Columbia Straw Supply works with local balers to buy up all that leftover wheat straw, which Columbia Pulp turns into pulp for paper products, giving farmers a new stream of revenue — and pushing the paper industry into a more sustainable direction.

Shifting away from large-scale farming would build resilience in the face of climate change and other crises. The authors of new research want to show how to make it happen.

The May 7th, 2021 Sustainable, Secure Food Blog explores how wind erosion affects farming in Washington and some solutions farmers can use. According to blogger Andrew McGuire, “Wind erosion is a soil health thief. In both sandy and fine-grained silt soils of Eastern Washington, wind erosion lifts, sifts, and then carries away the best part of the soil. Lost are the tiny particles of clay and silt with the organic matter that is stuck to them.” Local soil conditions make matters worse. Low rainfall produces sparse vegetation, therefore low soil organic matter levels.

Joint Base Lewis-McChord is adding to its list of on-base services with a weekly farmers market. The JBLM Marketplace launched April 20 and will continue every other Tuesday through Sept. 14. Leaders are hoping the marketplace will become a year-round event. “Obviously it will be subject to vendors availability and the popularity of the event,” said Josh Soldan, business and recreation division chief for JBLM’s Office of Morale, Welfare and Recreation.

The Biden administration has released a report outlining its vision to conserve and restore land, water and wildlife with recommendations for locally led, voluntary efforts to conserve 30% of U.S. lands and waters by 2030. The 24-page report outlining the administration’s “America the Beautiful” initiative recognizes the contributions of farmers, ranchers, forest owners, private landowners and fishers and commits to supporting those efforts.

At their San Francisco headquarters, Plenty is working on perfecting vertical farming of kale, arugula, bok choy, beet leaves, fennel, and mizuna. According to chief executive and co-founder Matt Barnard, Plenty’s technology uses a fraction of the land and one to five percent of the water compared to traditional agriculture. Additionally, all of Plenty’s facilities are powered by 100 percent renewable energy.

Once officially launched, AIM for Climate will catalyze greater investment in agricultural R&D and innovation to help to raise global ambition and underpin more rapid and transformative climate action in all countries, including by enabling science-based and data-driven decision and policy-making.

USDA will permanently end its Farmers to Families Food Box Program at the end of May. The program, which bought meat, dairy and produce from farmers and directed it to hungry families, was created by the Trump administration during the pandemic. Over the past year, USDA has spent more than $4 billion on the program and delivered more than 156 million boxes through mid-April.

The USDA has announced their multi-billion-dollar Pandemic Assistance for Producers, which aims to fill in gaps from CFAP. The new effort puts at least $6 billion into new programs to reach a broader set of producers than earlier efforts, including small and minority, specialty crop and organic producers.

“Soil Health is, simply put, the ability to produce marketable outputs with minimal inputs. It’s very important for people to understand that multi-dimensional property is dynamic, it changes over time and it’s dependent on environmental conditions like temperature, moisture and even the microorganisms and worms and all other life that’s present there.”

But people across the world are tired of it and 25 states in the U.S. are considering right-to-repair legislation in 2021.

SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) — Agricultural workers in Washington state would become eligible for overtime pay under a bill moving through the Legislature in Olympia.

Combined, the nutrition and agricultural provisions are estimated at $22.7 billion. Today’s article reviews the agricultural provisions of the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021.

WASHINGTON, Mar. 10, 2021 – Today, the U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R. 1319, the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021...Specifically, provisions within the jurisdiction of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) will reduce hunger across the country, strengthen the food supply chain, invest in rural America, and provide long awaited support to underserved, socially disadvantaged farmers.

$5 billion would go to farmers of color, who have lost 90 percent of their land over the past century because of systemic discrimination and a cycle of debt

If you’re a mother or father struggling to get by, who didn’t always know when or where the next meal would come from, you will rest easier tonight knowing help is on the way. The bill not only boosts SNAP benefits through September, it also increases targeted nutrition assistance to mothers and young children and expedites more nutrition aid to U.S. territories. Farmers, business owners, and workers across the food supply chain will see additional assistance to respond to market disruption, as well.

The [IDAHO] Senate Agricultural Affairs Committee voted 5-3 to send to the full Senate the bill requiring state officials to consider economic ramifications when imposing pollution regulations on farms and ranches producing manure to protect nearby communities and the environment from pollution.

A bill to make it easier for Washington ranchers to get their meat directly to consumers unanimously passed the state Senate this week. The bill would create a state-run meat and poultry inspection program with requirements equal to those of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

A good snowpack means more water for farmers who need irrigation this summer, as well as municipal water supplies. It can also help mitigate wildfire season.

Producers could see three new revenue streams from climate mitigation, he said. They were income from carbon markets, from conversion of agricultural waste into products ranging from chemicals to fabrics, and capture of methane from manure for use as a renewable fuel.

OLYMPIA — A bill to give counties and cities rather than an unelected state board the power to approve or reject solar panel arrays on farmland has failed.

Extolled as a defense against erosion and nutrient loss during fallow seasons, cover crops are being planted on a larger portion of U.S. cropland than before, said USDA economists.

U.S. agriculture faces a triple imperative — market, environment, and income — in responding to climate change, said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack on Thursday, his first day on the job. “We don’t have a day to waste on this,” he told reporters while indicating that the USDA will move at deliberate speed to identify and support successful mitigation practices.

Saldana's assertion that denying farmworkers overtime pay was grounded in racism comes as lawmakers consider whether to intervene and shield agricultural employers from backpay lawsuits, suits that farm groups warn pose existential threats to some producers.

Dan Newhouse says Tom Vilsack returning to head the USDA is a good thing for the farming community. The Chair of the Western Congressional Caucus, and a central Washington farmer himself, Newhouse said Vilsack can hit the ground running. Adding the Secretary understands many of the issues before Northwest producers.

The new era of climate mitigation on the farm would look like a beefed-up version of longstanding USDA conservation programs, augmented by a carbon bank that sets a floor price for carbon sequestration and reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, said leaders of the Food and Agriculture Climate Alliance (FACA) on Wednesday. “That’s what we’ve modeled it after,” said Chuck Connor, a founding member of the alliance and a former deputy agriculture secretary.

Prior to joining USDA, Harden was CEO of the National Association of Conservation Districts, providing national leadership for thousands of conservation districts across the nation.