i grew up embodying these legacies, learning to take as much of what’s given because you never know when the safety around you will crumble away. to watch out for myself and my people and always be aware. to be skeptical and cautious and prepare for the worst. while i believe that people are intrinsically good, i also carry practices of not trusting those around me. these lessons are rooted in experience, resulting in constant precautions.

my family home has weathered break-ins and my father’s car was recently stolen a few streets from our home. i’ve been harangued on the street for seemingly no reason (was it because of who i am? what i look like?), questioned about where i or my family are from or what my “heritage” is seemingly a billion times, made to feel small and incompetent simply because i didn’t look like anyone else present or like anyone who had been present before. in the name of protection, i was raised with a scarcity mindset, as well as my forebears’ belief in the american dream. 

learning about trust on huahine

this past fall, i had the incredible opportunity and privilege to study in the south pacific. one of the professors, josiane, is a tahitian ethnohistorian, teacher, author, botanist, linguist, and wonderfully kind person. in discussing culture and community in the french polynesian islands, she said, “you can’t trust someone who doesn’t trust anyone.” other similar maxims exist – trust people and they will become trustworthy. over the last few years away from home, i’ve learned about more worlds than the childhood worldview i grew up with.

i’ve worked hard to assume the best intentions and motivations, love all people, have empathy, and be generous with second, or more, chances. but in the rigid, individualistic cultures prevalent in the u.s., i’ve struggled with the balance of giving the benefit of the doubt while also still remaining safe. spending time in french polynesia, i was exposed to a different, more trusting lifestyle. i began to understand how these community values can be one of the most important ways to tackle climate change. 

some of the highlights of my time in the south pacific were on huahine, where josiane lives. huahine is known for its strong womxn, pride, and self-sufficiency. people live intentionally, practicing culture and traditions as their ancestors did. most of our programming that week was focused on learning about life there, especially related to food, as well as connecting with josiane’s home and friends. one whole day was spent with all of our professor’s friends at a couple’s, sofia and gus’, home and garden. they live off the grid with solar power, big rainwater tanks, no doors, barely any walls to their house, a couple of sailing canoes for transportation, and composting toilets, buying minimally from the island’s grocery store.

my class spent the morning walking through the huge garden with sofia as she told us about many foods i had never even heard of, as well as how they like to grow. she passed on so much of her knowledge in a couple hours, replete with years of best practices, things she had learned from just trying–planting seeds in every single place imaginable to see what conditions and companions each plant liked. the rest of the day was spent with all of josiane’s friends preparing a huge meal.

from each we learned different skills, ideas, and values. together, we husked coconuts, cracked them open, shredded the meat, squeezed the shreds to make coconut milk, made bowls out of the coconut shells, made coconut pancakes with the meat and fresh cassava flour we ground, chopped up a beautiful fruit salad and greens salad, and made carpaccio with fish they had caught yesterday. i talked to one about jewelry and traditional polynesian craft. another showed me how to better husk coconuts. one heard us mentioning a fruit that we’d never tried and shortly thereafter presented us with the fruit prepared in its juiced and fermented form. there was an air of abundance, of both time and joy.

sharing knowledge, building community

all of the food, knowledge, and skills to prepare this feast came from the garden and people present. all were open, willing to teach and to answer our (silly) questions, and they moved with grace and gratitude in the time we spent together and the generosity of the earth. the lack of hesitation in welcoming a group of foreigners into their community, which had never before been done, the generosity with which they shared their knowledge, demonstrated clearly to me what living closely with the earth can look like, in reality.

i had read and theorized and imagined and envisioned back in my ivory tower at school, but this was a genuine way of living that was joyful, fulfilling, and full of love. all of the friends knew nature’s rhythm and showed their gratitude to her by living in relationship with every other being. and they all did this in community. although it was sofia and gus’ home, all of the friends, and then us students, too, were so invited and so comfortable that we moved around their home with ease and care.

together, the friends, each offering their knowledge and skills, teach workshops to the surrounding polynesian community, not open to any tourists, of how to live close to the earth and use low-tech devices like sun-drying food racks and rocket stoves that use little wood. not only do sofia and gus exemplify a life with little harmful environmental impact, they also share that with many others, helping build and give to a community. 

a pampelmousse for everyone

another memorable experience of kindness was on nuku hiva at the arboretum papua-keikaha. the arboretum aims to preserve native and culturally significant foods, while also helping provide food to the community as the island has been stricken with drought for many years after the introduction of palm trees for plantation farming by colonizers.

when we reached the citrus groves, the man giving us the tour picked a few different pampelmousse (or, grapefruit) for our sampling. there were four different varieties that we were able to try and after our murmurs of deliciousness, he started picking pampelmousse after pampelmousse, handing them to people and telling us to take them with us! we were overwhelmed with fruit; everyone had at least a couple in their hands. whatever backpacks people had brought with them were overflowing with fruit. he was incredibly giving, wanting to share his work and the food important to his people.

had the citrus not gone to us, it would’ve, along with the rest of the fruit produced at the arboretum, gone to local schools for lunch meals. but it wasn’t a question of saving the juicy, ripe fruit for the schools, more of an assumption that there were visitors to this place and when they left they needed to take something with them–a mark of the kindness and mindset of abundance in people.  

living in rhythm with nature

building and extending generosity and trust in communities is an important way to address climate change. all of josiane’s friends and the man at the arboretum showed me this explicitly. they produce their own food, take and emit little in terms of housing, transportation, or waste, and share what they know with others so more people can live with the land. in recognizing the earth and others’ generosity, there is more gratitude, which can develop more responsible and intentional living. knowing that the breadfruit trees are abundant when they fruit and having gratitude for the amount of food the earth provides leads people to make sure they steward and care for those trees and do what they can to make sure they can keep reproducing year after year.

rather than keep these ideals siloed and individual, sofia exemplified these values in her community. she trusted a group of foreign students she had never met before to walk through her garden and harvest all kinds of food on our own. she, and the rest of my professor’s friends, shared their time, their hard work, and their knowledge with all of us. from that day, i truly came to understand that it’s possible to live in right relation with the earth, surrounded by and embedded in a community.

the people we met have little negative and harmful impact on the earth while teaching others to live closely, not pollute nor emit, and bask in the generosity of the planet and reciprocate with care for the land and waters. climate change has and will bring food scarcity, individualism and escapism, irregularity and the inability to depend on historically accurate cycles or trends, resulting in barriers to community building. but in building communities that are trusting, kind, and generous, that live in rhythm with nature, climate change solutions become everyday actions that are accessible and contagious to many people. 

