Against the backdrop of a looming global energy crisis, rising food insecurity, and the increased frequency and intensity of heat, hurricanes, and floods fueled by global warming, Florida’s governing bodies have had a consequential, but unsurprisingly counterproductive, month.

At the beginning of March, the state legislature passed a bill blocking local governments from adopting or enforcing “net-zero” policies. The bill, which was sent to Ron DeSantis’ desk, is expected to be signed by the governor in the coming days and would impact commitments made by more than a dozen cities from Tallahassee to South Miami to lower emissions and energy costs. 

Then, last Monday morning, DeSantis signed Senate Bill 290, or the “Florida Farm Bill,” into law. The bill passed with a 94-10 vote in the House and a unanimous vote by the Senate. Among the biggest climate rollbacks of the new legislation, which goes into effect July 1, is the provision that now preemptively bans cities and counties throughout the state from outlawing gas- and diesel-powered tools, such as tractors, lawn mowers, and leaf blowers. 

“If you want to use different stuff, fine, it’s a free country,” DeSantis said before signing the bill in Sebring, Florida. “But I like the gas-powered better. I just think it’s more reliable.” 

According to Brooke Alexander-Goss, the Organizing Manager at Sierra Club’s Florida chapter, there are at most seven municipalities in Florida that actually have bans against gas-powered lawn tools, like leaf blowers and chainsaws; no municipalities in the state have prohibited the big gas- and diesel-powered machines that farmers use on a daily basis. “They’re pinpointing something very, very specific, and it’s not even something we’ve seen or heard of,” Alexander-Goss said. “It’s just another example of the legislature overstepping and wanting to take over local control, which obviously opens the door for more of that in the future.”

Farmers and ranchers in the state are celebrating the way the new law bolsters an industry in decline. Florida’s $387 billion agricultural sector is facing a serious downturn, driven in no small part by climate change. Extreme weather has become a major economic strain in recent years for farmers and ranchers statewide. More extreme heat and insufficient rainfall have contributed to significant losses in citrus acreage, back-to-back hurricanes have decimated the production of animal goods and row crops, and the unusual cold temperatures that hit the state last month cost the entire industry upwards of $3 billion. Major storms have also driven up farm insurance rates, while federal tariffs, trade disruptions, and immigration enforcement have increased input, fertilizer, and labor costs. And yet agriculture itself remains a big contributor to planetary warming. Sugarcane production in Florida’s Everglades agricultural area alone has been found to be responsible for more than 7.3 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions every year — the bulk of the state’s agricultural emissions. The new law locks the state’s farmers into that cycle of reliance on fossil fuels — and in a state where greenhouse gas emissions surged by 30 percent between 1990 and 2022, no less. 

Environmental groups are, naturally, lamenting the bill’s passage for its climate setbacks. “This proves that, again, the legislature is not taking climate change seriously,” said Alexander-Goss.

The “Florida Farm Bill” also includes a provision that allows the state to open land designated for conservation for commercial farm use. Under this policy, lands acquired for conservation purposes since 2024 can be reclassified if deemed suitable for agriculture by state agencies. 

The legislation “represents a troubling shift away from the state’s long-standing commitment to land conservation at a time when we should be doubling down on climate resilience,” said Javier Estevez, political and legislative director at the Florida chapter of the Sierra Club. 

While the law requires an easement, or an agreement between governments and landowners to determine land use, as an attempt to limit the scale of development, Estevez says it still removes these lands from public ownership and weakens long-term ecological protections. Farming can increase water pollution, disrupt habitats, and stress fragile ecosystems that conservation programs were designed to protect. 

“By allowing certain conservation lands to be declared ‘surplus’ and sold for agricultural use, this law undermines the fundamental promise that protected lands stay protected,” said Estevez.

According to DeSantis, the farm bill “shows that we have a strong commitment to not just agriculture, but our rural communities writ large.” But the package largely sidesteps farm country’s economic strife. Other parts of the law include citizenship requirements for disaster loans, a new program designed to boost locally-grown seed varieties, and permanently authorizing a program that directs farm-fresh food to food banks. Ultimately, the law comes at a time of heightened tension between what Florida state policymakers want and what cities and counties are trying to achieve in the name of climate action, food production, and public health. One thing that the law doesn’t do for the agricultural industry is indicative of that growing political tension.

An earlier version of the bill proposed to expand Florida’s food disparagement law, often called a “veggie-libel” law, which gives individuals and companies the ability to sue for claims that disparage perishable agricultural products — by saying, for instance, that a product is unsafe for consumption. The new provision aimed to expand that authority to include all agricultural products and practices and would have allowed companies to recover attorney’s fees if they won a defamation suit.

In January, Kelly Ryerson, a leading Make America Healthy Again advocate and founder of the website Glyphosate Facts, launched a full-scale campaign against the measure, on the basis that it would violate free speech and inhibit MAHA’s main priority of improving public health by cleaning up the food system. Ryerson and other MAHA advocates took to social media, email, and phone blitzes to reach Florida lawmakers and voice their opposition to the measure. She even teamed up with environmental advocacy groups to make their case before policymakers at the state capitol.

Sugarcane is one of Florida’s biggest agricultural products and its growers routinely burn their fields, a practice that has been linked to premature death, respiratory distress, and other dangerous health conditions in low-income communities of color. The measure drew particularly fierce backlash from the many critics of these controversial practices because it would have expanded the “veggie-libel” law to include sugar manufacturers. 

Florida, Ryerson said, is “a really large stronghold” for MAHA, a powerful national movement that helped Trump win a second term and is now showing some dissatisfaction with the administration. She said there is “an interesting conflict” between health advocates and an agricultural industry she sees as “contributing to the toxicity of the food supply.”

The Senate stripped the provision from the bill last month. But Ryerson remains dismayed over the state’s decision to allow some conservation lands to be sold for farming. MAHA advocates would rather “permanently protect those lands for clean water, wildlife, and future generations,” she said, “not to have them auctioned off for commercial agricultural production, which will certainly pollute with toxic chemicals and fertilizers.”

The move “betrays Florida voters,” Ryerson said.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline With its new farm bill, Florida’s climate fight just hit a tractor-sized roadblock on Mar 30, 2026.

In the far corner of the Crockett County Senior Center, 75-year-old Cynthia Flores almost always has a puzzle going. She and her friends sort colors and look for edge pieces while they gossip — “faster than the telephone” — in the Tex-Mex blend of Spanish and English they grew up speaking in Ozona, a tiny ranching and oil outpost in far West Texas. A couple of days before Valentine’s Day, their puzzle surface was one of the few in the center not covered in red and pink hearts; preparations were underway for the big dance the following night.

“La comida esta ready,” another senior said, calling the puzzlers to lunch. Flores placed one last piece, then took her seat at a long community table. The plate in front of her would have delighted a nutritionist with its lean protein and mountain of steamed broccoli. She pulled a tiny plastic container of teriyaki sauce out of her bag and poured the contents over the meat. “They feed us what we need,” Flores said, “but I always fix it up.” Mostly, she said, she’s just thankful not to have to cook. Like many of her friends, Flores still lives at home, but comes into the center for lunch most days. After being married at 16 and preparing food for herself and her family for almost 60 years, she said she was ready for a break. 

