Wild weather impacts what food is on the shelf in your store and how much it costs, but it’s not the weather in your area that’s most important, nor is weather the only factor at play.

Soil carbon, especially carbon in agricultural soils, isn’t going to save us.

It isn’t even a big enough climate wedge to get the agri-food sector to reach within-sector climate targets set by The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) IPCC, let alone serve as mitigation for other sector’s emissions.

Yet, soil carbon keeps sucking up all the metaphorical oxygen in the corporate climate space. Why is this? And if not soil carbon, what are some other climate wedges that deserve more airtime from corporate agrifood actors?

There is no shortage of global scale research, knowledge, and data about climate change, but when it comes to implementing changes, organizations often struggle with knowing exactly where and how to deploy resources for adaptation.

What sparked this question? The Biden Administration released the Economic Report of the President in the first quarter of 2023, which highlights the current state of the environment, identifies environmental challenges, and outlines actions that can be taken to address these challenges. The administration recognizes that climate change is a significant threat to public health, the environment, and the economy, and emphasizes the need for immediate action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The agri-food sector depends on, but can’t find enough labor due to its own low wages, record low unemployment, and a broken immigration system. Industry leaders are clamoring for solutions. Some such solutions, like outsourcing to labor contractors, are backfiring as regulators find children working – and dying – on farms and in food plants across America.

Our rich history of policies and shifting political power dynamics have shaped agriculture and our American landscape for centuries. Today, we have approximately 900 million acres of agricultural land in the United States – roughly 3 acres for every person in the country, about the same amount of farmland we had in 1933 when Congress passed the first Farm Bill. That policy is also still the dominant driver of who farms this land and how.

Part 2 of our series on homesteading takes a dive into the scientific literature. We explore a paper in the September issue of Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment on Fences and their biophysical and social impacts. This science helps further unpack some of the problematic aspects associated with the colonial homestead origins of American agriculture, as well as points to opportunities to build greater resilience.

Round One of the Grow Well team debates the role of homesteads in the future of the food system.

The Inflation Reduction Act includes a big infusion of much needed funds for climate action, but what does it mean for the food & ag sector? Will public funds lead the way, or has the groundwork laid by voluntary corporate action made in the absence of prior public leadership already gotten us on the right path? We dive into where the money’s going, what it will do for climate impacts, and what we think remains to be done to catalyze change in the sector.

The latest IPCC guidance and assessments justify focusing more on fossil fuel removal and nitrogen fertilizer and less on soil carbon for more effective and achievable climate action in agriculture.

Climate action planning, food and ag business insights, and traceability projects highlighted our 2021 portfolio.

A recap of connections between this quarter’s core topics - climate action in ag and IUU action in fisheries - and why I’m excited about how an enhanced traceability framework could enable progress on these large-scale, global challenges.