Native American food sovereignty means ‘rebuilding our … food systems, one taste bud at a time’
When Covid-19 hit, intensifying hunger rates and limiting food access across the country, tribal communities drew on ancestral knowledge to mount a resilient response, said A-dae Romero-Briones, who directs Native agriculture and food systems programs at the First Nations Development Institute. “These long-buried behaviors would come up, and it was like honoring our ancestors,” she said. “To me, it was a renaissance.”
Scholar describes how high-end restaurants are riven with race and class divisions
When Eli Revelle Yano Wilson applied for a job as a server at a white-tablecloth restaurant in Los Angeles, management had plenty of questions for him. “Name three brands of IPA,” he remembers them asking. “How would you explain béarnaise sauce to a customer?” At a webinar hosted Wednesday by the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor & Employment, Wilson, now a sociology professor, confessed to the audience, “I still don’t really understand what béarnaise sauce is.”
Today’s Quick Hits
Perdue to pay: Perdue Farms agreed to pay $1.9 million and upgrade the wastewater treatment system at a chicken processing plant in Washington State to settle a lawsuit over pollution. (Food Processing)
Iowa’s solar arrays: A bill moving in the state Senate would outlaw “commercially owned solar panel farms” on high-quality farmland. (KWWL)
More cover crops: Three major farm groups hope to double the acreage of cover crops planted in the U.S. through an initiative targeting midwestern corn and soybean farmers that relies on cost-share and educational programs. (Agri-Pulse)
Unequal supermarkets: “There’s a lot of racism … behind these decisions, whether it’s unconscious or implicit,” said Andrea Richardson, a policy researcher at the Rand Corp., about the products supermarkets in different communities choose to feature on their shelves. (Kaiser Health News)
Sustainable water, lower yields: Researchers found that the production of corn, soybeans, and winter wheat could be dramatically reduced if a sustainable water supply was used to grow them. (Modern Farmer)