Every summer, people flock to Maryland to eat blue crabs. Named for their brilliant sapphire-colored claws, blue crab is one of the most iconic species in the Chesapeake Bay. The scientific name for blue crabs, Callinectes sapidus, means “beautiful savory swimmer.”

In restaurants and at home, diners pile steamed and seasoned blue crabs in the middle of a table covered in paper. Then, using small mallets, knives, bare hands and fingers, they break open the hard shells and extract the juicy meat from inside.

It is a messy experience, especially with Old Bay seasoning and beer known locally as Natty Bohs, one that is quintessentially Maryland.

Though many people know firsthand how difficult it is to pick and clean crab meat, they often don’t realize how crab is processed when it is sold in stores already picked and cleaned. Most people also may not know that crab picking is a livelihood for many, mainly poor, women.

For generations, African American women from Maryland’s rural, maritime communities labored for crab houses on the Eastern Shore.

Today, fewer than 10 crab houses are left on the Shore. The workforce consists of mainly female migrant workers from Mexico who do the grueling job of picking crab for eight to nine hours a day, from late spring to early fall. They make on average of US$2.50 to $4.00 for every pound of crabmeat they pick.

That pay is roughly one-tenth to one-twelfth of the wholesale price of one pound – or about a half of a kilogram – of the seafood they pick, which is $35 to $44. In comparison, the Maryland minimum wage is $13.25 an hour, while the federal minimum wage is $7.25.

Rise of immigration in rural America

Over 2.1 million migrants and immigrants work in jobs growing and processing food in the United States, playing an essential role in feeding Americans.

As an anthropologist and global health researcher, my work has shown that they are part of an increasing trend in rural America. Since 1990, immigrants have been moving to small towns and rural regions at unprecedented rates, accounting for 37% of the overall rural population growth from 2000-2018.

Some rural counties, like Stewart County in Georgia and Franklin County in Alabama, have experienced growth rates of over 1,000% in their foreign-born population, which have boosted their local economies and mitigated rural population decline.

Maryland’s rural Eastern Shore, for instance, has experienced a rapid rise in immigration since 2000. From 2010 to 2019, migration was the primary source of population growth, with the foreign-born population increasing by 90%.

Many immigrants come to this region to find work in agriculture, poultry and seafood processing. Some come directly from Mexico, Central America and Haiti.

Typically, farmworkers have temporary visas and arrive in late spring and early summer and stay through the growing season. Migrant Mexican women who work in crab processing also follow the same seasonal employment pattern. Others, like those working in poultry processing plants, have settled here more permanently, either as undocumented or permanent residents.

At risk of exploitation and injury

Immigrant workers in rural regions work dangerous jobs and are exposed to pollution, deplorable living conditions and limited safety training.

Additionally, immigrant workers are among the lowest paid and lack access to health information, preventive care and medical treatment. Dry skin, cuts, scrapes, rashes, chronic pain and broken bones are common among immigrants who work in agriculture, poultry and seafood processing.

These workers also suffer from numerous invisible injuries such as discrimination, verbal harassment and physical exploitation.

Challenges to rural health

Despite the daily risk of harm, migrant workers in rural regions have limited access to health care and rely on mobile clinics, local health departments and community health centers.

But these facilities are not equipped to handle specialty care or emergencies. Nor are many of them easily accessible due to location or hours of operation. In addition, many workers cannot afford to miss work or are afraid to tell their supervisors that they need care.

Some avoid health providers altogether because they are not treated well or feel misunderstood.

Essential but undervalued

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the notion of “essential” workers became part of the nation’s vocabulary as a way to describe people required to continue in-person work under lockdown conditions. They included food industry workers.

The pandemic exposed the disproportionate numbers of immigrant workers in the agriculture, poultry and seafood industries in rural America.

It also revealed how policies enacted during the pandemic to protect public health and essential workers did little to prevent people from working in dangerous workplace conditions without adequate safeguards.

Unable to self-quarantine at home, many food production workers got sick or even died as a result of working in crowded conditions without personal protective equipment and adequate ventilation.

In many ways, the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated the long-standing crisis of health care for immigrants in rural America.

But despite evidence that close to 2.5 million foreign-born people live and work in rural America, very little information exists on these people’s health.

This inattention by lawmakers is harmful and dangerous because it leaves health care providers and social workers with little understanding of immigrant experiences in small towns and sparsely populated rural communities.

Thurka Sangaramoorthy receives funding from The National Institutes of Health.

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NORTHAMPTON — Just last week, local farmer Courtney Whitely was staring out over the plot of land off Meadow Street where he grows eggplant and other crops. It was the best crop he has ever had, he said proudly.

But now it’s all gone.

