ball of energy, with a magnetism that has helped her become one of the fishermen’s closest confidantes. During the February clinic, she boisterously greets a shrimper while waving him over to come closer. “I hug them. I don’t care if they’re dirty or stinky or whatever,” she said. Gesturing to images on her phone, she said, “You see we take pictures [with them] and stuff like that. Make them very welcome. Make them happy.”

Roberts said she knows how to speak with the fishermen because it’s like talking to people back home in Vietnam. “I know how to make them feel comfortable, because I’m like one of them,” she said.

While it took her and Trieu years to gain their trust, the fishermen now tell them nearly everything—and they reciprocate by picking up the phone and offering help at a moment’s notice. During a previous year’s winter freeze, for instance, Roberts helped the fishermen get blankets after they called in the middle of the night to say they were cold. “They trust us now because they know that we’re here to help them, not to hurt them,” she said.

In the last year or so, they’ve even been able to convince a few of the shrimpers to accept care at a traditional hospital. Roberts sees it as a stride forward: “These guys, they don’t go to the hospital—even [if their] skull splits open, they won’t go!”

Last year, the team noticed over many months that a fisherman in his 60s was  in declining health, sweating during cold weather and experiencing high blood pressure. The Docside Clinic, along with its partners, helped the fisherman access medication and housing.

A small grant program at the free health clinic St. Vincent’s Hope Clinic, which covers the cost of Uber rides to and from the hospital, has made it even more possible for fishermen without cars to seek care if the Docside Clinic team notices they’re at risk.

At the February clinic, Díaz advises a fisherman whose blood pressure is abnormally high to get checked out at the hospital. Around 6:30 p.m., hours after the clinic ended, the sisters hop on a call to translate for the fisherman as he tries to arrange an Uber ride.

For Guillot-Wright, it’s been rewarding to see the fishermen access followup care or testing because of their familiarity with the clinics. “That continuity of care exists in a totally different way than it would have if we hadn’t just come out to the docks, plopped down our Academy chairs, and just started meeting people where they are,” she said.

A shrimper rests for a moment on the docks. (Photo credit: Joseph Bui)

The Quest for Long-Term Sustainability

Currently, about half of the clinic’s funding comes from NIOSH, which has faced policy whiplash over the last year. In April 2025, the Trump administration made extensive budget and staffing cuts to the federal agency only for all the fired employees to be reinstated earlier this year after public outcry.

While there was some back and forth with NIOSH, Guillot-Wright said, so far they’ve been able to keep their funding for the Docside Clinic. Still, she’s looking to grow their funding sources to ensure the viability of the Galveston location, as well as maintain a second Texas location in Port Arthur and expand to Louisiana and Puerto Rico.

“We’ve started to diversify and work with foundations, state funding, and think about other sustainable ways that we can keep the work going,” she said.

One way Guillot-Wright has tried to sustain the clinics is by partnering with local nonprofits, as evidenced by a table of free supplies available to the fishermen: cans of sliced pears and tomatoes from the local food bank, packets of Tylenol and Ibuprofen, portable ice packs, hygiene kits—even some mini Old Spice deodorants from the local Seafarers Center.

The clinic has also partnered with lawyer Bill Rankin, who’s provided the fishermen with free legal services for the last two years. One shrimper, through a Vietnamese translator, spoke with Rankin at the February clinic about how to apply for a new green card after losing his.

The card is vital for the fisherman to remain safely in the U.S., and he needs it to return home to Vietnam, which he hasn’t done since leaving in 1977. As he talks about visiting the graves of his parents and grandmother and reuniting with his younger sister, his eyes moisten slightly and his face flushes a soft red. “I [want to] come back to my country,” he said in English.

“We don’t always do the work of thinking about where our food comes from, and I think doing that work as consumers goes a really long way.”

Because of the transient nature of the shrimpers’ lives, Rankin explains documents often go missing, falling overboard or getting lost as shrimpers move from place to place. “They’re here legally generally,” he said of the fishermen, “but they might have, in the course of their employment, lost a particular kind of documentation that they need to get a copy of, or they’re looking to take the next step from being a legal resident to a citizen.”

