Throughout the Yangtze River Delta, a region in southern China famed for its widespread rice production, farmers grow belts of slender green stalks. Before they reach several feet tall and turn golden brown, the grassy plants soak in muddy, waterlogged fields for months. Along the rows of submerged plants, levees store and distribute a steady supply of water that farmers source from nearby canals.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
When an outbreak of deadly tornadoes tore through the small town of Mayfield, Kentucky, in December 2021, one family was slow to act, not because they didn’t know what to do. They didn’t know that they should do anything.
The family of Guatemalan immigrants only spoke Spanish, so they didn’t understand the tornado alert that appeared on their cell phones in English. “I was not looking at [an information source] that told me it was going to get ugly,” Rosa, identified only by her first name, told researchers for a study on how immigrant communities responded to the warnings.
Another alert popped up in Spanish, and Rosa and her family rushed downstairs to shelter. Ten minutes later, a tornado destroyed the second floor where they’d been.
For at least 30 years, the National Weather Service had been providing time- and labor-intensive manual translations into Spanish. Researchers have found that even delayed translations have contributed to missed evacuations, injuries, and preventable deaths. These kinds of tragedies prompted efforts to improve the speed and scope of translating weather alerts at local, state, and national levels.
Early into the Biden administration, the agency began a series of experimental pilot projects to improve language translations of extreme weather alerts across the country. The AI translating company Lilt was behind one of them. By the end of 2023, the agency had rolled out a product using Lilt’s artificial intelligence software to automate translations of weather forecasts and warnings in Spanish and Chinese.
“By providing weather forecasts and warnings in multiple languages, NWS will improve community and individual readiness and resilience as climate change drives more extreme weather events,” Ken Graham, director of NOAA’s National Weather Service, said in a press release announcing the 2023 launch. Since then, the service also added automatic translations into Vietnamese, French, and Samoan. The machine learning system could translate alerts in just two to three minutes — what might take a human translator an hour — said Joseph Trujillo Falcón, a researcher at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign whose work supported the program.
And now those alerts are gone. The National Weather Service has indefinitely suspended its automated language translations because its contract with Lilt has lapsed, according to an April 1 administrative message issued by the agency. The sudden change has left experts concerned for the nearly 71 million people in the U.S. who speak a language other than English at home. As climate change supercharges calamities like hurricanes, heat waves, and floods, the stakes have never been higher — or deadlier.
“Because these translations are no longer available, communities who do not understand English are significantly less safe and less aware of the hazardous weather that might be happening in their area,” said a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration employee familiar with the translation project, whom Grist granted anonymity to protect them from retaliation. Hundreds of thousands of alerts were translated by the Lilt AI language model, the employee said.
An internal memo reviewed by Grist showed that the National Weather Service has stopped radio translations for offices in its southern region, where 77 million people live, and does not plan to revert to a previous method of translation — meaning that its broadcasts will no longer contain Spanish translations of forecasts and warnings. The move enraged some workers at local NWS offices, according to conversations relayed to the employee, as the decision not to restart radio translations was due to the workload burden as the service’s workforce faces cuts under the Trump administration.
No clear reason was given as to why the contract lapsed and the agency has discontinued its translations, the employee said. “Due to a contract lapse, NWS paused the automated language translation services for our products until further notice,” NOAA weather service spokesperson Michael Musher told Grist in a statement. Musher did not address whether the NWS plans to resume translations, nor did he address Grist’s additional requests for clarification. Lilt did not respond to a request for comment.
Fernando Rivera, a disaster sociologist at the University of Central Florida who has studied language-equity issues in emergency response, told Grist the move by the administration “is not surprising” as it’s in “the same trajectory in terms of [Trump] making English the official language.” Rivera also pointed to how, within hours of the president’s inauguration, the Trump administration shut down the Spanish-language version of the White House website. Trump’s mandate rescinded a decades-old order enacted by former President Bill Clinton that federal agencies and recipients of federal money must provide language aid to non-English speakers.
“At the end of the day, there’s things that shouldn’t be politicized,” Rivera said.
Of the millions of people living in the U.S. who don’t speak English at home, the vast majority speak Spanish, followed by Chinese, Tagalog, Vietnamese, and Arabic. Now that the contract with Lilt has lapsed, it’ll be difficult to fulfill the Federal Communications Commission’s pre-Trump ruling on January 8 that wireless providers support emergency alerts in the 13 most common languages spoken in the U.S., said Trujillo Falcón, the researcher at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
The gap will have to be filled by doing translations by hand, or by using less accurate automated translations that can lead to confusion. Google Translate, for example, has been known to use “tornado clock” for “tornado watch” and grab the word for “hairbrush” for “brush fires” when translating English warnings to Spanish. Lilt, by contrast, trained its model specifically on weather-related terminologies to improve its accuracy.
While urban areas might have news outlets like Telemundo or Univision that could help reach Spanish-speaking audiences, rural areas don’t typically have these resources, Trujillo Falcón said: “That’s often where a lot of multilingual communities go to work in factories and on farms. They won’t have access to this life-saving information whatsoever. And so that’s what truly worries me.”
It’s an issue even in states with a large population of Spanish speakers, like California. “It’s assumed that automatic translations of emergency information is commonplace and ubiquitous throughout California, but that’s not the case, particularly in our rural, agricultural areas where we have farmworkers and a large migrant population,” said Michael Méndez, a professor of environmental policy and planning at the University of California, Irvine.
Méndez said that Spanish speakers have been targeted by misinformation during extreme weather. A study in November found that Latinos who use Spanish-language social media for news were more susceptible to false political narratives pertaining to natural disaster relief and other issues than those who use English-language media. The National Weather Service alerts were “an important tool for people to get the correct information, particularly now, from a trusted source that’s vetted,” Méndez said.
Amy Liebman, chief program officer at the nonprofit Migrant Clinicians Network, sees it only placing a “deeper burden” on local communities and states to fill in the gaps. In the days since the weather service contract news first broke, a smattering of local organizations across the country have already announced they will be doubling down on their work offering non-English emergency information.
But local and state disaster systems also tend to be riddled with issues concerning language access services. A Natural Hazards Center report released last year found that in hurricane hotspots like Florida, state- and county-level emergency management resources for those with limited English proficiency are scarce and inconsistent. All told, the lack of national multilingual emergency weather alerts “will have pretty deep ripple effects,” said Liebman. “It’s a life or death impact.”
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Millions of Americans don’t speak English. Now they won’t be warned before weather disasters. on Apr 14, 2025.
This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Kate Yoder.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Property owners and landlords in New York City can now be fined $25 or more if residents are found throwing a banana peel in the trash. As of April 1, all New Yorkers must separate organic waste — that includes food scraps, food-soiled paper (like empty pizza boxes), and leaf and yard waste — from the rest of their trash, similar to how metal, glass, paper, and plastic is set aside for recycling.
This is how the city is encouraging — or indeed, mandating — participation in its curbside composting program, where food waste is collected weekly by the sanitation department, same as the trash and recycling. Mandatory curbside composting is still relatively new in New York City; the program only rolled out in all five boroughs late last year.
The best use of food, of course, is to feed people. When it can’t do that, composting is one tool to help reduce emissions from organic waste — the methane released as food decays in landfills is a major driver of global warming. As a whole, the United States wastes as much food as it did nearly 10 years ago, despite setting an ambitious goal to cut food waste in half.
Getting New Yorkers onboard with composting will take time — and effort. When it comes to diverting food waste from landfills by composting it instead, New York lags far behind other large U.S. cities. The city recovered less than 5 percent of eligible households’ organic waste in the 2024 fiscal year. The fines announced this month are designed to boost compliance; in the first week of April, the New York City Department of Sanitation, or DSNY, issued nearly 2,000 tickets for allegedly failing to separate organics.
“That is only half the story: We picked up 2.5 million pounds of compostable material last week,” said Vincent Gragnani, press secretary for DSNY, “a 240 percent increase over the 737,000 pounds collected during the same week last year.”
But critics say the city should focus more on educating residents on the benefits of composting.
“My concern is that, instead of doing outreach, we’re focusing on fear-mongering,” said Lou Reyes, a local composting advocate. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Reyes and his partner started a volunteer-run effort in Astoria, Queens, to collect and compost neighborhood food waste. He described the city’s recovery rate of organic waste prior to the rollout of fines as “pretty shameful.”
The lackluster participation in the city’s composting program may be a function of time — Seattle, for example, banned organics in the trash 10 years ago. In San Francisco, composting has been mandatory since 2009.
Still, experts say boosting food waste collection in New York, a metropolis with more than 8 million people, will also take dedicated education and outreach.
“I would say our biggest tool that the department uses is education,” said Joseph Piasecki, the public affairs and policy coordinator for San Francisco’s environmental department. He mentioned that the city’s organics hauler works to notify residents and businesses of potential mix-ups before fining them.
“They will reach out, our department will reach out, we will call, we’ll put boots on the ground to go, like physically go, there, and be like, How can we help you be successful?” said Piasecki.
At a preliminary budget hearing last month, DSNY said it has sent out citywide mailers about the composting fines; the department is also meeting with every community board and holding information sessions for residents and property managers to better educate the public about the program. And Piasecki stressed that San Francisco’s composting program should not serve as a direct comparison for New York’s. About 800,000 people live in San Francisco, roughly a tenth of the population of New York City. It also covers a much smaller geographic area: about 50 square miles compared to just over 300. A better comparison might be Los Angeles, a city of more than 3 million that just rolled out a mandatory curbside composting program two years ago.
But adding to DSNY’s composting woes is that the agency has failed to reassure critics of the composting program, who argue the city is misleading residents about what happens to their food scraps while also creating an environmental justice issue.
As of now, food waste that gets picked up by DSNY will usually wind up in one of two places: a composting facility on Staten Island or a wastewater-treatment plant on the edge of Brooklyn and Queens. But last year, DSNY reported that only one-fifth of food waste collected actually makes it to the composting facility. The rest is sent to the wastewater-treatment plant in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Greenpoint. (Asked for updated figures, Gragnani said the department did not have a precise breakdown, as the numbers often fluctuate.)
At the wastewater-treatment plant, organic waste is mixed with sewage sludge and broken down in an anaerobic digester, where it produces methane and other gases. This cocktail of gases — known as biogas — can then serve multiple purposes: It can be used on-site to power the facility itself, or it could be refined into renewable natural gas and used to heat homes. Instead, the New York City plant has been blasted by locals for flaring off excess methane.
The solids leftover from this process — known as the digestate — could technically be used to enhance soils. However, advocates worry it may be too low-quality to be of any use to farmers and gardeners since it was originally mixed with city wastewater, which means it may ultimately end up in landfills, too. (Asked for comment, Gragnani directed Grist to New York state’s Department of Environmental Protection, which operates the digesters.)
In Los Angeles, the city’s guidance on curbside organics collection is clear about where it goes: Food scraps and yard waste collected are turned into compost that is then used by farmers to grow organic products. In San Francisco, according to Piasecki, some of the compost created by scraps is then used by Napa Valley wineries. He added that this could be a moment “for New York to develop that kind of story,” especially if compost from the city eventually helps rural communities throughout the state.
For now, DSNY may have its hands full, answering to critics who say the anaerobic digestion process further entrenches the fossil fuel industry at a time when cities need instead to decarbonize.
For example, when biogas is converted into what’s known as renewable natural gas and then given to the local utility company for free, it’s “creating an incentive for rebuilding all the [gas] pipes and making the investments in this fossil fuel infrastructure,” said Eric Goldstein, the New York City environmental director for the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Asked to respond to these criticisms, Gragnani, the press secretary for DSNY, said, “Would the ‘local environmental advocates’ you spoke with prefer that we use fracked gas to heat homes and businesses? Unfortunately, their rhetoric can discourage participation and send more food and yard waste to release methane in faraway landfills.”