Whitely’s Ras Farm was one of many local farms devastated when the Mill and Connecticut rivers flooded this week. After days of heavy rain across the Connecticut River Valley and in Vermont, the deluge destroyed the crops and livelihoods of farmers across the region. Now, those who work the land are assessing the damages and preparing for an uncertain future. And they’re not alone.

The floods have ravaged not just farms but homes, buildings and public infrastructure. And while the true extent of the damage is still emerging, it is becoming clear that socially vulnerable populations — immigrants, people of color, small-scale farmers, the unhoused — have experienced a heavy burden, mirroring longtime warnings from experts who have said that climate change will disproportionately impact those groups. 

“It was like someone stabbed me,” Whitely said Wednesday, gesturing to the muddy fields behind him and describing the hard work that the floods had washed away. Originally from Jamaica, he has spent some two decades farming here in the Valley. What might have been salvaged likely is unusable because of the contaminants that the flood waters brought. “If it’s not drought, it’s rain. If it’s not rain, it’s flood.”

Climate change experts say that global warming has resulted in a kind of “weather whiplash.” Years of drought can be followed by massive rain events made possible because warmer air can hold more moisture. From California to India, extreme weather events have become more intense and more frequent, punctuated by dry spells. In Massachusetts, the summer of 2021 was one of the wettest on record followed the next summer by a drought. This month, some places in Vermont were hit with 9 inches of rain in a day, an amount more typical of an entire summer.

“Warming may be leading to hydroclimate whiplash … which means wide swings between wet and dry periods,” said Michael Rawlins, the associate director of the University of Massachusetts Amherst’s Climate System Research Center. “This is believed to be an emerging manifestation of climate warming.”

In addition to smaller-scale farmers like Whitely, farm laborers — many of whom are undocumented immigrants — are already losing their livelihoods because of the flooding in the Connecticut River Valley.

“There are people telling me that because of the floods, all of this that’s happening, they are already not working or are working just one or two times a week,” said Claudia Rosales, who heads the Pioneer Valley Workers Center and has herself been a farmworker. “They need that work to live.”

Rosales said that the Workers Center is organizing to find farm workers employment at other farms or elsewhere. The organization also runs a mutual-aid food distribution program and is working to get financial assistance to impacted workers, she said. But for farm workers who do such essential work, finding other jobs is difficult for many because of their immigration status.

“Those immigrants need that work as much as society does,” Rosales said.

People without housing were also hit hard by the flooding. In an interview with MassLive, Manna Community Center’s Jess Tilley said on Wednesday that six unhoused people had been displaced by flooding at their camp site. 

“Many folks have lost all their belongings including tents, sleeping bags and outerwear,” the organization wrote on their Facebook page. Efforts to reach Manna were unsuccessful Thursday.

Much of the focus has been on farms, though, given the heavy damage they suffered.

On Wednesday, state officials and local lawmakers toured farms across the region that had been submerged and had only just become accessible. The first stop was at the 121-acre Grow Food Northampton Community Farm, where farmers can lease low-cost land and more than 400 community members grow organic garden plots, about a third of which are subsidized. Alisa Klein, the organization’s executive director, said that 275 of the 325 plots there had been inundated.

Pat James, the group’s community garden manager, said that walking through the plots was still heartbreaking, pointing to some of the produce Grow Food Northampton gives to food pantries and other meal sites across the region. Bigger, industrial farms might have an easier time rebounding from floods, but small-scale operations will be less likely to survive, James said.

“We’re not in the same boat,” was how James described the difference between agro giants and independent, small-scale farms. “We’re all in the same water right now … But the people with more resources and access have an easier way out of the water.”

Many of the secondary and tertiary consequences of the flooding are still yet undetermined, state Sen. Jo Comerford said as she walked through a parking lot caked with river mud on her way to see some of the affected farmland. Some of those local food pantries will be missing food they had counted on, for example. And it wasn’t clear as of Wednesday whether the financial costs of the disaster would hit the necessary threshold to trigger a bigger federal response, Comerford added.

“The ripples of this are unknowable at this point,” she said.

Puddles of water were still present on the fields Comerford was visiting. There, a group of Somali Bantu refugees work the land as a cooperative: the New Family Community Farming Coop. Acting as an interpreter between the English-speaking officials and the Maay Maay-speaking farmers, Mumat Aweys explained that out of about 20 plots farmed by the coop, a handful had been flooded.

“They put a lot of work into it; they mostly plow by hand,” Aweys said. “All that work … goes to ruins.”

As the planet gets hotter, many experts have called for municipalities, states and the federal government to get more serious about updating infrastructure to become more resilient. Northampton has gone so far as to create a new department, the Climate Action and Project Administration Department, to make sure that city projects meet climate and sustainability goals — something mayoral chief of staff Alan Wolf said has now become “part of the math of municipal government in the 21st century.”

“Reducing our vulnerability to extreme hydrologic events is an important component of adaptation to climate change,” said Rawlins, the UMass Amherst researcher. He said that extreme precipitation events are increasing faster in the Northeast than anywhere in the country.