Some might say Flores and her friends are living the retirement dream. The center is like a second home, with nutritious food and a full calendar of bingo, dominoes, and social events. Thanks to services like these, many of Crockett County’s aging residents have been able to stay in the familiar community where they, their parents, and sometimes even their grandparents grew up. Flores has been cutting hair locally for decades, working primarily out of her house. Many of her clients now are in their 90s. “I’ve been blessed to work in Ozona, where I can do my own thing,” she said. 

Ozona is the only town in Crockett County’s 2,800 square miles, and technically, it’s not even that. “The Biggest Little Town in the World,” as it brands itself, is technically unincorporated, meaning that the county is the only municipal government for its 2,800 residents. One person per square mile means Crockett isn’t the most rural county in Texas, but it’s up there. Taxes and regulations are minimal. The nearest city, San Angelo (the locals just say “Angelo”), is 90 minutes away. The nearest metro area, San Antonio, is three hours.

In her chic, clear-frame bifocals and flowy duster, Flores makes aging gracefully in place in one of the most rural places in the United States look easy. It’s not. In many rural communities, seniors may find it hard or impossible to get the resources they need to remain in their homes and hometowns. Older Americans are already at risk of isolation, and living in a remote area can make that worse. Not to mention, resources are thin, local hospitals and other services are folding, and groceries may be pricey, far away, or both. According to the Rural Health Information Hub’s summary of U.S. Department of Agriculture data, 10.2 percent of seniors in rural areas don’t have sufficient access to healthy and nutritious food, compared with 8.5 percent in metro areas. 

But in Ozona, older adults like Flores are thriving. The Crockett County government has created a strong network of senior services, and ensures that they are supported — with the help of a wonky tax arrangement and some powerful new neighbors: wind companies. 

AAbout 15 miles north of the senior center on State Highway 163, the wind turbines start cropping up, fleets of towering structures owned and operated by a company called NextEra Energy. In Texas, wind generates 29 percent of the power distributed by the state’s notoriously independent power grid — second only to natural gas. According to the state comptroller, Texas wind generation surpassed nuclear power in 2014 and overtook coal-fired generation in 2020. As of 2023, the state led the nation with 239 wind-related projects and more than 15,300 wind turbines. 

In Crockett County, the turbines generate more than just electricity. Money from NextEra supports the meals that Flores and her friends enjoy at the center and helps make events like the Valentine’s Day Dance possible. 

It all comes down to clever utilization of a section of the Texas tax code. As a way of attracting large projects like wind farms, the state offers companies a temporary property tax break — up to 10 years — in exchange for local investment. This Texas Abatement Act (also known as Section 312) means less tax revenue in the short term, but more dollars immediately flowing to community projects and programs like the senior center in Crockett.

While some economists say the abatements are unnecessary to recruit the companies — there aren’t many places they can go where taxes would be lower — the opportunity to reduce start-up costs for wind turbines or data centers or other developments gives the county a bargaining tool.

Many counties and cities use funding generated from these deals to improve roads and other infrastructure that might be strained by the new development, or to fund other public projects that don’t have a place in the regular budget. In Medina County, for instance, officials negotiated with incoming data centers to improve roads where locals were concerned about increased traffic. 

In Crockett County, like many places in West Texas, roads, jobs, and public projects have long been tied to oil and natural gas revenue, with its attendant booms and busts. According to Crockett County Judge Frank Tambunga, oil and gas have kept public coffers full in Ozona, even with the ups and downs of the industry — and the steadier (though usually lower) revenues from wind farms will likely add consistency to an already healthy budget. 

Ozona’s services for seniors are usually funded by a mix of federal and local funds, as well as charitable donations. As NextEra expanded its wind farms and more turbines cropped up, Tambunga saw the opportunity to offer those aging support services a boost.

Tambunga is a native of Ozona. Now in his early 60s, he’s well acquainted with the sorts of choices his slightly older peers are making. He hears their concerns about health care, groceries, and social isolation. When he considered what to ask for in the tax abatement negotiations with NextEra, those concerns were top of mind. But rather than push for a new public department or project, Tambunga looked to those already doing the work in the community. 

“As we negotiate, we ask that, during the term of the abatement, that they make charitable contributions to nonprofit organizations to help the local groups,” said Tambunga. “It allows us to provide support for these organizations that help people within the community.”

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Eligio Martinez remembers when the wind companies first arrived in Crockett County in the 2010s. He was a county commissioner back then (at times in Ozona, it feels like everyone has taken their turn in county office), and remembers talking to other counties to figure out the best terms for the tax abatement deal. Locally, he said, the wind turbines were an easy sell. “We welcomed them,” Martinez said. No one got caught up in the politics of green energy — something that Texas’ oil-funded politicians regularly debate — or even the aesthetic effect of adding turbines to the wide open vistas. They saw the chance to increase their tax base and gain funding for local services, Martinez said. “If it’s beneficial to the community, we’re going to stick together.”

For their part, the residents at the senior center didn’t understand exactly how the turbines worked — when the massive structures first arrived, they said, locals wondered if they could run electricity directly from the turbine and were skeptical when they learned that the electricity would be sent to Texas’ power grid to be used elsewhere. Energy-funded towns like theirs are used to asking: “How long will the royalties last?” They’re asking the same about the wind farms. They’ve lived long enough to watch booms and busts in nearly every industry — ranching, oil and gas, banking — but donations from the tax abatement deals and the increased tax revenue for the school district are welcome while they last. 

There’s a pragmatism, Martinez said, that comes from being so remote. “We’re very vulnerable here,” he said. When his mom got cancer in 2013, he saw just how vulnerable. He was lucky enough to have a job that allowed him the flexibility to take her to her chemotherapy appointments in San Angelo, but if he hadn’t, he wondered how she would have made the trek over and over, being as sick as she was.

Even for more able-bodied seniors, transportation is a hurdle in Ozona. The Concho Valley Transit buses make daily runs to San Angelo, and many use them for errands, but some don’t want to be out all day until the scheduled return trip. Some may have to check in for dialysis and cancer treatments at hours when the buses don’t run. And for those with more complex medical conditions or advanced cancer, San Angelo doesn’t have what they need. They’d have to go to San Antonio, Dallas, or even Houston — all between three and seven hours away. Whoever provides that transportation — usually a family member — is taking on substantial costs. 

Martinez started looking for ways to raise funds to help others in his community pay for these travel expenses. He was a radio DJ, so his first idea was a music festival. He organized a day-long festival, and posted some student volunteers by the door to collect entry fees. Almost no one came to hear the music, he said, but when he checked with the students at the door, they had raised $5,000. People had simply dropped off donations. Even if they didn’t want to spend the day listening to music, they wanted to help. Everyone knew this was a huge issue for rural Texans, and that most likely, at some point, they too would need to make long drives to access various forms of medical treatment. 

Martinez hosted a few more music festivals, but eventually realized that he didn’t need to put on an event — locals were ready to donate. He created a nonprofit, In Care of Ozona (or “Coz 4 Oz”), that provides gas cards and hotel funds for folks who need to travel for medical care. 

This year, Martinez became a beneficiary of the very programs he helped negotiate back on the commissioners court: He received two donations from NextEra, totaling $3,000 — Coz 4 Oz’s entire budget for the moment. 

It’s not just medical emergencies that create transportation woes in Ozona. Ordinary errands can be just as burdensome. As in many small towns, the local grocery store prices are high. Prices are better in San Angelo, so seniors will often carpool for the 90-minute drive, or if someone is planning to make a trip, they’ll take a list of what their neighbors need. Much of the impromptu organizing runs through the senior center, said Director Emily Marsh. “It’s like a huge family.”

