Hey there,
Another Thursday, another roundup! I have (hopefully) made up for last week’s heat stroke by sending you something a little less short, but just as sweet.
Welcome back to Before the Cutting Board, your weekly roundup of food + supply chain hot topics to help keep you up to speed on what’s going down with your food. If you’re new to Before The Cutting Board, here’s how it works: The “This Week” section focuses on news and current events. Occasionally, I’ll include a “Food Fights” section that explores some of the interesting debates flying around the food news world.
Let’s dig in.
-This Week-
Corn-y Legislation
Much of the US news cycle this week has centered around President Biden signing the Inflation Reduction Act. The legislation includes a historic $360 billion worth of investments aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Among those investments is the expansion of a tax credit program for industrial carbon capture and storage projects.
Remember the story I shared a few weeks ago about the carbon pipeline debate garnering pushback from a broad coalition in Iowa? As Reuters and The American Prospect pointed out this week, the ethanol industry and their proposed carbon pipeline projects are poised to win big from the carbon capture tax credits. However, the efficacy of carbon pipelines, and the potential harms they may cause, is still being debated. And it could create a green-washed pathway for the expansion of ethanol production, the environmental determinants of which have been well documented.
More on the Inflation Reduction Act + Farmers
This piece from Cal Matters and this one from The Arizona Republic covering how this week’s water conservation mandates will affect communities relying on the Colorado River. Federal water cuts were passed down on Tuesday when the seven Colorado River states failed to negotiate an agreement on cuts by the deadline. The federally mandated cuts require Arizona, Nevada, and Mexico to make the biggest reductions, while California managed to avoid any sacrifice for the time being.
This KCRW “Press Play” podcast with Tom Philpott as guest covers the Inflation Reduction Act’s investments into incentivizing farmers to scale back water use in Colorado River states.
In CBS this week: Some Black farmers, including the President of the National Black Farmers Association, are concerned about how the language used to describe farmer debt relief funding in the Inflation Reduction Act will disproportionately affect Black farmers. The concern stems not only from a history of discrimination from the USDA, but also continued issues with loan access during the pandemic.
A little shameless self-promotion
I had two pieces come out this week: a profile of Chef Nina Compton in Life & Thyme and a Civil Eats report on food rescue nonprofit Food Forward reaching a milestone of 250 million pounds - or 1 billion servings - of fresh produce delivered to food insecure communities.
That’s it for this week. If you enjoyed reading this, please forward to a friend. Even if you didn’t enjoy reading it, still tell your friends - misery loves company :)