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You don't have to look much further than your grocery receipt to see how climate change can affect our food supply chain. But some of the key drivers of climate change are sitting right in our carts. It's a chicken-or-egg debacle that we're happy to explore on this episode if it means understanding how we can create a more adaptable, equitable food supply chain.

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Farms are dealing with historic heat waves slashing wheat and maize yields, record rainfall collapsing corn harvests, sea level rise swallowing farmland on the East Coast, and disappearing pollinators that one-third of our food supply depends on. And we're paying the price. We hear from our community about how the rising price of groceries has meant making sustainability tradeoffs on what they buy at the store.

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Food insecurity and the climate crisis are also intertwined. Maggie Baird, founder of Support and Feed, helps us understand how the animal agriculture industry is at the center of many climate (and health woes), challenging us to rethink food traditions rooted in culture and family identity. To better understand how we got here,  Commons founder Sanchali Seth Pal follows the money through animal agriculture subsidies.

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Episode Credits

• Listener contributions: Sophia Anderson, Jeanne, Mary Klene, Molly Barton, Katherine, Dom Altomari
• Research : Makenna McBrierty
• Editing and engineering: Evan Goodchild‍
• Hosting and production: Katelan Cunningham

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Episode Transcript

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Katelan Cunningham (00:00):

Hey, hey, hey. Welcome back to Second Nature, a podcast from Commons. Commons is the app that hundreds of thousands of people use to spend less, spend better, and get rewards when they do. And on this show, we talk to people about how they're living sustainably in an unsustainable world. Perhaps you remember the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic when store shelves were absolutely barren because the whole world basically stopped. Factories were closed, transportation was at a minimum, and we were overstocking our kitchens to make sure that we had enough food to get by. For many of us, that feels like it was yesterday For me, it was the first time in my life that I had witnessed something like that on such a large scale. While thankfully we're no longer in the midst of a massive, widespread global pandemic. Food scarcity is not off the table

Katelan Cunningham (00:54):

In so many ways. The climate crisis is putting strains on our food supply and we're not really helping matters. I think Maggie Baird, who I talked to later in the episode, she said it best, our food choices affect the climate crisis and the climate crisis affects our food choices. I'm your host, Katelan Cunningham, and today we're diving into those effects on both sides of that equation to find out how we can make food choices that are not bad for the climate and how to adapt our food systems for the more extreme effects of climate change. Let's dig on in.

Katelan Cunningham (01:34):

In the past few years, your grocery bill has almost certainly gone up. Since 2020, the cost of food at home has risen nearly 30%, and we're seeing sharp price increases on even shorter timelines with human caused conflicts like the closure at the Strait of Hor, which almost immediately cause strains on our food supply chain from farming to transportation, and that can drastically raise the cost of food. Climate change is also putting a huge strain on our food supply chain on a longer timeline, and now we're starting to see it in our grocery bills because the less food there is and the more it costs to produce, the more we're gonna pay at the store. Let's start with extreme weather. We're seeing way more heat waves and droughts, and that's already been a huge blow to key crops like wheat, barley, and maize. Studies estimate that yields are four to 13% lower than they would've been without the effects of climate change.

Katelan Cunningham (02:30):

On the other end of the spectrum, we're also seeing excess rainfall, which can cause a ton of damage. Parts of the Midwest and the US have already seen a 42% increase in the heaviest precipitation events since the 1950s. And in years with that excess rainfall, corn yields drop by as much as 34%. Even sea level rise is starting to affect farmland. Between 1984 and 2022, approximately 25,000 acres of farmland were lost to sea level rise in the Chesapeake and Delaware Bay watersheds alone in those areas within 200 meters of salt patches, researchers estimate economic losses of 39 to $79 million a year from reduced yields on that farmland and this salt contaminated soil. It can take decades to recover. Soil is actually climate change hero. It can prevent erosion, it can suck up a lot of carbon, but not when we don't take care of it. Monocultures, heavy tillage, synthetic fertilizers, these things are all wreaking havoc on our soils, which makes it harder to grow plants and it makes it harder for the soil to do that climate work we needed to do like absorbing carbon dioxide and withstanding heavy rainfalls and droughts. Now let's talk pollinators. About one third of our food supply relies on pollinators like butterflies and bees. So if the pollinators are struggling, our food supply struggles with them. Of course, climate change is part of the problem. Pollinators are dealing with bees and butterflies. They know when and where to find the blooms that they need to pollinate, but rising and turbulent temperatures are shifting up that timeline. So by the time the pollinators arrive, the flowers are dead. Fewer pollinators means lower crop yields