Anaerobic digestion can play an important role within food-waste reduction programs, said Marcel R. Howard, zero-waste program manager at the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives. But he added that it “must be implemented within zero-waste and social justice frameworks to prevent environmental harm and prioritize community needs.”
In the end, New York City has its work cut out for it. Reyes said that he wants to see “real, legitimate” outreach from DSNY on why separating food waste matters. “I am a huge supporter of municipal organic recovery that actually works,” he said. That means having the community actually buy into the idea of keeping food out of landfills and ensuring environmental justice issues — like flaring methane in a populous neighborhood — are not created in the process.
“Those are, I think, more acceptable and more dignified solutions than the mess that we have in New York City,” he added.
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline New York City is making people compost — or pay up on Apr 10, 2025.
This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Frida Garza.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
This story was produced by Grist and co-published with High Country News.
Jill Falcon Ramaker couldn’t believe what she was hearing on the video call. All $5 million dollars of her and her colleagues’ food sovereignty grants were frozen. She watched the faces of her colleagues drop.
Ramaker is Turtle Mountain Anishinaabe and the director of Buffalo Nations Food Sovereignty at Montana State University – a program that supports Indigenous foodways in the Rocky Mountains and trains food systems professionals – and is supported by the United States Department of Agriculture, or USDA.
“The funding that we had for training and infrastructure leading to raising our own foods that are healthy and not highly processed and culturally appropriate, has stopped.” Ramaker said. “We don’t have any information on when, or if, it will resume.”
In his first two months in office, President Trump has signed over 100 executive orders, many specifically targeting grants for termination that engage with diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives and climate-related projects associated with the Inflation Reduction Act. Climate change destroys the places and practices central to Indigenous peoples in the United States, and is exacerbated by droughts and floods that also affect foods essential to Native cultures. Food sovereignty programs play a crucial role in fighting the effects of climate change by creating access to locally grown fruits, vegetables, and animal products.
“It feels like we’re just getting started in so many ways,” Ramaker said.
The funding freeze from the USDA is sending shockwaves throughout the nation’s agriculture sector, but their effect on tribal food initiatives raises even larger questions about what the federal government’s commitments are to Indigenous nations. That commitment, known as the federal Indian trust responsibility, is a legally enforceable obligation by the federal government to protect Indigenous lands, assets, resources and rights. It is grounded in treaties made with Indigenous nations in exchange for the vast tracts of land that allowed America to expand westward.
“That general trust responsibility I think absolutely encompasses food sovereignty and tribes ability to cultivate their lands,” said Diné attorney Heather Tanana at the University of California Irvine.
As the U.S. gained territory in the 19th century, Indigenous nations were largely successful at resisting incursions by settlers. Because tribes were typically more powerful, militarily, then American forces, federal officials turned to peace treaties with tribes. Often, these treaties signed away large areas of territory but reserved certain areas for tribal use, now known as federal Indian reservations, in exchange for guarantees like medical aid, protection, and food. Some tribes specifically negotiated to preserve traditional food practices in their treaty rights. Examples include the right to hunt in the Fort Bridger Treaty for tribes in the mountain west, the right to fish in the Medicine Creek Treaty in the pacific northwest, and the right to gather plant medicines.
“It would be odd not to consider the federal responsibility of including food security along with water access and healthcare services,” Tanana said.
But the United States has failed to uphold those obligations, taking land and then ignoring legal responsibilities, including provisions for food and sustenance. Hunting, fishing and gathering rights weren’t upheld and in the mid-1800s rations designed to replace traditional foods that were delivered to reservations were “low cost and shelf-stable” while many arrived to reservations rotten. Combined with federal policies that prevented tribal citizens from leaving their reservations to hunt and gather, malnutrition was widespread. For instance, a quarter of those on the Blackfoot reservation in Montana died of starvation in the winter of 1884.
In 1974, the USDA began its Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations. The monthly package of foods like flour, beef, and coffee, colloquially known as “commodities” or “commods,” was meant to provide Indigenous households with breads, fats, and sugars. But many of the foods provided by the USDA were, and remain, low in nutritional value, contributing to high rates of obesity-related diseases and other health issues. In 2023, around 50,000 Indigenous people per month accessed the program.
“That’s what we are trying to address with Buffalo Nations,” Jill Falcon Ramaker said. “Our communities have gone through a lot.”
Montana’s reservations continue to be hit hard by lack of healthy foods, and roughly 25 percent of Indigenous people face food insecurity.
Last year the Biden administration announced new initiatives aimed at strengthening tribal food sovereignty. This included funding meat processing facilities, support for Indigenous children’s nutrition in schools, and food and agriculture internships for those in higher education. The administration’s goal was to directly address the adverse effects of climate change on Indigenous peoples, as tribes are often “disadvantaged communities that are marginalized by underinvestment and overburdened by pollution.”
However, it’s unclear just how many programs the Biden administration funded or how much money went to those efforts. A request to the USDA for a list of food sovereignty grants was not answered.
“USDA is reviewing the programs for which payments have been on hold to ensure they align with the Department’s goals and priorities,” a spokesperson said in an email statement. “Secretary Rollins understands that farmers and ranchers, and other grant-funded entities that serve them, have made decisions based on these funding opportunities, and that some have been waiting on payments during this government-wide review. She is working to make determinations as quickly as possible.”
Earlier this month, the Pueblo of Iseta, Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation, and Cheyenne Arapaho Tribes along with five Indigenous students sued the Trump administration for violation of trust and treaty responsibilities after cutting funding to the Bureau of Indian Education. The cuts resulted in staff reductions at tribal colleges like Haskell Indian Nations University and Southwestern Polytechnic Institute and the lawsuit alleges that the move is a violation of federal trust obligations.
“Tribes have not historically had a good experience hearing from the government,” said Carly Griffith Hotvedt, an attorney and director of the Indigenous Food and Agriculture Initiative and member of the Cherokee Nation. “That doesn’t always work out for us.”
Hotvedt added the way the Trump administration is playing whack-a-mole with funding tribal food programs will continue to erode the little trust Indian country has in the federal government.
In Montana, Jill Ramaker said Buffalo Nations had planned to build a Food Laboratory in partnership with local tribes. The project would have developed infrastructure and research for plains Indigenous food systems. That plan is now permanently on hold for the foreseeable future.
“We are used to and good at adapting,” said Ramaker. “But it’s going to come at a tremendous cost in our communities.”
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How Trump’s funding freeze for Indigenous food programs may violate treaty law on Mar 31, 2025.
This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Taylar Dawn Stagner.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
DHAKA, Bangladesh — The United Nations food agency said it managed to avoid drastic food aid cuts to Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh in the face of concerns that their monthly rations would be reduced by more than half.
Earlier this month, the U.N.’s World Food Program, or WFP, said it might be forced to reduce the monthly rations for the over 1 million Rohingya refugees from Myanmar, from US$12.50 per person to $6, beginning in April.
Instead, the ration for Rohingya living in camps in and around Cox’s Bazar is to be set at $12, while the ration for those living in Bhashan Char, an island in the Bay of Bengal, would be adjusted to $13, a WFP official told BenarNews on Thursday.
The Bangladesh government has encouraged Rohingya to relocate to Bhashan Char, in a bid to alleviate overcrowded conditions at the 33 camps in the Cox’ s Bazar region. Since 2021, about 35,000 refugees have relocated to the island, according to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.
On Thursday, the United States announced it would give millions in fresh funding through the WFP.
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“The United States is providing $73 million in new assistance for Rohingya refugees,” U.S. State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said in a post on X. “This food and nutrition support through @WFP will provide critically needed food and nutrition assistance for more than 1 million people.
“It is important that our international partners engage with sharing the burden with life-saving assistance such as this.”
Since 2017, Washington has been the biggest aid donor to the Rohingya refugees, contributing nearly $2.4 billion, according to the State Department.
The administration of interim Bangladesh leader Muhammad Yunus thanked the American government for the influx of funds.
The latest plight of the Rohingya came to light two weeks ago when the head of the United Nations appealed to the international community for help after the WFP had announced the planned food rations cuts.
“I can promise that we’ll do everything to avoid it [a humanitarian crisis], and I will be talking to all the countries in the world that can support us in order to make sure that funds are made available,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said during his first trip to the refugee camps in southeastern Bangladesh in nearly seven years.
A WFP official welcomed the news on Friday while warning that more was needed.
“While April ration cuts are averted, given the immense needs, we still need continued funding support or we will soon run out of funds again,” said Kun Li, WFP’s head of communication and advocacy in Asia and the Pacific.
Human rights advocates also expressed concerns about the ongoing plight of the Rohingya, a stateless Muslim minority group, many of whom were forced from their homes in Myanmar’s Rakhine state following the August 2017 crackdown by government forces.
Last-minute support from donors had prevented “a worst-case scenario,” said Daniel Sullivan, the director for Africa, Asia and the Middle East at Refugees International.
“Renewed donor funds, including $73 million for WFP announced by the United States, will maintain rations at near the same levels,” he said in a statement. “However, broader aid cuts are already negatively affecting refugees and we remain deeply concerned that failure to renew more than minimal aid will lead to increased hunger, disease and avoidable deaths.”
A human rights advocate who lived in a Rohingya camp for six years spoke out about the plight of the refugees.
“I appreciate and thank the United States for stepping in to respond to the food reduction crisis and request other donor countries to continue funding the much-needed lifesaving assistance programs in the camps,” Refugees International Fellow Lucky Karim said in a statement.
“As past smaller cuts have shown, the drastic cut in rations would have accelerated malnutrition, disease, and negative coping mechanisms, including child marriage and human smuggling,” she said.
Back in Cox’s Bazar, a Rohingya expressed relief.
“We were worried, but now relieved,” Mohammad Nur, a leader of the Jadimura camp in the Teknaf sub-district, told BenarNews. “How can a person live with only $6?”
BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated news service.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Kamran Reza Chowdhury for BenarNews.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Read a version of this story in Korean
Hungry North Korean soldiers are selling some of their military equipment to buy food, prompting officials to conduct inspections that have caught some soldiers without all their issued gear, residents in the country told Radio Free Asia.
Though the country’s military is often said to be under-supplied, military-grade items tend to be of better quality than products civilians can obtain, so are viewed as desirable.
Weapons are used often during training, but personal gear like tents, lunch boxes, canteens and waterproof rice containers are not used as often, so some soldiers figure they won’t be missed.
RFA has reported in the past that soldiers often go hungry, and some of them even steal from residents get food.
The inspections began earlier this month, and will now happen on a regular basis, a resident of the northeastern province of North Hamgyong told RFA Korean on condition of anonymity for safety reasons.
“The authorities recently determined that some young soldiers are selling their military-issued gear or giving it to people they know because they are hungry and need money,” he said. “In fact, quite a few soldiers during this inspection were caught without their gear that they were supposed to have.”
Two items — canteens and waterproof rice bags — are particularly sought after, he said.
Those who were caught without all their issued gear were going to be severely punished, he said.
“They will be questioned about how they disposed of their military gear,” he said. “Measures will likely be taken such as having them bring back their gear or paying for the missing items.”
A unit in the northwestern province of North Pyongan conducted the surprise inspection by instructing the soldiers to assemble for a combat exercise in an open field, a resident there told RFA on condition of anonymity to speak freely.
“I heard this from a soldier who frequently visits my house,” he said. “The items that were mainly raised during the inspection were military rice containers and personal tents. There was also unit that was missing several shovels.”
He said that the rice container is something that everyone needs, and that the tents can be used to cover holes in the roofs of homes and other buildings.
In North Korea, able-bodied men are required to serve 10 years in the 1.2 million-strong military after high school, from around age 18, while able-bodied women must serve seven years.
But rations can be small, and RFA has reported that new recruits plead with their parents for food soon after enlisting.
“Some newly enlisted soldiers are so hungry that they will secretly sell their military-issued supplies,” he said. “It will be difficult to completely eradicate this phenomenon unless chronic problems such as hunger are resolved.”
