AI breakthrough could revolutionize how we research dinosaur fossils

by Frontiers

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

One of the most promising applications of artificial intelligence technologies is the identification of tumors from high-resolution medical imagery. Can the same techniques be used to help paleontologists more quickly analyze similar scans of dinosaur fossils? Researchers reported some of the early answers—and remaining challenges—in a new paper published in Frontiers in Earth Science.

Much of what scientists can glean from the fossil record of dinosaurs relies on the morphology of the preserved remains of the animals. To study the interior structure of a specimen generally requires cutting thin sections, effectively destroying the sample in the process. That changed with the introduction of high-resolution scanning technologies like X-ray computed tomography (CT), which basically reconstructs internal structures in three dimensions using radiation and digital software.

While the use of CT technology helps preserve specimens and generate very useful data, the images themselves present their own challenges. The scans differentiate various materials—for example, fossilized bones versus the rock encasing it—based on the absorption of X-ray radiation. Similar densities can make it extremely difficult to determine where one object begins and another ends. That means researchers have to rely on manual segmentation, a labor-intensive process for classifying similar sections of an image.

Putting AI to the test

AI can do image segmentation in minutes, compared to days or even weeks for a paleontologist. The question is whether a computer can classify sections voxel by voxel on par with a trained professional. Researchers attempted to find out using different types of deep neural networks, a type of AI model that mimics the human brain.

The team trained and tested the AI systems using more than 10,000 CT scans of three well-preserved embryonic skulls from Protoceratops, a smaller relative to the more familiar genus Triceratops. The fossils had been recovered in the 1990s from the Gobi Desert in Mongolia.

While the models did not perform quite as well as a human, the accuracy and processing speed showed that deep neural networks can significantly reduce the time to differentiate fossils from rock matrices.

Need for bigger data, better algorithms

Besides faster imaging processing, using AI in paleontology can help establish research standards, according to Congyu Yu, lead author of the study and a Ph.D. student at the Richard Gilder Graduate School at the American Museum of Natural History. Dr. Mark A. Norell, a co-author on the paper also at AMNH, is well-known for his work investigating the evolutionary links between dinosaurs and birds.

"Different researchers may have different interpretations on the same structure, which lead to various reconstructions of the evolutionary history," Yu explained. "In some cases, CT images may be deliberately reconstructed to follow a given idea. Using AI segmentation can detect those frauds without increasing the cost too much."

However, there is more work to do before that happens. Even the best model from the Protoceratops test struggled to perform well on other dinosaur fossils from the same rock strata and region.

"Generalization is always a problem for AI-based tasks," Yu noted, adding that researchers are continuing to train and test deep learning models on CT images from more fossil taxa and various preservation environments from previous digs in Mongolia.

"We are confident that a segmentation model for fossils from the Gobi Desert is not far away, but a more generalized model needs not only more training dataset but innovations in algorithms," he said. "I believe deep learning can eventually process imagery better than us, and there have already been various examples in deep learning performance exceeding humans, including Go playing and protein 3D-structure prediction."A classical machine learning technique for easier segmentation of mummified remains

More information: Congyu Yu et al, CT Segmentation of Dinosaur Fossils by Deep Learning, Frontiers in Earth Science (2022). DOI: 10.3389/feart.2021.805271, www.frontiersin.org/articles/1 … art.2021.805271/full

Provided by Frontiers 

Mapping Methane Emissions from Fossil Fuel Exploitation

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The amount of methane in Earth’s atmosphere has reached record levels in recent years. One of the major sources of emissions is the extraction, storage, and transportation of oil, natural gas, and coal, which results in the release of about 97 million metric tons of methane gas each year, according to the United Nations (U.N.). In a recent research project, scientists mapped where those emissions are coming from—not just by nations, but within them.

Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, trapping about 35 times more heat than carbon dioxide. The United States aims to reduce methane emissions 30 percent from 2020 levels by 2030, and other nations are making similar pledges.

Individual countries report their methane emissions by sector to the U.N. in accordance with the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Most countries estimate their methane emissions using records of how much of each fossil fuel they produced each year, multiplied by an emissions factor provided by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). And most governments only provide one number for emissions for each sector (oil, coal, gas) across the entire country.

Funded by NASA’s Carbon Monitoring System, scientists recently built a new series of maps detailing the geography of methane emissions from fossil fuel production. Using publicly available data reported in 2016, the research team plotted fuel exploitation emissions—or “fugitive emissions” as the UNFCCC calls them—that arise before the fuels are ever consumed. The maps delineate where these emissions occur based on the locations of coal mines, oil and gas wells, pipelines, refineries, and fuel storage and transportation infrastructure. The maps were recently published at NASA’s Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC). (Note that 2016 was the most recent year with complete UN emissions data available at the time of this study.)

“It is widely known that the self-reported country estimates are not the highest quality,” said Tia Scarpelli, leader of the effort and a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Edinburgh. “Our maps provide researchers with a spatial representation of methane emissions so that they can be compared with observations of methane concentrations from satellites.” Such maps are critical for monitoring changes in greenhouse gas emissions because the data tell scientists where to look and where to expect the most emissions.

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The maps indicate that the largest sources of oil-related emissions are found in Russia; the U.S. leads natural gas emissions; and coal emissions are highest in China. For oil and gas, the emissions are distributed across wells, flares, pipelines, refineries, and storage facilities. For coal, emissions are mapped to where it is mined.

Dark lines stand out on the map of natural gas emissions: these indicate the locations of pipelines. “Most of the emissions are not diffuse along the pipelines,” said Scarpelli, who led the research as a graduate student at Harvard University. “They are mostly coming from compressor stations that are present every hundred miles or so along pipelines to compress gas and keep it moving.” In Canada, dots in a line show locations of compressor stations. But for Russia, Scarpelli and colleagues did not have reports on the locations of the compressor stations or the pipelines. They had to digitize a paper map from the Harvard University library to map pipelines in Russia, and then distributed the methane emissions based on pipeline locations.

When comparing the new inventory to methane observations from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Greenhouse gases Observing Satellite (GOSAT) and the European Space Agency’s Tropospheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) on Sentinel-5, Scarpelli’s colleagues at Harvard found that Canada and the U.S. tended to underestimate methane emissions from fossil fuels. But for coal in China and oil and gas in Russia, the inventory overestimated emissions. This could be because of uncertainties related to a lack of in situ observations and of accurate infrastructure data.

NASA Earth Observatory images by Joshua Stevens, using data from the Global Inventory of Methane Emissions from Fuel Exploitation. Story by Emily Cassidy, NASA Earth Science Data Systems Program.

Scientists track the sources of 97 million metric tons of methane emissions.