Back at the Crockett County Senior Center, while Flores and her friends were working on their puzzles, 69-year-old Arletta Gandy loaded trays of hot meals into her small SUV. The former grocery store manager’s dangly, candy heart-inspired earrings bobbled as she heaved a box full of lunch sacks onto the back seat. She and two other volunteer drivers show up to the senior center every weekday to drive the three “Helping Hands” routes, delivering meals to 42 seniors around Ozona. It’s a good way to get out of the house in her retirement, said Gandy, who doesn’t consider herself “from Ozona” because, as she said, “I’ve only been here over 20 years.” 

After eight years delivering meals in the community, she knows the routes by heart. She knows which recipients have dietary restrictions and which dogs will run out of the house if she opens the door too wide. At some houses she chats briefly. Others have their own rituals. One man does little more than reach out from behind his screen door, but every day, as Gandy walks back down the plywood ramp overpassing the porch stairs, he says, “See you later, alligator.” 

“After a while, crocodile,” Gandy responds. 

“Nacho nacho,” the man calls back. 

“Nacho nacho,” Gandy replies. 

The Helping Hands program has been operating in Ozona for as long as Director Stacy Mendez can remember. She’s been involved since childhood. “I remember helping my grandmother and aunt deliver meals,” Mendez said. The program began in a local Catholic church, and when the Crockett County Senior Center opened with its commercial kitchen over 20 years ago, Helping Hands moved in.

In Texas alone, an estimated 100,000 seniors rely on meals funded through Meals on Wheels programs like this one. Across the board, federal funding for these programs has dwindled as pandemic-era appropriations expired and the Trump administration began canceling grants and slashing federal budgets. A government shutdown in the fall further disrupted an already unstable funding stream. Last September, a $20,000 donation from NextEra came just in time, Mendez said. It kept their lean operation afloat, replacing the lost federal dollars and allowing Helping Hands to continue operating through the shutdown, while other programs around the state had to cut back services. 

Other Texas counties could also use the renewables boom to meet local needs. The number of Texans 65 and older is expected to more than double from 3.9 million in 2020 to 8.3 million by 2050, making it the state’s fastest growing population, according to AARP. That’s a concern for hunger advocates like Jeremy Everett, director of the Baylor Collaborative on Hunger and Poverty, because seniors are already one of the most food-insecure groups, after young children. But while kids can get food through their schools, such hubs don’t usually exist for seniors, especially in rural areas. In 2026, Meals on Wheels reported that nearly 14 million seniors worried about having enough food.

“Without the ability to safely and reliably access affordable food, senior adults may no longer be able to live in the rural communities they have called home,” Everett said. In Crockett County, money from the wind farms is helping to address that issue. The county is also working with the Baylor Collaborative on Hunger and Poverty to identify ongoing gaps. Especially in times of economic uncertainty, a coalition-based approach to senior hunger is vital, said Everett. No one sector can meet every need, so partnerships between local governments, industry, and nonprofits are key. “That’s how strong food systems are built from the ground up,” Everett said.

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There’s another group of Crockett County seniors who benefit from the wind farms: ranchers. Steve Wilkins’ family has owned and operated the 6,000-acre Flying W Ranch for four generations, and he and his wife Belinda now breed Brahman beef cattle and lease part of their land to hunters. Belinda also sits on the board of the senior center. 

As of Valentine’s Day, Wilkins reckoned he was probably a month or so away from signing a deal to lease part of his family ranch to a wind company. Most of the ranches around them have already done so. “I’ve kind of been dragging my feet on it,” Wilkins said. He’s not sure how he feels about wind energy, but these days ranchers have to be pragmatic. Many also lease to oil and gas companies — one of the more lucrative ways to keep a ranch intact. But in “mature regions” like Crockett County, many oil wells have already been producing for decades, putting them near the end of their productivity. Natural gas can have a similar lifespan, but big profits tend to drop sharply after the first six months to two years. 

Wind, of course, is not a finite resource. Theoretically, the region could keep producing wind and reaping the benefits indefinitely, or as long as demand for electricity continues apace. Still, there’s skepticism about how long it will last, Belinda said. If the wind boom comes and goes, they’ll just have to keep adapting, as they always have. 

In any case, the wind farms are a longer-term investment. Wind money doesn’t start flowing to the ranchers immediately, Wilkins said. The companies told him that it could be seven or eight years before they start seeing royalties. At 70, Wilkins said, that’s of little use to him. But ranchers are also used to seeing land management in generational terms. “Maybe my kids can keep the ranch,” he said.

In the hours leading up to the Valentine’s Day dance, Jerry and Willa Perry checked in for their weekly appointment at Flores’ in-home salon. Jerry removed a red MAGA-style cap that said “Make Texas A Country Again” and placed his hearing aids inside while Flores trimmed his white hair. Willa, his wife of 70 years, looked on smiling. “I can’t wait to get you home,” she joked, raising her eyebrows playfully. Jerry smirked — although he could not hear her, he got her meaning just fine.   

Flores charges on a sliding scale from about $12 to $40 to make sure all her clients can afford to stay coiffed. She makes enough to stay in the house, which she rents. But at her age, she said, she knows that she’s just one medical emergency away from needing full-time care, which she’ll likely find at the county’s local public nursing home.   

After finishing with her last clients, Flores changed into a billowy red pantsuit, pearls, and bedazzled sneakers. The dance didn’t start until 6 p.m., but she and several other regulars were there by 5 to get a good table. Emily Marsh and Belinda Wilkins enlisted their help setting out food on the long buffet. By the time the DJ fired up the first cumbia number, about 60 seniors were seated around the dance floor with plates of chips, cookies, and veggies with dip.

Things started slowly, but began to pick up when a country two-step song came on. Judge Tambunga and his wife got up to dance, and other couples immediately followed. At the next cumbia, Flores rustled up a group of single ladies to take the floor. A couple songs later, she led a conga line. 

This story was supported by a grant from the Solutions Journalism Network.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline In rural West Texas, renewable energy brings a windfall for seniors on Mar 12, 2026.

Under the warm light of a hanging lamp, Marty Landorf carefully crumbled the dried flower head of a black-eyed Susan between her fingers, teasing apart the chaff to uncover its puny black seeds. Each one was destined for long-term cold storage alongside roughly 46 million other seeds at the Chicago Botanic Garden.

Every seed in the garden’s vault is different. Some seeds have hooks. Others verge on microscopic. A few carry a sharp, deterring scent. And some, like the airborne seeds of the milkweed, the host plant for monarch caterpillars, are fastened to silky fluff that drifts everywhere, hitching rides on volunteers’ clothes and following them home. 

“Fluff is fun,” Landorf said laughing, seated alongside five other volunteers cleaning, counting, and sorting seeds at a long metallic table in the garden’s seed bank preparation lab.

For all their variation, these seeds share a common trait: They’re native to the Midwest. These species genetically adapted over thousands of years and sustain the region’s ecosystems. That evolutionary inheritance makes them indispensable for restoring the nation’s remaining prairies, wetlands, and woodlands.  

The problem: Native seeds are in short supply. And climate change is intensifying demand. 

“Climate change is affecting our weather and the frequency of natural disasters,” said Kayri Havens, chief scientist at the Chicago Botanic Garden. “Wildfires becoming more common, hurricanes becoming more common — that increases the need for seed.”