Translated by Claire S. Lee. Edited by Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Ahn Chang Gyu for RFA Korean.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
China is putting scales in hotel rooms and promoting healthy recipes tailored to different culinary regions on social media in a bid to stem the nationwide obesity problem, according to health officials and state media.
China’s National Health Commission is hoping the recipes and other advice will “popularize” a healthy lifestyle in a country where more than half the adult population is overweight or obese, experts said.
“The main risk factors for the health of the Chinese people at present come from chronic non-communicable diseases,” National Health Commission Director Lei Haichao told a March 9 news conference in Beijing.
“While our living conditions have improved, we have also seen problems such as higher energy intake and relative lack of exercise,” leading to obesity and overweight, Lei said.
The Commission has hired Olympic athletes and released WeChat emoticons to promote weight management, while hotels have installed scales in their rooms to encourage a weight-conscious attitude among traveling businessmen, he said, calling on more hotels to follow suit.
He said officials will also encourage the setting up of weight clinics in hospitals to help people live healthier lives.
The Commission’s weight-loss manual for 2024 includes recipes tailored to different culinary regions of China, taking into account local tastes, the Global Times reported.
The spring menu for Northeast China includes dishes like iron pot stewed fish and vegetable wraps, complete with detailed energy content, it said.
The government will likely be enlisting the help of neighborhood officials and their “grid” surveillance system, the paper said.
Jennifer Bouey, senior researcher and epidemiologist at the RAND Corporation, said China’s obesity epidemic is a serious one, with more than half of Chinese adults either overweight or obese.
“Data from 2020 shows that the adult overweight rate in China is 34.3%, and the obesity rate is 16.4%, which taken together exceeds 50%,” Bouey said. “The obesity rate among children is also very high.”
That compares with just 5-7% of adults being overweight and only 1% obese during the 1980s, she said.
By 2030, more than 65% of Chinese adults are expected to be overweight or obese, bringing a burden of disease that will likely cost 418 billion yuan (US$57.7 billion) in medical expenses, according to government predictions.
China officially defines overweight as a Body Mass Index, or BMI, of 24-28 obese as higher than that.
This means a very high increase in the rate of tumors, heart disease, and metabolic diseases including diabetes, Bouey said, adding that type 2 diabetes is already a major problem in China.
“These are all very expensive diseases that have a very big impact on public health,” she said.
Randall S. Stafford, professor at the Stanford University School of Medicine and project director of the Center for Preventive Medicine, said East and South Asian people are more likely to have metabolic problems at lower obesity levels, so have a higher risk of chronic disease.
And it’s largely a problem for countries as they emerge from widespread poverty and food insecurity, he said.
“Economic development has made possible the over-consumption of calories and other lifestyle changes that promote the development of chronic disease, particularly heart disease and diabetes,” Stafford said.
“Obesity is particularly problematic in East and South Asia due to genetic differences compared to people of European and African ancestry that induce metabolic problems at lower levels of obesity.”
He said the United States doesn’t appear to have a “unified strategy” to tackle the problem, with the use of weight-loss drugs now becoming widespread.
“A healthier strategy must emphasize increased physical activity, a predominantly plant-based diet, attention to stress reduction and sleep, and weight maintenance prior to weight loss,” Stafford said. “Combining these strategies with drugs for people most prone to chronic disease development may be the best option.”
Bouey said there is an urgent need to increase public awareness of the problem in China.
“Obesity in China also comes against a specific cultural background where people have a fairly old-fashioned view of food, especially the older generation,” she said, adding that 30 years of the “one-child policy” had led to high levels of obesity, especially among boys.
“Women pay a lot of attention to their weight, but men don’t have such requirements,” she said.
Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Jenny Tang for RFA Mandarin.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
BANGKOK – Vietnam is reviewing import tariffs on U.S. goods as it seeks to avoid a costly trade war with its biggest export destination, according to Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh.
Vietnam’s trade surplus with the U.S. rose to a record US$123 billion last year, figures released in February showed. Vietnam had the fourth-largest surplus with the U.S. in 2024, behind only China, the European Union and Mexico, all of which are now facing tariffs on their exports to America, imposed by the Trump administration.
“The prime minister emphasized that the Vietnamese government always pays attention to creating favorable conditions for the activities of U.S. businesses and investors in Vietnam, affirming that Vietnam wishes to build a balanced, stable, harmonious and sustainable economic-trade-investment cooperation relationship with the U.S.,” Vietnam’s government said, reporting on a meeting between the prime minister and U.S. Ambassador Marc Knapper in Hanoi on Thursday.
Chinh asked Knapper for U.S. help in creating “favorable conditions for Vietnam to import high-tech equipment from the U.S.,” and said Vietnam was “actively reviewing import tariffs on goods from the United States, encouraging increased imports of key US products that Vietnam needs, especially agricultural products, liquefied gas and high-tech products.”
The prime minister’s comments build on those he made at the beginning of March during a meeting with U.S. business leaders in Hanoi. He told representatives of about 40 companies that Vietnam was considering imports of U.S. aircraft, arms and medicines, among other goods.
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Vietnam upgrades Singapore ties as it seeks to boost regional trade
EXPLAINED: How US tariffs affect Vietnam’s economy
Vietnam and the U.S. raised bilateral relations to the highest level of Comprehensive Strategic Partnership in September 2023. As part of the agreement, the U.S. committed to investing US$2 million to build up Vietnam’s semiconductor industry.
Knapper on Thursday reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to training chip industry workers and said Washington was also interested in helping Hanoi access essential minerals and develop its nuclear power industry, according to the Vietnam government. The U.S. embassy did not comment on the meeting.
While cutting its trade surplus with the U.S. may help Vietnam avoid duties on its exports like those faced by China, which has been hit with 20% tariffs, it has not escaped entirely. On Wednesday, the Trump administration imposed 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from all countries. The U.S. is Vietnam’s third-biggest export market for steel.
Edited by Taejun Kang.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Mike Firn for RFA.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
The Albanese government is being urged to fund innovation precincts and shared manufacturing facilities in a new national effort on food and beverage production that an inquiry found has suffered under a policy quagmire and challenging conditions. After examining Australia’s food and beverage manufacturing for the last year, a lower house committee on Friday called…
The post Govt urged to act on food manufacturing appeared first on InnovationAus.com.
This post was originally published on InnovationAus.com.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Happy New Year. How are you celebrating the Lunar New Year?
I’m teaching a dumpling class. Then with Pearl River, where I’m a creative manager, we’ve got the Lion Dance. I love Lunar New Year month because there’s just so much to celebrate. It’s totally busy all the time, and it feels nice to celebrate the culture and share it out with the world in whatever way I can.
Can you tell me a little bit more about how you got into cooking? You started out making homemade baby food for your toddlers, from what I understand.
When I had kids, I wanted to give them a good diet. From there, other parents took notice and said, “Oh my gosh, your kids eat so well. They’re actually fighting over vegetables. How do you do that?” Basically, I was making food from scratch—even chicken nuggets. Then I started sharing recipes, made a blog.
I wanted to make sure that what I was sharing was healthy so I took a year-long course at the Institute of Integrative Nutrition. It was there that I learned that food can not only nourish you but harm you and also heal you. Healing was from adapting more plant-based foods into your diet. I think the world needs to eat more vegetables. So that’s when I started focusing on plant-based, not only for myself. When I started my Instagram page, everything just fell into place. Connecting with the vegan community and all these opportunities came up—including my cookbooks.
Do you know that I’m actually a graphic designer? For the longest time, I was always trying to marry the two—graphic design and food. You have a bunch of raw ingredients—what are you going to create out of this? You have to create a logo by drawing it from a hat. It’s like playing Mahjong—you get dealt this shitty hand and then suddenly you have this most beautiful hand just through the process of playing.
I majored in graphic design in college and I remember my professor taught me this concept of totality, which is when you just nail a design, a dish, and even, like you’re saying with Mahjong. You put in so much work and it looks effortless but in reality it’s so many pieces that go into the final product. What are some other ways your culinary career and your graphic design career overlap?
You eat with your eyes first. I had one college teacher for an advertising class who was like, “How do you make bread sexy?” That kind of stuck with me. It also sticks with me in terms of, “How do you make vegetarian food sexy? How do you make going plastic-free sexy?” Even just celebrating how beautiful all that farm fresh produce is at the farmer’s market, or just adding color to dishes because Chinese food or Asian food or food in general— it’s very brown. I have an issue with brown food, so I always like to add a pop of color.
I mean, your cookbook is called The Vibrant Hong Kong, and the cover is pink and green and it’s not brown, it’s not dull. Even flipping through it, the photos and stuff, the design of it is really thoughtful.
[laughs] There are still brown foods in there.
Of course.
But you can’t tell because I put lots of color around it! Sometimes I go to a restaurant and order something vegetarian and it literally is brown. It’s so unappetizing. Why do people cop out on vegetarian food? They could add so much to it, but it’s like an afterthought.
For your cookbook, how did you go about adapting traditional Chinese classics to be plant-based?
Lots of trial and error. For example, my fish balls recipe was one of my hardest recipes—to just get that right texture.
How many iterations of plant-based fish balls would you say that you made in this process?
At least 50.
Wow.
It was kind of like a science lab, but an edible one. I like to use the whole ingredients. I like to integrate vegetables into it. So it’s not just that you’re replacing it.
What is the most creative way to incorporate vegetables into your diet? For people who can’t make stuff from scratch in the same way.
Eat the rainbow. Make sure you have every single color on your plate because that will just ensure that you’ve got a wide variety of nutrients. And that’s a really, really simple way. Make sure that half of your plate is vegetables.
Over your time of being plant-based, doing more research, and taking those courses, have you seen a rise in the plant-based lifestyle?
I think people are more accepting of it, especially here in New York. Maybe not so much in Chinatown with the uncles and aunties. If you go to a Chinese restaurant, the only vegan option you have is a Buddhist delight, and I’m like, “I cannot eat another Buddhist delight.” [laughs]
I think people need to get out of the mindset that vegan food is not tasty or that it’s not culturally appropriate or that it’s bland. Vegetables are so often an afterthought. But after my pop-up dinners, everyone’s like, “Oh my god, if I could find vegan food like this, I would eat it all the time.”
Exactly. I also feel like the mock meat thing is a cop-out. You’re just making the same dish, but it’s a replacement and there’s just more creative ways that you can make a dish vegan.
There are some mock meats that bleed and I’m like, “Ugh, but why? I don’t need my vegetables to bleed.” But for somebody who’s transitioning, that’s a really good thing for them. So in my book, there’s this black pepper cabbage steak, and instead of replicating a steak, I use a cabbage. It absorbs all the sauce in the nooks and crannies, and you eat it with a fork and knife. So you’re actually getting that same dining experience because you’re just kind of digging in, mopping up all the sauce and eating it. I’m not trying to pretend it’s anything but a cabbage, but it was the perfect vehicle. For me, it was a win because when I ate it, it brought me all the nostalgia of having a black pepper steak in Hong Kong when I was a kid. So it doesn’t necessarily need to be exactly the same.
What is your favorite snack from Hong Kong, and what does it remind you of?
My favorite snack is something that my grandparents would make every year before the Lunar New Year, so that when people came to pay their respects over the holidays, they would serve it along with the togetherness tray. It’s just fried taro, fried sweet potato, with fried peanuts as well, just this crunchy snack mix. So that’s one of my very first food memories. I don’t know where it originates from because not everybody in Hong Kong has heard of this snack. I love my crunchy snacks. That’s my little downfall.
Yeah, it’s hard to resist. I was just talking to a friend about food memory. There are some foods that are so ingrained in my mind and I don’t even know what it’s called, where I can even get it, but if I smell it, immediately, it’ll throw me back there, or I can taste it in my memory. Smell is one of the strongest sensations.
In Hong Kong in the winter there are roasted chestnuts on the street, and you can smell them before you even see where the cart is. And it’s just magic.