On the federal level, Congress is currently debating its “Farm Bill,” which lawmakers pass every five years. The massive legislation puts money toward the country’s food systems, and climate-justice advocates are pushing for significant investments in building more resilience and more steps to reduce carbon emissions.

“The evidence and science and everything around us clearly points to one thing: our future is going to be unlike our past and it’s becoming more difficult to predict that future,” said Omanjana Goswami, an interdisciplinary scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists. “What we need to do is build more resilient agricultural systems that can adapt to changing climatic patterns but also adapt to drought, to floods.”

Goswami said that from an environmental health perspective, the contamination brought by floodwaters needs to be accounted for. She said that the Farm Bill is a critical moment to further the vital work of building an agricultural model that stops harming the soil and instead works to sequester carbon and prepares for nasty weather ahead.

“This is an opportunity for … everybody to advocate for a more climate-focused Farm Bill,” she said.

One of the farmers at Grown Food Northampton was in the process of experimenting with perennial crops to figure out what could best deal with extreme weather. Piyush Labhsetwar is growing wheat and a pawpaw orchard along the banks of the Mill River, which were all five feet underwater after the floods.

“It’s a mixed bag for me,” he said on Wednesday. Nothing had been uprooted, for example. He just didn’t plan to have such an extreme event test that resiliency in his first year of experimenting.

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Dusty Christensen is an independent investigative reporter based in western Massachusetts. He can be reached at dusty.christensen@protonmail.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dustyc123.

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When the state House and Senate passed a five-year moratorium on building any new prisons and jails last year, those who had spent years fighting against the construction of a new women’s prison thought that the Legislature was finally listening.

But, in one of his last moves in office last August, former Gov. Charlie Baker vetoed the bill. Now, under Gov. Maura Healey, the new women’s prison is back on the table. What’s more, the state agencies in charge of prisons and public construction are blocking public records requests from activists opposed to the project for meeting minutes and other planning documents.

According to activists who requested those records, the state’s Division of Capital Asset Management and Maintenance, or DCAMM, and the state Department of Correction are refusing to share information about the project’s progress with concerned citizens through a controversial exemption to the state’s public records law known as the “deliberative process exemption.” 

Organizations and people concerned about the expansion of prisons in Massachusetts have received heavily redacted copies of documents in two recent attempts at seeking public information about the project. DCAMM released bi-weekly meeting minutes dating from September to May, but most pages were completely redacted. 

“The lack of transparency and accountability is unacceptable,” said Mallory Hanora, the executive director of Families for Justice as Healing, which is leading the #NoNewWomensPrison Campaign and requested the records. 

As incarceration rates in Massachusetts continue to fall and alternatives to prison are organized and passed into law, the Department of Correction continues to insist that a $50 million new women’s prison project is necessary to eventually replace MCI-Framingham, which is the oldest continuously operating prison in the United States. Organizers fighting the project are struggling to gather information in a state with some of the most opaque public records laws in the country. Massachusetts is the only state where the Legislature, courts and governor’s office all claim to be entirely exempt from disclosure laws. Healey campaigned on the promise that she would be one of the most transparent governors in state history, but quickly backtracked on that once in office. 

Hanora and her legal counsel are in the process of appealing the redactions. The most recent release from DCAMM included the list of state employees attending the bi-weekly planning meetings. The names John Rose and Sean Foley — both listed as construction coordinators for the Department of Correction — are bad news to the project’s opponents. 

According to Massachusetts public records law, the deliberative process exemption that DCAMM is citing applies to “inter-agency or intra-agency memoranda or letters relating to policy positions being developed by the agency.”

“This subclause shall not apply to reasonably completed factual studies or reports on which the development of such policy positions has been or may be based,” the law reads. 

The exemption is one of 23 such exemptions in Massachusetts. It divides all governmental information into two categories: “fact” and “opinion.” Factual information — like whether a final decision has been made about the prison project — is not protected by the exemption and must be made available to the public. The exemption protects “pre-decisional” and opinion-based information — the initial recommendation of a policy-maker, for instance. 

“According to the Secretary of State’s Guide on Massachusetts Public Records Law, state agencies can withhold documents chronicling discussions related to ‘legal and policy matters,’ but they must reveal factual matters involved in the deliberative process,” said Catherine Sevcenko, who is senior counsel for the National Council for Incarcerated & Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls, of which FJAH is a member. 

Sevcenko said that it’s unclear what the agency has redacted, but that “blacking out 90% of a document on the grounds that it reflects opinion rather than facts is concerning.” 

“Either the decision to build a new women’s prison is being taken with a scant factual basis, or the Commonwealth is withholding information that citizens are entitled to know,” Sevcenko said. “Neither is acceptable.” 