In 2024, the Chicago Botanic Garden, a 385-acre public garden and home to one of the nation’s leading plant conservation programs, launched the Midwest Native Seed Network, a first step in improving the region’s fragile seed supply. The coalition now includes roughly 300 restoration ecologists, land managers, and seed growers across 150 institutions in 11 states. Together, they are researching which species are most in demand, where they are likely to thrive, and what it will take to produce them at scale and get them in the ground.

The collaborative is compiling information on seed collection, processing, germination, and propagation while identifying regional research gaps and planning collaborative projects to close them. For example, the network is currently collecting research on submerged aquatic plants such as pondweeds, and other species that are challenging to germinate, like the bastard toadflax, a partially parasitic perennial herb.

“We’re addressing these local, regional, and national shortages of native seed that are really just hindering our ability to restore really diverse habitats, build green infrastructure, and support urban gardens,” said Andrea Kramer, director of restoration at the Chicago Botanic Garden.

Last year, the network undertook its first major project: a large-scale survey of more than 50 partners across the region. The results were stark. They revealed that more than 500 native species in the Midwest are effectively unavailable for restoration. In some cases, it’s because no one grows them. In others, the seeds are available, but the cost — even at a couple of dollars per packet — becomes prohibitive when restoration projects require thousands of pounds. And for certain finicky species, the bottleneck is technical: Researchers and growers still don’t fully understand how to germinate them reliably or help them thrive in restoration settings.

Kramer said that, ultimately, the goal is to connect the people who need seeds with those who know how to grow them. While the network does not sell seeds, it works with organizations and partners that do. “We are using the network to help elevate what we all know and share what we know to make it easier,” she said.

The shortage itself is not new. In 2001, following sweeping wildfires in the West, Congress tasked federal agencies, including the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service — which, combined, manage approximately one-fifth of the nation’s public lands — to craft an interagency, public-private partnership to increase the availability of native seeds. But according to a 2023 report, which identified the lack of native seeds as a major obstacle for ecological restoration projects across the United States, those efforts remain unfinished. 

Wildfires have scorched more than 170 million acres in the U.S. between 2000 and 2025, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. In 2020 alone, the Bureau of Land Management purchased roughly 1.5 million pounds of seed to rehabilitate burned landscapes. In a bad fire year, the agency can buy as much as 10 million pounds. 

The 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law dedicated $1.4 billion for ecosystem restoration over five years, including $200 million for the National Seed Strategy, a coalition of 12 federal agencies and various private partners established in 2015 to provide genetically diverse native seeds for restoration. The following year, the Inflation Reduction Act invested nearly $18 million to develop an interagency seed bank for native seeds. And in 2024, the Interior Department announced an initial round of $1 million for a national seed bank for native plants. 

“The U.S. does have a major seed bank run by the [Department of Agriculture], and it mostly banks crops,” said Havens, the scientist at the Chicago Botanic Garden. “But we don’t have that kind of infrastructure in place for native seed.”

Momentum for establishing a native seed bank stalled following funding cuts by the Trump administration. In early 2025, the Department of Government Efficiency cut 10 percent of the staff at the National Plant Germplasm System, which is home to one of the largest and most diverse plant collections in the world. 

“If something isn’t supported on a national level, then it becomes incumbent on states and regions to do that kind of work,” Havens said. “So that’s why we’re focusing right now in the Midwest.”

The network is the first of its kind in the Midwest, though similar initiatives have been active elsewhere in the country for years. Today, there are more than 25 similar networks operating across the U.S. In the western United States, these coalitions have come together in response to post-wildfire restoration projects. 

“One of the reasons why we were among the first is because of this federal land ownership that we have in the West, whereas in the Midwest, it’s more private land,” said Elizabeth Lager, a professor at the University of Nevada in Reno and co-founder of the Nevada Native Seed Partnership. More than 90 percent of all federal land is located in 11 Western states. 

Kramer said she hopes to run the seed availability survey again in 20 years and get a different response. 

“I want them to say, ‘We have access to all the seed we need,’” said Kramer. “And we can move on to the next challenging question, like, ‘Why isn’t the seed establishing in my restoration? Or, how do we manage the next challenge coming with climate change?’”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline A regional network is racing to save the Midwest’s native seeds on Mar 2, 2026.

For those coaxing thirsty crops like alfalfa from the parched fields and withered pasturelands in Eloy, Arizona, water is as good as gold — and just as scarce. “We’ve had nothing from the Colorado River for the last two or three years. I mean, we’ve had to cut back the volumes to the growers and have had to reduce acres and stuff to make it work,” said Ron McEachern, former general manager of the Central Arizona Irrigation and Drainage District, which serves the Eloy area.

The agricultural hub draws from the Colorado River basin through a vast canal network, but drought, overexploitation, and aging irrigation equipment are draining what little remains. “We got gates that are leaking and leaking downstream,” McEachern said. “The water spills and it spills, and nobody’s getting any use out of it.”

Nearly two years ago, the irrigation district was invited to apply to a new non-competitive grant program that the U.S. Department of Agriculture under the Biden administration was launching to help farmers in areas grappling with devastating droughts. McEachern collaborated with the federal agency to identify what his team would do with the grant: replace and upgrade the 35-year-old deteriorating radial arm gates in their local canal system. The district needed the components to more precisely regulate water levels in the canals, but they are much too expensive for them to buy and install on their own.

Then, in late 2024, they got the break they’d been hoping for. The Central Arizona operation was one of 18 irrigation districts spread across 12 western states initially selected to receive up to $15 million each from the USDA. The agency’s Water-Saving Commodities program also earmarked grants for three tribal communities and two state associations of conservation districts. In total, the USDA planned to spend a $400 million pool of funds on the initiative. 

Gloria Montaño Greene, who served during the Biden administration as Deputy Under Secretary for USDA’s Farm Production and Conservation, told Grist that the idea for the program started back in 2021, as severe drought conditions enveloped agricultural powerhouse states across the country. The $400 million, according to Montaño Greene, was set to be distributed through the Commodity Credit Corporation, a financial institution used to implement specific agricultural programs established by the federal government. By the close of 2024, she said the Biden administration had entered final agreements with selected recipients and notified Congress of how they intended to use the money. 

“When we left the administration, we already had the signed agreements and the commitments that were going to be going through with the process,” said Montaño Greene. Based on those final agreements, the money, which was structured to be either reimbursement-based or in the form of advance payments — or both, depending on the agreement — should have started flowing last year, as part of a five-year payment plan. “Everything was done, vetted, and reviewed,” said Montaño Greene. But because this money wasn’t voted on by Congress, the USDA may have the authority to backtrack on its commitments under an earlier administration.

Another former top USDA official familiar with the program, who requested anonymity, confirmed that the agreements were “100 percent” finalized before the end of 2024 — with the expectation that the incoming administration would need to honor them. “I can speak to the assumptions and guidance that we were working on from legal counsel at that time, which was by entering into these agreements with the districts and other partners, we’re committing those dollars to this purpose,” the former official added. “From our perspective, we were operating under a framework and counsel that we were committing those funds to the USDA partners.” 

Beginning last January, the Trump administration threw that into a tailspin. Federal monies were frozen, grant programs culled, and an unprecedented number of federal staffers were forced out of work. Many operations at USDA have since resumed to some semblance of normalcy. But the $400 million promised to the irrigation districts, associations, and tribes in 2024 remains unaccounted for, and the grant recipients have received no indication of whether the program would start or the money would be paid out. 

In fact, McEachern no longer even knew who at the USDA to ask for help. The last he heard from the agency about the water-saving grant was an email from his former point of contact to let him know they were leaving the USDA. That was over a year ago. 