Image of the Day for January 25, 2022Instrument:MapAppears in this Collection:Applied Sciences

Image of the Day Atmosphere Human Presence Remote Sensing


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Jan 24, 2022

Jan 26, 2022

References & Resources
Lu, X., et al. (2021) Global methane budget and trend, 2010–2017: complementarity of inverse analyses using in situ (GLOBALVIEWplus CH4 ObsPack) and satellite (GOSAT) observations. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 21, 4637–4657.
NASA Earth Observatory (2021, September 9) Mapping Methane Emissions in California.
NASA Earth Observatory (2020, July 15) Methane Emissions Continue to Rise.
NASA Earth Observatory (2016, March 8) Methane Matters.
Qu, Z., et al. (2021) Global distribution of methane emissions: a comparative inverse analysis of observations from the TROPOMI and GOSAT satellite instruments. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 21 (18), 14159–14175.
Scarpelli, T.R., et al. (2020) A global gridded (0.1° x 0.1°) inventory of methane emissions from oil, gas, and coal exploitation based on national reports to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Earth System Science Data, 12 (1), 563–575.
Scarpelli, T.R. et al. (2021) Global Inventory of Methane Emissions from Fuel Exploitation. Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC).
Zhang, Y., et al. (2021) Attribution of the accelerating increase in atmospheric methane during 2010–2018 by inverse analysis of GOSAT observations. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 21, 3643–3666.

Inside the smuggling ring that left a family to freeze to death on a perilous walk across Canada's border

By accounts from India, the father worked as a teacher, owned farmland, and the family left their village just days before being consumed by cold

Author of the article: Adrian Humphreys
Publishing date:Jan 26, 2022 • 

The Patel family, who died trying to walk into the U.S. from Canada. 

PHOTO BY @HIRSHAH1/TWITTER

The family of four that froze to death while trying to secretly walk into the United States from Manitoba during a blizzard were already waiting at the drop-off point in Canada when other Indian citizens arrived for the night hike across the border.

The father and mother were the oldest by a decade of the 11 migrants who gathered near Emerson, Man., on Jan. 19, for the organized illegal crossing. Their children were the youngest by far.

Most of the group were issued identical cold weather clothing by unknown smugglers: new winter coats with fur-trimmed hoods, gloves, ski masks and insulated rubber boots, all of it black.

The conditions were frightful, even for those accustomed to a prairie blizzard. The temperature hovered around -35C with the blowing snow and bleak darkness of a featureless remote route, as the group headed toward the border, about 9:30 at night.

While seven made it to safety, snatched from the cold by U.S. Border Patrol officers the next day, after more than 11 hours of walking, the family of four, including a toddler and an older child, didn’t even make it out of Canada.

The family was apparently not impoverished, as is the common perception of smuggled migrants, nor were they failed immigrants who lost a battle to stay in Canada, as is the perception of some migration experts.

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Man charged in human smuggling plot in which family died to be released from jail

They walked for hours in the frozen prairie darkness, and four didn't make it

By accounts from India, they were from a large and supportive family with some assets, the father working as a teacher and owning farmland, and left their village just days before being consumed by the cold.

Indian media have identified the victims as Jagdish Patel, 35, his wife, Vaishali, 33, their daughter Vihanga, 12, and son Dharmik, 3. The family left Dingucha, a village of 3,000 people in the state of Gujarat.

The information, in multiple publications, has not been confirmed by Canadian, U.S. or Indian officials.

An online prayer service for the Patel family was held Monday by about 250 ex-pats from Gujarat in Canada, organized by Hemant Shah in Winnipeg.

“What has happened is shocking. It is very devastating,” Shah said, growing emotional. He doesn’t know the family personally but the community is getting information from India on what happened.

“We could not believe it. With the weather now in Winnipeg, we don’t dare go out. Even thinking about the pain they might have experienced in freezing cold temperatures gives us goosebumps.”

While the Patel family includes a 12-year-old daughter, the RCMP originally said the older child was a male in their mid-teens. The original information, however, was based on an initial exam in austere conditions and could change after the post-mortem exam.

The U.S. side of the Manitoba-Minnesota border near where migrants walking from Canada were found frozen to death highlights the austere and perilous conditions. PHOTO BY U.S. BORDER PATROL

The remains of the four would have been exposed to severe cold for about 16 hours before discovery, hampering examination and identification. The RCMP said investigators need to have “100 per cent certainty” on identification, and notified their next of kin, before releasing identity information.

The family was a demographic anomaly within the group of migrants.

The others are all in their late teens and early 20s, said Chief Patrol Agent Anthony S. Good, of the U.S. Border Patrol’s Grand Forks Sector, whose officers rescued them in blizzard conditions on Jan. 19.

“It’s terrible to experience those conditions for that length of time. There is an unreasonable expectation for survival at that point,” Good said. The group was wandering aimlessly when agents spotted them in a search, after a driver, allegedly in the area to pick them up, was arrested.

“They were walking, but it was hard to see anything. They were a little bit disoriented and didn’t really know which way to go. They didn’t think the trek would be that arduous.”

Two of the migrants who made it needed medical assistance. One was taken by helicopter to hospital but has survived. They were all turned over to immigration officials.

The rest of the group told U.S. officials of “a similar travel agenda” to the Patel family, as described by Indian media, Good said.

Relatives and neighbours of the Patels said the family left for Canada on a visitor’s visa about a week before the migrants were found. The family is said to have paid the equivalent of about $1,000 to an immigration agent to get them to the United States.

Documents filed in court in the case against the alleged driver, Steve Shand, 47, of Deltona, Fla., disclose that U.S. authorities are investigating a human smuggling ring in the area.

Alleged human smuggler Steve Shand, 47, of Florida, was found by police ‘driving through blowing snow and snow drifts’ on the American side of the border. 

PHOTO BY FACEBOOK

It seems a twice-monthly cross-border operation for Indian nationals, with someone dropping the migrants off on the Canadian side with winter clothing and sending them south, where someone is expected to pick them up.

The Border Patrol said officers are aware of three earlier smuggling incidents in the same area.

Footprints in the snow made by the same make of boots worn by the rescued migrants were discovered by border officers on Dec. 12, Dec. 22, 2021, and on Jan. 12.

After the Dec. 12 incident, U.S. officers spoke with RCMP officers and were told that Canadian authorities found a backpack at what appeared to be a drop-off point inside Canada. A tag inside showed a price in rupees, the currency of India.

The van driven by Shand also contained a rental agreement for a “full size passenger van” from Jan. 10 to Jan. 13. On Jan. 12, a border patrol officer found more boot prints in the snow stretching into the U.S. from Canada, also by the same brand of boots.

Cpl. Julie Courchaine, a spokeswoman with Manitoba RCMP, declined to confirm the RCMP is part of a wider investigation into human smuggling.

“We are looking at everything involved in this,” she said. “The investigation is ongoing,” including close cooperation with U.S. authorities.

The deaths are sparking debate in India, with hard questions on why so many are willing to risk so much to leave.

Newspaper accounts say the village of Dingucha and others like it are filled with advertisements and enticements for immigration to Canada, the U.S., Britain and Australia. Many make unrealistic promises of admission to Canadian universities, even without a language certificate.