In its response to Hanora’s records request, DCAMM said that the redactions it made to the records were justified under the deliberative process exemption.

“Please note, portions of the requested records have been withheld or redacted pursuant to the Deliberative Process Exemption set out at G.L. c. 4, § 7(26)(d) (‘Exemption (d)’),” the agency wrote in its response. “This exemption applies to inter-agency or intra-agency memoranda or letters relating to policy positions being developed by the agency, in this instance, policy relating to corrections in the Commonwealth.  Policy positions being developed by the agency is ongoing and therefore exempt from mandatory disclosure at this time.” 

Hanora and other activists insist that they should have access to policy regarding women’s incarceration even as it’s being developed. FJAH is made up of, and works directly with, incarcerated and formerly incarcerated women, the demographic that will be most impacted by state decisions regarding the new prison. 

Deliberative process exemptions to public information laws have garnered controversy across the nation, not just in Massachusetts. 

In 2019, for example, the Sierra Club challenged the use of a deliberative process exemption to the federal Freedom of Information Act in a case that made it all the way to the Supreme Court. In May 2021, the court’s justices ruled in favor of the exemption, saying that “facilitating agency candor in exercising its expertise in preliminary agency deliberations” can outweigh “transparency and accountability concerns.” Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote the opinion, her first since joining the court. 

The Sierra Club’s case was the first time that FOIA exemption had been addressed by the court in 20 years. Advocacy organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed an amicus brief in the case, were hopeful the court would strengthen FOIA, but its ruling further blurred the lines. According to the Yale Journal of Regulation, the decision “furthers government secrecy.” 

Elsewhere, in Tennessee, Republican Gov. Bill Lee has drawn scrutiny for using that state’s deliberative process exemption frequently since 2019 to deny records to journalists and state representatives. 

The use of the exemption here in Massachusetts raises concerns about government transparency on a costly and beleaguered project. And it’s not the first time that opponents of the project have raised alarms about DCAMM and DOC failing to meet legal obligations around communicating with the public. The project has been shrouded in secrecy since the state failed to properly advertise its first request for proposals in 2019. That initial proposal and a second were withdrawn after administrative challenges citing improper procedures were filed with the Massachusetts Attorney General Office’s Bid Unit during Healey’s tenure as attorney general.

“This is typical of the DOC,” Hanora said. “Redacting notes about the new women’s prison project is just another example of how this rogue agency avoids accountability and the rest of the executive branch lets it happen.”

Hanora said that incarcerated and formerly incarcerated women have been clear that there is “no such thing as a safe or trauma-informed prison,” despite what the DOC claims they hope to build. 

“People are demanding that the state does something different and better for women than yet another prison where DOC’s abuse and medical neglect will certainly continue,” she added.

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Sierra Dickey is a writer and educator living in Gill. Find her on Twitter @dierrasickey.

The Shoestring is committed to bringing you ad-free content. We rely on readers to support our work! You can support independent news for Western Mass by visiting our Donate page.

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By Sarah Robertson

BOSTON – Soil products derived from sewage sludge have been applied to land for decades – on golf courses, to remediate disturbed land, and even to fertilize crops. Options to dispose of wastewater sludge are limited, and much of it ends up at commercial composting facilities. In the United States, approximately 47% of all “biosolids,” an industry term for sewage sludge, end up applied to land.

While a patchwork of regulations have been aimed at ensuring pathogens and heavy metals do not end up in our food supply through land application of sludge, in recent years it has become clear that a class of harmful manmade chemicals has been spread undetected. Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in our soil, food, and water have been linked to the practice, and it is likely that many farms have been contaminated unknowingly.

For some farmers, biosolids have offered an affordable alternative to traditional fertilizers. 

“I don’t think we know the extent of the problem,” state senator Jo Comerford’s office said in a statement. “This is a complex issue that deserves a lot of careful scrutiny and input from stakeholders and policy experts.”

This session, Comerford filed a bill that would protect Massachusetts farmers whose lands are discovered to be contaminated with PFAS from legal and financial repercussions. S.39, An Act protecting our soil and farms from PFAS contamination, would set up a special relief fund to test soil, water, and agricultural products for PFAS, remediate contamination, and pay costs incurred by affected businesses and individuals, including farmworkers’ medical bills. 

Additionally, the bill would require all soil products manufactured with “biosolids” to be labeled as such.  

“Enacting legislation like this would be the first step in a longer process of deciding who might receive funds and how much would be available,” Comerford’s office wrote. “We hope the bill will open up a discussion on the best policy choices…. [The] first step is to test biosolids being used on agricultural land to understand the scope of the problem, and to let farmers know about any products used in their soil so they can make decisions about their land.” 

On May 15, a hearing for S.39 and its sister bill in the House, H.101, was held on Beacon Hill by the Joint Committee on Agriculture. 

