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How ‘Fairy Tale’ Farms Are Ruining Hudson Valley Agriculture (Published 2022)

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Farmers are losing properties to wealthy buyers from the city, while leasing land from the new owners can feel like a “modern-day feudal system.”

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pgs 7-9 and 14-17

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Tons of resources are located in this spreadsheet curated by Melissa for even more learning!

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Week four

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Many exotic pets suffer or die in transit, and beyond-and the U.S. government is failing to act

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Often mailed dozens to a box, animals in the pet trade are subjected to inhumane conditions, experts say.

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Week four

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Last spring, farms across the country saw a surge in demand for their CSA programs, with signups and waitlists that flourished at rates not seen before. As families sheltered in place at home and farmers' markets either closed or ran under tight restrictions, more people turned directly to local farms to guarantee food for the months ahead. Some farmers even introduced home delivery options to bring the boxes directly to consumers' doors.

Yet, even with all the attention surrounding Community Supported Agriculture programs, coupled with the national reckoning following the murder of George Floyd last year, little space has been given to telling the full story of the CSA model. How deeply rooted the CSA is in Black history is rarely discussed-let alone properly attributed-by those who offer one.

Two New England farms, Indian Line Farm in Massachusetts and Temple-Wilton Community Farm in New Hampshire, have widely been credited with starting the CSA movement in America, said to have been inspired by European agricultural traditions. The farms-one white-owned and one member-owned-implemented their first farm share programs in 1986.

But the story of the CSA model actually begins decades earlier, in the 1960s and '70s, with a man named Booker T. Whatley. A Black horticulturist and agricultural professor at Tuskegee University in Alabama (where he followed in the footsteps of George Washington Carver), Whatley was an advocate for regenerative agriculture, among other environmentalist practices. At the height of the civil rights movement, Whatley began counseling the Black farmers who were deeply engaged in that struggle.

"The ideas that [Martin Luther] King [Jr.] and others stood for, first and foremost, came from the importance of land and farming for Black communities in the South," says Clyde Ford, a corporate trainer on racial justice and author of Think Black , as well as the forthcoming Freedom Dues, the story of how Black labor built America.

The popular narrative about the civil rights movement is largely focused on presidential elections, but Ford explains that there were equally as-if not more-important elected positions for Black landowners to vote for, ones that directly impacted their businesses and livelihood. The local farm service committees that determined how federal programs and loans were distributed consisted of elected members, meaning Black landowners could finally have the opportunity to vote for them. "That was critically important to how they received loans, received economic support and essentially received information that would help them as farmers," says Ford.

Black farmers were routinely denied loans and grants by the federal government, costing them land, money and agency. As a way to help them keep their land while also supporting their local Black communities, Whatley advocated for pick-your-own farms and what he called clientele membership clubs, which entailed customers paying up front for a season of food as a way of guaranteeing business.

"The clientele membership club is the lifeblood of the whole setup. It enables the farmer to plan production, anticipate demand, and, of course, have a guaranteed market," Whatley told Mother Earth News during an interview in 1982. "However, that means the grower had better work just as diligently at establishing and maintaining the club as at producing the crops. Put it this way: If you fail to promote your club, something terrible happens-nothing!"

Whatley eventually published these and other ideas in his 1987 handbook How to Make $100,000 Farming 25 Acres , a guide still embraced by small farmers today. The principles it contained were targeted as solutions for farmers with limited resources, such as the African American farmers suffering neglect at the hands of the USDA, according to Ford.

"The whole CSA movement grows out of this recognition that there's not going to be support from above from the government, that you have to find the support within the community," says Ford, who delved into the origins of the CSA movement while researching for his contribution to We Are Each Other's Harvest , a new book from Natalie Baszile that celebrates the stories of Black farmers in America. "[The concept of] 'buy local' wasn't just to support your community; 'buy local' was survival for Black folks. It was the only way, in many instances, that they were able to survive."

For several decades, CSAs have remained a bit of a niche market, and the "eat and buy local" movement has struggled to expand into the larger mainstream. The pandemic has helped change that, showcasing the model's importance to the future of our food system. Black farmers are part of that future, too.

"The CSA has basically been co-opted by co-ops and buying co-operatives who somehow mistakenly traced the roots of CSAs back to Europe, which has nothing to do with it in this country, and conveniently forget the role that Booker T. Whatley served," says Ford, whose own family has deep agricultural roots.

In Seattle, the Black Farmers Collective is working to reestablish that connection. The project began in 2016, with an idea to transform a wild blackberry field perched above the interstate into an urban teaching farm. Now called Yes Farm, the two-acre farm is located near Yesler Terrace, a public housing development in Seattle's Central District. "We're in the city, trying to offer this opportunity and turn this blighted land into this beautiful thing," says managing director Ray Williams.

The Black Farmers Collective also has two other farm locations, and it offers a CSA program. The goal is to not only grow produce but to grow the next generation of young farmers. "I would like to see young farmers that got their start here and then went on to grow elsewhere," says Williams.

Out of the 3.4 million farmers in the US today, only 45,000 are Black, with white farmers accounting for 98 percent of the acres being farmed. Meanwhile, Black farmers such as Travis Cleaver, owner of Cleav's Family Market in central Kentucky, are fighting to reclaim their agricultural heritage while also supporting their local communities, following a path for which Whatley helped pave the way.

Cleaver runs his livestock and vegetable farm, through which he offers a weekly CSA-although you won't hear him calling it that. "The term CSA has a bad stigma now, because so many people have been burnt by giving up this money and not getting back what they wanted," says Cleaver, who believes the pay-ahead CSA model fails to be inclusive and accessible to many. "I was raised by a single mother, so I know it's hard to come up with $600 when the rent's due."

Instead, Cleav's Family Market offers something it calls a vegetable box. Priced at around $40 for a family of four, the boxes are offered weekly for an 18-to-20-week period. "We base ours after what Booker T. Whatley did," but with a slight twist, he says. Subscribers confirm their box weekly, on Wednesday, which is distributed at various locations on Saturday. This format enables families to buy the fresh produce when they can afford to, with no penalties if they skip a week or two, allowing customers grace during times like back-to-school, when money is tight in many households in his community.

Farming has been passed down from generation to generation in the Cleaver family. His father grew tobacco, but Cleaver's own passion is raising livestock, something he didn't come around to until he was older. "Some people like to hunt, some people like to go to sporting events. Farming is my safe haven; farming is my happy place," he says.

He still keeps his full-time job as a railroad conductor as he works to grow his farm from the ground up. The farm pays for itself, but it doesn't make enough for Cleaver to do it full time at the moment. His goal is to pass the legacy on to his two daughters, who are 11 and 17 years old, and work their own farm stand. While only a small part of the farm's initiatives, Cleaver says the vegetable boxes have allowed him to steadily grow his practices and customer base without needing to rely on outside investment or loans. "What the CSA model does is that it makes you able to learn your craft as you go," he says.

