El Valle de Guadalupe is an area of Ensenada Municipality in Baja California, Mexico. The region contributes to more than three quarters of the country’s total wine production, according to a paper in Wine Economics and Policy. And wine-related tourism brings in US$180 million of annual revenue to Baja California.

Between 2014 and 2019, 18 percent of the agricultural and wine region in El Valle de Guadalupe was lost to urban development, members of Rescatemos El Valle report. The land has been subdivided and sold for the construction of private homes, businesses, and concert venues. The Municipal Institute for Research and Planning (IMIP) of Ensenada expects that less than half of the 5,445 arable hectares that existed in 2017 will remain by 2027. And if urbanization is not halted, IMIP predicts the region will cease to be known as “wine country” by 2037.

In a virtual press conference, members of Rescatemos El Valle–including President of Baja California State Council of Vine Producers Fernando Pérez Castro and winemaker Natalia Badan–emphasized the impacts of deforestation on the land. “In general terms, the uncontrolled growth of human settlements is identified as the main cause of the problem in Valle de Guadalupe,” a Spokesperson said, “which results in direct effects on water, soil agriculture, the community, and the landscape.”

In 2010, a Sectoral Program for Urban-Tourism Development of the Wine Valleys (PSDUT) was created to conserve 95 percent agricultural land for the next 30 years. But officials considered the plan a failure and replaced it with an updated version which reduced the declared area of conservation.

Rescatemos El Valle, howerever, wants more regulation. They are calling for the creation of federal agencies to protect the agricultural and biocultural heritage of the land. The campaign also proposes the naming of El Valle de Guadalupe as a “zone of natural and cultural beauty.”

“The campaign was to emphasize the importance of agricultural land use,” Ileana Espejel, campaign member and Professor of Ecosystems Management at Universidad Autonoma de Baja California, tells Food Tank. “Only 9 percent of the soil of Baja California is suitable for agriculture. We cannot yield an inch of this valuable land, even if its use is to produce alcoholic beverages. These beverages greatly increased the state’s income and put Ensenada on the world map.”

Espejel and her team have prepared regional plans to order land use laws in El Valle de Guadalupe since the 1990s. Espejel says she sees the valley as a “transdisciplinary laboratory” where different members of the community, with varying backgrounds and expertise, unite to advocate for the land.

Espejel says the campaign has helped restrict concerts in the valley, end illegal constructions, and support a project to update the aquifer data and build green infrastructure this summer.

Members of Rescatemos El Valle hope that the concrete and immediate actions to protect this national heritage will be used as an example to save other agricultural areas in the country.

“Cities can be built in so many other places,” Espejel tells Food Tank, “but losing fertile soil is unforgivable.”

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Photo courtesy of Boudewijn Boer, Wikimedia Commons

The post El Valle de Guadalupe Under Threat: The Campaign to Save Mexico’s Wine Country appeared first on Food Tank.

Catches in the Antarctic region are almost entirely driven by krill, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture report. The report reveals that 455,000 tonnes of Antarctic krill were captured in 2020, a sharp increase from the less than 100,000 tonnes captured in the late 1990s.

Aquafeed has used krill meal to accelerate fish growth and improve the color and taste of shrimp tails for decades. Carrying key nutrients and essential fatty acids, krill can augment fishmeal and other expensive ingredients in aquaculture feed without the burden of poor feed performance, according to the Global Seafood Alliance. Despite krill’s remote concentration in the Southern Ocean, the commercial desirability for harvesting krill is high.

The global aquaculture industry has grown rapidly in recent decades. According to the State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture report, the industry grew from supplying a mere four percent of fish 70 years ago to accounting for over half of the fish eaten in 2018. The global growth of fish farming has driven the demand for Antarctic krill as an alternative to wild fish in fish feeds, according to a report from the Changing Markets Foundation.

While growth in the aquaculture industry has expanded demand for krill, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) believes the more recent discovery of krill’s nutritional benefits has also contributed to the increased krill fishing demand in the pharmaceutical sector.

“The dietary supplement part of krill fishing has changed the nature of the fishery to show a way to make more valuable products from krill than people realized was possible,” Dr. George Watters, Director of the Antarctic Ecosystem Research Division at NOAA, tells Food Tank.