“I think some of the people that were involved are probably no longer there, and nobody was really kind of pushing to get this off the ground,” said McEachern. “One thing is, they haven’t swept the money. So the money is there. It’s just getting them to release it.” 

Dan Crabtree, superintendent of Palisade Irrigation District, based in Colorado, one of the other 18 irrigation districts, has had much the same experience. “Since the election, we have not heard anything from USDA, other than to say they were evaluating the program and the application,” said Crabtree. Another recipient — Greybull Valley Irrigation District in Wyoming — told Grist in an email that it also knew nothing about the program’s status. 

Randall Winston, general manager of Hidalgo & Cameron Counties Irrigation District 9, in Texas, another of the USDA’s selected recipients, said that while they’ve been waiting, the severe drought in the Rio Grande Valley has only gotten worse. As a result, they have been forced to dramatically reduce how much agricultural land the district is able to irrigate — last year, they supplied water for roughly 8,000 acres, when on a typical year they irrigate 120,000.

“Every drop of water, we’re trying to maximize that and save as much as we can,” said Winston. Prices for the equipment they need to manage the water they do have have also continued to climb, according to Winston, further setting them back. “We are concerned because we need to know the direction to take … We’re not mad at USDA, we just need to find out where we’re at with this,” he said.

Exactly why the administration has kept the funding locked without any communication to grantees for over a year is difficult to discern, according to Food & Water Watch research director Amanda Starbuck. “Is this specifically because it’s intended to help farmers adapt to climate change, and climate change is a bad word in the administration, or it’s simply just trying to cut corners wherever they can?” said Starbuck. 

The USDA did not respond to multiple requests for comment. 

During one former USDA staffer’s last few months working at the Farm Service Agency, they claim they were forced to partake in information “gatekeeping” as it related to the water-saving program. According to the staffer, who left their role in 2025 and asked to remain anonymous, “I was getting a lot of questions about, like, ‘Can we start or not?’ and I didn’t know the answer. I couldn’t get an answer. I really wasn’t allowed to communicate with them directly. Like, I couldn’t tell them ‘Your grant is frozen. Don’t spend any money because the money may never come to you.’ It was just ‘Tell them it’s under administrative review’ … And then I couldn’t get a clear answer out of my leadership, or my direct manager, or my manager’s manager, about where the program was in the review process.” 

As for the suspicion that the program may have been targeted in the way that other Biden-era programs geared toward mitigating climate change have been, the former staffer isn’t convinced. “To me, it does seem pretty neutral from a climate perspective, because a lot of the states that have water problems are not necessarily blue states,” they said. “So I don’t think it was something that someone, like a high level official, would come in and say, ‘That’s the program I want to gut.’”

Although they can’t be certain, the former staffer believes the explanation is actually quite simple: There are no employees left to distribute the money. 

Within the first five months of the Trump administration, the Farm Service Agency lost around 24 percent of its federal workforce. “It’s very possible it’s frozen because no one who works there that interacted with the program, like all of the people who know anything about the program, have now left the agency,” they said. The former staffer also said they have “a sinking suspicion” that the internal organizational disarray at USDA may have led the agency to forget about the program, which they described as having “a pretty small footprint” when compared to other initiatives that were dismantled in the last year. “I just don’t understand why we couldn’t be more transparent. … I don’t believe that that is the role that public servants, broadly speaking, both politically appointed and career, should play.” 

As the planet continues to heat up, rainfall is becoming increasingly erratic — ushering in longer dry spells punctuated by intense, sudden downpours that can overwhelm the land’s ability to absorb too much water. The resulting whiplash between periods of drought and flood can disrupt farming operations for multiple seasons. Extreme weather fueled by warming already costs the nation’s agricultural industry billions in lost crops and rangeland every year. 

Agriculture is not only a victim of this vicious cycle, but one of its drivers. In the U.S., the sector is responsible for at least 80 percent of all water consumed. Crop irrigation, which is often done inefficiently, makes up the single largest share of freshwater withdrawals nationwide. Take alfalfa. The crop used an estimated 2.15 trillion gallons of water across the seven states in the Colorado River basin in 2024 — most of it grown to feed cattle and dairy herds. 

“At USDA, we need to do more to also shift production systems to really be lined up with the climate reality,” said Starbuck, who argues that the burden of adaptation shouldn’t fall on individual farmers, or the irrigation districts that support them, but rather to federal regulators.

Yet even as demand for water grows, the policies intended to protect remaining supplies are being systematically dismantled. Over the last year, the administration has aggressively rolled back climate and environmental safeguards — revoking the government’s authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, proposing the removal of federal protections from the vast majority of the nation’s wetlands, and holding up billions in conservation efforts. 

Together, says Starbuck, these actions are putting at risk the very water supplies that American agriculture depends on. 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Did the USDA just forget about $400M in drought aid for farmers? on Feb 23, 2026.

Picture the bucolic little town of a fairy tale. At its core stand medieval buildings, a square where folks hawk their goods, and perhaps a well to provide water. Beyond the defensive wall radiate agricultural fields, where people toil to bring grains, fruits, and vegetables to market. 

Invert that for modern times and you’ve got the idea behind “agrihoods,” communities designed around a central farm. Like a garden in a big city, agrihoods promise to boost food security, reduce temperatures, capture rainwater, and increase biodiversity. As climate change intensifies heat, flooding, and pressure on food systems, agrihoods could be a way to make urban living more resilient — not just more picturesque.

“Developers have a hard time offering open space, because they would like to build more housing,” said Vincent Mudd, a partner at the architectural firm Steinberg Hart, which designs agrihoods. “One of the few ways to kind of bridge that gap is to be able to use active open space that actually generates commerce.” 

On paper, an agrihood is a simple concept: A working farm surrounded by single- or multi-family housing. Steinberg Hart recently finished two of them in California, one in Santa Clara and another, called Fox Point Farms, in Encinitas. The former, south of San Francisco, features townhouses, market-rate units and affordable housing, plus a community center and retail shops. The latter, north of San Diego, adds a farm-to-table restaurant, an event venue, and a grocery store, but its housing is primarily for sale instead of rent. “Two different housing programs for two different communities, but built around the sustainability of urban farming,” Mudd said.

While these projects are in relatively affluent areas, Mudd said agrihoods can be built nearly anywhere — though it might require tweaks to zoning rules. “Almost every city has the ability to make that zoning change,” Mudd said, “because it retains commerce, preserves jobs, generates sales tax income from retail, and provides mixed-income, attainable housing.”

(Last year, residents of the agrihood development in Santa Clara alleged that management failures have left them living in unsafe and unhealthy conditions, with delayed repairs, poor air quality, and other issues. The building’s manager, the John Stewart Co., and owner, Core Affordable, did not respond to a request for comment.)

Where it gets more complicated is the logistics of the farm. Water is the big one: Ideally a farm captures enough rainwater to keep crops hydrated. Because Northern California enjoys a Mediterranean climate of rainy winters and warm, dry summers, the Santa Clara agrihood gathers precipitation and stores it in a tower. “It auto-refills with city water once it gets to a certain point, but we can get two-thirds, or sometimes all the way through the summer without having to do that,” said Lara Hermanson, co-founder of Farmscape, which helped design, install, and maintain the community’s farm.