developing the capacity to trust is not an easy task, nor is it fair to ask uniformly of all people. some people are skeptical, self-protective, and wary for good reason. the world they live in is not built for them or their benefit, happiness, or ability to thrive. bad things can and do happen. greeting the world with trust and care can sometimes take an unexpected or harmful turn. 

it begins and ends with trust

at the end of the program, my family came to visit and spend the holidays together. within a couple of days, i noticed the generosity and goodwill i was accustomed to greeting and giving out shifting a bit. it was raining as my family drove up a narrow, bumpy, dirt road looking for our rental house. not a good road to be on in the rain with a tiny car with tiny tires. when we reached what seemed like the end of the road, with no luck on finding the house, a person came out from his home and tried telling us in mixed french, tahitian, english, and hand gestures to turn around and get off the road. it made perfect sense to me and i thought i understood what he was saying.

but for the others in my family, having just arrived in the country, they didn’t expect this behavior. this man was standing out in the rain, having come out of his house where we were on his property, telling us with zeal to turn around and leave. as the guy tapped on the window again to emphasize that we needed to go, someone said, “roll the window up” as he was speaking. i was astounded and frustrated! this person was trying to help, to be kind. i trusted him and saw the generosity, whereas that wasn’t shared within my family.

they did not expect interactions with strangers to be filled with generosity. it’s hard to be generous without trust and it’s hard to trust without being part of a community. with a little bit of trust in someone else, they will put a little bit more trust in you, as josiane says. that trust is the foundation of relationships that become communities, which can be filled with generosity and openness. community building is one of the most essential ways to contend with a rapidly warming world where suffering abounds. trust people and they will become trustworthy. 

“no-till farming is a soil management system where you essentially do not disturb the soil prior to planting as is done in “conventional tillage,” said roderick rejesus, ph.d. professor in the department of agricultural and resource economics at north carolina state university.

as a result of not disturbing the soil, crops from the previous season are left behind to break down, further adding fertilizer to the ground.

the practice of tilling the soil is as old as agriculture and was practiced across the world. tilling or digging anywhere from eight to 12 inches deep was thought to aerate the soil and remove weeds, preparing the soil for new planting.

the concept of not disturbing the soil took hold in the 1970s. agronomists and soil scientists started to understand the micro ecosystems below ground were compromised by tilling and doing more harm than good, unable to fulfill their role in the natural cycle.

“80% of all the insects live in the first two-three inches of the soil,” said ray archuleta, a soil health expert and no-till innovator of the year. “if you dig up the mesofauna you have to replace them and they contribute to the delicate nitrogen cycle. mesofauna like protozoa and nematodes eat bacteria, and when they do they release nitrogen.”

tilling not only disrupts the natural nitrogen fertilizer process that gives life to crops, but it also makes the soil more dry, leaving conditions ripe for erosion.

a financial consideration

in a recent study, rejesus analyzed how land values grow monetarily by adopting the practice of no-till.

rejesus matched satellite data with land value data for 2007, 2012, 2017 covering 12 states. his study found a 1% increase in no-till adoption rate in the study states leads to an average increase of $7.86 per acre in agricultural land value.

no-till “curbs erosion, benefits soil organisms and adds to diversity, and creates a more stable internal structure. it requires 50-80% less fuel and 30-50% less labor, so its perceived as contributing to less cost,” he wrote.

erosion has already stripped away about half of the topsoil on farmland across illinois and iowa, according to naturalists.

according to census data in rejesus’ study, just 27% of the u.s. practices no-till and the u.s. ranked first among all countries in no-till acreage.

holland farmer, francis de dobbelaere attended this year’s no-till farmer conference in st. louis to continue to learn about no-till. dobbelaere plans to incorporate this practice for the land he recently purchased in latvia. dobbelaere and his brother own and operate a farm that grows potatoes, onions, and grains, in holland. when dobbelaere and his brother move to their new 740-acre farm, in neighboring latvia, it will be no-till.

“potatoes need to be plowed, so at our farm, sia karli, in latvia, we will only grow wheat, canola, peas, barley, all winter crops,” said dobblaere. “people in latvia are not familiar with this [no-till] practice. it is so efficient, low cost, with minimal employees.”

protecting the worker worms

kelly and deanna lozensky own and operate guardian grains, a thriving 2,000-acre grain farm in minot, north dakota. one hour south of the canadian border, the lozensky’s grow heritage variety grains and stone-mill their flours to sell to a local commodity market.

“[no-till] is at the foundation of everything we do,” deanna lozenskey said. “we rely on soil biology to produce our crop. if i destroy the home of the underground workers, i have no underground workers to make my crop.”

the workers–or worms–and mesofauna that deanna lozensky refers to are the result of switching to no-till in 2000 and fully removing nitrogen fertilizer in 2013.

at the time they also had 6,000-acres of farm. deanna and kelly lozensky experimented with not using fertilizer on 500 acres of their farm between 2000-2012. the results were encouraging.

in 2013 guardian grains cut out added fertilizer completely. at that time they reduced their farmland from 6,000-acres to 2,000-acres, yet still remained profitable in yields and income.

“we use the same two combine machines as we did with three times the amount of land,” said deanna lozensky. “we are more profitable from the way we do things now.”

a fraction of a percentage of their yields goes toward making their own pasta from their grain. their pasta is from a french heritage wheat, rouge de bordeaux, dating back to the 1800s.

committing to no-till

kelly and deanna lozensky weren’t always a no-tillers. in 1999 when they first started farming, they tilled for one year.

“there was more labor in the one year that we tilled compared to years we didn’t,” kelly lozensky said.

nitrogen fertilizer that runoffs from farms into waterways is a compounding issue that no-till farmers do not contribute to: eutrophication.

because tilling the soil destroys organisms and mesofauna and disrupts the nitrogen cycle, farmers continue to buy nitrogen fertilizer to make up for the lull in the naturally occurring chemical element.

“soil is the most complex ecosystem on the planet. a farmer’s goal should always be to emulate the natural system,” archuleta said.  “we can attribute eutrophication–an access amount of nutrients commonly known as algal blooms– in the gulf from the overuse of nitrogen fertilizers.”

according to kelly lozensky, tilling farmers are in a hurry to get nitrogen, but they just need to adopt no-till farming to achieve the same results.