Christine Wong recommends:
Sight: Beach
Sound: Crystal singing bowls
Taste: Passionfruit
Touch: Acupuncture
Smell: Freshly cut grass
This post was originally published on The Creative Independent.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Radio Free Asia.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Ella Zhao traces Cuba’s food rationing system, which was once seen as a symbol of revolutionary ideals—equality and access to essential goods—but has since struggled to meet the population’s evolving needs. By highlighting the gap between socialist aspirations and the realities of everyday life, Ella argues that what began as a tool for social equity now stands as a stark reminder of the disconnect between revolutionary ideals and the growing human rights challenges in Cuba.
Cuba’s revolutionary journey has been represented through its economic and social reforms, with the food rationing system standing as a key symbol of this legacy. Established in 1962 amid a U.S.-imposed embargo, the system was designed to embody socialist ideals by ensuring all citizens had access to essential goods at subsidised prices. While it initially helped secure food access for the population, the system has drifted away from its human rights foundations over time. Economic hardships, shifting global alliances, and political pressures have exposed the limitations of maintaining equitable food distribution, revealing how the system no longer fully meets the population’s evolving needs.
Food rationing: a material expression of the Cuban Revolution
Although Cuba declared independence in 1902, economic control remained mainly in the hands of U.S. interests, with sectors like sugar, mining, and oil dominated by foreign capital. The Cuban Revolution aimed to break free from these ties and create a self-reliant, equitable society. Following nationalisation policies in 1959, Castro’s government introduced a series of social programmes, including the food rationing system, which promised to ensure food for all in response to the U.S. embargo.
Under the rationing system, each Cuban receives a ration card to buy a limited amount of food each month from government bodegas (ration stations) at subsidised prices. During the early post-revolution years, refectories also appeared at workplaces, where workers and managers ate the same meals, symbolising a shared commitment to equality. These practices helped forge a collective socialist consciousness, reinforcing values of equity and commonality through daily eating routines.
The decades immediately following the Revolution are remembered as the zenith of socialism in Cuba. With economic support from the Soviet Union, including favourable trade terms for sugar and access to inexpensive crude oil, Cuba experienced a period of relative prosperity. Soviet food imports replaced American goods, and a wider range of foods became accessible. For many Cubans, this era evokes fond memories of “canned fruits, Russian cakes, and sweets” and a time when access to food was not as restricted. These memories represent not only a nostalgic view of the past but also a vision of what socialism was meant to offer.
The Special Period and the enduring legacy of scarcity
In 1990, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, Cuba’s economy faced an immense crisis. The withdrawal of Soviet support led to severe shortages, marking the start of the Período especial en tiempos de paz (Special Period). Food became scarce, health and nutrition issues arose, and rationed goods were insufficient to meet the population’s basic needs. As the government assured citizens that these sacrifices were temporary, new hardships tested the endurance of Cuba’s socialist ideals.
Today, the impact of the Special Period on daily life remains deeply ingrained in Cuba, highlighting a significant human rights issue. According to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), the right to food guarantees regular, permanent, and unrestricted access to sufficient, culturally appropriate food that supports both physical and mental well-being, dignity, and a life free from fear. This stands in stark contrast to the current reality in Cuba. While rationing persists, the allocated quantities are insufficient to sustain an adult for an entire month, and traditional Cuban ingredients are often excluded. To make up for these shortages, both legal and illegal channels—such as black markets, food exchange networks, and dollar stores—have become vital food sources, illustrating how food insecurity has reshaped Cuban society and complicated the original ideals of equality and provision.
Food and memory: between nostalgia and reality
In the context of food scarcity, Cubans use memories of food to highlight a pressing human rights concern, revealing the tension between past promises and today’s harsh realities. For instance, when Cubans recall past meals with family and friends, they are not merely indulging in nostalgia—they are highlighting the gap between the rich, varied diet that socialism once promised and the austere, calorie-focused rations available now. These memories embody both an attachment to the values of the Revolution and a critique of its current state.
The right to food has also become more than just sustenance; it mirrors the complex relationship between Cuba’s socialist ideals and the lived experience of scarcity. Where the Revolution’s early years symbolised abundance, the present scarcity feels like a retreat from those founding principles. By reflecting on past experiences, Cubans indirectly express dissatisfaction with the ways socialism has changed over time. For instance, a Cuban quoted in Garth’s work remarks, “Cubans’ post-revolutionary achievements did not necessarily correspond to their own ideals of a better life, and so people clung to what had been lost, believing that the good life was slipping away.” For many Cubans, dreams of equality and abundance have faded along with the flavours of the past.
A continuous tension between hope and disillusionment
The endurance of the rationing system reveals a complex reality where hope for a “better life” under socialism collides with economic challenges. Food scarcity in Cuba is not just about securing meals—it encapsulates a larger tension between past ideals and present limitations. Through their diverse experiences of the right to food, Cubans continue to grapple with the enduring questions of the Revolution: Can it still fulfil its promises? Or are these memories mere fragments of a golden age that has slipped away?
In conclusion, the right to food in Cuba represents both the aspirations and the disappointments of the Revolution. It has long been more than a simple economic measure, serving as a symbol of equality that has fostered a sense of shared struggle. Today, however, it stands as a stark reminder of the human rights issue at the heart of Cuban life—the growing divide between the ideals of socialism and the material realities faced by its people. These memories reflect loss and a testament to resilience, carrying forward the complex legacy of a revolution that continues to shape Cuba’s collective consciousness.
All articles posted on this blog give the views of the author(s), and not the position of the Department of Sociology, LSE Human Rights, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Image credit: Alexander Kunze
This post was originally published on LSE Human Rights.
Crusty Bread, creamy cheese, bubbly kimchi or refreshing tepache – all cultures have fermented foods and beverages with their own traditions, language, and cultural heritage surrounding them. Fermentation, in this sense, is a living food culture that taps into ancient skills and traditional knowledge. But this knowledge is under attack. As capitalism continues its onslaught on rural, indigenous, communal, and non-commodified ways of life, traditional food practices are slowly dying out in the contexts in which they originally emerged.
The post Reclaiming Traditional Foods For A Degrowth Food Future appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
Can you walk me through your morning coffee ritual?
When I’m brewing just for myself or with another person, I usually go for the V60, a manual pour-over method. It’s always been my favorite home brewing technique. It doesn’t yield the most coffee, so it’s not great for impressing a crowd, but it’s perfect for small batches. I use a bleached paper filter because it doesn’t leave any extra flavors behind. I find that metal filters can sometimes give the coffee a metallic taste, which can really throw off the brew, and unbleached filters can leave a slight papery flavor. For the setup, I use a temperature-controlled gooseneck kettle and my own grinder.
Do you remember when you first had a “good” coffee?
It was in Edmonton, Alberta. A couple of friends took me to Transcend at the original Garneau location. I think I had a cappuccino or something, and everyone I was with was like, “This is the spot; this is the best coffee.” I didn’t have a frame of reference then, but it completely rewired my brain. I applied for a job there during that visit because I had just moved to Edmonton and needed work. I was hired almost on the spot.
How old were you?
18 or 19.
Would you say that was the beginning of your career?
Definitely. I had just dropped out of university and it wasn’t until I had the 60 hours of one-on-one training that things really clicked. Once I started, I realized, Wow, I’m actually really good at this. I had a strong palate, my retro-nasal senses were on point, and I picked things up quickly.
Does having a strong palate apply to anything else in your life?
Nothing professional, but I’m a big perfume guy. Some people are better tasters and some people are better smellers.
What does it mean to have a good palate?
For me, a well-developed palate can isolate the different flavors, aromas, and textures at play. This can be tricky with coffee, especially if you’re not a regular drinker or not particularly intentional about it. In North America, many people tend to prefer coffee that tastes nutty or chocolatey, whereas something like a naturally processed Ethiopian coffee is very aromatic and bold—it can hit you with flavors like blackberries and Jolly Ranchers. If you build your palate without assumptions, you can sip the coffee and ask yourself, “What else am I tasting?” Often, it’s not immediately obvious. It’s about exploring what else you can detect in the cup.
You work in coffee education. Can you explain what being a trainer entails?
I work as a management consultant and educator for Variety Coffee Roasters in New York. Specifically, for education, I’m responsible for building and executing the coffee program for their retail staff across eight cafes. I redesigned their education program, breaking it into modules. The first module is all about assessing the individual’s experience with coffee. If someone is new to coffee, it will start with a basic PowerPoint covering the fundamentals, like how coffee is a seed inside a cherry, followed by a full menu cupping. The second module focuses on milk-based drinks, including milk steaming and latte art. No one can work in the cafes until they’ve passed the milk training session. The final two modules are all about espresso dialing from scratch.
Before joining Variety, I had been working in coffee education on a consulting basis, helping small restaurants and cafes develop their own sustainable coffee programs. I designed an espresso training cheat sheet, a key part of my consulting. When I joined Variety, I adapted it to their program, and it worked so well that I eventually patented it. This method has allowed me to train people to dial in espresso to a high standard in just a few hours. When dialing espresso, I rely on instinct rather than a clear cause-and-effect process. I just know what to do, but teaching that kind of instinct to others has been one of the biggest challenges in my role as a trainer.
You started your own company recently, Hot Stuff, and you work with Nordic light roast coffee. Can you explain what constitutes a light roast and how you achieve that flavor?
A good way to compare roasts is through sugar: light roasts are like white sugar, medium roasts are like caramel, and dark roasts are like molasses. If you think of fruitier, more expressive coffees you’ve had, they’re likely light roasts. During roasting, after the drying phase and Maillard reaction, there’s a point called the first crack. The first crack is a chemical change when the green coffee stops absorbing heat, then expels it. At this stage, all the moisture is gone, and when the coffee expels the heat, it’s similar to popcorn popping. This is when the coffee’s pores open up, and the sugars inside begin to cook. Green coffee is full of sugar, gas, and oil. The oil and sugars carry the coffee’s natural flavor.
Depending on the coffee’s origin, the flavor can vary widely. African coffees tend to be fruity and tea-like. In contrast, Latin American coffees often have notes of stone fruit, nuts, caramel, and chocolate—flavors that North Americans might associate with more traditional profiles, even though all coffee originates from Ethiopia. For lighter roasts, the goal is to preserve these flavors while ensuring the sugar is developed enough to avoid grassy or underdeveloped tastes. In a light roast, you aim to stop the process just after it has developed enough to avoid those underdeveloped qualities, before the flavors begin to neutralize as the sugars cook… You need to learn how to listen to the coffee and figure out what it wants.
And you’re roasting the coffee yourself?
Yes. It’s a one-person business, but I hired a consultant to help me get started. Coffee roasting is an exclusive field, especially if you’re not a dude, so I brought in a friend who had roasted for Stumptown Roasters for years. Though I had years of specialty experience, he was the only one willing to teach me to roast.
We roast out of my workplace, Variety. I just asked the owner, “Hey, can Patrick and I rent the roastery on weekends for this project I’m working on?” and he said, “You do enough for me, just use it.” It was insanely generous because that saved me thousands and thousands of dollars. I can also store my green coffee there, which is crazy. The reason why most people don’t learn how to roast coffee is because it’s prohibitively expensive.
It feels like there’s so much of you in this project. You’ve been pursuing this since your teenage years, co-owned a café in Montréal for years, worked at Variety, and now launched this Nordic-inspired business. Given that you’re Nordic yourself, it all feels incredibly personal and reflective of who you are. Was that intentional?
I feel like with Hot Stuff, I realized I wanted to do my own thing, and I want to do it the way that I like to do it. I also want it to be less serious! I want someone to be able to walk into a cafe without being scared about asking a stupid question. I want someone trying a fruity espresso to be like, “Why does this taste like this?”
Last year, I hosted a public coffee cupping in my hometown in Saskatchewan, and a huge crowd showed up. I encouraged everyone to dive deeper into tasting coffee. By the end, people were genuinely excited about what they had learned. Even my mom joined in. One coffee was on the table with a noticeable sour defect, and she immediately picked up on it, saying, “This tastes like when a peanut starts to go a little sour.” I was amazed at how quickly she identified it. It made me realize that people inherently know how to taste; they’ve just never been given the opportunity to engage with coffee beyond its typical, commodity-focused perspective.