A rainwater capture system, though, comes with an upfront cost that a community garden in a lower-income neighborhood might not be able to afford. If one year the rains stop and drought takes hold, it will have to pay for more water. “Perhaps people with the biggest need for food or nutrition security are also sort of disproportionately facing greater water expenses,” said Lucy Diekmann, an urban agriculture and food systems advisor at University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources.

Even so, one of the many charms of any urban farm or garden is that greenery, and even bare dirt, breaks up the concrete landscape. Historically, cities have been designed to whisk water through gutters and sewers as quickly as possible, before it can pool and cause flooding. This strategy struggles to keep up as climate change supercharges rainstorms, making them dump more water. Green spaces let all that liquid soak into the ground, mitigating flooding even without deliberate catchment systems.

Still, an agrihood’s farm isn’t going to run itself. From the very beginning of planning, Hermanson said, a community must decide what it’s going to grow. The general idea is to get as much yield as possible because space is constrained compared to an industrial farm. So pumpkins probably aren’t a great idea, because those plants take up so much room. Instead, in Santa Clara, Hermanson grows Persian cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, and hot peppers because they’re small. 

While an agrihood can’t feasibly provide all the calories residents need, it’s an especially powerful system because the produce that it does produce is highly nutritious. Scale that food production up across a city, and the impact could be huge: One study found that Los Angeles could meet a third of its need for vegetables by converting vacant lots into gardens. “It’s incredible what we could do with what we have, and what we could do even more with intentional planning,” said Catherine Brinkley, a social scientist who studies urban agriculture at the University of California, Davis.

In Encinitas, Greg Reese, the farm manager at Fox Point Farms, is sending food to the agrihood’s grocery store, so in addition to size he also considers the value of his crops. A lot of that comes down to speed: Arugula grows faster than cantaloupe, meaning Reese can harvest it, send it to market, and grow some more in quick succession. (Given the pleasant climate of Southern California, the farm can grow for 11, maybe even 12 months of the year.) It can also produce foods that the chefs at the on-site restaurant want. “What is in high demand, and then what grows really fast as well?” Reese said. “I can plant a seed and they can harvest it in a month, or transplant it within two months, so it’s a higher turnover.”

These crops can even benefit from a quirk of city life: the urban heat island effect. As the sun beats down on all that concrete, asphalt, and brick, the landscape absorbs its thermal energy — raising the mercury well above surrounding rural areas — and slowly releases it at night. This is a growing problem for urbanites struggling with ever-higher temperatures. On the flip side, these green spaces help cool the neighborhood because their plants release water vapor, making summer more comfortable for the surrounding community.

An agrihood can also support local biodiversity. Planting native flowering species, for instance, simultaneously beautifies the landscape and attracts pollinating insects, hummingbirds, and bats (which eat mosquitoes, an added bonus). Even the flowers the crops produce provide food for these pollinators, which return the favor by helping the plants reproduce. 

With the crop varieties decided, an agrihood can figure out how much refrigeration and storage capacity to build out. They’ll also have to decide whether to sell produce from a stand, or use it in an on-site restaurant. And they’ll need to project the costs of hiring outside help to keep the farm going. 

It’s not so simple, then, as just erecting a few buildings around a green space and calling it a day. “All those things need to be figured out before you start putting things on paper and making commitments,” Hermanson said. “Successful farms are well-funded, well-staffed. Everyone does better with clear expectations, clear budgets, and then also the community knows what it is they’re getting.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline What happens when a neighborhood is built around a farm on Feb 6, 2026.

Declining numbers of international students coming to study in the U.S. hurts local economies, according to new data released this week. 

International students’ economic contributions declined by $1.1 billion this fall, costing the U.S. nearly 23,000 jobs, NAFSA and JB International found. Those figures are based on a 17% decline in international student enrollment. 

Much of that decline was among graduate and non-degree students, according to the data. A slight increase in undergraduate enrollment this fall bolstered the overall numbers. There are still more than 1 million international students in the U.S.

It’s been a tense time for international students at colleges in the U.S. In the spring, President Donald Trump’s visa revocation and sudden reversal left many reeling, as our Jessica Priest reported in Texas. Trump has also limited visa interviews, told some universities to cap their international student enrollment, imposed travel restrictions on visitors from 19 countries, and made H1-B visas — which allow educated foreign citizens to work in “specialty occupations” — more expensive.

The U.S. must adopt policies to attract and retain international students and realize that job opportunities for them after graduation “are essential to our standing as the top destination for global talent,” said Fanta Aw, NAFSA executive director and CEO. 

“Otherwise, international students will increasingly choose to go elsewhere—to the detriment of our economy, excellence in research and innovation, and global competitiveness and engagement,” Aw said in a release earlier this week. 

Our reporters have been detailing the declines in international students on the campuses they cover — including DePaul University in Illinois and IU Indianapolis. 

[Read more: Case Western Reserve, University of Cincinnati downplay international college student data online] 

A separate report on international students released this week by the Institute of International Education found that their numbers were decreasing even before Trump took office: International student enrollment dropped by 7% in the 2024 school year, according to the report. 

These declines matter — not just for college’s bottom lines, but for the broader economy. International students contributed $42.9 billion to the U.S. economy and supported more than 355,000 jobs last year, according to NAFSA. 

The pre-Trump slump “suggests colleges face other headwinds, such as a slowing global economy, growing competition from nontraditional education hubs, and lingering unease because of the China Initiative,” in addition to current political turmoil, Karin Fischer, the Chronicle of Higher Education’s international education reporter, wrote in her newsletter this week.

India remains the country that sends the most students to the U.S. Marcello Fantoni, Kent State’s vice president of global education, travelled there last spring to talk with prospective students, our Amy Morona reported at Signal Ohio. He told them Kent State is still welcoming — one of the few things he can control amid the broader federal policy changes. 

Still, he said Trump’s actions influenced how the students he spoke with viewed America.

“There is damage done there, and it will take a long time to be fixed,” he told Amy. “A long time.”  

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From Fort Worth: McKinnon Rice at our partner Fort Worth Report visited students who received paid, two-year auto technician internships through a partnership between Autobahn Fort Worth and Tarrant County College. 

It’s a growing field in the area and offers opportunities to make good money without much college: “A technician hired after an internship starts out earning $24 to $30 per hour, based on their performance, and the wage grows as skills do — highly skilled technicians can make as much as $250,000 to $300,000 per year,” McKinnon wrote.

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Sowing Resilience: Rural communities across the country are grappling with food insecurity. Schoolchildren, seniors, grocers and even farmers face a food crisis compounded by government cuts and soaring costs. These 10 stories reveal how communities are navigating — and reimagining — the systems that have left them hungry.

 

News by Scott France

The bounty that the seas and network of small farms produce masks an omnipresent reality in Jefferson County — food insecurity. 

Nearly 4,960 county residents lack consistent access to nutritious food each day—just under 15 percent —a rate similar to the state average, according to an Associated Press analysis of U.S. Census Bureau and Feeding America data. 

However, people and organizations across the county are working to meet the needs of the food insecure by building upon and refining approaches as government assistance dwindles.

Farmers markets, food banks, small farms, a cafe providing food for recovering alcoholics and a program geared to feeding non-white People of the Global Majority (PGM) are pitching in to help fill the need and the bellies of county residents.

The Jefferson County Farmers Markets in Chimacum and Port Townsend participate in multiple federal food security programs: the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Market Match (which doubles the value of SNAP purchases at farmers markets); Senior Farmers Market Nutrition Program (SFMNP); and the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program. SNAP, SFMNP and WIC are funded through the U.S. Farm Bill. 