Katelan Cunningham (04:20):

When all these issues start compounding and adding strain to our food supply chain that makes food more expensive. And we ironically are left to budget our way out of more sustainable options at the grocery store.

Dom Altomari (04:41):

I track my finances. I can confidently tell you that the prices have gone up. My grocery bill has gone up at least 30% over the past two years alone. So I do a lot of shopping at Trader Joe's and PCC, which is like our local co-op here in Seattle. When I can swing it and of course when my budget really allows for it, the farmer's market,

Katherine Stetkevych (05:11):

I buy the bulk of my groceries at Trader Joe's. They have the most consistent array of products. It's the closest to me. I could go to smaller shops, local shops, but they're either limited in the variety of products that they have or they've closed. Frankly. There's this one local grocery store where I like to buy this organic peanut butter that's made in Michigan, and I've seen it go up $2 over the past year and it was already kind of expensive. It does mean that sometimes when I'm running low on peanut butter, it makes me think twice about buying peanut butter at all. What I try to do is I try to find another relatively small company to support rather than going to these big national chains. One place that I like to scope out is an online surplus marketplace called Marty and see if they have a product that I was already looking to buy. It's usually cheaper and well, I'm not giving money to the big box stores.

Dom Altomari (06:21):

I mean, I've definitely had to make real trade-offs. Sometimes I opt for not organic. I try to skip the fancy oat milk and get what's on sale that week. Definitely shopping, sales, definitely shopping with coupons as much as I can. We have to do what we have to do.

Jeanne Cassiers (06:39):

It has changed my spending habits in terms of sometimes how many meals I eat in a day or just the quality of what I'm able to buy. And it almost forces me sometimes to buy more food that has a greater environmental impact. I have to really think about exactly what I'm buying and how many meals I can make out of it and try to compromise between the parts that I can buy locally grown and organic, and the parts that I have to buy mass produced in order to fit into my budget.

Molly Barton (07:14):

I think what would help me would be knowing more about where things have come from. Have they been brought in locally? Have they been shipped for thousands of miles? I think it's really easy to turn a blind eye to that when you are shopping for convenience, right? Like it would take a long time to figure that out for every item you buy. So you would just never even try. Whereas if it was labeled as being a more eco-friendly purchase or you know, labeled as being from right around the corner, I would definitely go for it. That would make things easier. Which actually leads me onto the next question. If money were no object, what kinds of products would you like to choose?

Katherine Stetkevych (07:52):

I would like to buy all of the hyperlocal and or organic food products at the grocery store. <laugh>, I would buy that organic peanut butter made in Michigan whenever I want it to. <laugh>. I love that peanut butter. Okay. I just, it's so good.

Mary Klene (08:12):

If money were not a concern, I wouldn't even shop at a grocery store. I would rely on farmer's markets and other local options. This way I can support the locals and know exactly where my food is coming from.

Molly Barton (08:26):

So exactly that. I would choose locally sourced, less traveled products, ideally with some kind of environmental incentive. I think probably fairly healthy options still, but I would like to know that what I'm buying doesn't have a huge environmental impact.

Dom Altomari (08:41):

I would buy almost exclusively from small local producers. Oh, I would have a CSA and I know that the more affordable options are often the ones that have the bigger environmental footprint. So it feels like a lot of uncomfortable tension honestly. And grocery store visits are not as pleasant as they used to be.