Because of growing demand, the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) has regulated the total krill catch within a 620,000 tonne ‘trigger’ level distributed across four regions in the southwest Atlantic. Although CCAMLR set an overall catch limit of 5.62 million metric tons a year, the trigger level was set to prevent the krill fleet from concentrating its fishing in small areas. If the specified catch limit for a subarea is reached, the fishery will close to avoid potential impacts to the local ecosystem.

Watters, the U.S. Representative to the Scientific Committee for CCAMLR, says that quotas are just one of the management problems they are facing in creating a more adaptable system. He says that developing protective zones in the Antarctic could also help regulate fishing to ensure krill’s natural predators have access to food.

Yet a study from CCAMLR finds that even with precautionary quota systems and protective zones, harvesting Antarctic krill has an outsized impact on predators further up the food chain. Krill feed on phytoplankton, acquiring energy to make them a vital food resource for a number of predator species whales, seals, fish, penguins, and a range of seabirds.

Watters explains including how this challenge is exacerbated by the uneven and ever-changing distribution of krill across the ocean.

“You have all of this krill passing by, but sometimes natural variation can cause periods of low performance for predators,” Watters tells Food Tank. “This causes you to think about how it’s not just the total amount of krill that’s important, it’s the nature of the krill swarms.”

Krill are also essential climate crisis mediators, making the Southern Ocean one of the largest carbon sinks in the world. According to Big Blue Ocean Cleanup, krill consume phytoplankton that store carbon and release oxygen, and then excrete this carbon in tiny pellets that sink to the ocean floor.

The complex nature of krill as both a keystone species in the Southern Ocean and a commercially desired resource has contributed to variability regarding the future of krill fishing. Simon Seward, EVP of Human Health & Nutrition for Aker BioMarine says many data gaps still exist, especially as climate crisis impacts in the region accelerate. Aker BioMarine is a biotech innovator and Antarctic krill-harvesting company creating products for human nutrition, pet food, and aquaculture.

“It is clear that we need to harvest more from the ocean, but we need to do so in more innovative and sustainable ways, and in a manner that protects ocean health and marine biodiversity globally,” Seward tells Food Tank.

With the heightened pressure on land-based resources, Seward says the krill fishery, as one of the most underutilized and sustainable fisheries in the world, might actually be a solution for future food systems.

“It is clear that we need to harvest more from the ocean, but we need to do so in more innovative and sustainable ways, and in a manner that protects ocean health and marine biodiversity globally,” Seward tells Food Tank.

In 2015, Aker BioMarine partnered with the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition and WWF-Norway to establish the Antarctic Wildlife Research Fund (AWR). The fund, which has successfully raised more than US$1.4 million since its inception, aims to support Antarctic research projects on krill and the ecosystem.

“The objective of AWR is to help close these gaps [in data] by providing additional funding to help various experts complete or expand their work,” says Seward. “Many projects have already been supported with additional grants and initiatives underway that will help protect the long-term health of the ecosystem in the Southern Ocean.”

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Photo courtesy of Shannon Lyday/NOAA Animal textures

The post Krill Fishing Boom May Threaten Antarctic Predators and Climate Crisis Mediation appeared first on Food Tank.

“We have seen an uptick in food insecurity in the past year, so now we’re opening up to new types of food to come into this starving food system,” Alyson Schill, Co-Founder and CEO of Careit, tells Food Tank. “That’s happening across the U.S. right now and it’s enabling more nonprofit organizations to source relationships between donors that they previously didn’t even know about.”

Careit operates through a mobile app, where businesses can create profiles and share details about surplus food they have. Nonprofit organizations with a Careit account then receive timely notifications when a donation in their area is posted or assigned to them. Upon notification, the organization has the option to either accept or decline that donation. If it is rejected, the donation becomes available again for other potential partners. Once a match is made, both parties can use the app’s chat features to confirm the donation, record details including the weight and temperature of the food and coordinate the logistics for pickup.

“Our focus is to create an ease of use with the technological features that Careit can offer businesses that previously haven’t had the ability to donate as frequently or ever before and allow them to actually start a food donation program or expand a food donation program they previously had,” Schill tells Food Tank.