Given the current political climate in the U.S. and surge of deportations, Rankin worries for the shrimpers. Even for immigrants who are legal residents applying for citizenship or passports, he said “the risk level has increased.”

Ultimately, Guillot-Wright said she sees the clinics as an effort to care for the people who feed us but are often forgotten. “We don’t always do the work of thinking about where our food comes from,” she said, “and I think doing that work as consumers goes a really long way.”

At the clinic, nurse Martha Díaz carefully finishes wrapping the fisherman’s foot to cover his sores. “It may be better to clean your whole entire foot, not just the wound, every day because bacteria can get stuck on your skin,” she explains.

After an interpreter translates Díaz’s instructions, the fisherman nods in understanding—he can clean his foot daily. He rests his newly bandaged foot on the concrete floor as Díaz pulls off her latex gloves and starts to gather the supplies he’ll need when miles out at sea. Perhaps next month, he’ll be back.

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]]> https://civileats.com/2026/04/01/a-mobile-clinic-delivers-critical-care-for-texas-shrimpers/feed/ 0 https://civileats.com/2026/03/31/trump-administration-tells-hospitals-to-align-with-new-nutrition-guidelines/ https://civileats.com/2026/03/31/trump-administration-tells-hospitals-to-align-with-new-nutrition-guidelines/#comments Tue, 31 Mar 2026 19:10:53 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=72368 March 31, 2026 — The Trump administration is pushing hospitals to align patient meals with the latest Dietary Guidelines by phasing out ultra-processed food and high-sugar foods in favor of fruits, vegetables, and minimally processed proteins. On Monday, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) sent a memo to hospitals requesting they adjust meals […]

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]]> March 31, 2026 — The Trump administration is pushing hospitals to align patient meals with the latest Dietary Guidelines by phasing out ultra-processed food and high-sugar foods in favor of fruits, vegetables, and minimally processed proteins.

On Monday, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) sent a memo to hospitals requesting they adjust meals with the updated Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA).

The memo urges hospitals to limit ultra-processed foods, sugar-sweetened beverages, refined grains, processed meats, and foods high in added sugars, sodium, and artificial additives.

Instead, hospital meals should prioritize minimally processed protein, vegetables, fruits, legumes, healthy fats, and whole grains. Some of the recommended meals include grilled salmon with quinoa and roasted vegetables or steel-cut oats with berries and nuts.

This is one of the first concrete steps the administration has taken to implement the updated DGAs, a key priority of the food wing of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement. The administration is in the rulemaking process to update nutrition standards for school meals to align with the guidelines, as well.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz announced the memo at a roundtable in Florida. The event was hosted by America First Policy Institute, a conservative think tank co-founded by Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins. The officials also celebrated a commitment from Nicklaus Children’s Hospital to include more farm-to-hospital purchasing and boosting local procurement.

The CMS memo, technically called a Quality and Safety Special Alert, reminds hospitals that they must comply with federal conditions to receive reimbursement for Medicare. This includes ensuring patient meals are nutritious in accordance with recognized dietary practices.

Hospitals are largely reliant on federal Medicare and Medicaid dollars. The memo states hospitals must comply with the Conditions of Participation, but does not discuss any enforcement mechanisms for this change.

Over the past decade, groups like the Food Is Medicine Coalition have pushed for changes to hospital food, and many large healthcare systems have worked to improve the quality of the meals they serve.

Ahead of the changes to school meals, school nutrition experts have warned it would cost more to move away from ultra-processed foods and more scratch cooking. It’s not yet clear the potential cost impacts on hospitals, but rural hospitals already on the economic brink are also grappling with the impacts of other healthcare policy changes. (Link to this post).