Perhaps fittingly, the concept could yet again help lift up Black farmers during a time of racial reckoning, just as Whatley designed.

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You Can Thank Black Horticulturist Booker T. Whatley for Your CSA

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Long written out of the narrative, the Tuskegee University professor first introduced the concept in the 1960s as a solution for struggling Black farmers

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Week three

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Credit... Photographs by Peter Fisher for The New York Times

Credit... Photographs by Peter Fisher for The New York Times

After being captives of the pandemic for more than a year, we have begun experiencing the pleasures of simple outings: dining al fresco, shopping with a friend, taking a stroll through the zoo. As we snap a selfie by the sea lions for the first time in so long, it seems worth asking, after our collective ordeal, whether our pleasure in seeing wild animals up close is worth the price of their captivity.

Throughout history, men have accumulated large and fierce animals to advertise their might and prestige. Power-mad men from Henry III to Saddam Hussein's son Uday to the drug kingpin Pablo Escobar to Charlemagne all tried to underscore their strength by keeping terrifying beasts captive. William Randolph Hearst created his own private zoo with lions, tigers, leopards and more at Hearst Castle. It is these boastful collections of animals, these autocratic menageries, from which the modern zoo, with its didactic plaques and $15 hot dogs, springs.

The forerunners of the modern zoo, open to the public and grounded in science, took shape in the 19th century. Public zoos sprang up across Europe, many modeled on the London Zoo in Regent's Park. Ostensibly places for genteel amusement and edification, zoos expanded beyond big and fearsome animals to include reptile houses, aviaries and insectariums. Living collections were often presented in taxonomic order, with various species of the same family grouped together, for comparative study.

The first zoos housed animals behind metal bars in spartan cages. But relatively early in their evolution, a German exotic animal importer named Carl Hagenbeck changed the way wild animals were exhibited. In his Animal Park, which opened in 1907 in Hamburg, he designed cages that didn't look like cages, using moats and artfully arranged rock walls to invisibly pen animals. By designing these enclosures so that many animals could be seen at once, without any bars or walls in the visitors' lines of sight, he created an immersive panorama, in which the fact of captivity was supplanted by the illusion of being in nature.

Mr. Hagenbeck's model was widely influential. Increasingly, animals were presented with the distasteful fact of their imprisonment visually elided. Zoos shifted just slightly from overt demonstrations of mastery over beasts to a narrative of benevolent protection of individual animals. From there, it was an easy leap to protecting animal species.

The "educational day out" model of zoos endured until the late 20th century, when zoos began actively rebranding themselves as serious contributors to conservation. Zoo animals, this new narrative went, function as backup populations for wild animals under threat, as well as "ambassadors" for their species, teaching humans and motivating them to care about wildlife. This conservation focus " must be a key component " for institutions that want to be accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, a nonprofit organization that sets standards and policies for facilities in the United States and 12 other countries.

This is the image of the zoo I grew up with: the unambiguously good civic institution that lovingly cared for animals both on its grounds and, somehow, vaguely, in their wild habitats. A few zoos are famous for their conservation work. Four of the zoos and the aquarium in New York City, for instance, are managed by the Wildlife Conservation Society, which is involved in conservation efforts around the world. But this is not the norm.

While researching my book on the ethics of human interactions with wild species, "Wild Souls," I examined how, exactly, zoos contribute to the conservation of wild animals.

A.Z.A. facilities report spending approximately $231 million annually on conservation projects. For comparison, in 2018, they spent $4.9 billion on operations and construction. I find one statistic particularly telling about their priorities: A 2018 analysis of the scientific papers produced by association members between 1993 and 2013 showed that just about 7 percent of them annually were classified as being about "biodiversity conservation."

Zoos accredited by the A.Z.A. or the European Association of Zoos and Aquaria have studbooks and genetic pedigrees and carefully breed their animals as if they might be called upon at any moment to release them, like Noah throwing open the doors to the ark, into a waiting wild habitat. But that day of release never quite seems to come.

There are a few exceptions. The Arabian oryx, an antelope native to the Arabian Peninsula, went extinct in the wild in the 1970s and then was reintroduced into the wild from zoo populations. The California condor breeding program, which almost certainly saved the species from extinction, includes five zoos as active partners. Black-footed ferrets and red wolves in the United States and golden lion tamarins in Brazil - all endangered, as well - have been bred at zoos for reintroduction into the wild. An estimated 20 red wolves are all that remain in the wild.

The A.Z.A. says that its members host "more than 50 reintroduction programs for species listed as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act." Nevertheless, a vast majority of zoo animals (there are 800,000 animals of 6,000 species in the A.Z.A.'s zoos alone) will spend their whole lives in captivity, either dying of old age after a lifetime of display or by being culled as "surplus."

The practice of killing "surplus" animals is kept quiet by zoos, but it happens, especially in Europe. In 2014, the director of the E.A.Z.A. at the time estimated that between 3,000 and 5,000 animals are euthanized in European zoos each year. (The culling of mammals specifically in E.A.Z.A. zoos is "usually not more than 200 animals per year," the organization said.)Early in the pandemic, the Neumünster Zoo in northern Germany coolly announced an emergency plan to cope with lost revenue by feeding some animals to other animals, compressing the food chain at the zoo like an accordion, until in the worst-case scenario, only Vitus, a polar bear, would be left standing. The A.Z.A.'s policies allow for the euthanasia of animals, but the president of the association, Dan Ashe, told me, "it's very rarely employed" by his member institutions.

Mr. Ashe, a former director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, suggested that learning how to breed animals contributes to conservation in the long term, even if very few animals are being released now. A day may come, he said, when we need to breed elephants or tigers or polar bears in captivity to save them from extinction. "If you don't have people that know how to care for them, know how to breed them successfully, know how to keep them in environments where their social and psychological needs can be met, then you won't be able to do that," he said.

The other argument zoos commonly make is that they educate the public about animals and develop in people a conservation ethic. Having seen a majestic leopard in the zoo, the visitor becomes more willing to pay for its conservation or vote for policies that will preserve it in the wild. What Mr. Ashe wants visitors to experience when they look at the animals is a "sense of empathy for the individual animal, as well as the wild populations of that animal."

I do not doubt that some people had their passion for a particular species, or wildlife in general, sparked by zoo experiences. I've heard and read some of their stories. I once overheard two schoolchildren at the Smithsonian's National Zoo in Washington confess to each other that they had assumed that elephants were mythical animals like unicorns before seeing them in the flesh. I remember well the awe and joy on their faces, 15 years later. I'd like to think these kids, now in their early 20s, are working for a conservation organization somewhere. But there's no unambiguous evidence that zoos are making visitors care more about conservation or take any action to support it. After all, more than 700 million people visit zoos and aquariums worldwide every year, and biodiversity is still in decline.