Schill says Careit is also helping grocery stores increase the amount of food they can deliver to the community through donations. Grocery stores typically have a relationship with a food bank that is connected to a variety of smaller, local organizations.

Schill says these smaller organizations are usually only able to pick up food from the store once or twice a week, and occasionally miss the pickups altogether. Careit has been able to fill in some of these gaps of missed pickups by building food donation relationships between larger grocery stores and smaller organizations. “We have been helping Sprouts Farmers Market to make sure that they have the right partners in each area so that food is distributed equitably,” she says.

Careit is also helping all of Sprouts Farmers Market locations to become compliant with SB1383, a California law requiring organic waste facilities and operations to measure and report organic waste material activity.

And the platform is broadening its focus beyond food to include household goods, including kitchen equipment, hand sanitizer, and other products. They are also exploring animal feed and have already helped farms in multiple states receive donations that they can use to care for their livestock. According to Schill, Careit’s approach toward animal feed donation is particularly notable due to longstanding issues of traceability within the industry.

“Careit is helping these smaller farms that are at the cutting edge of this old practice, that’s also new in terms of modern society’s way of viewing it, to make it visible and the norm,” Schill tells Food Tank.

Schill envisions Careit evolving into a vital resource for redistribution among nonprofit organizations, with the potential to contribute to effective emergency rescue relief as well. Careit is also initiating two partnerships in Portland, Oregon and Memphis, Tennessee aimed at establishing food donation programs and measuring their successes for future scalability.

“We’re doing some really big projects where we are helping groups of stadiums, event centers, or public places like zoos and colleges to collaborate to increase the amount of food they’re donating, to increase their composting, and then just in general, to have more sustainable practices around food systems,” Schill tells Food Tank.

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Photo courtesy of Alyson Schill

The post Careit: Turning Food Surplus into Community Solutions appeared first on Food Tank.

“We want the Oceans Futures platform based on strong scientific support for where fish will move in response to climate change so that we can understand where risks associated with fish and fisheries might change in the future,” Sarah Glaser, Senior Director of Oceans Futures at WWF, tells Food Tank.

Oceans Futures analyzes global climate and fisheries models to highlight 20 regions across the world that will likely see conflict, food insecurity, or geopolitical tensions by 2030. WWF hopes that the early warning system will enable early, collaborative action on conservation and conflict prevention to foster a harmonious climate for people and the environment.

Fisheries conflict has increased 20-fold over the last four decades, according to a study on global patterns of fisheries conflict, published in Global Environmental Change. And another study in Global Change Biology finds that 23 percent of all fish stocks will move in the next eight years, optimizing some fishing areas while deteriorating others and significantly impacting coastal communities and relationships across countries.

Oceans Futures aims to meet the challenges fisheries will face to provide solutions for more peaceful oceans, more sustainable communities and economies, and nutritious blue foods for all.

“When we design conservation interventions around fisheries management we need to be able to anticipate when conflict could happen as a result of our conservation interventions, but also in areas of the world in which conflict is systemic or there’s a recent history of conflict,” Glaser says.

Oceans Futures is supported by partnerships with the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), the International Conservation Caucus Foundation (ICCF), and Ode Partners. The platform’s initial launch reveals a combination of projections for how fish stocks will shift over time due to climate change as well as how this movement will increase the risk of conflict over fisheries.

By 2025, Oceans Futures hopes to expand the available body of data by using machine-learning models to understand what causes the escalation of low-level conflicts. Glaser says this technological advancement will help them build these models that operate up to 20 times faster than their first database, the Horn of Africa, which took almost two years and more than a dozen researchers to create.

Glaser believes the technological solutions that Oceans Futures develops can also serve as a valuable tool to address food loss and waste. If the platform can support the implementation of cold chain storage, including ice makers and refrigerated transportation, it can help reduce food loss in fishing communities. The cold chain infrastructure can also reduce fossil fuels if it is supported by solar, wind, or green power.

It’s a “win for the people in the communities who make more money because their fish is higher quality,” Glaser tells Food Tank. “And it also means that the ocean wins because more of the fish that are taken from it make it into the global food chain, and are not just lost to the system.”