The ads target the young, who dream of living abroad as a marker of success.

Judging by the age of the travellers who survived the trek last week, the ads are hitting their mark.

Potential remains found in 93 spots at B.C. residential school, but some children will be unaccounted for even after investigation

Kendra Mangione
CTVNewsVancouver.ca 

Reporter and Producer
Jan. 25, 2022 

Warning: This article contains details that readers may find disturbing.

An initial report into an investigation at a former residential school in British Columbia suggests the remains of dozens of people may be buried at the site.

Preliminary results of a geophysical examination at the site of the former St. Joseph's Mission Residential School were released during a news conference Tuesday, and included 93 "reflections" observed through ground-penetrating radar.

A section of the first 14 hectares examined was also used as a cemetery at some point. Those involved in the investigation are working to understand how the burials correlate with the cemetery.

Current data suggests 50 of the 93 potential burials are not associated with known graves, meaning they may be unmarked graves associated with the school.

The only way to tell whether those sites do, in fact, contain human remains is exhumation, and next steps are still being discussed, but human remains, caskets and graves can all produce reflections, project lead Whitney Spearing said during a presentation on the initial findings.

The property located near the Williams Lake First Nation operated as a school between 1891 and 1981. The site went by several names during that time, including the Cariboo Indian Industrial School. A farm and ranch were added to the Catholic Oblates' holdings at the site in the 1960s, and were used to sustain the school and staff.

Thousands of Indigenous children were forced to attend the school during that time.

Those behind Tuesday's presentation called it "one small snapshot" into the ongoing investigation, and that the results are preliminary at this stage. Research in Phase 1 included the geophysical examination as well as archival and photographic research and survivor interviews.

The plan for the school site is to search what's left of a 470-hectare area, and it's expected that zone may be expanded based on what is uncovered during further phases of the investigation.

Speaking about the investigation months earlier, Kukpi7 (Chief) Willie Sellars said it has been challenging for members, who are seeing old wounds reopened as they recount stories of abuse.

But he said in November that the information they've provided has been helpful to guide those involved in the technical aspects of the investigation.

On Tuesday, he said that those involved know that many children will remain unaccounted for even after the investigation is done.

Sellars said the bodies of some children were disposed of in rivers, lakes and incinerators.

He said for those children, there will be no headstones, no unmarked graves, no small fragments of bone to be forensically tested and, for their families, no closure.

"As is the case with many residential schools in Canada, the real story of what occurred at the St. Joseph's Mission has been intentionally obscured," Sellars said.

"There is clear evidence that religious entities, the federal government and the RCMP have knowingly participated in the destruction of records and the cover-up of criminal allegations."

He said there were decades of reports filed about neglect, abuse, deaths and disappearances at the school.

"For the bulk of St. Joseph's Mission history, these reports were at best given no credence. At worst, there was something darker going on in an effort to suppress the emergence of the truth."

At many of these schools, those who attended said they knew what went on but weren't believed.

Many Canadians weren't aware of these stories until a finding in May 2021, also at a B.C. residential school, that shocked the public and forced acknowledgement of the country's past.

CHILD'S RIB BONE PROMPTED FIRST SEARCH

The update comes after a discovery last year of what are believed to be approximately 200 unmarked graves on the grounds of a residential school in Kamloops, about 300 kilometres southeast of Williams Lake.

The search at that site, in an area that once was an orchard, was prompted by the discovery of a child's rib bone. The discovery in that location matched memories of survivors, who described children as young as six being woken up during the night and made to dig graves in the orchard.

That investigation is ongoing. The last update, in July, included that an area of nearly 650,000 square metres still needed to be surveyed.

An expert involved in the search of the area with ground-penetrating radar said it can be challenging to know if what analysts are seeing is a grave, prior to exhumation, when there is no casket, suggesting it would be some time before the total number of unmarked graves could be confirmed.

The findings at what was Canada's largest residential school sparked searches at the sites of former schools across the country, leading to similar discoveries elsewhere in B.C. and in other provinces.

CALLS FOR APOLOGIES, ACTION

The Pope has been invited by the Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation to visit the site if he travels to Canada in the "context of the long-standing pastoral process of reconciliation with Indigenous peoples."

A statement from the Vatican suggested the Pope is willing to do so, but did not commit to a date. The Pope expressed sorrow over the discoveries at residential schools – which were news to some, but confirmed what many survivors had known for decades – but has stopped short of directly apologizing for the role the Catholic Church played in the school system.

Tuesday's update also comes just days after a promise from Ottawa to release a mass of records related to residential schools.

Governments and churches that ran the schools have been under pressure to provide the records since the first report about the Kamloops Indian Residential School was released, but did not agree to the release until Thursday.

Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Marc Miller signed a memorandum of understanding on that day, outlining how and when the records will be released.

Thousands of pages of documents are expected to contain details on how children ended up in unmarked graves. For years, officials including the prime minister claimed all documents had been released, but those statements were untrue.

The process may take as long as six months, and resources will be required to comb through the documents, which need to be handled with care, but more will be released to the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation at some point.

For support for residential school survivors or others, contact the Indian Residential Schools Survivors Society at 1-800-721-0066 or www.irsss.ca.

With files from The Canadian Press and CTV News Vancouver's Alyse Kotyk and Bhinder Sajan

 
RELATED IMAGES


St. Joseph's Mission is seen in this undated photo submitted to and published by the SJM team.

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Dangerous ice shelves blanket Great Lakes shoreline

Scott Miller
CTV News London Videographer
Published Jan. 24, 2022 3:15 p.m. MST

It’s one long ice shelf as far as the eye can see, off the shores of Kincardine, Ont.

“Enjoy it, look at it, take pictures of it, but it’s not something to play on,” says Const. Kevin Martin of the South Bruce OPP.

Martin says officers in his jurisdiction have gotten several reports of people out walking on the ice shelves this winter, which cover the shores of most Great Lakes communities on either side of the border, and can be as much as six to 10 feet deep at their peak.

“That’s the most dangerous part, because these mounds could be hollow underneath. The peaks of them is where the ice is likely to be the thinnest. So, if you fall in, you’ve now got a six feet or more reach to the peak. It’s virtually impossible to climb out on your own,” says Dave Benjamin, director with the Great Lakes Surf Rescue Project, based out of Illinois.

Photos: Ice shelves along shores of Lake Huron

“For emergency responders, there is moving water underneath these shelves. So when you fall through these holes you fall into that moving water, you’re not where the hole is,” said Martin. “Seconds count, you need help right away and we just can’t find you that fast. So, please, please, don’t walk on that shelf ice.”

Last year, 98 people drowned in the Great Lakes and since 2010, 1,044 have lost their lives, according to Benjamin. While most of those deaths happen in the summer months, winter water deaths can happen as well.