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In a 2011 study, researchers quizzed visitors at the Cleveland, Bronx, Prospect Park and Central Park zoos about their level of environmental concern and what they thought about the animals. Those who reported "a sense of connection to the animals at the zoo" also correlated positively with general environmental concern. On the other hand, the researchers reported, "there were no significant differences in survey responses before entering an exhibit compared with those obtained as visitors were exiting."

A 2008 study of 206 zoo visitors by some members of the same team showed that while 42 percent said that the "main purpose" of the zoo was "to teach visitors about animals and conservation," 66 percent said that their primary reason for going was "to have an outing with friends or family," and just 12 percent said their intention was "to learn about animals."

The researchers also spied on hundreds of visitors' conversations at the Bronx Zoo, the Brookfield Zoo outside Chicago and the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo. They found that only 27 percent of people bothered to read the signs at exhibits. More than 6,000 comments made by the visitors were recorded, nearly half of which were "purely descriptive statements that asserted a fact about the exhibit or the animal." The researchers wrote, "In all the statements collected, no one volunteered information that would lead us to believe that they had an intention to advocate for protection of the animal or an intention to change their own behavior."

People don't go to zoos to learn about the biodiversity crisis or how they can help. They go to get out of the house, to get their children some fresh air, to see interesting animals. They go for the same reason people went to zoos in the 19th century: to be entertained.

A fine day out with the family might itself be justification enough for the existence of zoos if the zoo animals are all happy to be there. Alas, there's plenty of heartbreaking evidence that many are not.

In many modern zoos, animals are well cared for, healthy and probably, for many species, content. Zookeepers are not mustache-twirling villains. They are kind people, bonded to their charges and immersed in the culture of the zoo, in which they are the good guys.

But many animals clearly show us that they do not enjoy captivity. When confined they rock, pull their hair and engage in other tics. Captive tigers pace back and forth, and in a 2014 study, researchers found that "the time devoted to pacing by a species in captivity is best predicted by the daily distances traveled in nature by the wild specimens." It is almost as if they feel driven to patrol their territory, to hunt, to move, to walk a certain number of steps, as if they have a Fitbit in their brains.

The researchers divided the odd behaviors of captive animals into two categories: "impulsive/compulsive behaviors," including coprophagy (eating feces), regurgitation, self-biting and mutilation, exaggerated aggressiveness and infanticide, and "stereotypies," which are endlessly repeated movements. Elephants bob their heads over and over. Chimps pull out their own hair. Giraffes endlessly flick their tongues. Bears and cats pace. Some studies have shown that as many as 80 percent of zoo carnivores, 64 percent of zoo chimps and 85 percent of zoo elephants have displayed compulsive behaviors or stereotypies.

Elephants are particularly unhappy in zoos, given their great size, social nature and cognitive complexity. Many suffer from arthritis and other joint problems from standing on hard surfaces; elephants kept alone become desperately lonely; and all zoo elephants suffer mentally from being cooped up in tiny yards while their free-ranging cousins walk up to 50 miles a day. Zoo elephants tend to die young. At least 20 zoos in the United States have already ended their elephant exhibits in part because of ethical concerns about keeping the species captive.

Many zoos use Prozac and other psychoactive drugs on at least some of their animals to deal with the mental effects of captivity. The Los Angeles Zoo has used Celexa, an antidepressant, to control aggression in one of its chimps. Gus, a polar bear at the Central Park Zoo, was given Prozac as part of an attempt to stop him from swimming endless figure-eight laps in his tiny pool. The Toledo Zoo has dosed zebras and wildebeest with the antipsychotic haloperidol to keep them calm and has put an orangutan on Prozac. When a female gorilla named Johari kept fighting off the male she was placed with, the zoo dosed her with Prozac until she allowed him to mate with her. A 2000 survey of U.S. and Canadian zoos found that nearly half of respondents were giving their gorillas Haldol, Valium or another psychopharmaceutical drug.

Some zoo animals try to escape. Jason Hribal's 2010 book, "Fear of the Animal Planet," chronicles dozens of attempts. Elephants figure prominently in his book, in part because they are so big that when they escape it generally makes the news.

Mr. Hribal documented many stories of elephants making a run for it - in one case repairing to a nearby woods with a pond for a mud bath. He also found many examples of zoo elephants hurting or killing their keepers and evidence that zoos routinely downplayed or even lied about those incidents.

Elephants aren't the only species that try to flee a zoo life. Tatiana the tiger, kept in the San Francisco Zoo, snapped one day in 2007 after three teenage boys had been taunting her. She somehow got over the 12-foot wall surrounding her 1,000-square-foot enclosure and attacked one of the teenagers, killing him. The others ran, and she pursued them, ignoring all other humans in her path. When she caught up with the boys at the cafe, she mauled them before she was shot to death by the police. Investigators found sticks and pine cones inside the exhibit, most likely thrown by the boys.

Apes are excellent at escaping. Little Joe, a gorilla, escaped from the Franklin Park Zoo in Boston twice in 2003. At the Los Angeles Zoo, a gorilla named Evelyn escaped seven times in 20 years. Apes are known for picking locks and keeping a beady eye on their captors, waiting for the day someone forgets to lock the door. An orangutan at the Omaha Zoo kept wire for lock-picking hidden in his mouth. A gorilla named Togo at the Toledo Zoo used his incredible strength to bend the bars of his cage. When the zoo replaced the bars with thick glass, he started methodically removing the putty holding it in. In the 1980s, a group of orangutans escaped several times at the San Diego Zoo. In one escape, they worked together: One held a mop handle steady while her sister climbed it to freedom. Another time, one of the orangutans, Kumang, learned how to use sticks to ground the current in the electrical wire around her enclosure. She could then climb the wire without being shocked. It is impossible to read these stories without concluding that these animals wanted out.

"I don't see any problem with holding animals for display," Mr. Ashe told me. "People assume that because an animal can move great distances that they would choose to do that." If they have everything they need nearby, he argued, they would be happy with smaller territories. And it is true that the territory size of an animal like a wolf depends greatly on the density of resources and other wolves. But then there's the pacing, the rocking. I pointed out that we can't ask animals whether they are happy with their enclosure size. "That's true," he said. "There is always that element of choice that gets removed from them in a captive environment. That's undeniable." His justification was philosophical. In the end, he said, "we live with our own constraints." He added, "We are all captive in some regards to social and ethical and religious and other constraints on our life and our activities."

What if zoos stopped breeding all their animals, with the possible exception of any endangered species with a real chance of being released back into the wild? What if they sent all the animals that need really large areas or lots of freedom and socialization to refuges? With their apes, elephants, big cats, and other large and smart species gone, they could expand enclosures for the rest of the animals, concentrating on keeping them lavishly happy until their natural deaths. Eventually, the only animals on display would be a few ancient holdovers from the old menageries, animals in active conservation breeding programs and perhaps a few rescues.

Such zoos might even be merged with sanctuaries, places that take wild animals that because of injury or a lifetime of captivity cannot live in the wild. Existing refuges often do allow visitors, but their facilities are really arranged for the animals, not for the people. These refuge-zoos could become places where animals live. Display would be incidental.