As solutions are rolled out, Oceans Futures hopes to foster awareness and conversations about the role of fisheries in supporting peaceful coastal communities and food security.

“People are more and more committed to using these multilateral institutions, such as regional fishery management organizations as a means for working together to understand fisheries, to share information and to really promote good behavior on the world’s seas,” says Glaser.

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Photo courtesy of NOAA, Unsplash

The post Predicting Global Fisheries Risks: Inside WWF’s Oceans Futures Platform appeared first on Food Tank.

Villalobos highlighted that the climate crisis has significantly affected agricultural production in Mexico for decades, reaching an alarming peak in recent years. In September, temperatures soared to a record high, marking the hottest September since 1941 with a notable three-degree increase above the average, according to Villalobos. 

“The impact of these high temperatures, the lack of rain, and also the problems associated with some pests and disease really impacts this particular year’s production estimate,” Villalobos says. 

While official production statistics are forthcoming, Villalobos shares that early estimates indicate that cereals, corn, and bean yields were reduced between 28 and 30 percent, which will also lead to higher prices. 

Villalobos believes that extension services, communication tools, proper soil management, and access to technology are critical first steps toward overcoming these barriers and increasing productivity. 

Mexico is collaborating with the United States Department of Agriculture and U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack to increase the access to technologies between Mexico and the United States. 

“We need to incorporate the most advanced tools in order to make agriculture more efficient,” Villalobos says. “We understand that we have to increase productivity without expanding the frontier of agricultural land.”

Villalobos believes that this partnership and interdependency will not only increase food production and security in Mexico and the United States, but also across the globe. 

“I think North America will be capable enough to provide the food our societies require or demand,” says Villalobos. “But we also have to recognize that we need to play a more important role as a provider of food worldwide.”

Villalobos reports that Mexico is the 7th largest exporter of agricultural products in the world, exporting to 191 different countries. 

“The advantage is the diversity,” says Villalobos. “We can produce many different products all year round because of our geographical position.”

As Villalobos looks towards the future of Mexican agriculture, he emphasizes the importance of supporting small and medium-scale farmers. Mexico’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development has already made significant strides in this direction through initiatives like its Fertilizer Program. This program aims to enhance the availability of fertilizers to improve the agricultural productivity of small-scale farmers in economically marginalized regions. 

Watch the full conversation below.

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The post Mexico’s Agricultural Landscape: Overcoming Climate Challenges for a Sustainable Future appeared first on Food Tank.

The North American Meat Institute (NAMI) is a nonprofit, industry trade association that advocates for and supports more than 350 meat companies responsible for producing over 95 percent of the United States’ output of meat and poultry products. 

In 2021, NAMI launched their strategy, Protein PACT, a framework aimed at taking a consistent approach toward sustainability. 

“For us, sustainability is animal welfare, environmental impact, food safety, human health and wellness, and labor and human rights,” says Mittenthal. “All of those are really critical to be part of the sustainability puzzle for our industry.”

NAMI developed metrics within the Protein PACT to support and drive continuous improvement across the meat industry in a way that aligns with global goals and standards. According to Mittenthal, they have more than 90 metrics, which NAMI evaluates on an annual basis. They are continuously working with their members to share and develop this data, indicating where the industry currently stands and goals for between now and 2030. 

“This is a major culture change for our industry,” Mittenthal says. Before 2022, the meat industry didn’t engage in organizational-level data sharing. In the initial year of data sharing within NAMI’s membership, they successfully brought 90 percent of the industry by volume to report data through the Protein PACT framework. 

“Protein PACT is also a collaborative effort throughout the whole animal agriculture supply chain because there’s substantial work occurring throughout all of animal agriculture when it comes to sustainability,” says Mittenthal. 

According to Mittenthal, NAMI functions as an umbrella organization that harmonizes the efforts of beef, pork, poultry, dairy, feed, and animal health companies, fostering alignment across all sectors through data systems. 

Addressing concerns regarding greenwashing in the meat industry, Mittenthal calls attention to a report from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). According to the FAO, animal protein is uniquely nutrient dense and irreplaceable by other foods in a way that helps people’s livelihoods and nutrition.