“If you fall through that ice and you get pulled by that current there is no rescue. It’s unfortunately game over,” says Benjamin.

If there is one good thing about the ice shelves, it’s that they are protecting the Great Lakes shoreline from erosion this winter. The past few years, shorelines were unprotected and got battered by high, raging water.

“With the high levels coming down, and the ice shelves building up, we are going to see some beach restoration occur naturally,” says Benjamin.

So, appreciate the ice shelves for what they’re doing, but don’t venture out onto them, say both Martin and Benjamin.


Ice shelves forming on the Lake Huron shoreline in Kincardine, Ont., Jan. 24, 2022. 

(Scott Miller / CTV News)

Indigenous Farmworkers Hold the Key to Healing Our Burning Planet

Grape harvesters share traditional ecological knowledge to right our relationship with the land—and each other.

BROOKE ANDERSON 

IN THESE TIMES

JANUARY 26, 2022

“Escuchen a los trabajadores,” one sign reads at the Nov. 13, 2021, picket at Simi Winery. “Listen to the workers.”

BROOKE ANDERSON

Anayeli Guzman was born into a Mixtec-speaking Indigenous community in San Miguel Chicahua in Oaxaca, Mexico. Her family raised chickens on their land, and as a child she would help plant corn, squash and radishes. They ate handmade tortillas with beans, eggs and salsa. Her grandparents taught her to care for the land and to revere the rain. Few people worked for wages. Rather, families owned small plots and grew seasonal, drought-resistant crops, exchanged produce with nearby communities and helped each other with big projects.

After migrating to the United States to be with her husband, Anayeli (along with 11,000 other, mostly Indigenous, immigrant farmworkers) toils for meager wages in the $1.9 billion wine industry of Sonoma County, Calif. In the past several years, record-breaking wildfires have ravaged the area, often during harvest season. Vineyard owners routinely escort workers through evacuation zones to pick grapes in a haze of toxic smoke.

Fed up, Anayeli and her coworkers began to organize in summer 2021. After surveying hundreds of farmworkers, their committee created the 5 for Farmworkers in Fires campaign to demand language justice, disaster insurance, community safety observers, hazard pay and clean bathrooms. Workers hand-delivered those demands to dozens of wineries. When one winery, Simi, did not respond, around 300 workers and allies picketed Simi’s lavish, $145-per-ticket wine tasting. (Disclosure: I first met Anayeli and other farmworkers as a photographer hired to help document their campaign.)

Wineries not only endanger workers’ lives by instructing them to harvest in the midst of raging climate change-fueled blazes; wineries actually accelerate climate destabilization. Industrial agriculture is one of the largest contributors to climate change globally, and wineries are particularly likely to erode local ecological balance through soil depletion, intensive water use and the deployment of toxic fertilizers.

Indigenous farmworkers, however, often have access to traditional ecological knowledge passed down through millennia — about how to live in right relationship with the land, water and one another — but lack the power to steward and heal the land.

Now, farmworkers are organizing to change that.

“The reality is that, in this decade, we’re going to see serious changes,” says Davida Sotelo Escobedo, communications and research coordinator with North Bay Jobs with Justice, which is helping with the campaign. ​“The rich, the land owners, are going to talk about solutions that are disconnected from the land. But those who work the land have the knowledge and leadership to show us what we need to do. There is power in remembering and uplifting this connection with the land.”

In the spirit of remembering our way forward, I interviewed two Indigenous farmworkers at the heart of this organizing effort — Anayeli Guzman and Margarita Garcia — about their memories of home, working as a farmworker today, and what they’d change if they had the power to tend the land on which they currently labor.

Anayeli Guzman (right) shows her daughter, Dalia, how to care for a pepper plant at their home in Windsor, Calif.

Anayeli Guzman (right) helps her daughter, Dalia, with a Trabajos Con Justicia (“Jobs with Justice”) bandana before the Nov. 13, 2021, picket at Simi Winery in Healdsburg, Calif.
ANAYELI GUZMAN

RESPECT. ​“The wineries treat us like they treat the earth. There is no respect for us nor for the land. The only thing that interests them is production and money. But if the workers and the land didn’t exist, there wouldn’t be a harvest. There wouldn’t be anything.”

RAIN. ​“Our elders said that when it is time to plant, the first thing they’d do is offer something — be it liquid or food — to the land, because she is our mother. Before the first rains, they’d go to a cave carrying torches and candles and have a party with food, dancing and singing to ask God for rain. It is different here. Wineries expect the fruit to produce because they put chemicals and fertilizers on it.”

WATER, DROUGHT, FERTILIZERS. ​“The wineries use fertilizers which damage the land and water. Sometimes it is as if they make a plant produce or mature when it shouldn’t. It is as if they are forcing nature. We are also in a drought. At my home, there is no grass. But at the wineries, everything is green. It’s as if you’re transported to another world, as if they had their own river. It makes me sad because all the animals need water. They have a right to live too.”

CROP ROTATION. ​“There comes a time when we all must take a break. So too does the earth need a break. The farmers in my community let the land rest for a certain time. They let it breathe, let it regain nutrients for the next harvest. That doesn’t happen here. Here, it’s just constant work. As soon as the last harvest ends, they’re already pruning again.”

MUTUAL AID. ​“There used to be a lot of mutual aid — ​‘you help me, I help you,’ not, ​‘OK, you worked this many hours so you get this much cash.’ No. We worked as a team. We called it tequio. It’s a beautiful tradition and what I most miss. It is different here because you arrive and the boss tells you, ​‘Here is where we’ll work,’ and that’s it.”

MONEY WON’T HEAL THE EARTH. ​“They have to understand that there are things money cannot buy and that technology alone will not fix. This is true for the healing of the earth. We can’t just put up solar panels or buy different cars. We have to do it ourselves.”

WORKERS ARE THE REAL STEWARDS. ​“Like [Emiliano] Zapata said, ​‘La tierra es de quien la trabaja’ (‘The land belongs to those who work it’). The workers are the ones who spend time watching how the plants grow, how the grapes mature. We are more the owners than they are.”

Margarita Garcia wears a traditional huipil in her kitchen in Santa Rosa, Calif., which is “biodegradable” and “does not contain toxic material,” she says. The colors represent wild flowers back home, some of which are extinct.

Margarita Garcia advocates for the 5 for Farmworkers in Fires campaign outside of Simi Winery in Healdsburg, Calif., on Nov. 13, 2021. The campaign demands include, for example, clean bathrooms for workers.
MARGARITA GARCIA


WATER. ​“The wineries have damaged the land, the water and the environment. They use many pesticides to the point that the rivers are no longer clean. We have to be more conscious of caring for our water. Where I’m from, there’s always been drought, so we knew to use only what we needed and no more. Rainwater was recycled. We’d put containers outside and when it would rain we’d have water to water the plants. We had open air toilets and the waste would go to the plants. Same with the water from the wash — everything went to the plants.”