Such a transformation might free up some space. What could these zoos do with it, besides enlarging enclosures? As an avid fan of botanical gardens, I humbly suggest that as the captive animals retire and die off without being replaced, these biodiversity-worshiping institutions devote more and more space to the wonderful world of plants. Properly curated and interpreted, a well-run garden can be a site for a rewarding "outing with friends or family," a source of education for the 27 percent of people who read signs and a point of civic pride.

I've spent many memorable days in botanical gardens, completely swept away by the beauty of the design as well as the unending wonder of evolution - and there's no uneasiness or guilt. When there's a surplus, you can just have a plant sale.

Emma Marris is an environmental writer and the author of the forthcoming book "Wild Souls: Freedom and Flourishing in the Non-Human World."

Photographs by Peter Fisher. Mr. Fisher is a photographer based in New York.

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Opinion | Modern Zoos Are Not Worth the Moral Cost (Published 2021)

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Many of them aspire to be good civic institutions that care for animals on their grounds and in the wild. But is it really worth their captivity?

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Week three

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The romance of neoliberal peasant farming blinds us to our collective power

Let's get this out of the way, first:

I am a small farmer, operating on 40-ish acres in Virginia's Northern Neck.

I am not paid by, in hock to, in league with, or particularly happy with Big Agriculture. I'm just a guy who's been in the small-sustainable farming business long enough to understand that the model is fatally flawed, and mature enough to say it out loud.

To my friends who run and staff farmers markets: This essay is hard on farmers markets. It's not because I don't love you, but because I'm describing how restorative agriculture needs to evolve in order to compete without sacrificing its values.

Author, thoroughly enjoying himself at FreshFarm Crystal City. Photo: FreshFarmDC

Now...

I recently found myself with the free time to do some simple math. One of the larger farmers markets I participate in has about 100 vendors. I'm one of the mid-sized operations that sells there, and I'm paying about $1,000 a year in fees to participate in the market. I'm also devoting about 250 hours a year in staffing and prep time (call it $3,000), and about $650 in fuel getting to and from the market, plus another $1,200 in wear and tear on my vehicles.

Altogether, then, I'm paying $5,850 to participate in a large farmers market.

It's pretty safe to assume that the costs of the other 99 vendors are similar. We're shelling out a combined $585,000 to participate in just one market. Most of us participate in at least two markets, so let's double the figure to $1.17 million, then round down to $1 million just to be conservative.

A $1 million-plus annual operating budget could comfortably lease, service, and staff a large urban brick-and-mortar market that's open 12 hours a day, seven days a week, year-round.

Instead, we spend it on a pop-up market that's open just half the year (in my neck of the woods), for two days a week (remember, two markets), four hours at a time. And it's probably outdoors - where rain, excessive heat, or a cold snap will effectively ruin the day.

As much as I like farmers markets, the amount of resources that small farmers pour into them is terribly misdirected if we're serious about mounting a real challenge to the conventional food system.

The cultural power of farmers markets is a symptom of what's fundamentally wrong with sustainable/regenerative agriculture: veneration of the small family farm. It's the sacred cow of American cultural identity dating back at least to Thomas Jefferson's dream of a nation of yeoman farmers.

America's oldest farmers - Indigenous people - generally regarded the soil as a commons and worked it cooperatively. Many Indigenous nations, along with a number of religious and ethnic communities, continue the practice to this day. But the notion of the private farm, be it a pair of greenhouses or tens of thousands of acres, is what came to dominate American farming, and it's taken particular hold among the farm-to-table cohort.

We in that cohort trade the benefits of agrarian collectivism - living wages, retirement, a sane workload, profitability, survivability, and the capacity to make a game-changing impact in the marketplace... for rugged independence: complete autonomy in decision-making, the ability to grow what/where/how we want, set our prices as we please, sell wherever we choose, and work ourselves into the ground.

In short, we've done the most modern-American thing possible: bartered away our quality of life for the freedom to be miserable.

In short, we've done the most modern-American thing possible: bartered away our quality of life for the freedom to be miserable.

Our freedom also costs us results in the marketplace. The zeal for "saving the world" is undercut by annual sales at farmers markets estimated at less than $2 billion in the U.S., with the growth of markets slowing even as hundreds of billions of dollars of food are sold annually in grocery stores. As the link above shows, part of this slowdown may be the result of an explosion in local food hubs, which are themselves riddled with competitive issues of their own, in addition to the general reality that they're not farmer-owned. They're essentially middlemen that force farmers to take prices.

Note: 'Small family farm' does not mean they're farm-to-table outfits like mine. Most small farms are producing for the big commodity markets just like the big guys. Chart via Farm Policy News

Because of our insistence on independence and our failure to cooperate more closely, we're being outsold at the grocery store by a factor of 400 or more. Accounting for on-farm, food hub, restaurant, and other non-market sales do little to affect the scale of this imbalance. Farmers markets and other "local" outlets punch well above their weight in terms of social and cultural value, but this is fooling us into believing we're making more of an impact than we actually are, and that a rapidly consolidating food system backed by venture capital, entrenched interests, and the world's wealthiest corporations will somehow be displaced by the romance of neoliberal peasant farming.

Go to a big farmers market this weekend and have a look around. Each of those independent producers would tell you interesting stories: 80-hour (or more) workweeks, getting by without health insurance, paying employees next to nothing, and/or relying on volunteers, supplementing with outside jobs. Enduring broken marriages, worn-out bodies, social isolation, strained finances, emotional burnout.

These are the conditions my grandfather's generation endured that convinced their children to get as far away from the farm as possible. The current and relatively young generation of back-to-the-landers, diving into an ocean of nostalgia for pearls that aren't there, is setting the stage for a similar generational exit when their children come of age.

My grandfather (in dark clothing on the wagon facing the camera) hauling a record peanut harvest to market, sometime in the 1930s. Photo: Chris Newman

Unless, of course, we choose a different way.

Imagine all the producers at that market combining their acreage, expertise, supply chains, and financial resources into a co-op committed to producing food regeneratively, responsibly, and ethically. The results would be astonishing:

Costs of production would decrease significantly. Orders of seed, feed, equipment, and supplies would no longer just be in bulk, they'd be at a regional scale. Labor hours would be reduced as dozens of farmers are no longer replicating the same tasks (e.g. purchasing, bookkeeping, inventory, etc.)

Marketshare would swell. Owing to lower prices, larger quantities, and more accessible markets, we'd be able to service a much larger segment of the market. Increases in volume would reduce overhead costs, more than offsetting the reduction in each unit's top-line. (e.g. - we net more money selling 100 chickens to a single restaurant at a 30 percent discount than we do to 100 individuals because that bulk order means we're not paying for individual storage, transport, potential spoilage, transaction fees, the cost at the point of sale, etc.)