What do you feel you still have to learn?
I want to deepen my understanding of coffee production and agronomy because they’re incredibly fascinating. With climate change, we’re seeing significant shifts in how and where coffee is grown. Some countries are experiencing frost for the first time, leading to increased defects and challenges in production. Their coffee economies are struggling as a result. Meanwhile, other regions are seeing hotter climates that, surprisingly, are yielding more unique and exciting coffees. It’s been fascinating to observe these changes over the years. In the 11 or 12 years I’ve been in the industry, I’ve noticed how much Kenyan coffee, for example, has evolved in flavor compared to a decade ago.
At the same time, growing coffee is becoming increasingly difficult and costly, which impacts both producers and consumers. As coffee becomes more expensive, I believe it’s the roaster’s responsibility to educate consumers. It’s important to explain why their coffee costs $6—whether it’s due to climate challenges, labour conditions, or production costs—not simply because the roaster wants to charge a premium.
We also can’t ignore the fact that the coffee industry has deep roots in exploitation and slavery. As a coffee company, there’s a responsibility not just to help people enjoy coffee more but also to share the stories behind it—highlighting the producers, the struggles their countries face, and the broader context of what’s happening in the industry.
What does the future hold for Hot Stuff?
When I eventually open a brick-and-mortar roastery, my goal is to establish a program to teach people how to roast coffee, specifically aiming to support marginalized communities. The biggest challenges in learning how to roast coffee are often access-related. First, finding someone willing to teach you the craft can be difficult. As an educator, I’m passionate about filling that gap. But beyond that, sourcing and purchasing green coffee is incredibly challenging, especially if you’re unfamiliar with the process. Then there’s the question of where to store it and where to roast. My vision for the roastery is to address these hurdles and create a supportive environment where people can learn and grow.
I want to create a scholarship program based on a circular economy. The idea is to use still-fresh tasting, past-crop coffee to teach roasting. Participants—two or three at a time—would get meaningful, hands-on experience, not just a quick two-hour session. The coffee they roast would be bagged separately as “scholarship coffee” and sold at a lower price, with revenue reinvested into the program to buy more green coffee and support future participants. The goal is to make this education free and sustainable, reducing waste by repurposing coffee that might otherwise go unsold. There’s a huge demand for roasting education, especially among women and marginalized groups… I hope to create a space where aspiring roasters can learn without the financial burden or logistical challenges. We’ll see who shows up for it!
Nish Arthur recommends:
T.H.C.’s 1999 album Adagio
Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion (1997)
A staple turtleneck
The Erewhon Hailey Bieber smoothie
The L Word S6E3
This post was originally published on The Creative Independent.
With its nine members and nine partners, BRICS now makes up roughly half of the global population and more than 41% of world GDP (PPP).
The group is an economic powerhouse, including top producers of key commodities like oil, gas, grains, meat, and minerals.
At the BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia in October 2024, 13 countries were invited to become BRICS partners, meaning they are on the path to full membership in the near future.
Nine of these 13 nations accepted the invitation. The remaining four did not give a formal response as of the end of 2024. These were Algeria, Nigeria, Turkey/Türkiye, Vietnam.
The post BRICS Expands With Nine New Partner Countries appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
Conor Smyth (FAIR.org, 1/19/24): “The history of debates over the minimum wage is filled with claims about the detrimental effect of raising the wage floor that have repeatedly flopped in the face of empirical evidence.”
In September 2023, California passed a law requiring fast food restaurants with more than 60 locations nationwide to pay workers a minimum of $20 an hour, affecting more than 700,000 people working in the state’s fast food industry.
Readers will be unsurprised to hear that corporate media told us that this would devastate the industry. As Conor Smyth reported for FAIR (1/19/24) before the law went into effect, outlets like USA Today (12/26/23) and CBS (12/27/23) were telling us that, due to efforts to help those darn workers, going to McDonald’s or Chipotle was going to cost you more, and also force joblessness. This past April, Good Morning America (4/29/24) doubled down with a piece about the “stark realities” and “burdens” restaurants would now face due to the law.
Now we have actual data about the impact of California’s law. Assessing the impact, the Shift Project (10/9/24) did “not find evidence that employers turned to understaffing or reduced scheduled work hours to offset the increased labor costs.” Instead, “weekly work hours stayed about the same for California fast food workers, and levels of understaffing appeared to ease.” Further, there was “no evidence that wage increases were accompanied by a reduction in fringe benefits… such as health or dental insurance, paid sick time, or retirement benefits.”
Judd Legum (Popular Information, 12/3/24): “The restaurant industry provided a distorted picture of the impact of the fast food worker wage increase.”
In June 2024, the California Business and Industrial Alliance ran a full-page ad in USA Today claiming that the fast food industry cut about 9,500 jobs as a result of the $20 minimum wage. That’s just false, says Popular Information (12/3/24).
Among other things, the work relied on a report from the Hoover Institution, itself based on a Wall Street Journal article (3/25/24), from a period before the new wage went into effect, and that, oops, was not seasonally adjusted. (There’s an annual decline in employment at fast food restaurants from November through January, when people are traveling or cooking at home—which is why the Bureau of Labor Statistics offers seasonally adjusted data.)
The industry group ad starts with the Rubio’s fish taco chain, which they say was forced to close 48 California locations due to “increasing costs.” It leaves out that the entire company was forced to declare bankruptcy after it was purchased by a private equity firm on January 19, 2024 (LA Times, 6/12/24).
As Smyth reported, there is extensive academic research on the topic of wage floors that shows that minimum wage hikes tend to have little to no effect on employment, but can raise the wages of hundreds of thousands of workers (CBPP, 6/30/15; Quarterly Journal of Economics, 5/2/19). Media’s elevation of anecdotes about what individual companies have done, and say they plan to do, in response to the minimum wage hike overshadows more meaningful information about the net effect across all companies in the industry.
The Wall Street Journal (12/28/23) said last year that “it defies economics and common sense to think that businesses won’t adapt by laying off workers.” Since that hasn’t happened, does the Journal need better economists—or more sense?
And what about agency? The Wall Street Journal (12/28/23) contented that “it defies economics and common sense to think that businesses won’t adapt by laying off workers” in response to the new law. But why? Is there no question lurking in there about corporate priorities? About executive pay? About the fact that consumers and workers are the same people?
The question calls for thoughtfulness—will, for example, fast food companies cut corners by dumping formerly in-house delivery workers off on companies like DoorDash and Uber Eats, which are not subject to the same labor regulations? How will economic data measure that?
That would be a story for news media to engage, if they were interested in improving the lives of struggling workers. They could also broaden the minimum wage discussion to complementary policy changes—as Smyth suggested, “expanded unemployment insurance, the Earned Income Tax Credit, a job guarantee, and universal basic income.”
The narrow focus on whether a Big Mac costs 15 cents more, and if it does, shouldn’t you yell at the people behind the counter, is a distortion, and a tired one, that should have been retired long ago.
This post was originally published on FAIR.
Floating cages with fish by the thousands may be popping in the Gulf of Mexico under a controversial plan that was backed by President-elect Donald Trump’s administration four years ago and is likely to gain traction again after Trump begins his second term next month.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recently identified five areas in the Gulf that the agency says strike a balance between the needs of the growing aquaculture industry and the potential impacts on the marine environment and elements of the seafood industry that depend on wild fisheries.
Identifying these “aquaculture opportunity areas” is part of a decade-long federal plan to open the Gulf and other offshore areas to aquaculture. The plan got a strong push from Trump but slowed under President Joe Biden’s administration, which concludes next month.
Three of NOAA’s preferred aquaculture areas are off the coast of Texas and one is south of Louisiana. Each area ranges from 500 to 2,000 acres and could total 6,500 acres. A fifth area, considered a possible alternative, has been identified near the mouth of the Mississippi River, but it would likely conflict with shipping traffic and shrimping in that area.
The areas would open the Gulf for the first time to the large-scale cultivation of shellfish, finfish and seaweed. Seafood companies have long expressed interest in raising large, high-value species, including redfish and amberjack, in floating net pens several miles off the coasts of Louisiana, Texas and Florida.
Opponents say fish poop, fish feed and other organic debris that often swirls around offshore aquaculture operations will worsen the Gulf’s massive “dead zone,” a New Jersey-size area of low oxygen that pushes away fish and suffocates slow-moving crabs and other shellfish. Fish that escape from floating farms can spread diseases and parasites, gobble up food that supports other species, and potentially mate with their wild counterparts, introducing their domesticated genes, which tend to produce slower, dumber fish.
“When you think of all of these environmental impacts, it’s pretty concerning,” said Marianne Cufone, executive director of the New Orleans-based Recirculating Farms Coalition, a group opposed to offshore aquaculture. “Plus, we get super violent storms in the Gulf of Mexico. I don’t know how these (farms) won’t be damaged with fish escaping.”
But the planet’s already-taxed wild fish stocks can’t meet the world’s expanding appetite for seafood alone, said Neil Anthony Sims, CEO of Ocean Era, an aquaculture company that hopes to develop a floating redfish farm 40 miles from Sarasota, Florida. His assertion is backed by a 2021 Stanford University study that predicted global fish consumption is likely to increase by 80 percent over the next 25 years.
“We can’t feed a planet with wild fish anymore than we could feed a planet with wild antelope,” Sims said.
Many fish, including tilapia and catfish, are raised in ponds and other land-based facilities. Floating fish farms in state-managed waters are increasingly rare. In 2022, Washington state effectively banned its once-thriving salmon farming industry after about 260,000 non-native Atlantic salmon escaped from a net pen north of Puget Sound. Hawaii still hosts a floating fish farm that raises Hawaiian kampachi, a fish related to amberjack.
Deeper waters managed by the federal government have remained aquaculture-free.
Like Trump, Biden backs opening federal waters to fish farming, but his administration has taken a more methodical approach, directing NOAA to study various areas that may be “environmentally, socially and economically viable” for supporting offshore aquaculture.
Trump was more forceful during his first term, signing an executive order in 2020 that was aimed at breaking through the regulatory barriers that have long impeded fish farming in federal waters. The Trump administration backed offshore aquaculture as a way to create jobs, broaden markets for U.S. companies and help meet growing demand for seafood.
A 2020 federal appeals court ruling blocked new regulations allowing offshore fish farming under the Magnuson-Stevens Act, the primary law governing fisheries since 1976. But other laws, including the National Aquaculture Act of 1980 and the Fish and Wildlife Coordination Act of 1980, give NOAA the authority to develop aquaculture opportunity areas and conduct environmental impact permitting for offshore farms.
The opportunity areas unveiled by NOAA last month set the stage for a final greenlight by Trump or Congress. The public can comment on the opportunity areas until Feb. 20. NOAA will host the first of three virtual meetings to gather feedback on the areas on Dec. 17.
NOAA is also considering aquaculture opportunity areas in Southern California, but opposition is likely to be stiffer there than in the Gulf, where residents are already accustomed to heavily industrialized coastal waters, with thousands of offshore oil and gas structures near Louisiana and Texas and pipelines crisscrossing the seafloor.
But adding more industrial infrastructure will further crowd the Gulf’s first industry: fishing.
“We’re already dealing with the rigs and oil wells and all kinds of debris,” said Acy Cooper, president of the Louisiana Shrimp Association. “And you want to put more out there? It’ll be our downfall.”
The Gulf’s shrimping industry has been losing ground to imported shrimp, which is typically raised in farms in Asia and South America and is far cheaper than the wild-caught varieties.
Cooper, a third-generation shrimper in Plaquemines Parish, said America’s desire for seafood should be met by fishers rather than farmers.
“If you want fish, there’s a lot of fishermen here for you. We ready,” he said.