FIRE. ​“There was a lot of drought in my community, so there would be fires. It is not new for me. However, the fires never grew as large as they do here. The people themselves would self-organize to put out fires because there was no fire department. They’d surround the fire so that it could not jump, throw earth on it and hit it with branches. We’d intentionally burn certain areas in order to later plant corn. The ashes were used as compost to prevent insects without chemicals. Later, each town would take its turn to plant again and the trees would return.”

EXCHANGE. ​“In my community, el trueque is the exchange of crops. If a family has avocados and we have oranges, we’d exchange. If one town’s harvest was potatoes, plums, peaches and other things we didn’t have in my community, we’d exchange. We’d bring potatoes and they’d give us bread, or we’d bring tortillas and they’d give us chiles.”

KNOWLEDGE. ​“The bosses don’t respect the wisdom of the farmworkers. I remember this coworker of mine. The boss told her that she was born to work the fields because of the color of her skin. Instead of humiliating us like this, they should value our knowledge of the land. But they are interested neither in caring for the land, nor in the opinion of farmworkers. The only thing the wineries care about is extracting work from us to make money for them. Right now, you have to do what the boss says and sometimes it is against our will. But If the land owners listened to us, we could guide them about how to work with the land, not against it.”

Margarita Garcia (left) and Anayeli Guzman, among 300 other workers and community allies, rally at Simi Winery on Nov. 13, 2021, in Healdsburg, Calif., with North Bay Jobs with Justice.

Anayeli Guzman (bottom, facing the crowd) demands language justice and hazard pay, among other issues, at the Nov. 13, 2021, picket of Simi Winery.

As the planet rapidly escalates toward ecological collapse, those who put us on that path can no longer deny the collapse is imminent. They will propose technological solutions (more solar panels, more electric cars) while propagating the very same social and economic inequality that got us to this point. What we really need is to put stewardship back into the hands of people who recognize how to live in right relationship to the Earth and each other. Farmworkers, as grassroots ecologists with the wisdom and respect to take care of the land correctly, are the voices we need to heed.

All worker quotes have been translated from their original Spanish and edited for clarity and brevity.

BROOKE ANDERSON is an Oakland, California-based organizer and photojournalist. She has spent 20 years building movements for social, economic, racial and ecological justice. She is a proud union member of the Pacific Media Workers Guild, CWA 39521, AFL-CIO.

From raincoats to napkins, toxic 'forever chemicals' found in everyday products

"Rain jackets shouldn't cause cancer—but for some of us, that just might be the case"

Kenny Stancil,

 Common Dreams
January 26, 2022

Woman in a yellow raincoat (Shutterstock)

Despite the existence of safer alternatives, toxic "forever chemicals" linked to a wide range of health problems are found in most products labeled stain- or water-resistant, from rain jackets and hiking pants to mattress pads, comforters, napkins, and tablecloths

"We need urgent action at the state and federal levels to solve the PFAS crisis, including by quickly stopping its use in products we wear and use in our homes."

That's according to Toxic Convenience, a new study released Wednesday by Toxic-Free Future, which analyzed 60 commonly used items to highlight the "hidden costs of forever chemicals in stain- and water-resistant products" across three categories: outdoor apparel, bedding, and table linens.

The Seattle-based nonprofit research and advocacy organization found that 72% of the 47 stain- or water-resistant products it tested contain per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS).

PFAS are a class of synthetic compounds known as "forever chemicals" because they don't break down—polluting people's bodies and the planet for years on end. Scientists have linked long-term exposure to PFAS—identified at unsafe levels in the drinking water of more than 200 million Americans and detected in 97% of blood and 100% of breast milk samples—to numerous adverse health outcomes, including cancer, reproductive harm, immune system damage, and other serious issues.

Notably, all 13 of the products tested by Toxic-Free Future that were not marketed as stain- or water-resistant were found to be PFAS-free.

"Our testing finds continued, unnecessary use of the toxic chemicals known as PFAS in outdoor clothing and home furnishings like bedding and tablecloths," Erika Schreder, study author and science director for Toxic-Free Future, said in a statement.

"When companies use PFAS to make products stain- or water-resistant," said Schreder, "they are using chemicals that contaminate homes, drinking water, and breast milk with highly persistent chemicals that can cause cancer and harm the immune system."

Over a quarter of the studied products that were marketed as stain- and/or water-resistant appeared to be free of PFAS—demonstrating that alternative compounds are available and sparking calls for swift regulatory action to improve workplace and consumer safety.

"Some companies are using PFAS-free alternatives, but until regulations ban PFAS in products, these dangerous chemicals will continue to be used in our raincoats and bedding," said Laurie Valeriano, executive director of Toxic-Free Future. "We need urgent action at the state and federal levels to solve the PFAS crisis, including by quickly stopping its use in products we wear and use in our homes."

Manufacturers have been using a combination of PFAS, including compounds currently banned in other countries, the analysis revealed. While newer PFAS were present, researchers also discovered that nearly three-quarters of the products tainted with forever chemicals tested positive for older PFAS—already prohibited in the European Union and phased out by major U.S. manufacturers.

"It is time to stop this terrible injustice, hold manufacturers accountable, and urgently establish national and international bans for the entire class of PFAS," said Pamela Miller, executive director of Alaska Community Action on Toxics and co-chair of the International Pollutants Elimination Network (IPEN). "PFAS contamination of the Arctic poses a particular threat to the health of Indigenous peoples who are reliant on traditional foods as essential to their physical, spiritual, and cultural sustenance."

The products analyzed by Toxic-Free Future were purchased from 10 large retailers: Amazon, Bed Bath & Beyond, Costco, Dick's Sporting Goods, Kohl's, Macy's, REI, Target, TJX, and Walmart. According to the group, which conducted tests for total fluorine and PFAS at independent scientific laboratories, forever chemicals were found in at least one item sold by each corporation.

"Rain jackets shouldn't cause cancer—but for some of us, that just might be the case," said Emily Donovan, co-founder of Clean Cape Fear. "These companies sold a convenience product to consumers without fully disclosing the toxic trade-off."

"In my region of North Carolina, our drinking water has been severely contaminated from the manufacture of PFAS chemicals," added Donovan. "No one's drinking water should be contaminated for a rain jacket."

The analysis comes amid a national campaign pressuring REI and other retailers to ban PFAS in outdoor gear and other textiles.

Since November 2021, more than 60,000 REI customers have signed petitions and sent e-mails urging REI's CEO and board to take action on PFAS. Last month, a coalition of more than 100 local, state, and national organizations sent a letter imploring REI—which also happens to be facing a union drive in Manhattan—to catalyze an industry-wide shift away from the entire class of PFAS.

"Retailers, like REI, can stop contributing to this toxic trail of pollution by ensuring the products they sell are free of PFAS," said Mike Schade, director of Toxic-Free Future's Mind the Store program. "As a company committed to sustainability and one of the biggest outdoor retailers in the U.S., REI has a responsibility to lead the outdoor industry away from these toxic chemicals."