Katelan Cunningham (09:07):

When we talk about how our food choices affect the climate, the elephant in the room is actually a cow. Meat and dairy production is a significant source of carbon and methane and the work of getting folks to eat less meat is not easy, but it is the mission of the folks at support and feed. If you haven't heard of it, support and Feed is an organization that combats the climate crisis and food insecurity by working toward a global shift to an equitable plant-based food system. A few months ago, a couple days before Earth Day, the Commons team hosted our third annual Earth summit with our friends at Threat up at their HQ in Oakland. And I got to sit down with the founder of support and feed Maggie Baird. I got to talk to her about our societal relationship with the meat industry, how meat is tied to culture and how to build community around the plant-based cause.

Maggie Baird (10:04):

Hello,

Katelan Cunningham (10:05):

Hello. So excited to talk to you about community. It feels like every single panel has touched on that and that's a big part of the center of what you do at support and feed. So much of what we've talked about here is about the climate crisis obviously, but there's also food insecurity and I think on the surface those things may not seem like they're connected, but a lot of the work that you do at support and feed is about connecting the dots for people between the climate crisis and food insecurity. So I wondered if you could talk a little bit more about that, about how you connect the dots for people.

Maggie Baird (10:36):

Yeah, it's a topic that is just inextricably entwined and we don't really discuss it enough. You know, our food choices affect the climate crisis. The climate crisis affects our food choices. People who suffer from food insecurity and food inequity are disproportionately impacted by the climate crisis. If you're living in an area that is a food apartheid systemically cut off from access to nutritious food, you're probably living in an area that's also two degrees hotter in the summer. Lacks trees, lacks vegetation. There are civilizations and countries in the world that have already been destroyed by the climate crisis. And what we are eating is partly responsible for that. So trying to make the connection that every time we serve a meal to someone who may be insecure in their food situation, we can also make a choice that's more friendly to our climate and is more friendly to their health. Um, in the case of support and feed also supports a small business in the local area. Our mission at Support and feed really is the intersection of all of those. None of those standalone

Katelan Cunningham (11:47):

And all of your work at support and feed focuses on plant-based foods. So much of our family histories and cultures and traditions are centered around food and a lot of that food, at least in my family is <laugh>, is meat and like animal-based products. So much of our identity is rooted in it in food. How do you broach that when you're, when you're asking people to perhaps change something about themselves? Really?

Maggie Baird (12:09):

It's a good question and a fair question. We, we deal with it in different ways though depending on who the audience is. You know, just to back up a little, we talk a lot about the fossil fuel industry. The really powerful industry is the animal agriculture industry. And I think it's fair, as I've heard before, that you don't have to be perfect in your dietary choices or anything. But I do think it's really important to start to analyze how much we have been influenced, one might say, indoctrinated into our food choices by a system designed to lie to us. I think when people start to know that it sort of changes the way you think about things. You go, wait, is it actually true that this is the healthiest way to eat? Or have I just been told that by an industry that doesn't want me to eat this way?

Maggie Baird (13:03):

Is this an industry that is supporting animal agriculture at the destruction of our planet rather than farmers who grow crops for humans who are only 3% of a billion dollar industry? So I think part of it's mental, but that's to our audience. We have support and feed fans here, which is so awesome. But we have this amazing access to the music industry and fans in the music industry to that audience. We try to tell the story of why these choices matter and what is our personal responsibility and can you take the support and feed pledge to eat just one fully plant-based meal a day. So on that side of it, we're really telling the whole story and what our privilege can allow us to do. Now when we're talking about organizations where we deliver food, that's a different story. To that end, we work almost exclusively with community organizations.

Maggie Baird (13:59):

Occasionally we are forward facing, like in the case of the fires in Eaton Canyon, we've been feeding people in Altadena for two years, although even a lot of that is with other orgs. So we are working with community organizations that are doing amazing work. So we are not really just gonna go in and say Change the way you eat. You know, we're gonna say, what are your families like to eat <laugh>? You know, what are the things we can help you with? What would you like to try? What else can we deliver? There's an org that we really love, we work with all the time. And in the beginning they literally did not want food from us, even though everyone wanted food. You know, they were like, we don't, we don't want your food. Like, okay, well we have burritos, we have pizza, we have donuts.