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]]> https://civileats.com/2026/03/31/trump-administration-tells-hospitals-to-align-with-new-nutrition-guidelines/feed/ 3 https://civileats.com/2026/03/31/in-southeast-san-diego-a-model-for-creating-community-wealth-through-food/ https://civileats.com/2026/03/31/in-southeast-san-diego-a-model-for-creating-community-wealth-through-food/#respond Tue, 31 Mar 2026 08:00:26 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=72349 Since 2022, this truck, the People’s Produce Mobile Farmers Market, has sold affordable fresh fruits and vegetables to local residents, helping many stretch their Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits. With its rotating weekday schedule of stops, the truck can serve a wide swath of neighborhoods in need. “The first time I entered Mt. Hope […]

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Every Wednesday morning, a refrigerated solar-powered truck arrives at the Mt. Hope Community Garden in Southeast San Diego. The driver hops out and lifts an awning on the side of the truck, revealing shelves that will soon be filled with leafy greens, beets, eggs, avocados, honey, and even specialty fruits like kumquats.

Since 2022, this truck, the People’s Produce Mobile Farmers Market, has sold affordable fresh fruits and vegetables to local residents, helping many stretch their Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits. With its rotating weekday schedule of stops, the truck can serve a wide swath of neighborhoods in need.

“The first time I entered Mt. Hope community garden was due to food insecurity,” says resident Lucia Davis, who heard about it from a family member. Now she shops at the produce truck weekly. She has also joined a neighborhood growers’ network that donates food raised in backyards to the truck and to the Golden Groceries program, a CSA subscription. The community garden, produce truck, grower’s collective, and CSA all stem from the same place: a multifaceted nonprofit called Project New Village.

The organization has been working to reshape the local foodscape since launching its community garden in 2011 on land initially leased from the city.

“In the neighborhoods of southeastern San Diego, there are many fast-food and junk-food establishments, but very few healthy food outlets,” says Project New Village co-founder Diane Moss.

The organization, funded mainly through private donations, has been working to reshape the local foodscape since launching its community garden in 2011 on land initially leased from the city. In its mission to improve the health and well-being of the residents of Southeast San Diego, Project New Village has evolved into a full-fledged food justice organization. It’s also part of an emerging model called Equitable Food Oriented Development (EFOD), which uses food as an engine to build community wealth.

Now, plans are underway to expand this project with a $10 million food hub called The Village, which would provide the kind of permanent food and wellness infrastructure the neighborhood has never had. The two-story development will integrate the existing community garden and also include a fresh‑food marketplace, prepared‑food vendor stalls, a commercial kitchen, and a community gathering space. Project New Village hopes to start construction later this year and open the food hub in 2027.

“[This is] real community ownership of a physical space and economic resource that contributes to long‑term wealth and resilience at the neighborhood level,” Moss says.

The People’s Produce Mobile Farmers Market sells locally grown produce at the Vision Culture Foundation farmers’ market in National City, near San Diego. (Photo credit: Vito Di Stefano)

From Garden to Food Hub

Twelve African American–led organizations, including SD Black Psychologists Association and Jackie Robinson YMCA, founded Project New Village in 1994 as a response to neighborhood concerns like youth violence and family fragmentation. By 2008, their social‑justice lens expanded to food access and health.

“At that time there were no farmers’ markets, farmstands, or community gardens [in Southeast San Diego],” Moss says.

Outdated zoning made urban gardening difficult in Southeast San Diego, despite plentiful vacant lots and interest from the community. In 2011, Project New Village secured approval to start the Mt. Hope Community Garden on a third of an acre, leased from the city. Its 40 beds flourished, becoming an inspiration for civic change: In 2012, San Diego’s Development Services Department instituted urban agriculture reforms to make small-scale farming more feasible, relaxing rules for raising livestock, starting and operating community gardens, and selling produce grown on-site.

The mobile market “is beginning to address food apartheid to promote health equity.”

However, those reforms didn’t protect the garden when its lease ended in 2019, and the city put its land up for sale to align with evolving state laws to address the housing crisis. The Mt. Hope parcel was legally classified as surplus property, not a community asset, which the reforms would have safeguarded. The group managed to secure a loan from the nonprofit Conservation Fund in the nick of time, and outbid developers.

Owning the garden brought stability and fueled new initiatives. The group purchased the produce truck with state and private funds. U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) grants supported farmers’ market promotion, and a 2023 Alliance Healthcare Foundation grant contributed $2 million toward building a market—a cornerstone of the planned food hub.

In 2024, San Diego State University researchers who evaluated how these efforts were impacting food security noted that the produce truck “is beginning to address food apartheid to promote health equity.”