Our Synthetic Environment - Murray Bookchin Library

https://www.murraybookchinlibrary.org/our-synthetic-environment-2

2021-02-22 · nick February 22, 2021 Leave a comment. Bookchin wrote Our Synthetic

Environment under the pseudonym Lewis Herber. This was one of the first books of the modern

ecology movement.

DHS Medical Experts in Detention Health Send Letter to Department of Homeland Security on the Need for Boosters in Immigration Detention

DHS Failures to Implement CDC, Doctors’ Recommendations and Protective Measures Continue to Endanger Immigrants, Workers and the Public From COVID-19

January 26, 2022

WASHINGTON – Today, medical experts at the Department of Homeland Security Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (DHS CRCL) sent a whistleblower disclosure to DHS Secretary Mayorkas urging him to implement vaccination and booster requirements as well as a comprehensive COVID plan within ICE detention facilities. As Omicron continues to cause surges throughout the United States, booster vaccinations have become the standard in COVID-19 prevention, but DHS has yet to adopt this approach even in the face of the high, well-documented risks associated with detention settings.

Drs. Scott Allen and Josiah “Jody” Rich have conducted numerous investigations into ICE detention over the last seven years as medical subject matter experts in detention health. As early as February 2020 at the beginning of the pandemic, they began urging DHS to take action to address the substantial danger to immigrant, worker, and public health and safety posed by the spread of coronavirus in detention settings. They escalated their concerns to Congress in March 2020, calling ICE detention a “tinderbox scenario.” They renewed their concerns at the beginning of the Biden administration and again in June 2021 to Congress as COVID continued to spread aggressively in ICE detention, recommending that DHS adopt and implement a comprehensive DHS plan for COVID-19 vaccination for the detained population. When the Biden administration praised the success of vaccines in August 2021, the doctors once again called for DHS to do more for those in ICE detention, penning an op-ed in The Hill.

Drs. Allen and Rich today renewed their call for action to address the serious health threat to immigrants, workers, and the public, writing:

“COVID has presented a most daunting challenge, especially in high-risk congregate settings such as immigration detention. But ICE’s failure to implement a plan for providing boosters to detained immigrants is inexplicable in light of available science, government public health recommendations, and their widespread availability. The failure to act with alacrity has contributed to the number of confirmed COVID cases skyrocketing since the emergence of the Omicron variant.”

Government Accountability Project Senior Counsel Dana Gold, attorney for Drs. Allen and Rich, commented,

“It is unconscionable that DHS, nearly two years since the beginning of the pandemic, continues to endanger the lives of immigrants, workers and the public by failing to implement measures and enforce practices that protect against the spread of COVID. We hope that the Department will finally heed the warnings and recommendations of its own medical experts—echoed by the CDC—and ensure that immigrants and workers alike receive unimpeded access to vaccination and boosters to prevent further unnecessary illnesses and death.”

###

Contact: Andrew Harman, Communications Director
Email: andrewh@whistleblower.org
Government Accountability Project is the nation’s leading whistleblower protection organization. Through litigating whistleblower cases, publicizing concerns and developing legal reforms, Government Accountability Project’s mission is to protect the public interest by promoting government and corporate accountability. Founded in 1977, Government Accountability Project is a nonprofit, nonpartisan advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C.
January 26th, 2022

Biden Administration Cancels Two Trump-Approved Minnesota Mining Leases

An outdoor enthusiast takes a picture by one of the hundreds of fresh water lakes that make up the Boundary Waters in September of 2019 in the northern woods of Minnesota.

ANDREW LICHTENSTEIN / CORBIS VIA GETTY IMAGES

BY Sharon Zhang, 

Truthout

January 27, 2022

On Wednesday, the Biden administration announced that it has cancelled two mining leases near Minnesota’s Boundary Waters, a move that will likely kill the project opposed by environmental activists and Indigenous groups.

The project, proposed by Chilean mining giant Antofagasta, was revived by President Donald Trump when he took office and reinstated the leases, slashing environmental regulations that would have prevented the mine from being built. However, the Department of the Interior recently found that those leases were issued improperly.

“The Department of the Interior takes seriously our obligations to steward public lands and waters on behalf of all Americans. We must be consistent in how we apply lease terms to ensure that no lessee receives special treatment,” said Interior Secretary Deb Haaland in a statement. “After a careful legal review, we found the leases were improperly renewed in violation of applicable statutes and regulations, and we are taking action to cancel them.”

The agency said that the Trump administration hadn’t followed simple procedural steps and that the revival of the project had violated Interior Department regulations. Now that the leases have been cancelled, the project is likely dead.

The lease cancellation follows the Biden administration’s announcement last year that it would be pausing all mining activity in northern Minnesota in order to review environmental impacts.

Environmental advocates celebrated Wednesday’s news. “Today is a major win for Boundary Waters protection,” Becky Rom, chair of the Campaign to Save the Boundary Waters, said in a statement. “This action by the Biden administration re-establishes the long-standing legal consensus of five presidential administrations and marks a return of the rule of law. It also allows for science-based decision-making on where risky mining is inappropriate.”

Twin Metals Minnesota, a subsidiary of Antofagasta which would have operated the project, had spent nearly $1 million lobbying for the copper and nickel mines when Trump took office. Billionaire Andrónico Luksic, whose family controls the conglomerate, had also rented a house to Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump in hopes of buying favor with the presidential family.

Advocates said that the leasing flew in the face of evidence that the mining would have resulted in polluting heavy metal runoff that would have flowed directly into the Boundary Waters, causing irreparable damage.

The Boundary Waters are incredibly significant to Indigenous communities in northern Minnesota. In their opposition to the mining project, Ojibwe tribes have noted that the Boundary Waters have been used by Chippewa people for centuries and are still used by Indigenous people today to harvest fish and Manoomin, or wild rice.

The over one million acre wilderness area is also home to 230 species of wildlife that would have been threatened by the mine.

Twin Metals has spent years lobbying politicians to support the plan, claiming that it would benefit the state economically. But environmental advocates contend that any jobs created by the mines would be completely offset by the harm that the mines would do to the area.

The Boundary Waters is the most heavily visited wilderness area in the U.S., supporting over 17,000 jobs in the area and driving nearly $1 billion in economic activity. A 2020 study on the area by Harvard University economists found that any potential positive impacts of the mine would be negated by long-term detriments to the recreation and tourism industry in the area.

 Congress Hears Testimony on Meat Sector Concentration

This article features Government Accountability Project’s whistleblower client, Trina McClendon, and was originally published here.

A congressional committee heard testimony both for and against measures to break up concentration in meat and poultry processing as a way to deal with rising retail prices.

