Farmhand Community News #7
What I'm reading about in ag and why it matters
Hello from NJTransit en-route to NYC, the-train-in-front-of-us-is-stuck-so-we’re-delayed edition!
I’m in NYC this week for Climate Week, commuting from my parents’ house in the burbs. Lots of train time for reading, but NJ-transit at peak hours is suboptimal for laptop writing, so, like last newsletter, this is a quick post. Reach out if you’re in the city, I have like, maybe an hour of free time left this week and it could be used to spend time with you!
Purdue’s Consumer Food Insights Report came out and AgFunder News wrote a nice piece on key takeaways
TL;DR: 71% of consumers don’t really know what “regenerative” means and of those who do, most don’t want to pay a premium.
My take: Well, duh. Look, I’m into regenerative principles, they’re great and aspirational and good for us ag nerds to use as drivers for improvement. Also, normal eaters care about taste and price and convenience. People deserve to have a food system that they trust, period. And, for the most part, we have a system that people trust enough, so to me, it really comes down to driving the adoption of practices that enable us to raise the bar on commodities, generally. BUT, if you disagree with my approach and are working on changing consumer perceptions here, do it. We need many different approaches to reduce the negative side effects of producing food, fiber and fuel and there’s plenty of space for different approaches. Maybe check out this guide on Unlocking Demand for Regenerative Agriculture by Smoketown that just came out, seems rather useful.
Farmworker advocates say new federal rules could save lives, but Idaho AG helped block them
TL;DR: I mentioned Biden’s proposed protections for H-2A guest workers previously. This article is an Idaho focused investigative journalism piece that really gets into a bunch of different perspectives, but clearly has a pro-farmworker bias. It’s worth reading. It’s healthy for journalism to sometimes have a bias for those with the least power in society, I think.
My take: There’ve been a bunch of major players involved in lawsuits against these protections in various states over the past few weeks, including by groups that I work with and have respect for (here’s PR on the one from National Council of Agricultural Employers, which includes Western Growers Association, with whom I’ve been privileged to collaborate with on the Agtech Toolkit.)
One of the key lines that keeps coming up is some version of “critics of the new rules have argued that they are too burdensome for employers and would grant guest workers a right to unionize that citizen farmworkers don’t have.” Again, if you’re new here, farmworkers in most states do not have the right to unionize. H-2A workers typically rely upon being invited back (H-2A visa holders can’t stay in the US for a full year; instead, they work seasonally, go home, which is usually (but not always) Mexico, and are frequently invited back to the same farm for next years harvest/busy season.)
This is a tremendously thorny issue to write about. I have genuine empathy and respect for the farmer-group based suits that are coming down against H-2A unionization. In the world that we live in today, increased wages, compliance costs, and risk associated with farmworker suits can take a farm down overnight. I’m coming from the perspective of someone who has personally managed lawsuits and worker comp cases, some super valid, some completely fraudulent. And, my personal ethics code says that those in power (farm owners) should take the hit short term for those with less (farmworkers.) Even if it hurts. But, in a world where farmers are aging out and new farmers are decreasing, and farm profitability has dropped year-over-year for the past 2 years, we kind of need to do everything we can from a policy standpoint to keep farmers farming. This is a very challenging issue. Read about it, think about it, ask me about it, and tell me what you think about it. There has got to be a better way for us to simultaneously protect the people who manage farms and the people who work the fields, and it’s only through digging into and discussing the thorny issues that we’re going to make progress on them.Is WWOOFing as wack as it seems? (article is actually titled Field of Dreams )
TL;DR: World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms is a volunteer program that pairs city-folk with the opportunity to work (for free…well for food and shelter, hopefully/kinda) on organic farms around the world. It gets real weird and problematic.
My take: I’ve WWOOFed, twice - once solo the summer after high school at une ferme biodynamique a Thurins, France (and unfortanately that’s about as far as my French literacy seems to get me) and the second time my junior year of college with a friend at Opa’s Goat Grove (for real the name of the farm) in Oregon. I promise to have a chapter or two dedicated to each saga in my memoir when I get around to that, because I honestly can’t begin to make up the crazy stuff that went on (including but not limited to a witch and a blacksmith living in a double-decker veggie-oil powered van (that was roadworthy, allegedly?) and also a functional blacksmith shop, riding a bike without brakes into a ditch of stinging nettles (wouldn’t recommend), a genius(?)/formerly intentionally homeless guy who has like ALL of the classic works of literature memorized verbatim, and a farmer who work two different color flip flops but was so dirty it took me about 1.5 weeks of being there to realize he had two different color flip flops on. In less fun things, these experiences featured sleeping on floors with a half dozen other young women in apartments miles away from the farm (hence the need to ride that bike w/o brakes), other folks (“les Romas” in France) working on those farms in far more vulnerable positions, an infant screaming in the sunny hot fields while his caretakers (who were WWOOFers) spent a particularly hot day harvesting fava beans with me, and some pretty gnarly forearm burns created by bubbling confiture de abricot and just jarred boild courgettes (boiled zucchini, which is disgusting.)
In more seriousness, WWOOFing is kind of problematic. Farms are businesses. It’s not great that for-profit farms rely upon unpaid labor in the long term. Farms need to be able to pay people and turn a profit, period, and WWOOFing, like so many volunteer based programs/internships, enables the existing system of unprofitable businesses to limp along. Plenty of (privileged) people like me have had great fun WWOOFing. Plenty of people have been in massively compromised spots while WWOOFing. I don’t think this article quite does the wildless that is WWOOFing justice, but, it tries, and I was too lazy to write my own article, so, read it.
I do think more people should work on farms. I don’t believe that unpaid work has much of a role to play here.
Fall Conference Seasons continues…catch me at:
NYC Climate Week 9/23-9/26 - I’ll be moderating a convo on soil health & AI tomorrow with Climactic and bopping between other events and meetings throughout the day.
Regenerative Food Systems Investment Forum - Denver, CO - Oct 9-10 - I’ll be co-leading a workshop on “Bridging the Funding Gap: Mobilizing Venture Capital, Philanthropy, and Everything In Between for Regenerative Agriculture” with Farmhand Venture Partner Eva Goulbourne and co-facillitating a separate Shock Scenario workshop with Renée Vassilos and Sarah Nolet.
FIRA USA - Woodland, CA - Oct 22-24 - We’ve selected some awesome startups to pitch at FIRA, and I hear the fields for demos are shaping up nicely from my colleagues at UC ANR. Come see some robots in action!
UC San Diego CORE Summit - San Diego, CA - Oct 23-24 - I’m actually splitting myself to be both in Woodland and San Diego the 23rd and 24th…jk, if you’re lucky, you’ll catch my colleagues Micki Seibel or Hannah Johnson instead of me here or at FIRA, still working through the details.
VINE Connect Demo Day - Fresno, CA - Nov 4 - Farmhand Ventures, the VINE and UC ANR will be hosting the first of many exclusive demo days in our Connect series. Startups addressing labor solutions with field ready products trying to get in front of Central Valley growers can apply to participate, here.
Cheers,
Connie