Wages and quality of life for farmers would rise in real terms. The confluence of reduced production costs, cooperative labor, and increased market share will mean individual farmers are working less and getting paid more. We'd actually be able to enjoy creature comforts of other industries like evenings and weekends off, PTO, group health insurance, even retirement.

The barriers to entry for new farmers would be much lower. New farmers would not have to learn to be entrepreneurs, marketers, agritourism experts, and social media mavens in order to make it work. A farmer could actually make a living as a trade journeyman, just like any other trade, and brand new farmers could be trained by the co-op itself. On a related note...

Sustainable farming could be de-gentrified since it would no longer be a "labor of love" only available to people that can afford to work for free or next to nothing (i.e. afford to be exploited, which is a bad thing even if they don't seem to mind very much). Everyone - people of color in particular - would be able to look at farming as a viable career choice.

Farmers could follow their passions instead of diversifying. The co-op has producers of livestock, produce, fruit, mushrooms, grain, dairy, flowers, etc. Ecological diversity is managed at the co-op/landscape level rather than the level of the individual producer, so the latter can focus on what they do best, still make a living, and still operate within an ecologically restorative framework.

Farmers could operate at the scale they choose. If someone just wants to grow microgreens in their basement and sell them into the co-op's single-payer market, so be it. If they want to range a cattle herd followed by sheep and chickens across a few hundred acres leased or owned by the co-op, go for it. The only constraint is that the producer must follow the co-op's production standards.

The point is, these farmers would no longer be alone. We'd present a united farmer-owned - this is key - interface to the rest of the world - suppliers, customers, landlords, regulators, media, etc. - that, at present, each farmer is left alone to handle. It's that isolation that makes us weak and ineffective against incredibly well-resourced competition.

We have to evolve if we're going to survive.

Of course, subscribing to this model is going to take a big mental leap for some farmers because participating in a co-op does mean surrendering some autonomy - you have to adhere to the group's agreed-upon regenerative growing practices (we kinda do this anyway), you don't get to set your prices (you don't necessarily have to sell anymore, either; you just get paid a salary), and there may be limits around what gets produced.

The big change is that the farmer isn't just accountable to themselves; they're accountable to all the other co-owners. But that accountability goes both ways, and the farmer has both a voice and a vote in an organization that's big enough to compete, but small enough for each voice and vote to matter.

Without that change, each farmer is left alone and isolated, having to handle their own leases, purchasing, packaging, insurance, taxes, regulatory compliance, customer relationships, marketing, research, technology, bookkeeping, and staffing... to say nothing of doing the full-time job of farming itself. It's categorically unsustainable, and extractive agricultural interests are counting on it. In particular...

Farmers being so preoccupied with non-farming tasks that we don't have the headspace to consider alternatives or act strategically. If we're working all the time, and are physically and mentally exhausted, we simply don't have time to think clearly.

Ecologically extractive agriculture drawing the kind of margins that attracts private investment and capital, while restorative agriculture does not; only throwing off enough profit to benefit the self-investment of the producers. Our competition is relying on the inefficiency of our self-investment (e.g. farmers markets), which is driven by...

Farmers internalizing the mythic virtue of rugged independence, which keeps us isolated and denies us the efficiency, effectiveness, and power of acting collectively to countermand the efficiency, effectiveness, and power of private capital.

And now that we know this, it's time to do things differently.

Our farm has access to thousands of acres of land near Washington, D.C., only a fraction of which we're able to actively farm since there's only three or four of us. We've resolved to evolve our business into a farming collective for all the reasons stated above, with a particular focus on providing opportunities of ownership for people traditionally denied such roles in agriculture: people of color, LGBT folks, and women, in particular.

Aerial image of our broiler chickens, cattle, and laying hens in a field in Virginia's Northern Neck. Photo: Chris Newman

The end result will be a group of 75 to 100 producers stewarding land everywhere from the suburbs of the nation's capital to the Virginia Piedmont, each one making a living wage and enjoying a high quality of life while our customers enjoy greater access to our products in terms of price, variety, and availability. We want this to become a template for other smallholding regenerative farmers orbiting other cities to follow, so they too can make a real and measurable impact on the land and on the market.

We've launched a Kickstarter to prime this effort, and hope you'll consider making a pledge.

In the meantime, I hope you'll consider making a trip to your local farmers market. Even in the promised land of farmer-owned brick-and-mortar markets offering door-to-door delivery, farmers markets will still be one of the best ways to connect to the actual people growing your food and gain an understanding of what it takes to responsibly feed a hungry planet.

Chris Newman is a farmer in Virginia's Northern Neck. He's tall and skinny and is growing a great and woolly beard for totally non-political reasons. If you like what you've just read, please consider a click on that there green heart thing. And if you really like what you just read, please consider a pledge to our Kickstarter.

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Let's get this out of the way, first: I am a small farmer, operating on 40-ish acres in Virginia's Northern Neck. I am not paid by, in hock to, in league with, or particularly happy with Big Agriculture.

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Week two part one

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Classroom animals are wonderful resources for teachers to make learning fun in all subjects!

Pets Bring so Many New Ways to Learn

Whether it's Math ("how much does a hamster weigh?") or Science, ("what does a snake eat?") Geography ("what part of the world do ferrets come from?") or Grammar ("what words would we use to describe a goldfish?") students will approach learning all these subjects with a new enthusiasm and interest. Other classes can even come visit your classroom pets and your students can create special presentations about the animals.

Pets Enrich the Classroom Experience

Even kids with no exposure to animals or nature in their home environment can see, feel, touch and make connections to the wide world of animals.

Observing and caring for an animal instills a sense of responsibility and respect for life.

A pet brings increased sensitivity and awareness of the feelings and needs of others-both animals and humans.

Kids learn that all living things need more than just food and water for survival.

Students will see directly how their behavior and actions affect others.

Studies show that the presence of animals tends to lessen tension in the classroom.

A Child's Health, Education and Welfare

Caring for pets in the classroom is one way of improving school attendance and teaching children about responsibility.

Health & Education

It's official. Studies show that children from families with pets are better equipped to fight off infection than kids from non-pet households, showing significantly higher levels of immune system performance. When school attendance records were compared side by side, researchers discovered that kids with pets averaged more days at school every year than their pet-free counterparts.

The study also showed that kids turn to their pets for emotional well-being, with 40% of children choosing pet companionship when feeling down. Kids were also found to seek out their pets when feeling tired, upset, scared or lonely, and 53% of respondents said they enjoy doing homework with pets nearby. "Being around animals is extremely good for children", says Dr. Harvey Markovitch, pediatrician and editor of The Archives of Disease in Childhood. "They're good for morale, and teach children about relationships and about the needs of another living being - learning to care for a pet helps them to learn how to care for people". Studies show caring for pets aids in improving school attendance and teaching children about discoveryhealth.com

Studies show caring for pets aids in improving school attendance and teaching children about responsibility.
Kids and Pets-A winning combination!
Pets and Emotional Growth

Taking care of a pet provides opportunities for learning; builds a child's self-esteem and develops strong human animal bonds.

