Sustainable Agriculture & Food Policy

Once an ordinary stretch of land, a new greenhouse, raised beds and an adjacent field tucked away behind brick buildings at the University of Texas-Pan American became officially organic last week. Students, faculty, staff and other supporters of the Subtropical Organic Agriculture Research program, or SOAR, gathered in the afternoon heat to tour the garden used for student experiments intended to advance organic farming.

The new agriculture: From food farms to solar farms Across the U.S., government agencies and energy developers are looking at agricultural land to develop renewable energy resources like wind and solar. Researchers will examine the policy shift from protecting farmland at all costs to promoting renewable energy over other uses. They will begin with a case study from California, which favors renewable energy development instead of agriculture, and make policy recommendations that could be applied to renewable energy development in Western New York.

Hospitals and other large institutional buyers represent a major marketing opportunity for good food entrepreneurs like farms and ranches. But how can the two ends of the food chain best connect? GoodFoodWeb.com guest author and Switzer Fellow Kendra Klein cites one success story happening in Northern California. Read the article

That’s right. Neither wild fish nor farmed fish can be certified organic because no organic standards exist in the U.S. to regulate them. But that may be about to change—for the worse. Why? The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is currently proceeding with the development of organic aquaculture regulations that could allow wild fish and ocean-based fish farms to be certified organic. Read a Switzer Fellow Thought Leadership piece by 1994 Fellow Lisa Bunin of the Center for Food Safety.

Ever since the brown marmorated stink bug (Halyomorpha halys) was first discovered in Allentown, Pennsylvania in the late 1990s, it has spread to more than 40 states and parts of Canada. It has devastated orchards, crops, and fields, and has become a terrible nuisance in gardens, backyards, and homes. It has an appetite for as many as 300 different plants, and it’s been blamed for causing an estimated $37 million in losses in the Mid-Atlantic region for apples alone.

New research from Stanford scientists shows that farmers in Europe will see crop yields affected as global temperatures rise, but that adaptation can help slow the decline for some crops.

A dairy farmer for over 40 years, Richard Beal became one of the state’s first organic dairy farmers 17 years ago. However, producing milk—even organic milk—as a commodity that is sold with a small profit margin to a processor has taken a serious financial toll. Now he struggles with how to pass the farm onto his son, Adam, without putting either of them into crushing debt or forcing them to sell land to developers. His daughter, Amanda, is a food systems consultant and married to a budding cheese-maker who offers a possible new way forward.

Kendra Klein has co-authored a report on redefining healthy food in the health care for Health Care Without Harm. Healthy food cannot be defined by nutritional quality alone. It is the end result of a food system that conserves and renews natural resources, advances social justice and animal welfare, builds community wealth, and fulfills the food and nutrition needs of all eaters now and into the future.