But NOAA isn’t so sure the U.S.’s wild fisheries can support the demand for seafood alone. About 80% of the seafood consumed in the U.S. is imported, and about half of the imports are produced via foreign aquaculture. That’s giving rise to a “seafood trade deficit” that had grown to $17 billion in 2020, according to NOAA.
As much as U.S. fishers may want to meet demand, wild stocks are under increasing threat by climate change, which is altering marine species reproduction, feeding habits and distribution.
Offshore fish farming can help the U.S. adapt by producing seafood in a more controlled environment, according to NOAA.
“Aquaculture offers a pathway to grow climate resilience,” said Janet Coit, NOAA Fisheries’ assistant administrator. “Identifying areas suitable for sustainable aquaculture is a forward-looking step toward climate-smart food systems.”
But fish farms will likely worsen the dead zone, one of the Gulf’s main climate-related problems. The dead zone is fueled by agricultural runoff and other nutrient pollution that flushes into the Gulf from the Mississippi. Rising temperatures speed the growth of algae that feeds on the nutrients. When the massive algal blooms die, their decomposition robs the Gulf of oxygen.
Developing floating farms in and around the dead zone will add even more nutrients from poop and fish food that will nourish bigger blooms, Cufone said.
“We have warmer waters and all of the difficulties our fisheries are having because of climate change, but none of that supports an argument for factory fish farms,” she said. “If we care about climate change, we shouldn’t have them in our oceans.”
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How Trump could bring fish farms to the Gulf of Mexico on Dec 11, 2024.
This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Tristan Baurick.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Angela Bishop has been struggling with what she describes as “the cost of everything lately.” Groceries are one stressor, although she gets some reprieve from the free school lunches her four kids receive. Still, a few years of the stubbornly high cost of gas, utilities, and clothing have been pain points.
“We’ve just seen the prices before our eyes just skyrocket,” said Bishop, who is 39. She moved her family to Richmond, Virginia from California a few years ago to stop “living paycheck to paycheck,” but things have been so difficult lately she’s worried it won’t be long before they are once again barely getting by.
Families nationwide are dealing with similar financial struggles. Although inflation, defined as the rate at which average prices of goods or services rise over a given period, has slowed considerably since a record peak in 2022, consumer prices today have increased by more than 21 percent since February 2020. Frustration over rising cost of living drove many voters to support president-elect Donald Trump, who campaigned on ending inflation.
Simply put, inflation was instrumental in determining how millions of Americans cast their ballots. Yet climate change, one of the primary levers behind inflationary pressures, wasn’t nearly as front of mind — just 37 percent of voters considered the issue “very important” to their vote. Bishop said that may have something to do with how difficult it can be to understand how extreme weather impacts all aspects of the economy. She knows that “climate change has something to do with inflation,” but isn’t sure exactly what.
In 2022, inflation reached 9% in the U.S. — the highest rate in over 40 years. That was part of a global trend. The lingering impacts of the pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, higher fuel and energy prices, and food export bans issued by a number of countries contributed to a cost of living crisis that pushed millions of people worldwide into poverty.
Extreme weather shocks were another leading cause of escalating prices, said Alla Semenova, an economist at St. Mary’s College of Maryland. “Climate change is an important part of the inflationary puzzle,” she said.
In February of 2021, Winter Storm Uri slammed Texas, causing a deadly energy crisis statewide. It also caused widespread shutdowns at oil refineries that account for nearly three-quarters of U.S chemical production. This disrupted the production and distribution of things necessary for the production of plastics, which Semenova says contributed to ensuing price hikes for packaging, disinfectants, fertilizers and pesticides.
Food prices are another area where the inflationary pressure of warming has become obvious. A drought that engulfed the Mississippi River system in 2022 severely disrupted the transportation of crops used for cattle feed, increasing shipping and commodity costs for livestock producers. Those added costs were likely absorbed by consumers buying meat and dairy products. Grain prices jumped around the same time because drought-induced supply shortages and high energy prices pushed up the costs of fertilizer, transportation, and agricultural production. Not long after, lettuce prices soared amid shortages that followed flooding across California, and the price of orange juice skyrocketed after drought and a hurricane hit major production regions in Florida.
Though overall inflation has cooled considerably since then, the economic pressures extreme weather places on food costs persist. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations reported that weather disruptions drove global food prices to an 18-month high in October. In fact, cocoa prices surged almost 40 percent this year because of supply shortages wrought by drier conditions in West and Central Africa, where about three-quarters of the world’s cocoa is cultivated. This can not only impact the price tag of chocolate, but also health supplements, cosmetics, and fragrances, among other goods that rely on cocoa beans.
“What we have seen, especially this year, is this massive price spike,” due to abnormal weather patterns, said Rodrigo Cárcamo-Díaz, a senior economist at U.N. Trade and Development.
But the impact on consumers “goes beyond” the Consumer Price Indicator, which is the most widely used measure of inflation, said Cárcamo-Díaz. His point is simple: Lower-income households are most affected by supply shocks that inflate the price of goods as increasingly volatile weather makes prices more volatile, straining households with tighter budgets because it can take time for wages to catch up to steeper costs of living.
Rising prices are expected to become even more of an issue as temperatures climb and extreme weather becomes more frequent and severe. In fact, a 2024 study found that heat extremes driven by climate change enhanced headline inflation for 121 countries over the last 30 years, with warming temperatures expected to increase global inflation by as much as 1 percent every year until 2035. Lead researcher and climate scientist Maximilian Kotz noted that general goods, or any physical things that can be bought, broadly experienced “strong inflationary effects from rising temperatures.”
Electricity is already getting more expensive as higher temperatures and disasters strain grids and damage infrastructure, driving higher rates of utility shutoff for lower-income U.S. households. Without significant emission reductions, and monetary policies set by central banks and governments to mitigate the financial impacts of climate change by stabilizing prices, this inequitable burden is slated to get much worse. Severe floods derailing major production regions for consumer electronics and auto parts have recently disrupted global supply chains and escalated costs for things car ownership in the U.S. Persistent climate shocks have even triggered an enormous increase in the cost of home insurance premiums.
All told, the inflationary impact of climate change on cost of living is here to stay and will continue to strain American budgets, said Semenova. “The era of relatively low and stable prices is over,” she said. “Costs have been rising due to climate change. It’s the new normal.”
That’s bad news for families like the Bishops, who are simply trying to get by.
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Don’t blame Biden for inflation. Blame the climate. on Dec 5, 2024.
This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Ayurella Horn-Muller.
Workers in the food industry earn some of the lowest wages in the U.S. economy, and after a long day of preparing, cooking, or serving food at work, many struggle to put food on their own tables. A hefty 29% of U.S. jobs were linked to the food and agricultural industries in 2021, and job growth in food sectors is on the rise. But the low pay has consequences. According to the U.S.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
The journey that led Anita Adalja, a 42-year-old queer South Asian farmer, to enter the agricultural field began when they were 25, living in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Adalja worked as a social worker in supportive housing, trying to finish graduate school, and felt like they were in over their head. Along with their coworkers, they would often go to the roof of the supportive housing building…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Ralph welcomes Vani Hari, also known as “The Food Babe,” to tell us about her campaign against Kellogg’s to stop using artificial dyes in their cereals that have been linked to various health problems and have been banned in Europe. Plus, noted labor organizer, Chris Townsend gives us his take on the AFL-CIOs obeisant relationship to the Democratic Party.
Vani Hari is an author and food activist. A former corporate consultant, she started the Food Babe blog in 2011, and she is the co-founder of the nutritional supplement startup Truvani.
It is a game of whack-a-mole because we get these corporations to change, or they announce that they’re going to change, and then they go back on their commitment. And that is what’s happened with Kellogg’s.
Vani Hari
Chris Townsend is a 45-year union member and leader. He was most recently the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) International Union Organizing Director. Previously he was an International Representative and Political Action Director for the United Electrical Workers Union (UE), and he has held local positions in both the SEIU and UFCW.
These workers who have been betrayed, lied to, wrecked, destroyed, poisoned, all of these things—this becomes the breeding ground for Trumpist ideology. And the Democrats won’t face this.
Chris Townsend
Our media largely ignores the labor movement. Our small labor press—left press—generally subscribes to the “good news only” school of journalism. So these endemic problems and even immediate crises are never dealt with. Now, some of that is because the existing labor leadership generally is not fond of criticism or is not fond of anyone pointing out shortcomings (or) mistakes.
Chris Townsend
We’re a cash cow—and a vote cow— to be milked routinely and extensively by this Democratic machinery… The leadership today in the bulk of the unions is an administrative layer, business union through and through to the core. The historic trade union spirit that always animated the unions in various levels is not extinguished, but in my 45 years, I would say it is at a low ebb. In the sense that we just have been sterilized because of this unconditional and unholy alliance or domination by the Democratic Party. And there’s no room for spark. There’s no room for dissent. There’s no room for anyone to even raise the obvious.
Chris Townsend
[Leaders of the AFL-CIO are] basically bureaucrats in that building on 16th Street, collecting their pay and their nice pensions. Completely out of touch with millions of blue collar workers that have veered into the Republican Party channels—the so-called Reagan Democrats, which have spelled the difference in election after election for the Senate, for the House, for the Presidency.
Ralph Nader
In Case You Haven’t Heard with Francesco DeSantis
News 11/20/24
1. In his new book Hope Never Disappoints, Pope Francis writes “what is happening in Gaza has the characteristics of genocide,” and called for the situation to be “studied carefully…by jurists and international organisations,” per the Middle East Eye. These comments come on the heels of a United Nations committee report which found that Israel’s actions are “consistent with characteristics of genocide,” and alleged that Israel is using starvation as a weapon of war. The Catholic pontiff has long decried violence in all forms and has previously criticized Israel’s “disproportionate and immoral” actions in Gaza and Lebanon, per AP.
2. On November 14th, the AP’s Farnoush Amiri reported that more than 80 Congressional Democrats sent a letter to President Biden on October 29th, urging the administration to sanction Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. Only made public after the election, this letter called for sanctions on these individuals “Given their critical roles in driving policies that promote settler violence, weaken the Palestinian Authority, facilitate de facto and de jure annexation, and destabilize the West Bank.” This letter was principally authored by Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro, and in addition to dozens of House Democratic signatories, was signed by no less than 17 Senators.
3. Another remarkable post-election Israel story concerns outgoing Congressman Jamaal Bowman, who was ousted from his seat by a flood of AIPAC money. In an interview with Rania Khalek, Bowman relates a remarkable anecdote about the presidential campaign. Bowman says he specifically requested to campaign for Kamala Harris in Michigan – where he was so popular his AIPAC-backed primary challenger disparagingly said “[Bowman’s] constituency is Dearborn, Michigan” – but the campaign ignored him and instead deployed surrogates that seemed almost designed to alienate Arab-Americans: Liz Cheney, Ritchie Torres, and Bill Clinton who went out of his way to scold these voters. These voters were likely decisive in Kamala Harris’ loss in that state.
4. On November 13th, Senator Bernie Sanders announced that he intends to bring Joint Resolutions of Disapproval to the Senate floor. As Sanders writes in a press release, the “The JRD is the only mechanism available to Congress to prevent an arms sale from advancing.” Unlike previous efforts however, Sanders no longer stands alone. According to Reuters, “Two of the resolutions, co-sponsored with…Senators Jeff Merkley and Peter Welch, would block the sale of 120 mm mortar rounds and joint direct attack munitions (JDAMS). A third, sponsored by Democratic Senator Brian Schatz, would block the sale of tank rounds.” Senators Elizabeth Warren and Chris Van Hollen have announced their intention to support the JRD. Certain heavy-hitting Democratic-aligned institutions have also bucked precedent to back this effort, including the massive Service Employees International Union and leading Liberal-Zionist group J Street.