“We want to ensure that farmers are not at risk of losing their farms, losing their livelihoods, due to practices employed on their land in the past that have generally been accepted management practices – until this point,” said Winton Pitcoff, director of the Massachusetts Food System Collaborative. “We need more research, we need more education, and we need to be prepared to support farmers in understanding the risks and addressing them where that’s needed.”

Pitcoff’s organization, an association of food and farm policy organizations, helped bring the issue of PFAs contamination of farmland to the legislature’s attention. PFAS, he argued, puts the stability of the state’s food systems at risk. 

Removing contaminated farmland from agricultural use permanently, an approach taken recently in Maine, is “pretty extreme,” Pitcoff said. After several farms had to close due to high levels of PFAS found in milk, soil, water and vegetables, the state banned the land application of biosolids entirely. 

“What this bill does is make sure we’re talking about the protection for farmers,” Pitcoff said. “I think Maine talked about that way too late in their process.”

Laura Spark, a policy advocate with Clean Water Action, called Maine’s approach the “most protective.”

“The problem with PFAS contamination on farms is that PFAS are persistent – they last, essentially, forever,” Spark told legislators. “They are bioaccumulative: the more we consume, the more they accrue in our bodies. And they are toxic at very, very low levels.”

Assessing the Impact

The state Department of Environmental Protection (MassDEP) currently regulates and permits the land application of biosolids, and determines whether products are fit for agricultural use, or for other uses such as capping landfills. No state or federal limits have yet been set on PFAS levels in land-applied biosolids, but this is expected to change. In Massachusetts, wastewater treatment facilities have been required since 2019 to test for the presence of the chemicals in their sludge.

In 2018, after a review of the Environmental Protection Agency, the US Office of the Inspector General released a report titled EPA Unable to Assess the Impact of Hundreds of Unregulated Pollutants in Land-Applied Biosolids on Human Health and the Environment. This report detailed, among other things, that the agency does not have the data or resources necessary to assess the safety of 352 pollutants found in biosolids – 61 of which are designated as “hazardous” or “priority” pollutants by other EPA programs. 

These chemicals include PFAS, heavy metals, pharmaceuticals, and other chemicals. The federal agency only sets limits for nine heavy metals in sludge.

Janine Burke-Wells, executive director of the Northeast Biosolids and Residuals Association, said that the farms in Maine with the most potent contamination had applied biosolids originating from a facility that processed high levels of industrial waste, including waste from paper products manufacturers.

“We need to just take a step back and have some more conversations about the risks of various sources,” Burke-Wells said, adding that she would support legislation relieving public water treatment facilities from liability for PFAS contamination, and exempting them from federal Superfund laws in such cases.

Burke-Wells praised Montague Clean Water Facility superintendent Chelsey Little for piloting a town-owned biosolids composting program. “There are others out there that will push this down the pipeline,” she said of other wastewater treatment plant operators. “They’re all deers in the headlights… They don’t want to move until this all shakes out.” 

Movers and Shakers

Casella Waste Systems, one of the largest waste management companies in New England, recycles or disposes of most of the municipal sludge produced in Franklin County. A number of towns coordinate with the Franklin County Solid Waste Management District to ship their sludge to a facility in Lowell, where it is treated further and then trucked away by Casella for either disposal or recycling. 

In the past, Casella contracted directly to dispose of sludge from both the Montague Clean Water Facility and POTW#2 plant in Erving, where residential and paper mill wastewater are treated by ERSECO Inc., a subsidiary of Erving Industries. Casella ended its contract with ERSECO in 2021, citing concerns over “emerging contaminants” such as PFAS, forcing the paper company to procure a more expensive contract sending its sludge to Canada.

“In the absence of federal regulations concerning biosolids management,” said Casella director of communications Jeff Weld, “ states will be introducing unique approaches based on the volume of biosolids production vs. available landfill space, incineration capacity, and suitable land for treated biosolids application purposes…. Our charge is to work within the regulatory framework of each state in which we operate while providing solutions that are economically and environmentally sustainable for our customers and the communities we serve.” 

In recent years Casella has been responsible for most of the biosolids application on farmland in Hampshire and Franklin counties. A public records request filed by this reporter found that between 2010 and 2021, five farms in Greenfield, Hatfield, Sunderland, and Northfield and a parcel of land in Orange were spread with biosolids-based soil products. 

In five instances, the product in question was Casella’s Biomix, produced using sludge from the Erving plant; the Northfield farm contracted with a different company that composed sludge from Nashua, New Hampshire. None of the landowners responded to requests for comment.

“We will continue to engage with all stakeholders concerning the emerging science around PFAS, and will be proactively providing comment and feedback on H.101/S.39,” Weld said.

How Much Farther?

Mickey Nowak, executive director of the Massachusetts Water Environment Association, which represents wastewater operators, said that in his opinion a complete ban on the land application of biosolids would have serious repercussions on an already precarious and expensive waste stream. The state, he said, needs a master plan for biosolids. 