“human health depends on soil health so we better get it fixed,” deanna lozensky said.

think about the most recent trip you took to your local grocery store. how long did it take you to get there? did you take multiple forms of public transportation? how accessible was your trip? for the many people living in the district’s wards 7 or 8, it can take them a long time with multiple forms of transportation to get to their nearest grocery store.

arcadia center for sustainable food & agriculture is providing a unique solution to bring food closer to d.c. residents living in areas with little to no food access. outreach and education manager, juan pablo echeverria, takes us along on a tour of arcadia farm to show us how their sustainable agriculture is contributing to food accessibility in d.c. 

this year, visitors looking for a fun fall activity are in for a surprise when they head to at’l do farms, located just outside of lubbock, texas, for there will be no corn found. in its place – a maze of multi-species cover crops that contains seven different plants. sorghum, sunflowers, pearl and foxtail millet, cowpeas, sun hemp and radishes will all work together to reduce water inputs. 

a family affair

eric simpson was born and raised on the same property that at’l do farms still calls home today, and agriculture has been a family affair for generations. originally, the land was a monoculture system that rotated growing cotton, sorghum and wheat until the mid-’90s. 

when a low period hit, the simpson family was forced to reevaluate their business. they decided to use the land in a different way and planted their first corn maze in an attempt to bring visitors to the farm and generate a new stream of revenue. 

“it became more and more profitable and in fact, we slowly transitioned out of the production side of agriculture and now we just do the maze and a kind of agritourism type of industry,” simpson said. 

at’l do farms has operated the maze and other fall attractions for 21 years and the farm now welcomes over 50,000 visitors each season.

slideshow by katie perkins

a dry area in drying times

dubbed the llano estacado by early spanish settlers, this region is an approximately 32,000 square mile plateau situated atop the southern boundary of the ogallala aquifer that receives an average of 18 inches of precipitation a year. 

widespread drought and as little as one-tenth of an inch of rain during the winter of 2021 meant corn had a slim chance of growing to the height necessary to construct the maze. 

“what we could see from last year is it didn’t rain pretty much from september all the way until may,” simpson said. “corn, which is a very water-intensive crop, just wasn’t going to cut it. because of climate conditions, it just didn’t rain, and it forced us to make a better decision.” 

these conditions sent simpson to the drawing board in order to find a way the maze could still happen while reducing its water consumption footprint. his neighbor uses a traditional pivot irrigation system but simpson knew he did not want to be reliant on the ogallala aquifer.

globally, approximately 70% of groundwater that is drawn out of aquifers is used for crop irrigation. 

“the entire agriculture industry right now is propped up on the ogallala (aquifer) as its water resource,” simpson said. “the ogallala is depleting at a way faster rate than what is being recharged.” 

the ogallala aquifer is a finite resource. in the next 50 years, 70% of the ogallala aquifer is estimated to be depleted, with the main withdrawals stemming from the agriculture industry. 

“i think in my lifetime we will see a drastic transition away from agriculture on the llano estacado because of a depleting aquifer and extreme climate change,” said simpson. 

an artist by trade, simpson never planned on returning to the family farm after graduating from texas tech. he found himself back in west texas after being accepted to an art residency in lubbock.

“it was at that time that i saw that farming didn’t have to be the way that it’s always been here,” simpson said. “in the sense that you could make changes about biodiversity, soil health and planting drought-tolerant crops.” 

forging a new maze

creating a polycultural farming system like simpson has done at at’l do farms this season has a multitude of benefits for the health of his land. the variety of plants attracts pollinators, reduces erosion, decreases pesticide and herbicide usage, reduces harmful pests, and increases nutrient cycling. 

“lubbock is notorious for being a little bit behind the times, but i think that’s ok,” simpson said. “it gives us young folks the opportunity to see what other folks are doing in other parts of the country and jump in.”

simpson and his family are forging new paths in the agriculture industry and he believes they can spark change amongst his peers in the agritourism industry. change towards a more sustainable future. 

“to my knowledge, we are the first ones to do a multispecies crop for a maze,” simpson said. “i think we are showing people throughout the country the options for doing types of things like this.” 

looking toward the future, simpson says he definitely wants to continue planting non-traditional crops for the annual maze, building healthy soil and working with the land — not against it. 

“as long as we can continue to make little baby steps towards alternative and more drought tolerant and resistant practices, that’s what we are going to do to keep the farm alive,” simpson said.

the only water roy pfaltzgraff has for his crops in haxtun, colorado, is what comes out of the sky, and that is not much during this mega-drought that has been devastating the west. despite extremely difficult growing conditions, pfaltzgraff still produces crops at a decent yield, in large part due to his soil health practices.

pfaltzgraff is part of colorado’s saving tomorrow’s agricultural resources (star) soil health program and is the only farmer in colorado, as of october 2022, to receive a maximum of five stars for the soil health of his fields. the outstanding soil health in his fields also impacts food quality, and pfaltzgraff is passionate about producing a quality product compared to the conventional farming focus on yield. with an associate’s degree in culinary arts, he has crafted several delicious gluten-free mixes using millet flour, corn, and other crops on his farm.

pfaltzgraff believes that it is important for people to get to know farmers and understand how food is produced. farmers and producers like pfaltzgraff will be profiled for their soil health practices in an upcoming three-part documentary series called “hold our ground,” which i am helping produce with the colorado state university center for science communication.

i began this project when i traveled to the ithaca farmers market to learn more about farming in new york. there, i was able to connect with justin jordan, owner of jordan farms in southern new york. justin was very kind to teach me about the barriers and difficulties of farming that have stemmed from overwhelming industrial farming. through this project, i learned about some of the ways that small-scale farmers are financially disenfranchised.

this video is intended to be a transparent example of what it takes to transform a living animal into a cooked chicken breast. through this artistic production, we are able to acknowledge at least some of the complexity of chicken processing. although graphic, the scenes are surprisingly beautiful and shocking as we are exposed to the vivid colors and textures of slaughter. there is also an underlying theme of zero-waste, throughout the video we see various ways to use the entire bird. feet and all! 

newman developed his farm with a vision to provide equitable access to fresh, nutritious food to residents of the washington metro area and other cities in maryland and virginia. it’s a tall order. while newman has access to nearly 2,000 acres, the farm currently operates on 120 acres with a team of 7 and is focused on the production of beef, pork, chicken, and eggs.