5. In the House, Republicans and many Democrats are pushing H.R. 9495, a bill which would grant the executive branch the power to unilaterally strip non-profit organizations of their tax-exempt status based on accusations of supporting terrorism. As the Intercept notes, “The law would not require officials to explain the reason for designating a group, nor…provide evidence.” The ACLU and over 150 other “civil liberties, religious, reproductive health, immigrant rights, human rights, racial justice, LGBTQ+, environmental, and educational organizations,” sent a letter opposing this bill in September, and celebrated when the bill was blocked on November 12th – but it is back from the grave, with Nonprofit Quarterly reporting the bill has cleared a new procedural hurdle and will now advance to the floor. Yet even if this bill is successfully blocked, little stands in the way of Republicans reviving it in the next Congress, where they will hold the House, Senate, and the Presidency.
6. Back in October, we covered Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib’s letter to Kroger CEO Rodney McMullen expressing grave concern over the company’s decision to roll out facial recognition-based price gouging technology. According to Tlaib, Kroger has stonewalled Congress, so she is leading a group of House Democrats in a new letter demanding answers to the critical questions that remain, such as whether Kroger will use facial recognition to display targeted ads, whether consumers can opt out, and whether the company plans to sell data collected in stores. This letter is co-signed by progressives like AOC, Barbara Lee, and Eleanor Holmes Norton, among others.
7. In new labor news, the NLRB has issued a rule banning anti-union “captive audience meetings,” per the Washington Post. This report notes that these meetings, in which employers warn workers of the risks in unionizing, are considered highly effective and are commonly used by companies like Amazon, Starbucks, Apple and Trader Joe’s. According to the Post, Amazon alone spent more than $17 million on consults to do exactly this between 2022 and 2023. On the other hand, Bloomberg Law reports a federal judge in Texas has blocked a Labor Department rule that would have expanded overtime eligibility to four million mostly lower-level white collar workers. This was seen as among the Biden Administration’s key achievements on labor rights and foreshadows the rollback of worker protections we are likely to see in a Trump presidency redux.
8. Donald Trump has signaled that he will nominate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as his Secretary of Health and Human Services. Kennedy will likely face a difficult confirmation process; his past environmental activism is anathema to Republican Senators, while his more recent vaccine-skepticism is unpopular among Democrats. Yet just as Donald Trump emerged as an improbable RFK ally, a surprising opponent has emerged as well: former Vice-President Mike Pence. In a “rare” statement Pence writes “For the majority of his career, RFK Jr. has defended abortion on demand during all nine months of pregnancy, supports overturning the Dobbs decision and has called for legislation to codify Roe v Wade. If confirmed, RFK, Jr. would be the most pro-abortion Republican appointed secretary of HHS in modern history…I…urge Senate Republicans to reject this nomination.” As with other unpopular Trump nominees, many expect RFK to be appointed on an acting basis and then possibly installed via the recess appointment process.
9. In some positive news, Drop Site reports that in Sri Lanka, the Leftist president Anura Kumara Dissanayake, who wrested the office from the corrupt clique that has ruled the nation since independence has won a resounding victory in the recent parliamentary elections. Reuters reports that Dissanayake’s coalition won a “sweeping mandate,” with enough seats to pass his anti-corruption and poverty-alleviation agenda. More shocking is the fact that Dissanayake’s coalition ran up the score in the Tamil-dominated north and east of the country. As Drop Site notes, only 15 years ago the Sri Lankan government crushed the Tamil Tigers and carried out large-scale massacres of the Tamil minority. Dissanayake has vowed to end the occupation and release Tamil political prisoners, as well as take on the International Monetary Fund which is seeking to impose economic control on the country in exchange for a fiscal bailout. Neither goal will be easily achieved, but the size of Dissanayake’s victory at least provides the opportunity for him to try.
10. Finally, AP reports that three of Malcolm X’s daughters have filed a $100 million lawsuit against the CIA, FBI, and NYPD. This lawsuit alleges that these agencies were “aware of and…involved in the assassination plot,” and that law enforcement was engaged in a “corrupt, unlawful, and unconstitutional [relationship with]…ruthless killers that…was actively concealed, condoned, protected, and facilitated by government agents.” Two of Malcolm X’s alleged assassins were exonerated in 2021 after an extensive re-investigation found that authorities withheld crucial evidence, per AP, and new evidence reported earlier this year by Democracy Now! supports the theory of an assassination plot involving collusion between the FBI and NYPD, if not others.
This has been Francesco DeSantis, with In Case You Haven’t Heard.
This content originally appeared on Ralph Nader Radio Hour and was authored by Ralph Nader.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Today we’re celebrating a huge victory: The 365 by Whole Foods Market brand coconut milk supplier no longer abuses monkeys through forced labor!
Whole Foods failed to take action to eliminate the cruel monkey labor from its supply chain, but our investigators and negotiators worked tirelessly to get rid of it.
In January 2024, we sent Whole Foods evidence that endangered pig-tailed macaques were being illegally kidnapped from the wild, kept chained up, and abusively trained to produce its store-brand 365 coconut milk, but it didn’t respond to any of our pleas to fix its supply chain.
In the face of Whole Foods’ callous disregard for these monkeys’ suffering, PETA launched a massive campaign—which included three damning PETA exposés, dozens of demonstrations across the U.S., creative advertising campaigns, hundreds of phone calls, a heartfelt plea from singer Morrissey, and e-mails from more than 100,000 concerned consumers.
Since Whole Foods remained unresponsive, PETA Asia took matters into its own hands. It identified Merit Food Products as the supplier of Whole Foods’ 365 brand coconut milk and found that this supplier sourced some of its coconuts from third-party farms in Thailand that were using monkey labor.
Sure enough, when PETA Asia’s investigators visited the Thai third-party farm that supplied Merit Food Products, they found rampant monkey abuse.
Whole Foods once again failed to act on PETA Asia’s evidence, so PETA’s own investigators and negotiators went straight to Merit Food Products. The company was eager to help monkeys, so we worked together to remove monkey labor from its supply chain, and it committed to sourcing third-party coconuts only from countries that don’t use monkey labor.
Now that Whole Foods’ 365 brand coconut milk is free of monkey labor, we’re demanding that Thai officials take immediate action for the countless monkeys who are suffering in Thailand, including by doing the following:
Please help us put an end to monkey labor by urging the Thai government to make it illegal and to shut down “monkey-training schools”:
When Thailand finally ends its rampant abuse of monkeys, it will regain the trust of socially conscious importers and consumers, who are dropping Thai coconut milk in record numbers.
The post Victory! Whole Foods Is Now Monkey-Free—No Thanks to Whole Foods appeared first on PETA.
This post was originally published on Animal Rights and Campaign News | PETA.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Radio Free Asia.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Radio Free Asia.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
When Hurricane Helene made landfall in Florida three weeks ago, Jason Madison was alone at his place, which doubled as a shrimp storefront in Keaton Beach. As the wind began to roar and the bay started to roil, Madison decided to flee. It was the right call. When he returned home the next morning, he found that the nearly 20-foot storm surge had torn it apart. Dead fish and broken furniture littered the landscape. Most everything in the building was lost, taking with it a cornerstone of his livelihood.
“I had five tanks under there where I stored shrimp, because we sell everything alive, but all that’s all gone now,” said Madison, a commercial bait and shrimp farmer for the last 23 years. He paused to take in the strewn debris. “Well, the pieces are around.” Anything Helene left behind is a waterlogged shell of what used to be. He doesn’t know how, or even if, he’ll rebuild.
Stories like this are playing out all through the Southeast. The storm battered six states, causing billions of dollars in losses to crops, livestock, and aquaculture. Just 13 days later, Milton barreled across Florida, leaving millions without power and hampering ports, feed facilities, and fertilizer plants along the state’s west coast.
Preliminary estimates suggest Helene, one of the nation’s deadliest and costliest hurricanes since Katrina in 2005, upended hundreds of thousands of businesses throughout the Southeast and devastated a wide swath of the region’s agricultural operations. Milton’s impact was more limited, but the two calamities are expected to reduce feed and fertilizer supplies and increase production costs, which could drive up prices for things like chicken and fruit in the months and years to come.
The compounding effect of the two storms will create “a direct impact on agricultural production,” said Seungki Lee, an agricultural economist at Ohio State University.
When a farm, an orchard, a ranch, or any other agricultural operation is damaged in a disaster, it often leads to a drop in production, or even brings it to a screeching halt. That slowdown inevitably ripples through the companies that sell things like seeds and fertilizer and equipment. Even those growers and producers who manage to keep going — or weren’t directly impacted at all — might find that damage to roads and other critical infrastructure hampers the ability to bring their goods to market.
Early reports indicate this is already happening. Downed trees, flooded roads, and congested highways have disrupted key transport routes throughout the Southeast, while ports across the region suspended operations because of the storms, compounding a slowdown that followed a dockworker strike along the Gulf and East Coast.
Helene dismantled farming operations that serve as linchpins for the nation’s food supply chain. Cataclysmic winds destroyed hundreds of poultry houses across Georgia and North Carolina, which account for more than 25 percent of the machinery used to produce most of the country’s chicken meat. An analysis by the American Farm Bureau Federation found that the region hit by Helene produced some $6.3 billion in poultry products in 2022, with over 80 percent of it coming from the most severely impacted parts of both states. In Florida, the storm flattened roughly one in seven broiler houses, which the Farm Bureau noted, compounding losses throughout the region that “will not only reduce the immediate supply of poultry but also hinder local production capacity for months or even years.”
The storm uprooted groves, vegetable fields, and row crops throughout the region. Georgia produces more than a third of the nation’s pecans, and some growers have lost all of their trees. Farmers in Florida, one of the nation’s leading producers of oranges, bell peppers, sugar, and orchids, also have reported steep production losses, facing an uncertain future. The rain and floods unleashed by Helene hobbled livestock operations in every affected state, with the situation in western North Carolina so dire that local agricultural officials are crowdfunding feed and other supplies to help ranchers who lost their hay to rising water. Those working the sea were impacted as well; clam farmers along the Gulf Coast are grappling with the losses they incurred when Helene’s storm surge ravaged their stocks.
All told, the counties affected by Helene produce about $14.8 billion in crops and livestock each year, with Georgia and Florida accounting for more than half of that. If even one-third of that output has been lost to the two hurricanes, the loss could reach nearly $5 billion, according to the Farm Bureau.
Preliminary estimates from the Department of Agriculture suggest the one-two punch may incur more than $7 billion in crop insurance payouts. On October 15, the USDA reported allocating $233 million in payments to producers so far.
As bad as it is, it could have been worse both for consumers and for farmers nationwide. Florida is home to the highest concentration of fertilizer manufacturing plants in the nation. Twenty-two of the state’s 25 phosphate waste piles, several owned by industry powerhouse Mosaic, were in Milton’s path. The company, which did not respond to a request for comment, shuttered operations ahead of the storm, and has since announced it sustained “limited damage” to its plants and warehouses. (But the Tampa Bay Times reported that one facility was grappling with water intrusion following Helene and was inundated during Milton, likely sending water polluted with phosphate waste flowing into Tampa Bay.) The storm also halted operations for several days at Port Tampa Bay, which handles around a quarter of the country’s fertilizer exports.
Production impacts from both hurricanes may be felt most acutely by the Sunshine State’s struggling citrus industry, which has long been embattled by diseases and destructive hurricanes. Any additional losses could further inflate costs for goods like orange juice, which reached record highs this year, according to Lee, the agricultural economist. “In the face of hurricane shocks, agricultural production in southern states like Florida will take it on the chin,” he said.
But teasing out the effect of a single storm on consumer prices is not only exceedingly difficult, it requires many years of research, Lee warned. Although all signs indicate that Hurricane Ian was partly responsible for the record food prices that followed that storm in 2022, the strain the hurricane placed on costs compounded other factors, including global conflict, droughts in breadbasket regions and the bird flu epidemic that decimated the poultry sector.
Even so, there’s still a chance that ongoing disruptions to ports and trucking routes could cause “the entire food supply chain to experience additional strain due to rising prices” associated with moving those goods, said Lee. If that turns out to be the case, “eventually, when you go to the supermarket, you will end up finding more expensive commodities, by and large.”
