Hey there,
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-
It’s corn! (yet again)
In case you’ve been offline lately, a video of a very adorable child professing his love for corn went viral earlier in August and someone turned it into a song. As is now typical, a lot of marketing teams have responded with various ‘IT’S CORN’ memes. Interestingly, NASA jumped on that train with this tweet showing how clearly the corn belt could be seen from space in 2020. The joke is cute (I guess), but the visualization of how intense corn mono-cropping has gotten is pretty mind-blowing.
For the record, the destructive impacts of mono-cropping are well-documented - as indicated by recent calls from the IPCC to shift away from monoculture farming systems and the current push toward regenerative agriculture. ICYMI, a few weeks ago I rounded up articles about how the Inflation Reduction Act is further bolstering the ethanol industry as it positions itself behind carbon pipelines. 40% of US corn goes to ethanol production.
Two farmers paving a path toward food sovereignty
Check out this High Country News piece that covers the journey to food sovereignty in communities on Taos Pueblo and Navajo Nation across Northern New Mexico. The story follows two farmers and seedkeepers, diving into the significance these efforts hold not just in the present for their community, but also for future generations.
The largest privately-owned company in the US
This video from More Perfect Union is provides a telling and necessary timeline to the Cargill family’s rise to agribusiness prominence. Cargill is not only the top earner among meat industry monopolies (and other big ag value chains like cocoa and palm oil), but it’s also the largest privately-owned company in the US. Interesting context to Cargill’s recent big poultry merger with Sanderson Farms that goes unmentioned in the video: both Cargill and Sanderson were sued by the DOJ for a wage-suppression scheme which resulted in a $84.8 million settlement.
Other headlines
Earlier in the summer, the Arizona Republic reported that Arizona is leasing land to Saudi Arabian company Fondomonte so that it can grow water-intensive alfalfa to feed dairy cows back in Saudi Arabia. With little to no aquifers to pull water from in-country, growing alfalfa in Arizona allows Fondomonte unfettered, and apparently very cheap, water access. This week, amid some major state elections, candidates have been calling for investigations into and cancellations of the leases.
Last week, the USDA announced a $300 million investment into a new initiative to support farmers making the typically-costly transition into organic farming.
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 :)