newman’s goal of accessible, sustainable food places him at odds with the dominant practices and intellectual framework of both industrial agriculture and small, sustainable farming. in contrast to the factory farms typical of industrial agriculture, his cattle are entirely grass-fed and his pigs forage in managed woodland—creating a double benefit that both minimizes the use of external grain feed and contributes to his development of a food forest. yet, unlike some organic suppliers, he prioritizes accessibility of his food; this year, he launched a food donation program to provide for the hungry in addition to his wealthier customer base. true to his twitter bio, newman’s approach to the business of sustainable farming is “something else”—something outside of existing models. 

broadly speaking, there have been two streams of alternative agriculture: one which seeks to reform the agribusiness industry from within, and one which seeks to challenge it from outside. gunsmoke farms is an example of the former. owned by general mills, gunsmoke’s 34,000 acres in fort pierre, south dakota, supply the needs of the company’s organic products, such as annie’s organic mac & cheese. besides avoiding the use of synthetic pesticides and fertilizers, the initial plan for the farm included the use of cover cropping, no-till planting, and other practices aimed at building soil health and bolstering the surrounding ecosystem. three years later, however, these plans have failed to materialize, leading to the degradation and erosion of soil on the farm, and drawing public criticism.

the second stream of agricultural reform centers on a rejection of big business, and sees the solution as a myriad of small, individual farms serving the needs of their local communities. polyface farms, owned by virginia farmer joel salatin, is a quintessential example. salatin is something of a heavyweight in sustainable farming spheres: he has been hailed as america’s most famous farmer, his 550-acre livestock farm was named the mecca of sustainable agriculture, and he has published 11 books which teach his methods and philosophy.

salatin claims that a farm’s philosophy is just as important as its practices; if anything, it is more important since philosophy forms the root from which practice springs. at polyface, the cows are grass-fed, the pigs forage in the woods, and grain feed for the free-range chickens is locally sourced and non-gmo. according to salatin, “[polyface’s] goals are not about sales; they are about quality.” he writes that the organic label is not comprehensive enough and “does not incentivize anyone to do better than the minimum standards,” leading to what he calls “industrial junk organics.” 

salatin said his vision is “to see a million polyfaces displace all the monsanto and usda demons.” at the same time, he proudly claimed that “polyface has never had a sales target, marketing plan, or business plan,” which reek far too much of profit-oriented farming to him. instead, expansion of his model depends on a two-tiered value shift. first, farmers must make quality their priority. if they do, “customers will come and sales will increase automatically,” he said. at the same time, consumers must consciously choose ethical and environmentally responsible farms. in his words, “get your nose out of people magazine and research and then patronize food and farm organizations that treat their folks with the values you value.”

as a single entity, it is impossible to deny the success of polyface. the farm pulls hundreds of thousands of dollars per year in revenue and is proof that regenerative farming can be financially viable. yet, polyface faces a number of problems when it comes to salatin’s goal of mass replication, problems which are representative of small-farm sustainability as a movement––problems like affordability.

food from polyface is prohibitively expensive. a dozen eggs sell for $6.75; milk at $11.30 to a gallon. for a purely profit-oriented farm, these prices are not a problem. there are a sufficient number of customers willing and wealthy enough to pay a premium for salatin’s “beyond organic” food that his farm can not only survive, but thrive.

yet, newman of sylvanaqua said that the success of sustainable farming in business does not necessarily translate to its success as a movement. if the goal of sustainable farming is to reform the food system entirely, sustainably sourced food must be accessible to everybody, not just a wealthy portion of the market. 

salatin is not alone in naming consumer values as the battlefield of sustainable agriculture. he is joined by figures such as alice waters, champion of slow food, who censured the nation’s “fast food values,” and wendell berry, author and farmer, whose essay the pleasures of eating argued that “[eating] is inescapably an agricultural act, and how we eat determines, to a considerable extent, how the world is used.” in other words, it is consumers who are responsible for the growth of sustainable farming while producers are free from scrutiny.

newman is skeptical of this shame-and-blame tactic. he said that a critique of behavior may change the habits of an audience which can afford to listen, but $11 milk is simply beyond the reach of a minimum or low-wage worker, no matter how strong the “value shift.” newman believes any solution that is centered on altering consumer behavior is doomed to fail—and is either unaware of the realities of poverty and lower-middle income or chooses not to engage with them.

at sylvanaqua, newman is trying to take the best of both small sustainable farms and industrial agribusiness by pairing commitment to ethical and environmental responsibility with efficiency and productivity. he said that only through this balance can sustainable agriculture be successful, and suggested that many of sustainable agriculture’s shortcomings stem from a reactionary mindset.

“part of (the problem) i think is a certain degree of intellectual laziness…big ag is big, so (people think) the solution must be small,” he said. “big ag is integrated, so (people think) the solution must be to not integrate, to disperse, to only focus on the farming. big ag is all about business, so (people think) sustainable ag must be decidedly non-business.”

the issue with this response, newman explained, is that it’s simplistic. in rejecting large agribusiness across-the-board, small farmers may reject not only the flaws, but the traits that made industrial agriculture successful—traits like scale. 

according to the usda, the class of farms making $100,000-$250,000 per year and the class making $500,000 to $1 million each work about 15% of u.s. farmland. the only difference between the two groups is that the average farm in the former category is about 1,000 acres large, while the average in the latter is just short of 2,000. in other words, fewer, larger farms are able to produce more on the same amount of land than smaller, more numerous ones, thus enabling them to sell at cheaper prices. newman believes that in order to compete, sustainable agriculture must embrace the efficiencies of scale rather than salatin’s million-polyface dream.

while newman said that farmers need to adopt business models that boost affordability, he said that price is only one part of a larger problem of accessibility. in his estimation, the strategies that small farmers use for selling and distributing their food are fantastically impractical.