Maggie Baird (14:41):

They say, we'll take the donuts. So we just led with donuts, but we were like, do you wanna try anything else? And they literally led us, they taught us, they were like, we like this burrito, we don't like this burrito. We'll like this. We'll serve this to this to our families, not this. And we learned so much from that. And so that's really what it looks like in every city, in every org it's going to be different. We're going to try to address we people are comfortable with, but trying to break through the misconceptions people have about plant-based food. This is another story, but like we do culinary trainings on the road with arenas and I've had culinary chefs say to me, I don't need any plant-based food. And I'm like, really? Guacamole? <laugh>. Exactly. Yeah. Salad the tomato. And they're like, Nope, not at all.

Maggie Baird (15:33):

You know? So there's a lot to overcome. There's a lot, again, kind of a lot of indoctrination. And I wanna say one more thing about culture is that some of that's relatively recent. You know, we, what is really is like comfort. Comfort, what feels familiar to us, what did we grow up with? But even generationally back just like two generations, that looks extremely different and you have to go, why did that even happen? You know, my culture, because I grew up in Western Colorado in the seventies, you know, my culture was a boxed package of tacos, you know, you know, chow main in a can. Like I wouldn't call that my culture. So I think there's also this somewhat unraveling of like what's just comfort and familiar to you and if that's impacting not only the planet but your health. You know, a lot of communities have been led to believe that they are destined to poor health, but some of that is just diet and what is made available to them. You know, if you don't have a grocery store in your town, if you have a million fast food restaurants, that's not your culture. You know, that's what you've been deprived of. You know, we try to say like, you deserve plant-based food. You know, you deserve healthy food. You know, it's not a punishment.

Katelan Cunningham (16:50):

It kind of forces you to think about like, what is the thing I really love about this? Do I really love my grandma's mac and cheese with bacon or do I like eating it with my grandma? Yeah. You know what I mean? You sort of start to unpack that. And I think we have the opportunity too, to make new traditions now. You know, like people can learn plant-based recipes from you guys and and take that forward into their

Maggie Baird (17:07):

Families. And I also think we are all kind of limited. Like when I moved to New York City in 1981, I had Indian food for the first time in little India and I was like, what is this? This is like, this is now my favorite, has been my favorite food for the rest of my life. I never had it before. You know? And just think of that in our own lives, you know, think of if you're living this diet, whatever it may be, that has been what you've exposed to, that means there's this world of culinary beauty that you've never had. And that's what I think about plant-based food. I mean the amounts of just fruits and vegetables that are shockingly new to us still, you know, 'cause we just don't cook with them.

Katelan Cunningham (17:47):

There are right now strains on the food supply chain for various reasons. The straight of ous also climate change. Are you guys seeing any of that strain coming through in your work at support and feed?

Maggie Baird (18:00):

Well we definitely are. I mean, number one is just, just more people than ever, as we all know who need food. People are really suffering. You know, people who are fully employed and don't make enough to buy groceries. So we see it. I think probably the most on that, that just demand is, is just through the roof. But there are predictions, you know, I heard that potatoes maybe gone in 20 years. You know, climate change is wiping out a lot of our food. It's urgent. I just wanna say like I read Diet for a Small Planet in 1975, you know, 1975, like this is not a shock. It was all predicted and it's all coming true. But yeah, crops are less available where I feel it is more like on the strategic planning of support and feed. Because even in 2020 when we started and we were doing our strategic planning, you know, there was some like optimism and you know, oh we can make this better world.