An Underserved Community

Project New Village’s work is increasingly urgent. Food insecurity affects 26 percent of San Diego County residents, comparable to pandemic levels. In Southeast San Diego, where Project New Village operates, the numbers are higher because the poverty rate is up to three times the county average. This area also has the county’s highest enrollment for CalFresh, California’s version of SNAP.

Many people in this majority Black and Latinx area live more than a mile from a supermarket, and most small stores lack fresh produce and healthy food. But don’t call Southeast San Diego a food desert. The term “food apartheid” more precisely captures what’s missing: land ownership and capital.

San Diego County has the nation’s highest concentration of farms, with more than 5,000 operations, 69 percent of which are small—between 1 and 9 acres—and located mostly in the unincorporated inland and northern parts of the county. It is a top producer of nursery products, floriculture, and avocados.

Things look much different in Southeast San Diego. In the early 20th century, racially restrictive covenants concentrated non‑white residents in Southeast San Diego, and redlining denied them federal mortgage loans to buy land and build wealth. Many families once farmed small plots, but as suburbs grew and land values rose, the foodscape hollowed out, a casualty of development.

Now, federal cuts under the 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill have deepened nutrition insecurity, slashing programs like SNAP, which had contributed most of the food aid in San Diego (for every meal provided by the Feeding America charitable network, SNAP supplied nine). The cuts total roughly $300 million per year for San Diego nonprofits and safety‑net programs, putting 100,000 San Diegans at risk of losing food assistance.

To help offset the cuts, private funders led by the San Diego Foundation awarded more than $2.5 million to programs that provide resources such as medically tailored meals and weekend food kits. Project New Village was able to use $250,000 of this aid for operating its mobile farmers’ market. The nonprofit is otherwise less dependent on federal dollars, powering through with a mix of philanthropic funders, state and city grants, and community‑based donors.

A rendering of The Village, a $10 million project that will integrate the Mt. Hope Community Garden and include a fresh‑food marketplace, prepared‑food vendor stalls, a commercial kitchen, and a community gathering space. (Credit: MW Steele Group)

The EFOD Model

The Mt. Hope Community Garden, mobile farmers’ market, backyard growers’ network, and future food hub form what Project New Village calls the Good Food District.

The nonprofit is building this community‑owned economic engine through Equitable Food Oriented Development, which focuses on reparative wealth building rather than maximizing investor profit.

The EFOD strategy was formalized in 2019 by a collaborative of nonprofits across the country that had spent decades working to give their communities a say in their food systems, with support from DAISA, an equity-focused consulting firm, and the Kresge Foundation. To date, the collaborative has funded more than 40 BIPOC‑led food and agriculture projects, including the Detroit Food Commons, a national model for community‑owned retail, and El Depa, in Puerto Rico, which advances seed sovereignty and agroecology.

San Diego has few community‑wealth models, according to the San Diego Food System Alliance (SDFSA), a sustainable food nonprofit and Project New Village partner. There are too many barriers, including zoning limits, redevelopment pressure, and sky-high land costs. Cheaper lots often lack water, accessibility, and other features that would make them suitable EFOD candidates.

“Land is the foundation,” says Sona Desai, SDFSA co‑executive director. The organization is developing the county’s first agricultural land trust to help underserved growers secure land.

Project New Village applied for and received an EFOD designation in 2021 and remains the only EFOD organization in San Diego. Membership is highly selective. While designation doesn’t guarantee funding, it opens access to capital designed for community‑owned, non‑extractive food‑system work and strengthens eligibility for other public and private dollars. EFOD is backed by philanthropic, affordable-lending, and community‑investment partners, which still includes the Kresge Foundation.

With a public market, commercial kitchen, healthy food vendors, and event space, The Village will bring the kind of amenities to Southeast San Diego that many communities take for granted.

“The Village project brings food dignity to a community lacking in neighborhood healthy food choices,” says Ami Young, a resident who shops at the produce truck and prioritizes local and organic food.