“people use farmers markets which only operate one or two days a week, and usually during the day, when people are working…and god help you if it rains,” he said. pickup programs for community supported agriculture shares often fall victim to the same critique, with the added hurdle that the farmer, not the customer, picks the produce, meaning people may not get either what they need or know how to use. even if farm food is affordable, it may not be available. a local, all-hours supermarket is an easier, more accessible way to get food than the intermittent, and sometimes distant options that farmers have on offer.

acting alone, farmers don’t have the time to sell their food every day of the week, much less for extended hours. and until they do, farmers are limited in the customers they can reach. this problem calls to another tactic from industrial food: vertical integration. not only does this lower the cost of the end product by eliminating middlemen, newman said, it also allows farmers to focus on what they do best, rather than stretching themselves thin and doing everything inadequately. the farm is only one part of the food system, and any successful attempt at reform will have to work on broader scales, he said.

sylvanaqua does not yet embody all of newman’s ideals. yes, the chickens are free-range, the cattle grass-fed, and the pigs forage in silvopasture-managed woodland with trees whose fruit and nuts supplement the pigs’ diets. yet, in terms of scale, sylvanaqua is a far cry from gunsmoke farms, operating at just 120 acres, which is all that current demand warrants. the prices for his products are high—$5.50 for a dozen eggs, $15 for a pound of bacon. not content to remain this way, newman is aggressively pursuing expansion, most recently through sylvanaqua’s mutual aid program.

newman created the program this summer in response to the farm’s shortcomings in affordability and accessibility. the process is this: sylvanaqua’s customers are encouraged to buy mutual aid shares along with their other purchases. the shares are also advertised to the tens of thousands of followers of newman’s social media accounts. this money is used to pay for meat and eggs that go to food aid organizations who provide meals in washington, d.c. and other cities in the region.

“not everybody has a stove, or cookware, or the expertise, or time to cook the food we have,” newman said. “[these] organizations know how to turn our food into something accessible for people.” 

while these organizations are not owned by sylvanaqua, these collaborations demonstrate the benefits of vertical integration. the program is also helping newman to expand his business. 

“it’s really hard and really expensive to break into new geographic markets,” he said, “because it usually starts with three or four people, or it starts with doing a farmer’s market, which are both ways to lose lots of money really quickly. what mutual aid allows us to do is show up to annapolis with $1,000 worth of paid food donations, and… deliver to three or four regular customers in annapolis without losing money [on transportation and time].” the program has provided over $35,000 in food donations since its inception in late june.

yet, newman is by no means blind to the shortcomings of agribusiness. like salatin, he sees the problem as one of philosophy and worldview, something evident in his writing.

“xàskwim (corn) monocultures are not a white invention,” newman wrote. “in fact, my own ancestors planted them. first-contact colonizer accounts describe in detail cornfields that stretched for miles and miles…but these fields weren’t planted every year…(but) with a careful ethic of not taking too much even when a vast monoculture was involved.” 

as newman sees it, big agriculture is not inherently antithetical to sustainability. while the environmental and social problems surrounding the current agricultural system are numerous, it is also necessary to recognize the ways in which it has been successful in bringing food to people. improving food systems requires coupling the best that agribusiness has to offer with people, organizations, and businesses that center people and environment over profit. to reform food, sustainable farming needs to be the new “big ag.”

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about this series: the planet forward-fao summer storytelling fellows work was sponsored by the north america office of the food and agriculture organization of the united nations (fao), and the fellows were mentored by lisa palmer, gw’s national geographic professor of science communication and author of “hot, hungry planet.”

“i thought, you know, what in the world is this guy doing?” said brown, who owns a corn, soybean, hay, and beef cattle farm with his wife, jennifer, in highland county, ohio.

he couldn’t figure out what was growing — it was too tall and lanky for wheat — so he made a point of meeting his neighbor that summer. turns out, he had been tending to his field of cereal rye, a popular cover crop, a type of crop grown usually in off-seasons to improve soil health and mitigate erosion.

the pair got to talking about soil health and erosion, and soon brown set aside one of his bean fields for a cereal rye crop of his own.

interest in sustainable farming practices is building, and while independent and governmental conservation organizations can be good resources for promoting ecological practices, farmers say that swapping information peer-to-peer works best.

“i think the number one way this movement is growing, just like it grew with me, is from another farmer,” said brown, a 40-year-old first-generation farmer.

it’s been 10 years since he spied his neighbor drilling in the winter chill. today, he keeps 90% of his roughly 1,300 acres covered year-round.

wide lens mobile phones are important information-sharing tools for rural farmers around the globe, but many lack access to data and internet service. across africa, less than 40% of farming households have internet access, according to a 2020 study published in nature sustainability.

the missing ingredient

farmer interest in sustainability practices has grown, especially in soil health, said taylor dill, agriculture and natural resources educator for ohio state university’s darke county extension program.

it’s a national trend. the number of organic farms increased 39% from 2012 to 2017, according to the latest united states department of agriculture census, while the average farm put in place no-till practices on 374 acres of land, 29 more acres than in 2012. for cover crops, that average acreage increased from 77 to 100.

dill said that younger farmers — “the next generation that will inherit the land” — show a particular interest. with farmers of any age, “one of the most effective ways that we can teach farmers is being able to have another farmer speak to another farmer about an experience. they’re going to listen to their peers,” she said. 

greg mcglinch owns and operates down home farms in darke county. “word of mouth still means a lot in rural america,” he said.

wide lens farmers use mobile phones to grow their businesses, but the cost of owning a phone can set them back. low-income farmers in asia spend anywhere from 11 to 24% of their income on mobile services, according to a 2009 study. 

in that vein, brown started the “ohio soil health and cover crops” facebook group, which has racked up over 1,600 followers as of august 30, 2021. the feed includes everything from no-till instructional videos to requests for advice on best ratios for soil additives.

brown had a bad slug problem this year, but saw that the unwelcome pests weren’t showing up on his cover crop fields. he threw that idea out for the community to mull over. the page is there for farmers to crowd-source, said brown — “to bounce ideas off of one another, or solutions.”

farmers talk to each other. but that point is often missed on the national scale, dill said. much of the time, farmers are “overlooked,” she says, while the public, clamoring for sustainability measures, “want to go straight to having a policy rather than having a conversation first.”

that’s wonky, said dill, since “all of those decisions directly affect producers.”

science in the field

greg mcglinch’s farm is a checkerboard of harvestable crops, conservation practices and experimentation. on a clear june day, the 41-year-old farmer pointed out all the pieces from behind the wheel of a trundling four-wheeler.

there’s the strip of flowering plants between the forest grove, and a harvest field that acts as a habitat buffer. a low, concrete mass buried at one end of the creek is a head wall that keeps rainwater from ripping up the waterway’s banks. there’s the field of perennial wheatgrass that mcglinch said he didn’t quite know what to do with yet, except to “start playing and learning” how he could sell the hardy crop.