Pets Encourage Nurturing

Nobody enjoys being treated roughly. Kids soon learn that if they want to be liked and trusted by the family cat, they'll need to treat her carefully and kindly. This sort of training benefits all kids, but is especially important to small boys who don't often get the chance in our society to practice nurturing skills as girls do.

Pets Build Self Esteem

Helping to take care of a pet gives a child a sense of pride and accomplishment, especially if the animal is able to return the affection. Shari Young Kuchenbecker, Ph.D., research psychologist at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, says, "The child who cares for a pet knows that what he does matters, and so he'll want to do more of it. The more successfully he feeds, walks, or emotionally bonds with the pet, the more confident he'll feel." In fact, studies conducted by the Waltham Centre have shown that children with pets have higher levels of self-esteem than those without pets.

Pets Teach Responsibility

Even a small child can begin to learn to care for the needs of another living being. Whether helping to empty a cup of dry kibble into the rabbit's bowl, or filling the hamster's water bottle, it's never too early to start teaching kids proper animal care. Of course, parents or teachers must monitor all pet care that the child carries out. Kids should be expected to fulfill their responsibilities, but when the inevitable slip-ups occur, we shouldn't make too much of a fuss; we should just point out that the pet was counting on him.

Pets Become Friends

Lots of animals such as cats, dogs and guinea pigs love human contact and can become a child's best buddy. Kids can even develop strong human animal bonds with non-responsive animals such as fish or turtles. These relationships help to strengthen a child's social skills, giving them the potential to do better in a school setting. (sesameworkshop.org)

There are many benefits to having classroom pets! Here are the benefits two teachers shared with us through our Pets in the Classroom Success Story Video Contest!

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Classroom Pets Stimulate Learning Classroom animals are wonderful resources for teachers to make learning fun in all subjects! Pets Bring so Many New Ways to Learn Whether it's Math ("how much does a hamster weigh?") or Science,

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Week two part two

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Many teachers consider bringing animals into their classrooms as a way to teach students about responsibility, pet care, animal science, and more. We know that many teachers who keep classroom "pets" do so with good intentions and a love for animals. But a classroom simply isn't a suitable home for an animal, and there are many factors that kind teachers need to consider before bringing one into theirs.

While children can undoubtedly benefit from knowing and learning to care for animals, those lessons must be taught in situations where all variables are controlled-a virtually impossible feat in a bustling classroom full of curious youngsters. There are many ways to teach students responsibility and appreciation for animals that don't involve putting vulnerable lives at risk.

As educators, it's our responsibility to teach students that each and every life is valuable. Here are facts that every teacher considering a classroom "pet" needs to know:

A Classroom Is an Unhappy 'Home' for Animals

When sensitive animals are confined to small cages or tanks in classrooms, their needs are rarely met and their natural instincts can't be accommodated. For example, mice and other small mammals are nocturnal, yet they're kept in brightly lit classrooms and regularly removed from their cages throughout the day, completely disrupting their natural sleep rhythms. Rabbits and rodents are prey animals, so they instinctively try not to show that they're sick or in pain-and they become terrified very easily, are fearful of being picked up by unfamiliar hands, and are even prone to suffering from heart attacks in stressful situations. Imagine how distressing it must be for animals to be handled by large numbers of children who may not know the correct way to hold them. It's virtually impossible for an animal in a classroom to be protected at every single moment when children outnumber adults.

While having classroom "pets" might be tempting and seem like fun, let's face it: You know that your busy classroom (and your many young learners' excited, inexperienced hands) are not the best thing for animals-and it's wrong to discount their needs and well-being.

Classroom 'Pets' Are Often Left Alone and Left Behind

Class "pets" are highly vulnerable to illness and neglect, as they're regularly left unmonitored at night and on the weekends. And when animals are left alone-even overnight-things can quickly take a turn for the worse. There have been countless cases of animals who died of heatstroke in classrooms during warm weekends or perished in the cold when the heat was turned off as everyone else went home. Small animals are at risk of heatstroke in temperatures as low as 82 degrees.

During school breaks, it's a scramble to find students who can take animals home with them-which presents another problem entirely. More often than not, if students do volunteer, their homes aren't screened, and they and their families are unprepared for the comprehensive care that small animals require (which can-and often does-lead to tragic consequences). A teacher in Beaverton, Oregon, for example, reported that a "classroom" gerbil who was sent home with a student endured a broken back and died after being played with recklessly. In another case, a rabbit was killed by a dog after being sent home with a student. A household full of kids, other animals, and unpredictable circumstances can be a dangerous place for a defenseless animal whose life depends on proper care.

If no students or teachers can take animals home during school breaks, they usually end up in severely crowded shelters-contributing directly to the homeless-animal crisis. Because of this-as well as the risks involved in keeping animals in the classroom-some shelters have even implemented rules against adopting animals for classroom use.

And what happens to "classroom" animals in an emergency? While these situations are (thankfully) uncommon, they do occur. Most schools, though, don't have emergency preparedness plans in place for the animals in their classrooms in the case of a fire, flood, or other disaster-meaning that, in all likelihood, the animals will be left behind to suffer. Is it realistic to think that the animals in your classroom will be rescued if your school faces an emergency?

It's a Health Risk for Kids

Having classroom "pets" poses a huge risk not only for the animals-it can endanger the students, too. Millions of kids suffer from allergies and asthma, which can both be triggered or exacerbated by the presence of certain animals and some types of animal bedding.

Bacteria, such as salmonella, can be spread by the handling of reptiles and amphibians and their enclosures, and small mammals, such as hamsters, rabbits, chinchillas, guinea pigs, gerbils, rats, and mice, can carry transmittable diseases, too.

Animals such as guinea pigs, sugar gliders, spiders, and snakes can also easily nip or bite students if they feel threatened, frustrated, or even hungry. Small animals are often handled roughly by eager students (many of whom have absolutely no experience doing so) and can become scared and uncomfortable, which could cause them to lash out in self-defense.

Animals in the Classroom Are at Risk of Abuse

Sadly, unintentional neglect isn't the only threat that classroom "pets" face. Even in the best of situations, animals in classrooms are at risk. Nearly every week, PETA learns about animals who have been hurt or killed by young people (and we assume that countless other incidents go unreported). PETA has also received many reports of neglect and awful cruelty to animals who are kept in schools. The following incidents are a few of them:

Arlington, Texas: A group of high school students strangled a classroom "pet" ferret to death during class, allegedly to elicit a response from their teacher.

Beaverton, Oregon: A gerbil who was sent home with a student endured a broken back and died after being played with recklessly. A rabbit was killed by a dog after being sent home with another student.

Cape Coral, Florida: A rabbit who was allegedly kept with three others in a wire cage at a school died after being chased during a weekend.