“Anything else will result in chaos,” Nowak said. “If land application is greatly reduced or banned, where will these biosolids go? Incineration and landfill capacity is full. How much farther to distant locations can we ship our biosolids?”

Asked for comment on S.39, Nowak said that “the key to a long-term solution” is the reduction of PFAS at its source. “The bill addresses the concerns of farmers,” he argued, “but says nothing about the concerns of the 120 publicly owned wastewater treatment works in the Commonwealth.”

Last year, Senator Comerford introduced another bill, An Act restricting toxic PFAS chemicals in consumer products to protect our health, which would have banned PFAS in child car seats, cookware, fabric treatments, cosmetics, and furniture. It did not pass. Comerford sat on the legislature’s PFAS Interagency Task Force, which helped to draft both pieces of legislation.

Senator Comerford’s office said groups such as the American Farmland Trust, Northeast Organic Farming Association and Sierra Club brought the issue of farmland application of biosolids to her attention, and that she has yet to engage in conversations with Casella over the issue. “We have not talked with them yet, but would welcome discussions with them,” the office said.

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A version of this article was published in the Montague Reporter. Mike Jackson contributed additional reporting.

Sarah Robertson is an independent journalist living in western Mass.

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For the 20th time since 1933, Congress is writing a multiyear farm bill that will shape what kind of food U.S. farmers grow, how they raise it and how it gets to consumers. These measures are large, complex and expensive: The next farm bill is projected to cost taxpayers US$1.5 trillion over 10 years.

Modern farm bills address many things besides food, from rural broadband access to biofuels and even help for small towns to buy police cars. These measures bring out a dizzying range of interest groups with diverse agendas.

Umbrella organizations like the American Farm Bureau Federation and the National Farmers Union typically focus on farm subsidies and crop insurance. The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition advocates for small farmers and ranchers. Industry-specific groups, such as cattlemen, fruit and vegetable growers and organic producers, all have their own interests.

Environmental and conservation groups seek to influence policies that affect land use and sustainable farming practices. Hunger and nutrition groups target the bill’s sections on food aid. Rural counties, hunters and anglers, bankers and dozens of other organizations have their own wish lists.

As a former Senate aide and senior official at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, I’ve seen this intricate process from all sides. In my view, with the challenges in this round so complex and with critical 2024 elections looming, it could take Congress until 2025 to craft and enact a bill. Here are four key issues shaping the next farm bill, and through it, the future of the U.S. food system.

The price tag

Farm bills always are controversial because of their high cost, but this year the timing is especially tricky. In the past two years, Congress has enacted major bills to provide economic relief from the COVID-19 pandemic, counter inflation, invest in infrastructure and boost domestic manufacturing.

These measures follow unprecedented spending for farm support during the Trump administration. Now legislators are jockeying over raising the debt ceiling, which limits how much the federal government can borrow to pay its bills.

Agriculture Committee leaders and farm groups argue that more money is necessary to strengthen the food and farm sector. If they have their way, the price tag for the next farm bill would increase significantly from current projections.

On the other side, reformers argue for capping payments to farmers, which The Washington Post recently described as an “expensive agricultural safety net,” and restricting payment eligibility. In their view, too much money goes to very large farms that produce commodity crops like wheat, corn, soybeans and rice, while small and medium-size producers receive far less support.

Food aid is the key fight

Many people are surprised to learn that nutrition assistance – mainly through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps – is where most farm bill money is spent. Back in the 1970s, Congress began including nutrition assistance in the farm bill to secure votes from an increasingly urban nation.

Today, over 42 million Americans depend on SNAP, including nearly 1 in every 4 children. Along with a few smaller programs, SNAP will likely consume 80% of the money in the new farm bill, up from 76% in 2018.

Why have SNAP costs grown? During the pandemic, SNAP benefits were increased on an emergency basis, but that temporary arrangement expired in March 2023. Also, in response to a directive included in the 2018 farm bill, the Department of Agriculture recalculated what it takes to afford a healthy diet, known as the Thrifty Food Plan, and determined that it required an additional $12-$16 per month per recipient, or 40 cents per meal.

Because it’s such a large target, SNAP is where much of the budget battle will play out. Most Republicans typically seek to rein in SNAP; most Democrats usually support expanding it.

Anti-hunger advocates are lobbying to make the increased pandemic benefits permanent and defend the revised Thrifty Food Plan. In contrast, Republicans are calling for SNAP reductions, and are particularly focused on expanding work requirements for recipients.

Debating climate solutions

The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act provided $19.5 billion to the Department of Agriculture for programs that address climate change. Environmentalists and farmers alike applauded this investment, which is intended to help the agriculture sector embrace climate-smart farming practices and move toward markets that reward carbon sequestration and other ecosystem services.