One of the greatest unknowns remains the question of how many storm-weary operations will simply call it quits. Industrial-scale businesses will surely rebound, but the rapid succession of ruinous hurricanes may well discourage family farms and small producers from rebuilding, abandoning their livelihoods for less vulnerable ventures.
“It’s what we call a compound disaster. You’re still dealing with the effects of one particular storm while another storm is hitting,” said economist Christa Court. She directs the University of Florida’s Economic Impact Analysis program, which specializes in rapid assessments of agricultural losses after disasters. “We did see after Hurricane Idalia that there were operations that just decided to get out of the business and do something else because they were impacted so severely.”
Madison isn’t sure what’s next for his shrimp operation. He’s too focused on salvaging what he can to think that far ahead. “I don’t really know what I’m going to do,” he said. He hasn’t been able to afford flood insurance, so he’s not sure how much financial support he’ll end up getting to help him rebuild even as he’s still recovering from Hurricane Idalia, which pummeled Florida’s Big Bend area in August. “The last few years, it’s just things are dropping off, and times are getting hard … it’s like, what can you do?”
As the world continues to warm, more and more farmers may find themselves confronting the same question.
Jake Bittle contributed reporting to this story.
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Helene and Milton upended a key part of the nation’s food supply on Oct 24, 2024.
This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Ayurella Horn-Muller.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Ukraine urged North Korean soldiers arriving in Russia to surrender, offering them food and shelter, as the United States and NATO confirmed for the first time they have evidence of North Koreans deployed to Russia.
North Korea and Russia have denied that North Korean soldiers are being sent to help Russia with its war in Ukraine but South Korea and its allies have warned of a dangerous escalation of the conflict.
“We appeal to the soldiers of the Korean People’s Army who were sent to support the Putin regime. Don’t die senselessly on foreign soil. Do not repeat the fate of hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers who will never return home,” said the Ukrainian Defense Intelligence Directorate, or GUR, in a Korean-language message on its Telegram messaging channel on Wednesday.
“Surrender! Ukraine will provide you with shelter, food, and warmth,” it added, introducing its surrender hotline “I Want to Live.”
The project was originally designed to help Russian servicemen in Ukraine who did not want to participate in the Russian invasion, launched in February 2022, to safely surrender to Ukrainian forces.
As of June, more than 300 Russian soldiers had surrendered through the hotline, according to the Ukraine government.
“It doesn’t matter how many soldiers Pyongyang sends or to which sector – they will be accepted. Ukrainian prisoner-of-war camps are ready to receive soldiers of any nationality, religion, or ideology,” the GUR said.
The message was posted with a video, just over a minute long, showing facilities where surrendered North Korean soldiers would stay.
“In camps, prisoners of war are housed in large, warm, bright rooms with separate sleeping quarters. They receive three meals a day, and their diet includes meat, fresh vegetables, and bread,” the narrator of the video said in the Korean language.
Ukraine’s message to North Korean soldiers came after the U.S. and NATO confirmed they had evidence that North Korean troops had deployed to Russia.
Lloyd Austin, the U.S. defense chief, said it remained to be seen what exactly Pyongyang’s forces were doing there, but according to South Korean and Ukrainian warnings, they were preparing to join Russia’s side in the war in Ukraine.
Austin added the U.S. was also still attempting to determine what North Korea would get in return for helping Russia with manpower.
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‘Security consequences’
NATO spokesperson Farah Dakhlallah said in a statement that alliance members had “confirmed evidence of a DPRK troop deployment to Russia.”
“If these troops are destined to fight in Ukraine, it would mark a significant escalation in North Korea’s support for Russia’s illegal war and yet another sign of Russia’s significant losses on the front lines,” Dakhlallah said.
The Democratic People’s of Republic of Korea, or DPRK, is North Korea’s official name.
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte has warned that the involvement of North Korean troops could significantly escalate the conflict.
The U.S. and NATO confirmation followed a report by South Korea’s spy agency that more than 3,000 North Korean troops had been sent to Russia, with the total expected to reach 10,000 by December.
The South has vowed to take “phased” measures in response to growing military cooperation between Pyongyang and Moscow, including sending weapons to Ukraine for the first time.
In response, Russia’s foreign ministry warned on Wednesday that South Korea would pay a heavy price if it got involved.
“They should think about the security consequences if they get involved in the Ukrainian crisis. The Russian Federation will react to those aggressive steps, if our citizens are under threat, under peril,” said ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova.
“We sincerely hope that the Seoul authorities are guided by common sense,” she added.
Zakharova also dismissed the reports of the North’s troop dispatch as “fake.”
“The armed forces of North Korea exist, but you should turn to Pyongyang to identify their location,” she said. “I cannot [understand] why there has been so many gossips, so many loud noises around this. This is a propaganda work.”
“Russian cooperation with North Korea in military and other areas corresponds to international law … That is the first, and the second is that we don’t inflict any damage to South Korea,” she added.
“I cannot understand so much fuss about it coming from Seoul.”
On Monday, North Korea’s representative to the United Nations dismissed reports it was sending soldiers to support Russia in its war as “groundless rumors,” adding that its cooperation with Moscow was “legitimate and cooperative.”
Edited by Mike Firn.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Taejun Kang for RFA.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Three years ago, Erin Primer had an idea for a new summer program for her school district: She wanted students to learn about where their food comes from. Primer, who has worked in student nutrition within California’s public school system for 10 years, applied for grant funding from the state to kick off the curriculum, and got it. Students planted cilantro in a garden tower, met a local organic farmer who grows red lentils, and learned about corn. “Many kids didn’t know that corn grew in a really tall plant,” said Primer. “They didn’t know that it had a husk.”
The curriculum, focused on bringing the farm into the school, had an effect beyond the classroom: Primer found that, after learning about and planting ingredients that they then used to make simple meals like veggie burgers, students were excited to try new foods and flavors in the lunchroom. One crowd pleaser happened to be totally vegan: a red lentil dal served with coconut rice.
“We have had students tell us that this is the best dish they’ve ever had in school food. To me, I was floored to hear this,” said Primer, who leads student nutrition for the San Luis Coastal district on California’s central coast, meaning she develops and ultimately decides on what goes on all school food menus. “It really builds respect into our food system. So not only are they more inclined to eat it, they’re also less inclined to waste it. They’re more inclined to eat all of it.”
Primer’s summer program, which the district is now considering making a permanent part of the school calendar, was not intended to inspire students to embrace plant-based cooking. But that was one of the things that happened — and it’s happening in different forms across California.
A recent report shows that the number of schools in California serving vegan meals has skyrocketed over the past five years. Although experts say this growth is partly a reflection of demand from students and parents, they also credit several California state programs that are helping school districts access more local produce and prepare fresh, plant-based meals on-site.
Growing meat for human consumption takes a tremendous toll on both the climate and the environment; the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that livestock production contributes 12 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Specifically, cattle and other ruminants are a huge source of methane. Animal agriculture is also extremely resource-intensive, using up tremendous amounts of water and land. Reducing the global demand for meat and dairy, especially in high-income countries, is an effective way to lower greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate the rate of global warming.
The climate benefits of eating less meat are one reason that school districts across the country have introduced more vegetarian — and to a lesser degree, vegan — lunch options. In 2009, Baltimore City Public Schools removed meat from its school lunch menus on Mondays, part of the Meatless Mondays campaign. A decade later, New York City Public Schools, the nation’s largest school district, did the same. In recent years, vegan initiatives have built upon the success of Meatless Mondays, like Mayor Eric Adams’ “Plant-Powered Fridays” program in New York City.
But California, the state that first put vegetarianism on the map in the early 20th century, has been leading the country on plant-based school lunch. “California is always ahead of the curve, and we’ve been eating plant-based or plant-forward for many years — this is not a new concept in our state,” said Primer. A recent report from the environmental nonprofit Friends of the Earth found that among California’s 25 largest school districts, more than half — 56 percent — of middle and high school menus now have daily vegan options, a significant jump compared to 36 percent in 2019. Meanwhile, the percentage of elementary districts offering weekly vegan options increased from 16 percent to 60 percent over the last five years.
Student nutrition directors like Primer say the foundation that allows schools to experiment with new recipes is California’s universal free lunch program. She notes that, when school lunch is free, students are more likely to actually try and enjoy it: “Free food plus good food equals a participation meal increase every time.”
Nora Stewart, the author of the Friends of the Earth report, says the recent increase in vegan school lunch options has also been in response to a growing demand for less meat and dairy in cafeterias from climate-conscious students. “We’re seeing a lot of interest from students and parents to have more plant-based [meals] as a way to really help curb greenhouse gas emissions,” she said. A majority of Gen Zers — 79 percent — say they would eat meatless at least once or twice a week, according to research conducted by Aramark, a company provides food services to school districts and universities, among other clients. And the food-service company that recently introduced an all-vegetarian menu in the San Francisco Unified School District credits students with having “led the way” in asking for less meat in their cafeterias. The menu includes four vegan options: an edamame teriyaki bowl, a bean burrito bowl, a taco bowl with a pea-based meat alternative, and marinara pasta.
Stewart theorizes that school nutrition directors are also increasingly aware of other benefits to serving vegan meals. “A lot of school districts are recognizing that they can integrate more culturally diverse options with more plant-based meals,” said Stewart. In the last five years, the nonprofit found, California school districts have added 41 new vegan dishes to their menus, including chana masala bowls, vegan tamales, and falafel wraps. Dairy-free meals also benefit lactose-intolerant students, who are more likely to be students of color.
Still, vegan meals are hardly the default in California cafeterias, and in many places, they’re unheard of. Out of the 25 largest school districts in the state, only three elementary districts offer daily vegan options, the same number as did in 2019. According to Friends of the Earth, a fourth of the California school districts they reviewed offer no plant-based meal options; in another fourth, the only vegan option for students is a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. “I was surprised to see that,” said Stewart.
Making school lunches without animal products isn’t just a question of ingredients. It’s also a question of knowledge and resources — and the California legislature has created a number of programs in recent years that aim to get those tools to schools that need them.
In 2022, the state put $600 million toward its Kitchen Infrastructure and Training Funds program, which offers funding to schools to upgrade their kitchen equipment and train staff. This kind of leveling up allows kitchen staff to better incorporate “scratch cooking” — essentially, preparing meals on-site from fresh ingredients — into their operations. (The standard in school lunch sometimes is jokingly referred to as “cooking with a box cutter,” as in heating up and serving premade meals that come delivered in a box.) Another state program, the $100 million School Food Best Practices Funds, gives schools money to purchase more locally grown food. And the Farm to School incubator grant program has awarded about $86 million since 2021 to allow schools to develop programming focused on climate-smart or organic agriculture.
Although only the School Food Best Practices program explicitly incentivizes schools to choose plant-based foods, Stewart credits all of them with helping schools increase their vegan options. Primer said the Farm to School program — which provided the funding to develop her school district’s farming curriculum in its first two years — has driven new recipe development and testing.
All three state programs are set to run out of money by the end of the 2024-2025 school year. Nick Anicich is the program manager for Farm to School, which is run out of the state Office of Farm to Fork. (“That’s a real thing that exists in California,” he likes to say.) He says when state benefits expire, it’s up to schools to see how to further advance the things they’ve learned. “We’ll see how schools continue to innovate and implement these initiatives with their other resources,” said Anicich. Stewart says California has set “a powerful example” by bettering the quality and sustainability of its school lunch, “showing what’s possible nationwide.”
One takeaway Primer has had from the program is to reframe food that’s better for the planet as an expansive experience, one with more flavor and more depth, rather than a restrictive one — one without meat. Both ideas can be true, but one seems to get more students excited.
“That has been a really important focus for us. We want [to serve] food that is just so good, everybody wants to eat it,” Primer said. “Whether or not it has meat in it is almost secondary.”
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline More schools than ever are serving vegan meals in California. Here’s how they did it. on Oct 15, 2024.
This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Frida Garza.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