Some of the most dramatic testimony before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law came from Trina McClendon, a poultry farmer from Mississippi. She talked about how Sanderson Farms, with whom she and her husband had a 15-year contract, tried to impose a 9% pay cut in August, after the announcement of its proposed merger with the Wayne Farms unit of Continental Grain Co., in partnership with Cargill. They and other local farmers fought Sanderson and it dropped the pay cut for now.

McClendon said that the Sanderson contract is “one-sided” and leaves them with all the costs of running the poultry operation, along with a debt of $1.4 million.

“I’m asking you to stop this buyout and send a clear and concise message to Sanderson Farms, Cargill and Continental Grain that the consolidation of our fabulous industry is detrimental to continue the practice of a free and fair market economy,” McClendon said in remarks quoted by Progressive Farmer/DTN. She urged a moratorium on big mergers in the food and agribusiness in general.

Other witnesses, however, downplayed or discounted the role of concentration in the meat and poultry market.

Geoffrey Manne, founder and president of the International Center for Law and Economics, said other factors were to blame for food price inflation, including increased demand caused by fiscal stimulus programs, “supply and demand shocks,” and an increase in the money supply. “What is not a plausible explanation is increased concentration and the exercise of market power in the food supply chain,” Manne said.

Death of a Sales Barn: How Corporations Took Over Our Food System

A new report explains how a handful of agribusiness firms came to dominate U.S. agriculture, how they’re ruining rural America, and how we might stop them.

ZOE PHARO JANUARY 26, 2022

GETTY IMAGES

Joe Maxwell, a fourth-generation hog farmer in Mexico, Missouri, used to sell his pigs at the Mexico sales barn, which held livestock auctions almost every day of the week. Today, the barn only hosts a sale once a week. Maxwell remembers the decline this way: ​“When we got ready to sell our pigs, there got to be fewer and fewer people wanting to buy,” he says, ​“until there was just about one.”

The death of the small-town sales barn, not to mention other local businesses, illustrates the dramatic changes that have consumed U.S. agriculture in recent decades. These changes have transformed farming from a decentralized model largely in the public arena — with local livestock auction houses and publicly-funded agricultural research — to a highly-concentrated model in the private arena — in which seeds, research, and equipment software are seen as intellectual property and guarded by dominant agribusiness firms.

As of 2020, 2 million farmers and 21 million food and farm workers stand on one side of the U.S. food system while 325 million eaters stand on the other. In between them are a handful of multinational companies — Tyson, JBS, Bayer, to name some of the biggest — who manage nearly every step of how food gets from producer to consumer.

But if this concentrated, corporatized food system seems inevitable or inescapable, it isn’t. In a new report, titled ​“Bigger Is Not Better: The High Cost of Agribusiness Consolidation,” the international human-rights federation ActionAid explains how we got here and details the nearly 70 years of policy decisions that created our industrial food system.

Read the report here.


Today’s consolidation, according to the report, can be traced back to the post-World War II period, when politicians worked to dismantle the New Deal Agriculture framework. This included programs like the Agricultural Adjustment Act, Roosevelt’s economic recovery program, which paid farmers to limit their crop production. The legacy of the New Deal model is complicated — it discriminated against Black farmers and encouraged mechanization and consolidation — but it did set up generations of farmers for success.

In the 1950s, inspired by technological innovation, business groups worked to address the ​“inefficiencies of farming,” and according to the report, they saw the primary problem as an excess of labor — in other words, too many farmers. These groups aimed to replace a third of family farms, which numbered in the millions, with a few larger farms, capable of producing commodities with less labor and more technology. As Earl Butz, Nixon’s secretary of agriculture, famously put it, ​“get big or get out.”

A series of federal farm bills brought more acres into production and lowered price floors (the lowest legal price that can be paid for a good) which allowed agribusiness companies to pay less for farm goods than they cost farmers to produce. As farmers scrambled to make up for lost revenue and increase their volume, federal enforcement of antitrust laws, which prevent unlawful mergers and business practices and encourage competition among buyers, declined under both the Carter and Reagan administrations.

In 1996, the U.S. Farm Bill, known as the ​“Freedom to Farm Act” (or, to many farmers, as the ​“Freedom to Fail Act”) put the nail in the coffin of small holders. This law ended the last vestiges of supply management, once the dominant farm policy in the United States.

Supply management, says Gary Hoskey in a video by ActionAid, can be described as ​“don’t raise more than what can be consumed.” Its necessary components are a floor price for commodities based on the cost of production, a commodity reserve that fluctuates depending on crop success, and conservation programs that take agricultural land out of production — allowing farmers to remain in production during long periods of low prices.
These corporations have cleverly styled themselves as the “farm lobby.” The Farm Bureau, for example, claims to be "the voice of agriculture,” but its real business is selling insurance through FBL Financial Group.
Instead, the new farm bill further entrenched industrial farming practices by encouraging farmers to plant chemical- and machinery-dependent monocrops like corn and soybeans. Around this time, meatpacking companies began investing in hog confinement and moving to vertical integration. According to the report, their model was that of Don Tyson, the former president of Tyson Foods, in which his company owned all parts of the supply chain except the riskiest: the farm.

These days, the largest food retailers are getting into livestock and dairy markets themselves, cutting out farmers altogether. For example, in 2019, Costco opened its own, fully vertically-integrated meatpacking plant in Nebraska to produce its $4.99 rotisserie chickens. As firms grow, according to the report, they prefer to source from fewer companies in their supply chain, as this simplifies ordering, transport, and other processes.

Even cooperatives, ​“farmer-run organizations formed to give farmers a better shot against big corporations,” the report says, ​“now too often look like corporations themselves.” Many now own processing facilities as well, making them both the buyer and seller, which undercuts farmers in the same way as vertically-integrated companies. In the late 2000s, farmers filed two class action lawsuits against Dairy Farmers of America (DFA), the nation’s largest dairy cooperative, but settled out of court.

As processors have concentrated, sales have shifted from open cash markets — like sales barns — to contract arrangements between processor and grower. ​“While contracts can guarantee a secure future price for a farmer,” the report notes, ​“the reality is that the buyer generally sets the terms, which can be extremely restrictive for and unfavorable to the farmer.” For livestock, for example, the company supplies specific feed, medicine, and other inputs.

As a result of these forces, farms these days are fewer and bigger, and mid-sized farms have been the hardest hit. A quick measure that economists use to see whether a market is freely competitive or subject to manipulation is to look at the percentage controlled by the top four firms. When four companies control over 40%, the market is considered uncompetitive, and over 70% indicates a monopoly. Today, the top four companies control 85% of the beef market, 85% of the corn seed market, and 90% of grain trade. Meanwhile, 20% of farms control nearly 70% of U.S. farmland.

Political Promises to Farmers

In 2008, when Barack Obama campaigned on enforcement of antitrust rules and breaking up agribusiness power, the message resonated in rural areas and farming communities. During his campaign, Obama said he planned to ​“reinvigorate antitrust enforcement.”