Helena, Arkansas: A snake was stolen from his classroom enclosure and cooked to death in a school microwave.

Hoboken, New Jersey: An African dwarf frog died after apparently being overfed by a kindergarten student.

Lawrence, Kansas: A rabbit at the Hilltop Child Development Center died after his tail was apparently pulled off.

Melbourne, Victoria, Australia: A rabbit was found decapitated and the body strewn about the campus, and a guinea pig died from shock at Smith Street Early Learning Centre.

Monterey, California: A goldfish being kept as a "pet" in a middle school classroom was killed after bleach was poured into his water.

Orlando, Florida: Several snails died after students purposefully shook the jars in which they were being kept. The animals were being used as part of a cruel bottle biology experiment in a science classroom.

Santa Rosa, California: A hamster was tortured and killed at Northwest Prep Charter School during a break-in by five juveniles between the ages of 11 and 14.

Staten Island, New York: A hamster was stolen from Eden II School during a burglary and was never recovered.

Tampa, Florida: Nine gerbils died after they were deprived of food and water for more than two weeks, finches died of exposure, and a ball python froze to death in the head of the science department's classroom at Freedom High School.

Yorktown, Virginia: A gerbil in a Grafton High School classroom was allegedly killed by a student who became upset. The student was charged with cruelty to animals.

Having Animals in the Classroom Supports Cruel Breeders and the Hidden Horrors of the Pet Trade

Many small animals used as class "pets" come from awful breeding facilities, where they're kept in horrific conditions, deprived of proper veterinary care, and left vulnerable to abuse. Breeders also directly contribute to the severe animal-overpopulation crisis and destroy the chances that animals in shelters have of finding good homes.

There Are Better Ways to Teach

Kids can learn responsibility and develop respect for animals in countless ways that don't put a single animal at risk. Teach responsibility through community service projects and by caring for plants and/or a school garden. Teach children about the life cycle and animal behavior by observing local wildlife, watching high-quality documentaries, or using computer programs. Children should never be misled into thinking that animals are classroom tools-there's never an excuse to put an animal's well-being at risk. Every lesson that can be taught with live animals can also be taught in kind and thoughtful ways that don't jeopardize anyone's life.

Respecting Animals Means Leaving Them Out of the Classroom-so What Can You Do?

Say no to classroom "pets" and yes to humane teaching methods. Pledge NEVER to keep animals in your classroom, and share information with your students and staff about why you choose to do so. Choose enriching classroom activities that show students to respect, care for, and empathize with animals without keeping them in unnatural situations or putting them at risk. Be creative-animals are living beings, not teaching tools, and there are much better ways to instill important lessons in children.

Speak up for animals at risk in your school. If your school is keeping animals-either as "pets" or as teaching "tools"-voice your disagreement! If you're comfortable doing so, communicate with the staff members involved, explaining the cruelty inherent in the pet trade and in keeping animals in the classroom, along with the many risks that are involved and the message that it sends to students.

Change your school's policy. You can even write a letter to your principal and school board members, asking them to implement a policy regarding keeping animals in the school. Be sure to include all the pertinent information, and contact usif you need any assistance!

Remember, it's never too late to do what's right. If you already have an animal in your classroom, please make the compassionate decision either to take the animal home or to find a sanctuary where he or she can live peacefully and with appropriate care. Explain to your students why you're making this decision and use it as an honest, teachable moment.

Living beings should never be put in danger in order to be used as an example or part of a lesson. Just because we can do something doesn't mean that we should do it-and when it comes to keeping animals in the classroom, the risks to the animals' well-being will always outweigh any potential benefits to the students (which can easily be achieved through kinder means). It's our responsibility to make sure that we treat animals with respect, dignity, and their best interests in mind-and teach our students to do the same.

Every teacher can lead with compassion. Join TeachKind for free to receive lesson plans, classroom ideas, tips on humane education, and more!

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What's the Problem With Classroom 'Pets'? | PETA

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Thinking about getting a classroom "pet"? Think again. Find out why the classroom is NOT a good place for animals.

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Week two part three

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It's one of the most-asked questions here at the Smithsonian's National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute: How can I work in a zoo?

Depending on the job, there are a lot of different answers. But there is one thing they all require: a commitment to the welfare of animals and conservation of species.

If you are interested in a profession working in close contact with animals on a daily basis, such as wildlife biologist or veterinarian, an advanced degree in zoology or veterinary medicine is recommended. Jobs requiring less schooling but include frequent, direct contact with animals include veterinary technician, zoo keeper, or wildlife technician.

Since most of these jobs are popular, there are often more applicants than positions. You should expect strong competition and salaries considered low relative to the level of education necessary to perform them. And these jobs aren't easy. Caring for animals can require around-the-clock attention in some settings. Wildlife biology can involve working outdoors in sometimes difficult field environments.

Looking to take adult classes on conservation and wildlife issues? Be sure to check out The Smithsonian-Mason School of Conservation. This institution offers a range of compelling residential, hands-on, interdisciplinary programs in conservation biology for undergraduate and graduate students and professionals at the facility on the grounds of the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute in Front Royal, Virginia.

FAQs About Working at Zoo

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How do you get a job at a zoo? Depending on the job, there are a lot of different answers. But there is one thing they all require: a commitment to the welfare of animals and the conservation of species.

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week two part one

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An ad led to Domingo Morales falling in love with compost. A windfall is helping him spread the word.

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Domingo Morales, founder of Compost Power, at a public housing complex in Canarsie, Brooklyn, last month. "I have all this burning energy that never dwindles," he said. Credit... Calla Kessler for The New York Times

There were good reasons Domingo Morales, a city kid from the Bronx, didn't want to try his hand at urban farming. He was terrified of germs. He thought vegetables were disgusting. Plus, everyone knows the ground in New York City is shot through with lead.

But Mr. Morales's bosses in 2015 really wanted him to give it a shot, so he did. To his astonishment, he loved it. And though he couldn't know it at the time, Mr. Morales would fall in love with insects, bacteria and even vegetables, and before long, become arguably the most famous compost guy in New York.

Mr. Morales, a doe-eyed, vibrant 30-year-old once known on the street as "Reckless," is on a mission to make composting cool, by which he means accessible to everyone, by which he means the people he grew up around in hard-bitten neighborhoods in New York City.

Through a program Mr. Morales created that brings composting to public housing, home to as many as 600,000 New Yorkers, he is showing his community what, for him, is still an astonishment: Recycling food scraps can help them grow nutritious food.

"For many years, compost has been that evil, stinky upper class thing that white people do," Mr. Morales said. "But it's really a great introduction to sustainability as a whole."

The climate benefits could be immense. Food scraps and yard waste make up a third of everything New Yorkers throw away and, once in landfills, release vast amounts of methane, which traps far more heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide. Composting food waste can drastically slash those emissions.