Most pre‑development milestones for The Village are complete, and the team is awaiting city approval of construction permits. EFOD funds supported early consulting work; now a capital campaign is underway to secure the remaining $4 million for construction and operations. Meanwhile, the garden, where it all began, along with the mobile farmers’ market truck and backyard growers’ network, will continue its important work.

When you ask Moss about the challenge of overcoming the funding gap, her answer is calm. Project New Village plans to pursue public and private grants and equity loans, Moss explains, while further cultivating its donor base.

“If needed, we can approach the construction in phases, and the timeline would need to be adjusted,” she says. “Ours has been a journey of small miracles, and we can see the finish line.”

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]]> https://civileats.com/2026/03/31/in-southeast-san-diego-a-model-for-creating-community-wealth-through-food/feed/ 0 https://civileats.com/2026/03/30/trump-administration-boosts-biofuels-in-effort-to-ease-farmer-woes/ https://civileats.com/2026/03/30/trump-administration-boosts-biofuels-in-effort-to-ease-farmer-woes/#respond Mon, 30 Mar 2026 17:24:39 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=72338 March 30, 2026 – Amid farm economy struggles and rising gas prices, President Donald Trump announced on Friday the release of an updated biofuel policy and temporary boosts to ethanol sales. Speaking at a White House event celebrating farmers, Trump announced a final rule raising the minimum amount of renewable fuels that must be blended […]

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]]> March 30, 2026 – Amid farm economy struggles and rising gas prices, President Donald Trump announced on Friday the release of an updated biofuel policy and temporary boosts to ethanol sales.

Speaking at a White House event celebrating farmers, Trump announced a final rule raising the minimum amount of renewable fuels that must be blended into the U.S. fuel supply. Biofuels like ethanol, biodiesel, and renewable diesel are largely made with corn and soybean oil, meaning this rule could boost demand for those crops.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized the rule under the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS). The final rule sets Renewable Volume Obligations (RVO) significantly higher than the previous amount, released under the Biden administration, and slightly higher than previously proposed levels.

Biodiesel and renewable diesel production and use is expected to increase by 60 percent with the latest RVOs in comparison to the previous limits, according to the EPA. Under the rule, fuel made with foreign feedstocks or foreign-made fuel will have less compliance value than domestic fuels starting in 2028.

In a press release, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said the volumes are expected to create a $3 billion to $4 billion increase in net farm income.

“At a time of significant economic pressure across agriculture, policies that strengthen domestic demand are more important than ever,” Rob Larew, president of the National Farmers Union, said in a statement. “Expanded biofuel volumes translate directly into stronger markets for our corn and soybean growers, helping support farm income and rural communities.”

Recently, the administration also announced an emergency fuel waiver allowing the sale of E15 gasoline, which is fuel blended with 15 percent ethanol, from May 1 to May 20. While commodity groups and members of Congress have pushed for more E15 sales for years, the waiver is largely aimed at preventing dramatic price hikes at the gas pump amid the war in Iran.

While proponents of E15 welcomed the waiver, they also pushed for more certainty through permanent year-round E15 sales.

“Hardworking people in this country are struggling with Trump’s cost of living crisis—from health care to groceries to energy bills to child care—and it is time that Congress put up or shut up by putting legislation for permanent year-round E15 to a vote of the full House,” Representative Angie Craig (D-Minnesota) said in a statement.

Craig is the top-ranking Democrat on the House Agriculture Committee. During the recent markup of the House farm bill, Democrats pushed to include a provision granting year-round E15 in the package, but Republicans voted down the amendment, arguing it was not under the committee’s jurisdiction.

Both actions are also the latest steps as the administration works to appeal to its agricultural base ahead of midterm elections and as farmers continue to struggle with high input costs and low prices for commodities. On top of these trends, changing trade policy has presented additional challenges for farmers.

Now farm groups are warning lawmakers and the administration of even more pressures due to the war in Iran, including its impact on fertilizer and fuel prices.

During the White House event, Trump also touted the Farmer Bridge Assistance (FBA) program, which provides $12 billion to farmers, with the bulk going to commodity producers. He also said the administration would request additional farm assistance in the next funding bill.

On top of these announcements, the White House released a website showcasing the administration’s actions related to agriculture. These include tax policy changes under the Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill. (Link to this post.).

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