“We feel like our industry has a critical and necessary role to play in this discussion,” says Mittenthal. “It is really holistic and is critical for healthy development and healthy cognitive development.”

Mittenthal goes on to explain that NAMI’s collaboration with a number of environmental organizations are critical to their capacity to create impact. 

“The solution for improving everyone’s impact on the climate is not a one organization or one industry solution,” he says. “It takes everybody and that’s why you see 80,000 people here at COP where everyone wants to highlight the contributions they can make and the opportunities we have throughout a variety of industries to ensure we’re making progress.”

Watch the full conversation below.

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The post Building a More Sustainable Meat Industry with Data, Partnerships, and Collaboration appeared first on Food Tank.

“We’re able to provide such high-quality produce that anybody can shop,” Javier Guerrero, President and CEO of Coastal Roots Farm, one of the first farms to open a pay-what-you-can initiative, tells Food Tank.

Coastal Roots Farm, located in Encinitas, California, operates as a normal farm stand or supermarket, where consumers can shop for produce of their choice. At the point of payment, their private check-out system allows shoppers to view their total bill and choose the portion they can comfortably and willingly pay. Their market offers up to US$30 off produce at no-cost to those who need it.

“Those that can pay, pay. Those that need to deduct, deduct. Some people might donate,” Guerrero says.

Guerrero emphasizes that the market promotes the same shopping experience for people from all different walks of life, whether they can pay for any, all, or more than their total cost of produce. He says the customers who are paying the full fare, or even donating a little more, know they may be helping someone who is shopping right next to them and needs that support.

Last year, Coastal Roots Farm grew 86,000 pounds of food and fed 45,000 people, according to Guerrero. Between 70 -75 percent of what they grew is donated to the community, both through the farm stand or other initiatives.

Coastal Roots Farm has also inspired several other pay-what-you-can farm stands across the nation. Common Good City Farm, located in Washington D.C., launched their first pay-what-you-can initiative during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The question that we asked ourselves was how do we create a market where everyone can still shop for whatever they want, and that their ability to pay for that doesn’t impact their ability to shop,” Samantha Trumbull, Executive Director of Common Good City Farm, tells Food Tank.

Common Good City Farm is located in Ward 1, which houses over one tenth of the total D.C. population, according to DC Health Matters. They report that 20 percent of all households in Ward 1 earn less than US$49,999 annually. On average, white households earn twice that. Common Good City Farm’s pay-what-you-can model intends to respond to this inequality.

Trumbull explains that Common Good City Farm initially aimed to create a system that allowed people to pay a discounted price or pay nothing, while also encouraging those who can to pay more.

While the farm stand successfully increased access and reduced socio-economic stigma, she says they still find some community members are hesitant to shop when they can’t make any payment.

“It is our constant job to work on the way we communicate this to people,” Trumbull tells Food Tank. But through conducting demographic surveys on site, the Farm has found that people who can afford to pay more or donate are not nearly meeting the level that they had hoped and encouraged.

“People do tip and do pay extra to support the program, but not nearly at the level that we wanted to encourage them to,” Trumbull says. “We really think there are plenty of people in our community who can pay 200 percent of the suggested price, and no one is doing that.”

Trumbull and Common Good City Farm anticipated that the higher income group would help subsidize those with lower incomes. Yet, they were surprised to find that reciprocity was most prevalent among their middle-income shoppers.

This pay-what-you-can model has also been used at Groundwork Farms and Sprout City Farms in Denver, Colorado to ensure fresh produce is affordable and available for all of their community members. EarthDance Organic Farm School in Ferguson, Missouri also debuted a pay-what-you-can drive-thru farm stand in response to the pandemic; the farm’s success with this model inspired them to employ it at their farmers’ market booth and develop a physical on-farm stand.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), 12.8 percent of U.S. households were food insecure at some time during 2022, a significantly higher rate than the 10.2 percent in 2021. “Food insecurity has not gone away in San Diego [county] as it hasn’t with many parts of the country,” Guerrero tells Food Tank. “With the costs of inflation and the costs of everything, really, people shouldn’t have to question their ability to eat well and stay healthy.”