“it’s a real complex career,” he said, between deft sips of coffee from a sloshing mug as the four-wheeler tooled down a path toward his vegetable plot. mcglinch rotates the garden every year from one side to another, and moves the mobile chicken coop he built to the unoccupied side for a season of good fertilizer.

learning these techniques — “it’s kind of hard knocks,” he said. “i do a lot of reading and researching and talking with friends and (seeing) what other farmers are doing.”

sustainable farming practices aren’t just handed down from a lab to farmers, dill said. farmers often offer their own ideas; researchers try the ideas out on a farmer’s fields or at a small plot at a university, which publishes the results in peer-reviewed journals and in fact-sheets that farmers and extension educators use in field trips to disperse the information. and money is always part of the equation.

“when we’re talking with farmers, we’re talking about how we can be more sustainable,” dill said, “but also we need to be able to make sure they’re still productive.”

it’s not a simple yes or no as to whether sustainability practices cut costs, brown said. there are a lot of factors that make up the cost and profit of any one plot or field. he said he sees returns on expenses for seeding and tending cover crops in the reduced use of fertilizers and nutrient applications.

it’s a lot of looking forward, brown said. if his soil is healthy, for example, it will hold more water, making his crops less vulnerable in dry years.

“when i sit down and look at my budgets,’ he said, “i don’t want this to be an extra expense.” 

mcglinch also knows that balance well. “you’ve got to make a profit, or you can’t keep going,” he said. “at the same time, you’ve got to find a good balance, because we want to keep the land in the best shape.”

the farming industry hasn’t reached equilibrium yet, he said, but it can.

“we do need large-scale agriculture because we have a population to feed. it’s just a matter of how do we balance all that, too. i think there’s a way, it’s just, we’ve got to learn.”

it’s not all up to farmers, though. “at the end it’s going to come down to consumer decisions,” mcglinch said. “it’s the buying power. it’s what the consumer wants.”

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about this series: the planet forward-fao summer storytelling fellows work was sponsored by the north america office of the food and agriculture organization of the united nations (fao), and the fellows were mentored by lisa palmer, gw’s national geographic professor of science communication and author of “hot, hungry planet.”

although farmer steve stierwalt grows crops in the tiny town of sadorus, illinois — with a population of barely 350 — the agricultural practices he employs have environmental implications that stretch from midwestern cornfields to central american seas. 

fertilizer-polluted waterways in champaign county, where stierwalt farms, converge into the mississippi river, emptying toxins into the gulf of mexico — where a 2,000-square-mile, pollutant-induced hypoxic zone makes aquatic life nearly impossible.   

one cause of deoxygenated water in the gulf? water that falls from the sky. 

“it’s pretty amazing the amount of energy each single raindrop has,” stierwalt said. “when it hits bare soil, it’s like a miniature explosion. it displaces soil particles. anytime that soil gets into surface water, it’s carrying nutrients with it. the nutrients, as we know, contribute to the hypoxic zone.” 

to reduce soil erosion that illinois rivers carry to the gulf, stierwalt has decreased fertilizer use and adopted conservation practices, like nutrient management tools that measure cost-effective and environmentally conscious amounts of nitrogen to apply to corn. 

sustainable agriculture practices — like rotating crops, planting cover crops, and eliminating tillage — allow stierwalt to adapt to heavy rainfall, a form of extreme weather intensifying in illinois. indeed, science confirms stierwalt’s observations: a major assessment released by the nature conservancy in april outlines how climate change will escalate periods of extreme heat, increased precipitation, and more intense storms in illinois. 

on farms, for instance, heavy rain and conventional tillage — ploughing, harrowing, and removing plant residue to prepare seedbeds — can trigger a chain reaction of climatic damage, contributing to soil erosion, and phosphate- and nitrate-infested run-off, resulting in pollution of the gulf. these processes are already transforming illinois, and no domain — from urban infrastructure to human health to plant biodiversity — will remain unaffected. 

the report drew on the expertise of 45 researchers, scientists, climatologists, and policy-makers in illinois, all of whom contributed to its stark findings.  

“climate change can seem like an overall threat that we don’t have any ability to change,” said michelle carr, illinois state director at the nature conservancy. “when we look at state-specific data, and how it affects different industries that are prominent in our state, it allows those players to do more, because they’re seeing the specificity to their own geography.”  

45 authors, one report

co-led by climatologist donald wuebbles, former illinois state climatologist james angel, climate change project manager at the nature conservancy karen petersen and director of conservation science at the nature conservancy maria lemke, the 197-page report contains contributions from 45 specialists and covers the impacts of climate change on illinois hydrology, agriculture, public health, and ecosystems. the statistics alone illustrate the projected scope of environmental transformation.

accompanied by longer growing seasons and less severe extreme cold, temperatures will likely warm by 4 to 9 degrees f under a lower scenario and 8 to 14 degrees f under a higher scenario by the end of the 21st century. longer growing seasons may sound like a bonus — but extremely long seasons can devastate, limiting crop diversity, encouraging invasive plant growth and straining water supplies. 

the report also projects more rainy days and fewer snowy days by the century’s end, trends on the heels of a 5% to 20% increase in mean precipitation over the past 120 years. according to projections, severe weather will contribute to short-term droughts, as well as intense rain and flooding. far from functioning as a minor inconvenience, flooding can delay planting, wash away fields of seedlings and destroy exposed crops. 

illinois residents can expect extreme heat by the century’s close, too. in southern illinois, for instance, scientists project the annual hottest 5-day maximum temperature to increase from 96 degrees to 100-107 degrees f under a lower scenario and 102 to 114 degrees f under a higher scenario.

“you see reports about fires in california or sea level rise in florida, and you think it’s more of a coastal problem,” petersen said. “we hope this report will help make some of those future impacts tangible, and for people to realize that climate change will have serious impacts in illinois, and we can still do something about it.”

wuebbles said land use and greenhouse gas emissions have remained the most significant contributors to climate change since the mid-1900s. heavy emissions, he added, are unsustainable: the report projects that continued fossil fuel use will produce the most dramatic transformations, while a switch to renewable energy will net less extreme changes. a third scenario — which wuebbles called “negative emissions” — will require scientists to harness technology to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. 

regardless of the scenario, human activity will drive transformations in northern, central, and southern illinois, said wuebbles, a university of illinois at urbana-champaign professor who has contributed to several united nations intergovernmental panel on climate change reports.