The farmers markets also partner with the Washington State University (WSU) Jefferson County Extension and Clallam County Extension offices. Sallie Constant, Farm to Food Bank Coordinator for WSU Extension says that she is “not only connecting people in food access, but also educating, as well as working on systems, environments and policy stuff that can make it easier for folks and food banks to more consistently access that produce.”

“We are reaching people who really need fresh food, and don’t otherwise have access to it,” Constant said “We’ve been a supporting partner helping source fresh produce from local farms to help fill the pre-packed box option for people who don’t have access to a farmers market, especially in the farther flung communities like Brinnon and Forks.We’ve gotten a lot of interest from the Brinnon and Forks food banks where they don’t have much supply of fresh produce,” Constant said. 

This year, the SFMNP is serving 1,070 seniors in Clallam and Jefferson Counties, a 62% increase over 2023. 

Many older rural residents live alone, with poor mobility, fixed incomes and limited access to grocery stores. SFMNP enables seniors to pick up a $50 benefit card at a farmers market in either Port Townsend or Chimacum, as well as an additional $30 towards farmers market produce courtesy of community donations and small grants. This $80 may be used to buy a fresh local produce share at the food bank nearest their home from July through September. The share includes six weeks of fresh, seasonal, local and Washington state produce, three weeks of fruit and three weeks of veggies. 

An alternative for Jefferson County seniors is to sign up for a program that allows them to pick up the equivalent value of a fresh produce share at a local food bank. The Jefferson County Food Bank Association (JCFBA) operates food banks in Port Townsend, Chimacum, Quilcene and Brinnon, as well as a pop-up site in the Coyle.

“I want to foster ways in which community members are empowered to buy from local farms, and bring home local food, regardless of their income,” said Amanda Milholland, executive director of the Jefferson County Farmers Markets.

As a result of recent federal legislation dubbed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, SNAP recipients will see decreases in their benefits of between $25 and $146 per month beginning in September, according to Milholland. She noted that state and federal funding of the SNAP Market Match program will drop by 60% in 2026, and support for the program’s administration will end, leaving a gap of tens of thousands of dollars per year for staff time and printing vouchers, cards and tokens.

According to the Food Research and Action Center, a Washington, D.C. organization that fights hunger, “SNAP is not only a poverty alleviation tool — it also acts as a powerful economic multiplier. Every $1 in SNAP benefits generates up to $1.80 in economic activity. In rural America, where small businesses operate on thinner margins, that support is often the difference between staying open and closing down.” 

Nourishment Through Food and Connection

More than 20 seniors gathered outside the Port Townsend Food Bank well before the 11:30 a.m. opening time on a recent Saturday, the designated day for seniors. “The food bank is about food security, as well as socialization and survival,” said Ellen O’Shea, a regular food bank recipient. “We share resources with each other.”

“There’s such knowledge and understanding here that older people have lots of health issues,” O’Shea added. “So they can choose from fresh fruits and vegetables and protein. My husband and I find it hard to afford protein. It’s hard to be at this stage of our lives where we need good food, and if we can’t get it, we’re not going to survive.”

The food bank fills several rooms with tables and racks of food at the Mountain View Commons building, where clients can walk through and select what they want. The food bank dedicates one room for clients with special needs, such as those who are homeless and don’t have cooking equipment, or need some other assistance. A volunteer accompanies the individuals through the room to ensure that they are getting the food that suits their situation, as well as any other necessary items such as propane, utensils or personal hygiene products.

Toby Sheffel volunteers at the food bank and receives its food. “I have MS, which is debilitating, making it a big deal to go to the grocery store, and this is so convenient,” Sheffel said. “A lot of us get therapeutic benefits working here. It has helped my MS through the exercise, positivity and love everyone has.”

Jefferson County Food Bank Growers network provides huge support to the food bank association. The most recent data available indicates that the network supplied over 13,700 pounds of produce through the first nine months of 2024, according to Patricia Hennessy, executive director of JCFBA. Additionally, JCFBA receives fresh food from gardens tended by individuals, schools and local farms, including grocery stores, restaurants, bakeries, small farms and organizations including the PT Gleaners. The Gleaners are teams of volunteers who pick fruit from backyard sources to give to schools, food, banks, nonprofits and senior centers. Additionally, Hennessy estimates that 25% of food bank customers are proxy shoppers who collect food for homebound family, friends and community members. 

To reach the many seniors who are either homebound, unaware of the benefits for which they qualify or have been reluctant to take advantage of them, JCFM has developed a Food Access Ambassador Program. Seniors are trained and paid a small stipend to reach out to their peers and help them access the application or explain how the program works. 

“It helps reduce some of the stigma of food access programs if your friend tells you about it,” Milholland said. “Some food ambassadors have gone to low-income housing and signed up everybody in the building for the program.

“There are people who are living in remote areas or don’t have access to transportation that are able to get this fresh produce they couldn’t have before,” added Milholland. Although Clallam County has a mobile food service that goes to several senior low-income housing centers and community centers where food can be picked up, Jefferson County does not have the resources to provide that service, she said.

Emotional Element of Food Insecurity

For some people, food insecurity can prompt an emotional response. “There is a lot of stigma in asking for food,” said Joey O’Bryan, an advocate with the Recovery Cafe in Port Townsend. The cafe’s mission is to foster a beautiful, safe, warm, drug- and alcohol-free space for everyone, O’Bryan added. It serves approximately 65 meals a day, Tuesday through Friday, to people in recovery.

Brian Richardson, program manager at Recovery Cafe, said that the meals are an equalizer and an engagement tool to build community. “We’re getting a surge of seniors, and more women with mental health challenges,” Richardson said. He is appealing to community members for donations. 

Oceana Sawyer started Nourishing Beloved Community in 2024 to build food literacy through growing food and hosting Sunday potlucks for People of the Global Majority (PGM), non-white people of African, Asian, Indigenous, Latin American and mixed-heritage backgrounds. The organization purchases food from PGM growers and producers.

Sawyer says that food acquisition and the shopping experience are frequently not safe or comfortable for many of these people. “Our number one hurdle is getting people to take food,” she said. “There’s shame about receiving food.” 

Sawyer informed The Beacon that it recently lost its primary source of funding, a Washington State Department of Agriculture Food Resiliency grant. She is appealing to community members to think of NBC when considering organizations worthy of their donations. 

Cuts are happening across the US for a variety of reasons. The U.S. Department of Agriculture will stop collecting and releasing statistics on food insecurity after October 2025, saying the numbers had become “overly politicized.”

The decision comes in the wake of federal funding cuts for food and nutrition safety net programs nationwide.

A Relentless Need for Funding

Sixty percent of the food that the Port Townsend Food Bank receives is what Hennessy calls “food rescue,” which comes from supermarkets, restaurants, bakeries, etc. “My call to the community is, ‘Cash is king,” Hennessy said. “$250 feeds a family of four for a week.”

Milholland is concerned that the country is relying heavily on nonprofits to run vital programs. “How do we make sure that people have access to food? If we as individuals have enough, what can we do to make sure that our neighbors also have enough, and it’s not just on the shoulders of those who work at nonprofits to figure out how to get there?”

Associated Press data reporter Kasturi Pananjady contributed to this report. This reporting is part of a series called Sowing Resilience, a collaboration between the Institute for Nonprofit News’ Rural News Network and The Associated Press. Ten nonprofit newsrooms were involved: The Beacon, California Health Report, Capital B, Enlace Latino NC, Investigate Midwest, The Jefferson County Beacon, KOSU, Louisville Public Media, The Maine Monitor and MinnPost. The Rural News Network is funded by Google News Initiative and Knight Foundation, among others.