"As president, Obama allowed for the continued consolidation of corporate power in the food system. This is a large part of why Trump won Dunn County decisively in 2016 and in 2020.”

After he was elected, Obama’s Department of Justice (DOJ) and Department of Agriculture (USDA) launched a landmark, year-long investigation into the issue in 2010. Thousands of farmers testified and submitted public comments, the ActionAid report says, often at great risk to their livelihoods. However, the inquiry ended quietly: the release of a 24-page memo in which the federal government simply reiterated its ​“commitment to vigorous antitrust enforcement in the agricultural sector” but took no serious action.

In fact, in the decade since, agribusiness consolidation has only increased. According to ActionAid, the DOJ has since greenlighted many major agribusiness mergers, including those that shrank the ​“Big Six” seed and chemical companies down to the ​“Big Three” and those that further consolidated the meatpacking industry.

Democrats’ failure to address agribusiness consolidation, some argue, has real political consequences. Bill Hogseth, who lives in a rural Wisconsin county that went for Obama twice before swinging to Trump in 2016, put it this way in an essay for Politico: ​“Rural voters appreciated Obama’s repeated campaign promises to challenge the rise of agribusiness monopolies. But as president, he allowed for the continued consolidation of corporate power in the food system…. [T]hese moves signaled that his administration did not have the backs of family farmers. This is a large part of why Trump won Dunn County decisively in 2016 and in 2020.”

Politicians on both sides of the aisle have reason not to push policies distasteful to agribusiness. The largest multinational corporations — including Bayer, Smithfield, and grain dealer Archer Daniels Midland — spend millions in direct lobbying and political donations, according to the report.

These corporations have cleverly styled themselves as the ​“farm lobby” and have a great deal of influence in Washington, D.C. and state capitals, using farmers as a front to push their agenda. The Farm Bureau, for example, has state-level chapters in all 50 states and claims to be ​“the voice of agriculture,” but its real business is selling insurance through FBL Financial Group.

The Farm Bureau is not the only group claiming to represent family farmers while supporting big businesses. ActionAid reports that almost two dozen commodities have research and promotion boards funded by ​“checkoffs,” a mandatory tax collected from farmers, for every animal or pound of raw goods they sell. Though not explicitly political, these boards have financial connections with trade groups that lobby for specific state laws — for example, those that exempt concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) and other large-scale operations from environmental regulations.

The Environmental Impact of Consolidation

The corporate consolidation of farming also has devastating environmental impacts, according to the report. Industrial livestock production, one of the most consolidated and technology-dependent parts of the food system, is responsible for 14.5% of total global greenhouse gas emissions, which is comparable to the entire global transportation sector.

“You couldn’t design a better system to breed deadly diseases.”

Pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers and manure from CAFOs can also damage water and air quality. Four companies control 70% of the global agrochemical market, and the chemicals they manufacture are linked to water contamination and serious health effects — and are often banned in other countries. U.S. regulatory oversight generally depends on voluntary self-monitoring and manufacturer reporting, and decisions are driven by cost-benefit analyses that place a monetary value on health weighed against the financial benefits of chemical use.

With climate change making water and arable land even more scarce, investors and multinational corporations have identified farmland as a lucrative asset class and are buying up farmland around the world. For example, TIAA, the retirement fund manager with close to $1 trillion in assets, is now the world’s largest land investor, with holdings from Brazil to Illinois. The report says these farmland investments are often more subtle than traditional land grabs, in which a corporation or government simply seizes land from its original owner or steward without negotiation or payment, but raise many of the same ecological, legal and human rights concerns.

In addition to damaging the land, industrial agriculture is a major public health hazard. According to evolutionary biologist Rob Wallace, farming monocultures of genetically similar animals and plants, increasing deforestation and the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria via the widespread use of antibiotics in CAFOs all make people more vulnerable to future epidemics. ​“You couldn’t design a better system to breed deadly diseases,” Wallace says in the report.

This system locks countries into the production of particular goods for export — in the United States, corn and soybeans — which undermines each country’s own food security and sovereignty. The report notes that a highly specialized and concentrated supply chain is vulnerable to shocks and bottlenecks. During the pandemic, for example, shuttering just three pork packing plants impacted 10% of the nation’s pork supply — hog prices plummeted and farmers had to euthanize their animals, while shoppers faced shortages.

In April 2020, Trump invoked the Defense Production Act to force meatpacking plants to reopen but did not mandate any worker protections. According to the report, by September 2020, more than 44,000 plant workers had tested positive for Covid-19 and at least 210 had died, with rural areas becoming some of the worst virus hot spots in the nation.

How We Can Really Feed the World

Farming in the United States, once dependent on diversification and complex ecosystem knowledge, is now highly mechanized and dependent on fossil-fuel based technology, ranging from chemical fertilizers and pesticides to genetically-modified seeds, GPS-guided precision agriculture techniques, and automated climate-controlled barns.
70% of the world’s population still successfully relies on small-scale or peasant farmers for their food.

Agribusiness frequently promotes these innovations and consolidation as the only way to feed the world, but this system still fails us: at least 720 million people, including 42 million in the United States, still go hungry, according to the report. And, despite the reach of consolidation, 70% of the world’s population still successfully relies on small-scale or peasant farmers for their food. The report puts it this way: ​“It is actually a network of localized and regionalized farmers and markets that most efficiently feeds the world, community by community.”

Though agriculture has great potential to support ecosystems and benefit the environment — by raising fewer animals, using cover crops, rotationally grazing, saving seeds from year to year and using food waste as feed, to name a few regenerative methods — these practices are generally discouraged by the current agricultural regime. Instead, agribusiness has so far responded to climate change by proposing market-based mechanisms, like soil carbon markets and ​“green finance,” that, according to the report, do not protect against further consolidation.

To begin undoing the consolidated power block that is corporate agribusiness, the report has a few suggestions. First, an immediate moratorium on agribusiness mergers and on all mergers and acquisitions for agribusiness companies. Revisiting the Food and Agribusiness Merger Moratorium and Antitrust Review Act, last introduced in 2019 by Sen. Cory Booker, would be a start, and would allow time to develop new, stricter procedures for mergers and acquisitions.

Other helpful steps, according to the report, could include creating land trusts to provide land access to young and marginalized farmers, ensuring living wages for farmers and farmworkers, establishing incentives for conservation practices and developing a new federal farm program that guarantees farmers a fair price based on the costs of production. ActionAid adds that the USDA and EPA must enforce protections for farmers, workers and the environment, including stronger Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration (GIPSA) rules.

A sustainable future for agriculture may not look like a return to the days of the sales barn but, as this report makes clear, it doesn’t look like corporate control, either. Instead, ActionAid’s report makes the case that we need to move towards a decentralized food system with re-localized economies, and quickly.


ZOE PHARO is a Chicago-based writer and In These Times editorial intern. She holds a degree in political science from Carleton College.