Farmhand Community News #4
What I'm reading about in ag and why it matters
Hello!
Whelp, we’re off the bi-weekly schedule. Blame United - I thought I’d be back from vacation last Saturday, but United decided I needed to stay on in France through Tuesday. Who am I to fight the aviation authorities, so I took the extra 2 days to hike and bike and swim and eat and drink. As a result, some of the reads here are slightly backlogged, but I’m refreshed!
It’s a New Day For Farm Financing - Zach Ducheneaux announces USDA Updates to Farm Loan Programs
TL;DR: Ducheneaux’s FSA has been doing some stuff worth tracking. They just made the biggest change to FSA ag loans since 2007. Exciting!
My takeaway: If you don’t know what is is, the Farm Service Agency handles commodity, disaster, and conservation programs in the US and provides guaranteed emergency, ownership, and operating loans through its distributed network of Farm Credit Banks partners. Their products are subsidized and these loans have highly favorable rates - the most recently available farm operating loan interest rate was 5.375% and the farm ownership loans are at 5.625%. There are, of course, limitations to what FSA will fund, and there have and continue to be discriminatory issues (something that Vilsack’s USDA and Ducheneaux, who is notably the first ever Native American FSA Administrator, have been working to combat.) That said, there are a bunch of private, non-FSA loan products for beginning and/or niche farmers that have interest rates far in excess of those of FSA products. In a competitive market, which all farm businesses must compete in, if you’re trying to start or finance a farm at unsubsidized rates, you’re starting a few paces behind everyone elses’ starting line….be careful!
TL;DR: The EPA issued an emergency order to stop the use of DCPA, a weed control pesticide most used in broccoli, brussels, cabbage and onions because it alters fetal thyroid hormone levels.
My takeaway: This hasn’t happened for 40 years. The EPA pulled it because “unborn babies whose pregnant mothers are exposed to DCPA, sometimes without even knowing the exposure has occurred, could experience changes to fetal thyroid hormone levels, and these changes are generally linked to low birth weight, impaired brain development, decreased IQ, and impaired motor skills later in life, some of which may be irreversible.” Guess who those mothers are? That’s right folks, farmworkers. I just got back from vacation and haven’t had time to chat with growers yet on ramifications of this ban, and I have no idea how important DCPA is in management. If you have thoughts, let me know.
TL;DR: Farmworkers on dairies are contracting H5N1 (aka avian flu) from cows, but OSHA can’t really do much about regulating small farms.
My takeaway: This is a good example of OSHA being powerless in protecting workers’ safety and health on farms. I think people think OSHA like, does stuff. And to be sure, the folks at OSHA must do some stuff..I guess they like, publish workplans. But they’re not doing very much enforcing on farms, and especially not at small farms. In a world where we love to pretend that small farms are inherently better than larger farms, this kind of system of “stay out of my property, its my farm and I’m a farmer so you should just trust me” lends itself to, surprise, abuses on farms! Small farms aren’t inherently better. On the bright side, OSHA does have some authority over poultry processing plants (the other place H5N1 is spreading, and a major source of Covid spread and corresponding deaths during the scariest part of that pandemic.)
Even if you don’t care about humans who do farmwork (which you should), we should fix this because pandemics are no fun for anyone.
TL;DR: Kind of a long, more-nuanced-than-NYT-usually-is oped that could also have been titled “Uh oh, climate change is really gonna mess up our food system!”
My takeaway: A bunch of my non-ag-friends have sent me this article over the past couple of weeks for all the obvious reasons. It covers a lot of important points and is really pretty well researched. I’m obviously a big proponent in investing in interventions to prevent some of the less desirable transformations to our food systesm that he* predicts. I really appreciate that he called out genetic-modification as “promising” - you don’t see that every day in the NYT opeds, and its factually true! I wish he’d pointed out the obvious but under-cited fact that, as the climate warms and the number of days that are too hot for humans to work outdoors increases in agricultural production regions, we’re gonna have major problems. More major (from a $ standpoint, which is, let’s be real, the thing that matters) than all the agronomic impacts of climate change. So, idk, maybe invest in next generation ag equipment so that the equipment can cultivate crops and the humans can manage said equipment from safe, climate controlled settings? And if you won’t do that, then invest in any of the other future-proofing opportunities in agrifood?
*David Wallace-Wells is a climate change journalist known for writing "The Uninhabitable Earth,” which, if you missed it when it came out and you’re looking for an incredibly depressing but well-written read, I’d recommend it. If you’re already feeling a little sad, definitely avoid it.
TL;DR: I snuck this one in last minute - it’s just this week’s Politico Weekly Ag (great newsletter, subscribe!) but it focuses on the Biden admin’s work to create federal heat safety regulations to protect farm workers.
My takeaway: I don’t think that its possible to invest in agricultural labor and be apolitical. This newsletter gives a nice summary of the Biden administration’s efforts to protect farmworkers (who are 35x more likely to die from heat exposure.) I know that no one likes regulations. But guess what’s worse than regulations? People dying preventable deaths. These efforts probably won’t pass before November, but, it’s nice that they’re trying. I do think that it’s important for farmer’s voices to be part of this lawmaking process because the farm profitability squeeze is real, and any additional costs passed on to farmers as a result of new regs are going to need to be mitigated somehow. As we’ve seen with some of the overtime exemption roll-back in blue production ag states, well-intended policy isn’t the same as well-designed policy.
Have a great week!
Connie