Every spring, investors flock to Omaha, Nebraska, for Berkshire Hathaway’s annual shareholder meeting, where Warren Buffett holds court. Insiders call it Woodstock for Capitalists, and CNBC covers it with the fervor of Fox Sports on Super Bowl Sunday. 

Last year’s meeting held particular weight. Investors were watching closely to see if Buffett, the company’s 93-year-old CEO, would name Greg Abel, Berkshire’s vice chairman, as his successor, and how the company would weather the billions in wildfire lawsuits threatening its energy utilities. Buffett dodged the succession question, but the meeting revealed something just as consequential: the company’s strategy to avoid wildfire liability. 

Two months earlier, the Utah legislature had passed a law allowing utilities to charge their own customers to build a fund for future fire damages. The state also has a 2020 law on the books that capped the amount fire victims could sue utilities for damages. Combined, the two laws mean that if homes in Utah burn down due to a power company’s faulty electrical line, the financial damages residents can seek are limited — and they may already have been paying into the fund that covers them. For utilities, the result is reduced costs.

At the shareholder meeting, Abel singled out Utah as “the gold standard” of utility protection — a model he urged other states to adopt. “As we go forward,” he told the crowd, “we need both legislative and regulatory reform.”

Berkshire Hathaway Energy, or BHE, Buffett’s $100 billion energy arm, operates a vast power grid that stretches across the West. BHE subsidiaries such as Rocky Mountain Power and PacifiCorp are responsible for maintaining more than 17,000 miles of transmission lines that serve roughly 10 million customers across 10 states. In recent years, BHE has been slapped with lawsuits in Oregon worth nearly $10 billion for fires caused by its faulty equipment. For BHE, the Utah laws were a significant win, shielding the company from that kind of liability in at least one state. Across the West, BHE-owned utilities and their lobbyists are now trying to replicate that success, securing laws that both cap wildfire damages and shift costs onto customers. 

“It’s infuriating to me that they are creating these situations,” said Stephanie Chase, a research and communications manager at the Energy & Policy Institute and a former consumer advocate in the Washington State Attorney General’s Office. “They’re not doing a good job at maintaining their power lines. Then when they start fires, they don’t want to pay for them.”

BHE’s infrastructure is aging, and maintaining it is expensive. Climate-proofing measures, like running power lines underground, can easily cost more than $1 million per mile, according to the Institute for Energy Research, and would put the cost of sending all BHE-owned equipment into the ground at well over $17 billion. Other resilience measures, such as trimming branches that grow over power lines and inspecting equipment in rural areas, are also expensive. 

“Vegetation management is not one of the things that they receive a return on investment,” said Chase. State regulatory agencies typically set utility prices using a formula known as the rate base, which excludes routine maintenance like vegetation. By contrast, utilities earn a return when investing in new infrastructure, Chase added. “Utility companies have a much bigger incentive because they’re receiving a return on equity on any funds that they put into capital expenditures: building a new plant, building construction, building new lines,” she said. BHE did not respond to multiple requests for comment. 

Earlier this summer, the Wyoming legislature passed a law that limits damages that can be awarded to victims of a utility-caused fire, so long as the company followed its own wildfire plan. In July, Idaho also enacted a similar law, shielding utilities from negligence if they prove they adhered to their wildfire plan. According to state regulatory filings, at least one representative for Rocky Mountain Power and other utilities operating in the state lobbied lawmakers in March and April to get the law passed.

One state senator who voted against Idaho’s law, Bruce Skaug, told Grist that it leaves little regard for residents who may have legitimate grievances. “We don’t want to bankrupt utilities,” Skaug said. “At the same time, if they burn down your house, you shouldn’t have any trouble getting the claim through a jury trial.” Yet, the law could do just that, he said. Skaug hopes to tweak the law to better protect residents during the next legislative session, which begins in January.

PacifiCorp is also running the same playbook in Washington. The company has petitioned state regulators to start tracking the cost of insurance increases and wildfire liability, which Chase calls a “stepping stone to getting those costs included in customer rates.” From there, utilities could begin to press regulators or legislators for permission to pass those costs on to customers.

In Utah, Rocky Mountain Power’s lobbyists benefited from a friendly legislature. Carl Albrecht, a co-sponsor of the two bills, spent decades working for utilities — including 23 years as CEO of a small electric cooperative — and takes several thousand dollars in political contributions from the energy utility industry and Berkshire Hathaway each year, according to campaign finance disclosures. Perhaps most crucially, Utah hasn’t had any major wildfires in recent memory. 

That’s not the case in Oregon. In September 2020, fires enveloped hundreds of thousands of acres across the state, burning down 4,000 homes — including a state senator’s — and killing 11 people. In the aftermath, PacifiCorp became the state’s arch-villain — and a chance at the perks it won in other states vanished.

Soon the public learned that at least some of the half-dozen fires burning across Oregon that Labor Day stemmed from downed power lines owned by PacifiCorp. A subsequent investigation by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, an agency that oversees energy markets and transmission,  found that the distance between vegetation and power lines did not meet safety standards and that some of these violations were so severe that “at least 45 percent of PacifiCorp’s BES lines” should not have had any power running through them at all. 

Public outcry turned into class action lawsuits against PacifiCorp, which turned into a costly lesson for BHE. Since 2020, juries have awarded more than $300 million to several dozen plaintiffs. Yet the fate of thousands of other claimants remains unresolved as the lawsuits drag out in court. In the end, the company may be on the hook for around $8 billion more in potential damages. 

But the lawsuits may not bring much relief to the victims. 

“Warren Buffett is not just going to dump billions in to settle,” said Bob Jenks, executive director of Oregon Citizens’ Utility Board, a consumer advocacy group. More likely than meeting the claimants’ demands, Jenks predicted that “the company will go into bankruptcy.” 

Despite its pariah status in Oregon, PacifiCorp has been trying to secure the same protections that it has in Utah. Earlier this year, when state representatives introduced utility-friendly bills in the Oregon legislature, they were dead on arrival. “I didn’t expect the degree of anger at PacifiCorp that’s out there,” Jenks said. “I understand. Your house burns down, and PacifiCorp is playing hardball and doing everything they can to prevent liability.” 

The notion of offering some financial support to utilities in the form of ratepayer funds isn’t inherently problematic, experts acknowledge. For example, utilities in California rely on wildfire funds to pay for damages caused by their fires. As in Utah and other states, ratepayers contribute to the pot. But unlike other states, a government entity called the California Earthquake Authority — and not the utilities — oversees the distribution of that fund when it’s needed. After a tree felled a PG&E power line in 2021 and sent the Dixie Fire burning across Northern California, the fund has provided $445 million in support to the utility.  As a result of the program, utilities like PG&E can avoid bankruptcy, but aren’t allowed to pass on the costs directly to their own customers.

So far, catastrophic fires haven’t hit states where PacifiCorp has won liability caps since they’ve taken effect. But with the track record of BHE subsidiaries and rising temperatures drying out Western forests, experts believe that it’s only a matter of time. 

“The risk is there,” Jenks said. “Climate change has made our forests so much drier than they used to be, and we don’t have the same June rain. Our forests weren’t designed for this.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Who pays for wildfire damage? In the West, utilities are shifting the risk to customers on Sep 19, 2025.