Mr. Morales's devotion to that end, and infectious enthusiasm, has landed him an ever-widening spotlight. He has been named " New Yorker of the Week" by the television station NY1, and profiled on the "How to Save a Planet" podcast as well as by the climate site Grist. In the fall of 2020, he won a $200,000 prize to take his composting ideas citywide, after which his face appeared on a billboard in Dumbo, Brooklyn.

All of which are remarkable feats for anyone, not least Mr. Morales, whose onetime goal in life was to make it to 18 alive.

"To be a kid from the hood and then person on the news, an educator, teacher, mentor, role model - it's good," Mr. Morales said.

Garrulous and affable, Mr. Morales all but fizzes with energy and ideas. As he threaded his way through the streets of Harlem after visiting one of his compost sites one recent day, he pointed to a community garden: He's aching to stage an intervention on its saggy looking compost bins and install a concrete pad that would deter rats and make shoveling easier. He also thinks the manual labor involved in composting could be packaged as outdoor workouts he'd call "Motion With Meaning," and is working on a video series.

"I have all this burning energy that never dwindles," Mr. Morales said. "It's just there."

Stamina was drilled into him early. Mr. Morales grew up with six siblings in Soundview Houses, a public housing complex in the Bronx. On her paydays, to save on subway fare, his mother had the whole family walk some 15 miles to Red Hook, Brooklyn, where she worked as a home health aide, to pick up her check. To help with rent, Mr. Morales sold candy on the subway, often getting ticketed for illegally moving between subway cars.

The family moved to public housing in East Harlem where Mr. Morales, who is small in stature, learned to fight. After his stepfather got arrested and charged with marijuana possession, the kids were split up and sent to foster care. "My whole family was destroyed for weed," Mr. Morales said. Yearning to belong, Mr. Morales befriended guys who hung out on the street. Some committed suicide, others were stabbed or shot.

At 17, Mr. Morales learned that his girlfriend was pregnant; they had a second child two years later. Mr. Morales found work as a hotel porter, a repairman, a computer technician. "I always mastered the job, it became very boring, the same thing over and over, and in most cases I was underpaid," he said. After quitting a salad bar gig that paid $6.75 an hour, he sank into despair.

On one especially dark day, Mr. Morales was heading into his building when he saw a notice for Green City Force, a nonprofit that trains young people from public housing for solar installation, horticulture and other green jobs.

"I thought, 'Maybe this flier is for me, maybe this is a sign from the universe that I'm still needed, that there's something I could be useful for,'" Mr. Morales recalled. "It was either 'All right, I'm taking the elevator to the roof right now, or I'm taking this flier to my apartment.'"

He took the flier, and his world opened up.

At Green City Force, Mr. Morales quickly became known for his larger-than-life personality, boundless curiosity, and tirelessness, according to Lisbeth Shepherd, the nonprofit's co-founder and former executive director. Mr. Morales learned about food injustice as he built garden beds and planted seeds, out in the sun and fresh air. His despondency lifted.

Three mornings a week, he worked at a large compost site in Red Hook, Brooklyn, run by a climate activist and lawyer, David Buckel. The site was entirely hand-powered, using no fossil fuels, and became Mr. Morales's outdoor classroom, and Mr. Buckel his teacher and confidant.

Mr. Morales learned that when food scraps are properly composted, the end result is a marvelous resource: Nutrient-rich soil that strengthens plants and also serves as a carbon sink.

"Composting is the only form of recycling you can do from start to finish and watch your work be put to good use," Mr. Morales said.

He learned how to build compost pyramids with fresh food scraps in the middle, insulated by older material, which deterred rodents, and that properly churned compost doesn't smell bad. He learned about worm bins, three-bin compost systems, and how black soldier flies could help decompose meat and dairy products, which are often compost no-nos.

Hired to work at the Red Hook site full time, Mr. Morales put in long hours, and, in an echo of his childhood treks, often Rollerbladed to work. At night, he headed back to East Harlem to a fractious home life (by then he and the mother of his children had split up) with gang violence nearby. "Red Hook was this oasis, my safe space, my home," Mr. Morales said. "David was the only person I was comfortable talking to."

Early in 2018, Mr. Morales was hit with a series of losses. His biological father died, followed a week later by his cat, Max. One morning in mid-April, unthinkable news arrived. In an act of climate protest, Mr. Buckel had committed suicide by setting himself on fire in Prospect Park.

Reeling, Mr. Morales and a co-worker headed to a nearby bar. He ended up taking over operations at the site, keeping it running, sometimes by himself, and fought for dwindling city funding until mid-2020, when he was laid off.

But, once again, brighter skies lay ahead.

Launched in 2019 in honor of the billionaire real estate developer David Walentas, the David Prize awards $200,000 to people committed to improving New York. Upon hearing about it, Ms. Shepherd thought of Mr. Morales.

"He immediately saw the need to have people have a hands-on experience with compost, because of the magic that happens when you yourself are the person taking food scraps and seeing them turn into something powerful that helps plants and food grow," Ms. Shepherd said.

With his winnings, Mr. Morales built compost systems at five public housing sites in four boroughs that housed Green City Force urban vegetable farms, with more planned. He has a paid staff of nine, all young public housing tenants.

He called his initiative "Compost Power," and gave it the slogan "Making Composting Cool." The sites have produced at least 30 tons of finished compost, he said, all directly added to adjoining farms.

For residents who worry about rats, Mr. Morales points out that his odorless systems don't attract them, and that his teams collapse any rat tunnels they find. For residents concerned about food, Mr. Morales shows how compost helps grow healthy vegetables. Compost Power also runs children's workshops where Mr. Morales likes to talk about collaboration with the F.B.I. "Police officers?" the kids ask wondrously. "No! Fungus, bacteria and insects," Mr. Morales replies, and then hands out magnifying glasses so they can see the life thatteems in the compost.

"He's super invested in community and for others to come after him," said Tonya Gayle, executive director of Green City Force. "That's a game changer."

Mr. Morales doesn't live full time in New York anymore. After Mr. Buckel's death, the only place he found solace was in the woods of rural Pennsylvania, where he stayed with his cousin. As the pandemic bore down, he and his wife, who works in software, bought a place there, and grow tomatoes, Swiss chard, kale, spinach, potatoes, and all sorts of beans. During the week, working in New York, Mr. Morales stays with relatives, agonizing about the carbon footprint of his one-and-a-half-hour commute; he's planted trees on his property to help offset it. He's hoping to buy the new Ford F-150 electric truck, partly because he heard it can double as a generator.

Mr. Morales wants to one day go to college, possibly an Ivy League, but in the meantime is working to expand the number of Compost Power sites, and train his staff to eventually take over.

"Everybody should like it, everybody should want it," Mr. Morales said. "It should be cool for everybody."

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The Unlikely Ascent of New York's Compost Champion

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An ad led to Domingo Morales falling in love with compost. A windfall is helping him spread the word. Send any friend a story As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Anyone can read what you share.

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Week two part two - read only pp 16-17