This big pot of money has become a prime target for members of Congress who are looking for more farm bill funding. On the other side, conservation advocates, sustainable farmers and progressive businesses oppose diverting climate funds for other purposes.

There also is growing demand for Congress to require USDA to develop better standards for measuring, reporting and verifying actions designed to protect or increase soil carbon. Interest is rising in “carbon farming” – paying farmers for practices such as no-till agriculture and planting cover crops, which some studies indicate can increase carbon storage in soil.

But without more research and standards, observers worry that investments in climate-smart agriculture will support greenwashing – misleading claims about environmental benefits – rather than a fundamentally different system of production. Mixed research results have raised questions as to whether establishing carbon markets based on such practices is premature.

A complex bill and inexperienced legislators

Understanding farm bills requires highly specialized knowledge about issues ranging from crop insurance to nutrition to forestry. Nearly one-third of current members of Congress were first elected after the 2018 farm bill was enacted, so this is their first farm bill cycle.

I expect that, as often occurs in Congress, new members will follow more senior legislators’ cues and go along with traditional decision making. This will make it easier for entrenched interests, like the American Farm Bureau Federation and major commodity groups, to maintain support for Title I programs, which provide revenue support for major commodity crops like corn, wheat and soybeans. These programs are complex, cost billions of dollars and go mainly to large-scale operations.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack’s current stump speech spotlights the fact that 89% of U.S. farmers failed to make a livable profit in 2022, even though total farm income set a record at $162 billion. Vilsack asserts that less-profitable operations should be the focus of this farm bill – but when pressed, he appears unwilling to concede that support for large-scale operations should be changed in any way.

When I served as deputy secretary of agriculture from 2009 to 2011, I oversaw the department’s budget process and learned that investing in one thing often requires defunding another. My dream farm bill would invest in three priorities: organic agriculture as a climate solution; infrastructure to support vibrant local and regional markets and shift away from an agricultural economy dependent on exporting low-value crops; and agricultural science and technology research aimed at reducing labor and chemical inputs and providing new solutions for sustainable livestock production.

In my view, it is time for tough policy choices, and it won’t be possible to fund everything. Congress’ response will show whether it supports business as usual in agriculture, or a more diverse and sustainable U.S. farm system.

Kathleen Merrigan is a former Deputy Secretary of the US Department of Agriculture

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By Sarah Robertson

CHICOPEE – Food banks across the state are experiencing unprecedented levels of demand as inflation pushes the cost of food higher and emergency aid programs initiated by the pandemic come to a close.

“Food insecurity is on the rise in Massachusetts, and across the country for that matter,” Andrew Morehouse, executive director of the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts, said at a press conference at McKinstry Farms in Chicopee on Monday. “It shouldn’t come as any surprise to anyone that food inflation is hammering families that are trying to make ends meet.”

Since the pandemic began the number of Massachusetts residents receiving help from food banks has doubled. In 2022 the state’s four major food banks – the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts, the Greater Boston Food Bank, the Merrimack Valley Food Bank, and the Worcester County Food bank – served more than 800,000 people every month. These nonprofits distribute food to hundreds of food pantries, soup kitchens, shelters, senior centers, and other organizations across the state.

Representatives from the four food banks attended Monday’s press conference along with an assortment of Hampden county politicians to request more government aid to address hunger. Morehouse told the small crowd that the coalition of food banks is requesting $41.5 million in funding from the state for the Massachusetts Emergency Food Assistance Program (MEFAP) in the next fiscal year. That is over $10 million more than what Governor Maura Healey’s administration is proposing in the 2024 fiscal year budget.

“We’re requesting – we’re imploring – the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to invest in MEFAP $41.5 million at this point in time, when people need the food most,” Morehouse said.

Growing Needs

According to data analyzed by the Greater Boston Food Bank, food insecurity in Massachusetts has increased by 70% since the pandemic began. One-third of adults in the state experienced food insecurity in 2021, as well as half of all households with children.

The late state representative Peter Kocot introduced legislation that established the MEFAP in 1995. The program paid for about 26.4% of the food purchased for the four major food banks in the 2022 fiscal year. The rest mostly comes from donations and federal funding.

“That program has been essential in times of crisis and need,” said state senator Adam Gomez, whose district includes parts of Chicopee and Springfield. “We’ve seen it when Hurricane Maria hit.”

Last year MEFAP received an additional $10 million in emergency funding, bringing it to about $30 million. This year the governor is proposing $31.2 million for MEFAP.

Meanwhile, a slew of other pandemic-era supports either have ended or are ending, including supplemental food stamp benefits, extra unemployment benefits, stimulus payments, and the federal child tax credit. State and federal grants meant to offset pandemic-related financial challenges, such as the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) and Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ESSER), are also temporary measures that have helped address food insecurity but are not expected to come back.