“illinois’ climate is expected to continue to change over the century, with significant impacts on urban and rural communities and sectors,” he said.

from farming to flooding 

consistent with the report’s predictions, stierwalt has observed — and adapted to — extreme weather events. to protect soil, waterways, and farmland, stierwalt practices no-till, strip-till, and cover crop farming — practices that sequester carbon in his soil while reducing nutrient pollution and soil erosion. 

currently the president of the association of illinois soil and water conservation districts, stierwalt also serves on the steering committee for s.t.a.r., a nationwide program dedicated to “saving tomorrow’s agriculture resources” by helping farmers adopt conservation-based practices. 

“healthy soils are more armored against these extreme weather events,” stierwalt said. “(without adapting), the danger is losing this asset that we can’t afford to lose. we lose that soil for future generations.”  

in conventional tillage, farmers use an implement to turn over soil, passing over the field multiple times and leaving barren soil behind. in no-till farming, farmers use planters or drills to cut a v-slot in the remains of previous crops, planting seeds within. benefits of no-till include increased infiltration and soil fertility, and decreased labor costs and soil erosion. 

adopting sustainable agricultural practices, like no-till and drought-resistant crops, will determine the extent to which “future generations” of farmers face smaller crop yields, increased livestock illnesses, and increased crop diseases. bill miller, a northwestern university engineering professor who contributed to the report, said “natural climate solutions” present promising ways to mitigate extreme weather. cover crops, for instance, prevent soil erosion while strengthening soil’s biological properties. “it can help build up the richness of the soil,” miller said. 

farming, though, is far from the only affected sector. changing precipitation patterns are causing flooding events in the majority of illinois’ gaged rivers and streams, exacerbating stress on urban drainage systems and increasing the incidence of combined sewer outflows. northwestern engineering professor aaron packman, who also serves as director of northwestern’s center for water research, worked on the report’s hydrology team. 

packman said chicago’s low-lying inland areas, particularly neighborhoods on the south and southwest side, are especially flood-prone. there, stormwater damage and inadequate infrastructure deplete property values, and chronic flooding carries waterborne illnesses. across the city, extreme weather exacerbates geographical inequalities.  

“the loop has more than a hundred years of engineering to keep everything from flooding,” packman said. “the lower-lying areas were settled later because they’re naturally more flood-prone, and they’re not as well protected by that centralized infrastructure.” 

the metropolitan water reclamation district of greater chicago treats wastewater and provides stormwater management for 5.25 million people in cook county, as well as a commercial and industrial equivalent of 4.5 million people. to mitigate the impacts of urban flooding and stormwater damage, mwrd has crafted stormwater management regulations for new developments, partnered with communities to better manage water and supported local green infrastructure projects. 

still, “policies, planning, tunnels and reservoirs cannot eliminate flooding alone,” mwrd public affairs staffer patrick thomas said. the report presents similar conclusions: packman said a combination of sustainable water management in agricultural sectors, flood-control measures in municipalities, state-wide policies and consistent data collection might mitigate the harm climate change poses to illinois’ water resources. 

no turning back 

prominent report contributors, including wuebbles, participated in a may 17 panel to discuss the report’s results. during the panel, elena grossman, the program manager of illinois’ building resilience against climate effects program, reminded audiences that projected extreme weather will significantly harm our physical and mental health. 

contaminated drinking water, tick- and mosquito-borne diseases and respiratory illnesses will all increase amid intensifying weather — so, too, will psychological and financial challenges.  

in the case of flooding, “there’s both the trauma of watching your home being flooded, of losing personal items, and then the financial stress of having to rebuild it or fix it,” grossman said. 

at its core, she added, the report is “about humans.” 

in the month since the report’s release, miller said authors have begun to discuss writing analyses that specifically address mitigation measures. as climate change continues to create extreme weather conditions in illinois, reimagining the state’s infrastructure, policies and economic practices becomes increasingly urgent, packman added. 

“climate change is a long-term process,” packman said. “but in the last four years, we’ve seen unprecedented things, things that historically never happened. so it’s not something far off in the future. it’s something happening now.”

***

q&a: farmer joe rothermel talks soil health, sustainability 

joe rothermel is a farmer who grew up in broadlands, illinois. he farms corn and soybeans on 1,000-acres in champaign county. in 1992, his father, also a farmer, switched from conventional tillage to conservation-driven no-till farming. 

conventional tillage requires farmers use an implement to turn over soil, leaving barren soil behind. in no-till farming, farmers use planters or drills to cut a v-slot in the remains of previous crops, planting seeds within. rothermel adopted no-till in 1995, and began supplementing this practice with cover crops in 2010. 

q: what are some of the advantages of farming with no-till and cover crops like alfalfa, rye, and clovers? 

a: one of the reasons we plant cover crops is to help increase our soil health. one of the things you’ll notice is soil structure is improved. the ground is firmer. you can drive on it sooner. we have a lot of heavy equipment nowadays, and in a conventional program it’s easy to compact the soil. conservation practices lend themselves to improving soil structure and holding up equipment so we don’t have as much compaction. 

one of the main reasons to plant cover crops or to no-till is to reduce soil erosion. through tillage, we’ve already lost half the organic matter that was originally in the prairie. other potential benefits are nutrient recycling. the more biological activity we have, the more nutrient recycling. the idea is to use less synthetic fertilizer, less inputs. if we can maintain the same output with reduced inputs, that’s more efficient for the farmer. 

and then the big thing is carbon sequestration. by not tilling the soil and using cover crops, through photosynthesis that will put carbon into the soil. hopefully someday, that’ll be a source of revenue for farmers to help offset some of the costs of these conservation practices.

q: how have extreme weather events impacted soil erosion and health?

a: it seems to rain a lot. we used to get a half inch [in a single rainfall]. now, if we’re unlucky, we can get a two- or three-inch rain in a couple hours. i think we’ve cut down on some erosion; we still get some gullies. but compared to some of the other fields in the area, it’s significantly less. some of the other conventionally tilled fields will have a cascade of soil coming off the field into the ditch. we don’t have that anymore. 

it’s not perfect — but it does reduce erosion, especially if you have covers growing. we want the water to go down into the ground instead of running off, because when it runs off it takes topsoil with it. and then it takes nutrients with it. and then we have the hypoxia issue in the gulf of mexico. and so that’s another issue. another reason to reduce tillage and grow covers.

q: what percentage of illinois farmers are practicing conservation agriculture? 

a: in illinois, less than 6% of farmers are growing cover crops, so there’s a long way to go. 

farmers are very independent. older populations don’t like change. there’s peer pressure. there’s a risk of failure. there’s a whole host of reasons, but i’d say the number one is economics. 