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Photo Courtesy of Melissa Askew, Unsplash

The post Pay-What-You-Can Farm Stands Flourish Amidst Soaring Food Insecurity and Inflation in the U.S. appeared first on Food Tank.

“I wanted to leverage my four decades of experience to design a plant-based approach to scaled food service using real vegetables, grains, and legumes—along with cultural authenticity and respect – to field delicious products that help institutions address some of the most vexing challenges created by our current food system,” Michel Nischan, founder and Chief Executive Officer of Wholesome Crave, tells Food Tank. “Our products naturally address climate change, biodiversity, and cultural authenticity.”

In 2007, Nischan co-founded Wholesome Wave alongside food policy leader Gus Schumacher and American food writer Michael Batterberry. The nonprofit organization strives to address diet-related diseases by helping low-income Americans buy and eat healthy fruits and vegetables. Wholesome Wave partners with community-based organizations to raise and re-invest private funding through programs that meet the unique needs of each community. According to Nischan, Wholesome Crave can help Wholesome Wave meet the challenges of traditional philanthropy in sustaining long-haul initiatives.

“Policy advocacy is difficult to find funding for, so launching a for-profit food company to steer unrestricted, tax-free gross revenue royalties to Wholesome Wave was an opportunity we needed to pursue,” Nischan says.

Through selling responsibly sourced, plant-based soups into the marketplace, Wholesome Crave directly supports food policy advocacy, such as the Gus Schumacher Nutrition Incentive Program (GusNIP) in the 2018 Farm Bill. Nischan believes that this model can reveal how food manufacturing for scaled environments can be designed for impact from the start.

“This provides Wholesome Wave with the unrestricted earned income it needs to continue its highly respected advocacy work to end nutrition insecurity and beyond,” Nischan says.

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, Wholesome Crave focused exclusively on the corporate food service sector. However, when the pandemic disrupted their intentions to partner with other corporate accounts such as UBS and Morgan Stanley through Restaurant Associates, Wholesome Crave pivoted to establish an e-commerce platform to ensure the business’ survival. This allowed Wholesome Crave to extend its reach into the college and university sector, where a more certain return to regular business was anticipated that fall.

“We’re now in a dozen college and university institutions and counting, and corporate food service is finally showing signs of life,” Nischan says.

In February 2023, Wholesome Crave partnered with Nestlé Professional and the University of Massachusetts Dining Program to launch the Purpose-Driven Plant-Based Incubator. This partnership unites college and university food service operators in a collaborative effort to drive measurable, sustainable change in the food system by making culturally authentic, plant-forward options affordable and doable.

Wholesome Crave also recently announced a partnership with Anna Hammond’s Matriark Foods, allowing them to replace their organic vegetable base stock products with an upcycled vegetable mirepoix.

“Because soup is such a deliciously powerful platform where excess food can land, we will be looking at a variety of approaches to incorporate more into our products,” Nischan says.

As Wholesome Crave looks towards the future, Nischan says they hope to work with their Impact Board of Chefs to connect their customers with small-holder producers, supporting products like fonio, tepary beans, and indigenous heirloom corn. As they scale, Wholesome Crave is also looking to expand into other product categories beyond soup.

“The impact potential is stunning.” Nischan says. “When a facility that serves, say, 50,000 meals a day changes the onions they buy, they have a profound impact on the environment and local economy just through that one choice.”

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Photo Courtesy of Wholesome Crave. 

The post Wholesome Crave: Transforming Large-Scale Food Services for a Sustainable Future appeared first on Food Tank.

“Through Hope in the Water we are on a mission to reimagine a planet where both ecological balance and food abundance are possible. Our series is a fresh take on how we can rewrite menus worldwide that will create a meaningful and lasting impact for generations to come,” David E. Kelley, the producer of the series, says in the press release.

Kelley, a storytelling visionary and 13-time Emmy Award-winning producer, produced the series in collaboration with four-time James Beard Award and Emmy Award winner Chef Andrew Zimmern and his production company Intuitive Content. The series is directed by award-winning filmmaker Brian Peter Falk.