“It’s a serious problem,” Morehouse said. “And to make matters worse, COVID-era federal benefits have dried up, and national supply chain obstacles are preventing the United States Department of Agriculture, the single-largest recent supplier of food inventory for food banks, from purchasing and delivering that food to us.”

Before the pandemic, the federal government typically paid for about 25% of the food distributed by the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts. According to public policy manager Laura Sylvester, that figure is now closer to 17%. To fill the gap, the food bank’s board of directors recently approved spending $500,000 in emergency funds to purchase food.

“We’re blowing through our rainy-day fund,” Sylvester said. She added that due to inflation, food banks are also paying more money for less food.

Managing Costs

The backdrop chosen for Monday’s announcement was McKinstry Farms, a fifth-generation family farm locally famous for its sweet corn.

The Food Bank of Western Massachusetts is relocating from its longtime Hatfield headquarters to Chicopee, about three miles from the farm. The new $26.3 million building is expected to open in September, The Reminder reported.

Monday’s event began with the farm’s matriarch and patriarch, Nicole and Bill McKinstry, sharing some of their family history. Standing in a nearly finished packing garage, the couple talked about how they have recently built a new farm store, and are expanding their growing operations.

For the past two years the McKinstrys have taken part in the MassGrown Initiative, a pandemic-inspired program funded by MEFAP to promote intra-state exchanges among food businesses, intended as a way to protect against supply chain disruptions. Through this initiative, the farm has provided tens of thousands of pounds of food to the Food Bank.

Ashley Randle, commissioner of the state Department of Agricultural Resources, called MEFAP a “shining example of a public-private partnership.”

“Today’s farmers are facing so many challenges… with inflation and the rising costs of inputs such as feed, fertilizer, and fuel on top of climate change,” Randle said. “We’ve witnessed that certainly in the last few years.”

Grants have helped offset the cost of other recent investments at McKinstry Farms, including a walk-in refrigerator and the new packing shed where the press conference was held.

At the peak of the planting season. McKinstry Farms hires around 45 farmworkers, many of whom work under temporary agricultural worker visas, known as an H-2A. The business is currently advertising seasonal positions on their farm on the US Office of Foreign Labor Certification website. Last year, the pay was advertised at $15.66 per hour, working 48 hours per week. This year it is listed at $16.95 per hour.

Will McKinstry, a recent college graduate taking over management of the family farm from his parents, said the farm is spending lots of money on fuel for tractors. The family owns fields in Amherst, Hadley, Granby, and Belchertown, and often drive tractors from town to town.

“Managing a crew can be a challenge,” McKinstry said. “Sometimes our guys need to start in the morning and pick corn in Hadley, and then have to go pick broccoli in Granby…. It’s a lot of time on the road – a lot of fuel, too.”

The Big Picture

Senator Gomez, who represents parts of Chicopee and his hometown of Springfield, told attendees he is advocating for increased funding for the MEFAP program so that “food reaches the communities that I grew up in.”

Gomez said that he has experienced periods of financial hardship. When his family lost their home, he said, they had to rely on institutions served by the Food Bank.

During the last legislative session, Gomez introduced a bill to protect the rights of people working seasonally on Massachusetts farms, who tend to be migrant workers. “An Act establishing fairness for agricultural workers” would have mandated a minimum 24-hour rest period every week, and a maximum work week of 55 hours, but it died in committee.

“We’re still negotiating with the farms as well, to try to give them an incentive to pay farm hands an appropriate wage,” Gomez told the Reporter. “A lot of the resistance we’ve had is from farmers who own farms. They say that it’s going to hurt them, but at the same time you’re overworking individuals – you’re not paying them retirement, you’re not paying them overtime. They’re basically working six days a week with no breaks, and they’re not getting a fair wage.”

US legislators are also pushing for more funding for food systems at the federal level. Massachusetts representative Jim McGovern signed a letter encouraging the House subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration to fully fund The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP)’s administrative grants account at $100 million, and is requesting $15 million for the Emergency Food Program Infrastructure Grant Program.

Global food prices hit record highs last year, according to the United Nations, partly due to extreme weather events and the war in Ukraine. To counter increased pressure on the food system and the scarcity of workers who maintain it, federal legislators tried to pass the Farm Workforce Modernization Act last session. The bill would have expanded access to the H-2A visa program and established a system to verify farmworkers’ legal immigration status. It passed the House, but Republicans in the Senate rebranded it as the Affordable and Secure Food Act, and ultimately declined to include it in an omnibus spending package.

“In Hampden County, we know that we have the most impoverished county in the state of Massachusetts,” Gomez said. “It’s unfortunate that we have to go that route, but I think the truth is evident: without the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts, a lot of people would probably starve.”

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A version of this article was published in the Montague Reporter. Photo courtesy of the author.

Sarah Robertson is an independent journalist living in western Mass.

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