q: how can conservation farming become more economically viable? 

a: conservation is not free. initially, somebody’s got to pay for it, and i’m not sure it should all be on the farmer. if we would get paid for carbon sequestration that would certainly help.

but until then, there’s cost share programs from places like the (u.s. department of agriculture) and (natural resources conservation service). there’s several other places that will offer cost share. a lot of the big food companies now are getting on board, because they want to be able to tell their customers that their food supply is grown sustainably, so they’re offering some incentives to farmers. 

so there are some sources of revenue, but it’s not a huge amount of money. over the long run, i think this way of farming will eventually be self-sufficient. in other words, the benefits will outweigh the costs, and there won’t be a cost to it. hopefully, it will become the mainstream way of farming.

time since the beginning of this global pandemic can be measured by the size of the zucchini plant outside audrey’s bedroom window. on nearly day one of quarantine, she knelt beside a garden bed and planted a seed, not much bigger than the size of a pencil eraser, into the ground. now, four months later, that seed has blossomed into a plant that is 3 feet wide, blooming with yellow flowers and covered with vividly green, dinner plate sized leaves. the plant has stretched over the patch of dirt and its fruit is starting to make itself known.

like us, covid-19 may have forced you into a new relationship with food. newfound time in quarantine may have brought you closer to your food as you also planted seeds and watched them sprout, kneaded your hands into bread dough, or experimented with new recipes.

however, the same pandemic may have caused you to feel increasingly distanced from food sources, as changing incomes led to a scramble to figure out how to feed your family or health conditions caused anxieties to rise about how to secure food supplies in safe ways. this pandemic may have brought you closer to your food, further from your food, or a mix of both. but regardless, food has been part of your covid-19 experience.

pandemic or not, the food that ends up on your plate has always traveled a complicated, exploitative, and convoluted path to get there. in fact, when one begins to peel back the layers on our food system, one might even realize that it was built to keep some of us very full while the rest starve.

you might begin to think about the inhumane conditions, minimal pay, and backbreaking labor migrant workers endure to harvest our food. you may think of the unequal distribution of grocery stores allowing communities with abundant resources easy access to healthy foods, while lower-income communities have very few options. you may think of the thousands of miles some of our produce travels, year-round, to make it to your store, and the high amount of carbon fuel it takes to make it there.

you may think about the struggle for native communities to have sovereignty over and access to the plants that serve as binding ropes to culture, as colonial forces have built a “single species” diet and wiped out many native species. you may think about how, after generations of black bodies working the land and inventing and passing down traditions of sustainable farming, now only 0.5% of american farmland is owned by black people, and relationships to the land has been severed.

you may think of a multitude of other reasons.

when you sprinkle in a virus as widespread and dangerous as covid-19 to a food system that is already exploitative, a perfect recipe of chaos is created that disproportionately affects the food security of people of color.

in the united states, the initial stages of the pandemic were marked by the closures of offices, restaurants, and schools. grocery store workers and farm workers were recognized as essential workers to continue the movement of food supply chains. as we were able to keep eating, these workers lacked resources and options to protect themselves, leading to higher infection rates and deadly ramifications as seen in the farmworker community of immokalee, florida. these same food service and agricultural industries largely employ people of color, adding a racial component to this unequal virus exposure.

it was quickly realized that the correlation may further show that food service industry workers may have a harder time maintaining food security in the pandemic. if you can’t do your job due to illness or unexpected lay-off, you won’t be able to afford food to feed your own family. in addition, job loss has not been equal across industries. for example, employment in technology or the oil and gas sectors can much more easily transition to virtual employment, while food industry and hospitality workers are left without work and without salaries. this leaves an entire class of people without income. these industries also provide less ability to save for emergencies such as this, creating even greater food insecurity during this crisis.

in washington, d.c., we have seen local government, nonprofits, restaurants, and community members get creative about responses to food insecurity that has been exacerbated by the virus. for example, the local government has worked as a bridge to connect restaurants’ food supply with nonprofits, so food can be redistributed. restaurants have changed their modes of production, to keep people employed but making products more needed in this time, like hand sanitizer, or selling raw materials in a csa model to provide families with locally sourced groceries.

local nonprofits in the district, like d.c. central kitchen, have taken the lead in providing breakfast and lunch daily to school children and their families. snap benefits have expanded to some delivery models so that high risk individuals do not have to leave their homes to purchase food. and mutual aid groups have allowed neighbors to share food with each other. while these are needed immediate reactions to big problems within our food system, these solutions act much like spraying a squirt gun on a burning building, as they do nothing to address the deep-seated inequalities within our food system.

food banks, nonprofits, and mutual aid systems are not intended to be permanent solutions. they are meant to support people as they work to gain independent access to food. the fact that communities heavily relied on them even before the pandemic points to a fundamentally broken food system wherein people are not able to afford the most basic things necessary for survival. 

as urban gardeners managing a community garden in d.c., it is clear that long-term solutions only come when communities and individuals begin to pull closer and gain autonomy over their sources of food. when communities or individuals invest in growing their own food, they are able to access and eat healthy, cost-efficient, ethical, and sustainable produce. further, a sense of community is fostered, where neighbors begin to take care of neighbors, new skills are learned, cultural crops can reemerge, and a sense of economic independence can even appear.

likewise, policy change is a crucial part of supporting a sustainable and equitable food system. reimagining policies — that could include subsidies for small farmers, similar to those large farming corporations enjoy, or reclaiming unused space for community agriculture — are good places to start. these policies, combined with community members willing to invest time into creating small local spaces for agriculture, can begin to create new relationships with our food.

perhaps, now, with a global pandemic exposing many of the gaps in our food system, people might have the time to learn, imagine, and create community-based food systems that truly serve all people.

soon, that zucchini growing outside the bedroom window will be harvested. while the vegetable fills us up, we will recognize that in the same time it took to grow that produce from seed, covid-19 has caused compounding problems and exposed some of the glaring inequalities of our food system. we will acknowledge that it is the result of a system that is built to exploit and disproportionally causes harm on communities of color. we will eat and we will be reminded to draw closer to our food and to dig into the messy, intersectional work of pursuing a healthier food system so that we can grow a more beautiful, sustainable world for all people.

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about the authors: audrey friedline and liz szafranski are managers of the grow community garden and students at george washington university. audrey is a rising senior studying international affairs and sustainability and liz is a rising sophomore studying biology and geography. they both love plants and care about food justice issues.