More than one-third of the food produced in the U.S. is never eaten, ending up instead in landfills, sewers and wastewater treatment facilities, or incinerated. Food waste is the most common material in American landfills, comprising 24% and 22% of landfilled and combusted municipal solid waste, respectively. This waste is generated by households, food service providers, food retailers, and food manufacturers and processors. In a 2021 report on the environmental impacts of U.S. food waste, the Environmental Protection Agency states that the amount of surplus food would be enough to feed more ..read more

In late 2020, Archer-Daniels-Midland, one of America’s oldest and most profitable food companies, predicted customers’ preference for foods with “bright and exciting” colors and “familiar, nostalgic” flavors would “shape the food industry.” ADM seemed poised to capitalize. Over the next few years, it purchased two companies specializing in crafting tastes. One creates savory dairy flavors for snacks and frozen meals.  But the division spearheading ADM’s new flavor forays, Nutrition, was not as healthy as it seemed. It missed revenue expectations — prompting internal, government and share ..read more

The feds have just dropped the hammer on foreign meat companies conning consumers into believing their products are made in the good ol’ USA. First the sad backstory. Back in 2015, former President Barack Obama signed the Consolidated Appropriations Act in response to a World Trade Organization ruling that U.S. mandatory country-of-origin labeling — or COOL — law broke WTO rules. Canada and Mexico believed the law was no more than a thinly veiled attempt to convince U.S. consumers that foreign beef was inferior. The act immediately repealed COOL, specifically removing beef and pork muscle cut ..read more

During the 2023 harvest season, one of Jake Lieb’s tractors quit working. A week later, his combine stopped working, too. Both were new — and he was locked out from making any repairs himself because of software restrictions embedded in the machines.  Instead, a technician from John Deere was dispatched to diagnose and repair the problems. While waiting for the technician to come out, Lieb fired up a 20-year-old tractor he hadn’t used for harvesting in years. Crops are vulnerable to the weather, and had he not, Lieb could have lost at least a day of harvest. Some of the crop might have d ..read more

At a February legislative hearing, a seemingly mundane bill reforming county zoning procedures drew testimony from a big name: Gov. Jim Pillen.  For those seeking to build projects such as livestock operations, Pillen said, applying for a permit from the county can be “extraordinarily frustrating.” The bill would “take some of the subjectiveness out of this process,” he told the legislative committee. Before becoming governor, Pillen had gone before county boards seeking permission to build his hog farms as he grew a Nebraska pig empire.  Gov. Jim Pillen He usually succeeded. When h ..read more

In 1999, a federal judge ruled, in what’s known as the Pigford settlement, that the U.S. Department of Agriculture had discriminated against Black farmers for years. The agency had systematically denied Black farmers assistance to grow their operations, the judge found.  Despite the ruling, Black farmers still struggle to access federal assistance at the same clip as their white counterparts. In 2021, the USDA rejected 42% of loan applications from Black farmers but only 9% of white farmers’ applications, according to CNN. The discrimination has had long lasting effects. The size of farm ..read more

This story was originally published in The Gazette. Iowa is the No. 1 corn-producing state. We also lead the nation in production of pork, eggs and ethanol. But another state ranking has gotten more attention in recent years: Iowa has the fastest-growing rate of new cancers in the nation and the second-highest cancer rate overall, behind Kentucky. Iowa’s stubbornly-high cancer rate can’t be blamed on just one thing, but oncologists and public health researchers agree it’s time to look more closely at Iowa’s top industry to see how it might be contributing. “If you did an aerial map of Iowa, w ..read more

Let’s state the obvious. Nutrient pollution is a massive problem in U.S. meat processing facilities that discharge millions of pounds of phosphorus and nitrogen into the nation’s waterways each year. Within the Environmental Protection Agency’s industrial category, meat and poultry product (MPP) facilities are the nation’s highest phosphorus and second-highest nitrogen polluters.  You would think the EPA has stringent regulations to turn off the Big Meat nutrient pollution fire hose.  But no. The last time EPA updated nutrient pollution standards for the nation’s largest meat proces ..read more

This story was originally published by Grist. Sometimes climate change appears where you least expect it — like the grocery store. Food prices have climbed 25% over the past four years, and Americans have been shocked by the growing cost of staples like beef, sugar, and citrus.  While many factors, like supply chain disruptions and labor shortages, have contributed to this increase, extreme heat is already raising food prices, and it’s bound to get worse, according to a recent study published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment. The analysis found that heatflation could ..read more

This story was originally published by Grist and the Food & Environment Reporting Network. America’s “fescue belt,” named for an exotic grass called tall fescue, dominates the pastureland from Missouri and Arkansas in the west to the coast of the Carolinas in the east. Within that swath, a quarter of the nation’s cows — more than 15 million in all — graze fields that stay green through the winter while the rest of the region’s grasses turn brown and go dormant.  But the fescue these cows are eating is toxic. The animals lose hooves. Parts of their tails and the tips of their ears slo ..read more