Hope in the Water embarks on a global journey, uncovering creative solutions and breakthrough blue food technologies that can save the threatened seas and fresh waterways while feeding future generations. Celebrated environmental activists, Shailene Woodley, Martha Stewart, José Andrés, and Baratunde Thurston reveal the hidden costs of the climate crisis, irresponsible fishing, and habitat destruction. The docuseries shines a light on the stories of innovators, aquafarmers, and fishers who are leading initiatives to build a sustainable future for the planet.

Hope in the Water is part of a larger multi-year impact campaign led by Fed by Blue. The nonprofit aims to provide and inspire visionaries, thought leaders, ocean enthusiasts, activists, and consumers with the knowledge and resources to help protect and participate in a responsible blue food system.

“We’re honored to be a part of the journey in bringing this important food system to bear in what are some of the most engaging conversations with thought leaders and experts,” Jennifer Bushman, co-founder of Fed by Blue, tells Food Tank. “We aim to always see how we can include our blue food system and align where we can have both water protection and water production in service to the future of food.”

Hope in the Water is part of a multi-year, multi-platform initiative from PBS exploring how every aspect of the climate crisis impacts communities, countries, and the entire planet. PBS’ Climate, Nature, & Our Planet initiative aims to provide a deeper understanding of the issues surrounding the climate crisis and explore its intersections with conservation, biodiversity, and the ecosystem.

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Photo courtesy of Hiroko Yoshii, Unsplash

The post Hope in the Water to Premiere on PBS Summer 2024 appeared first on Food Tank.

“There are a wide range of animal industries that we rarely see or think about — and some that most Americans have never heard of,” Ann Linder, Associate Director of Policy and Research for the Brooks McCormick Jr. Animal Law and Policy Program at Harvard Law School, tells Food Tank. “But each of these industries carries disease risk and each activity tends to make the others more dangerous as pathogens and animals can move from one industry or supply chain to another.”

The report explores 36 distinct consumer-facing animal markets, including large-scale production for food, hunting, fishing, and trapping, pet trade, and entertainment. Through documenting each market’s supply chain, surrounding regulation, and potential risk for zoonotic disease, the authors developed a Market Risks chart. The chart evaluates the level of risk for each market by considering various factors and conditions related to zoonotic risk, as well as the measures taken to mitigate them.

Linder, who is also an author of the report, says that the system in which these animal markets are managed could contribute to an overall lack of regulation.

“Many of the issues we observed arose when there were gaps between different agencies or between different levels of government,” Linder says. “Those gaps can create significant holes in regulation, made worse by siloing between agencies.”

According to the report, there is not a unified federal or state authority responsible for the prevention, detection, and regulation of zoonotic disease. Rather, regulatory control is divided among a spectrum of different government and state agencies. Each agency is tasked with overseeing particular types of animals or activities, but oftentimes, these distinctions are made along arbitrary lines.

Linder explains, “captive wildlife fall outside the jurisdiction of the USDA, whose primary focus is livestock, and they also fall outside the purview of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service which focuses on free-roaming wildlife. They fall between the cracks and the fault lines between these different agencies and, in some cases, are left completely unregulated altogether.”

Linder highlights how these gaps in regulation across the meat industry also present several opportunities to improve these systems of production in ways that would promote animal health and welfare while also discouraging the spread of zoonotic disease.

“There are also emerging alternatives that might reduce our dependance on systems of production that carry these kinds of vulnerabilities and offer a broader range of food options in the future,” Linder tells Food Tank.

The report outlines policy challenges to reduce disease risk in the United States. The challenges are loosely organized into three categories: foundation, design, and function. At a foundational level, risk can be mitigated through increased visibility and interconnectedness of industries. Design touches on the structural issues that undermine regulation, calling for increased funding, more organized jurisdiction, and heightened awareness of animal markets in the public health sphere. The functional aspect examines the current limits and pitfalls that hinder agencies’ ability to effectively implement regulations, resulting in reactionary response, silos between agencies, and inequities in disease risk.

According to Linder, closing the information gap is one of the first steps toward addressing these challenges and informing a more comprehensive approach to reducing zoonotic risk.

“By looking at these industries alongside the risk they pose, we’re better able to make clear-eyed assessments about whether that risk is justified and where it could be reduced,” says Linder.

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Photo Courtesy of Artem Beliaikin, Unsplash

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