Maggie Baird (18:57):

And now it's like, okay, unnatural disasters, extreme weather events. By the law of nature, were three a year now they are every other week. That's not hyperbole. They literally are every other week. So we have to add into our strategic planning. How do we cope with, with extreme weather events, you know, feeding people in Altadena, feeding people in Tennessee from the floods. So these are the kind of things we see climate change affecting our food systems. We know there are gonna be shortages, but also wiping out communities. And most crisis operations are designed to come in and help people very quickly. And those are wonderful organizations and we can all name them, but I can tell you in Altadena a year later, people are still struggling. You know, people who didn't have insurance, you know, or maybe couldn't live in their home that didn't burn down, but they couldn't live in it because it's toxic. You know, people really, really need services much, much longer. And so that's where we see a lot of the impact. Yeah,

Katelan Cunningham (20:03):

And that's sustainability too, being able to sustain people through the years and years that it takes to get to that recovery point. Yeah,

Maggie Baird (20:09):

And and can I just say, just in the communication, there are very calculated organizations, operations, trying to control the narrative around extreme weather events. So you know, when there's a mass shooting and then there's thoughts and prayers and if you say something about guns, you're told you're political. It's the same with climate. You bring up climate after an extreme weather event and people are like, oh, this is not the time people have died. And like this is the time a calculated effort to get us not to get that in the narrative. And the narrative is chosen for us by people in the communications sector that just get it to be not on the climate crisis.

Katelan Cunningham (20:51):

We have so much opportunity in our own little communities, right, to start spreading that. Because it's easier for me to hear that from you sitting with you right here, than it is to like find it through the course of all the news that I'm seeing in my feed. You and I talked a lot about our circles of influence and you're lucky to have a very large circle of influence with your daughter. If you wanted to talk a little bit about that and and just like how folks can, even if your circle of influence is your group chat with your four friends or your church or your workplace, how you can come to the table, not even with ideas, but just conversations and to kind of start with people. And you guys do that a lot on Billie's tour.

Maggie Baird (21:30):

I love it though. I love the idea of just being where you are. Because before Billie was in the music industry, I was doing this already, you know, in our homeschool group and our, you know, I mean my friends remind me, they're like, oh, I remember that thing you said in like 1982 about, you know, red peppers. And you know, I don't know, it's sort of you. You do it wherever you are, wherever you work, wherever you live, you bring sustainability in that. Whether that's making sure there's plant-based food as the majority of your food at your luncheon or your gala. If you are worried about ai, you have to know that what you eat is much more impactful than that. You know, if you're worried about, you have to put food into the conversation. If you're on the board of something, if you're planning an event, make sure that that as the minimum largely plant-based at largely.

Maggie Baird (22:19):

If it doesn't, if it can't be all the way, okay, but make sure that it's largely, these are the things we all can control. And that's in everything we do. So in the music industry, I did sort of find myself, you know, yikes, having to learn a whole new industry and be quite shocked by lack of sustainability awareness. And you know, I will say that for the first few years nobody did listen to us <laugh>. But then Billie got very famous and people started listening, which was great. And they started making changes and everybody on her team got involved. Like everybody, you know, we are not gonna see merch shown to us if it's not like the most sustainable option and the vinyl is gonna be recycled vinyl. And, and that's really important. Everyone doing it, you know, just empowering a team and say this is a priority for us, so whatever sector of our company you are, you are the one that's gonna guide us in making this choice.

Maggie Baird (23:19):

And then the fortunate thing was, of course Billie and Finneas live this way too. And so then they let their platform be a part of it. I don't really think that every artist necessarily has to carry this flag, but it's important that some artists do and say, Hey, this is where you can make change and kind of set a new status quo. But every artist should be doing it, whether they're carrying the flag or not. Arenas should just be doing it. Teams should be doing it. But yes, we've been lucky to have this very large platform and Billie and Finneas have been willing to let that be true. 'cause it's hard.

Katelan Cunningham (23:56):

Yeah, it's hard. It's hard to find that balance, especially if you're as famous as Bille and Finneas are, you're sort of worried about becoming this type of person to everyone or letting that be your entire brand, even as just like a person in your friend group, much less like at that scale <laugh>. Yeah. So it is, it is a careful balance to find

Maggie Baird (24:15):

You don't wanna be dismissed. Oh, we don't have to take her seriously because she always talks about that or she always, so you're walking this balance of saying like, I wanna normalize this. I want this again to be status quo. It's not just me.

Katelan Cunningham (24:31):

I hope it's becoming a little cooler to care about stuff. I remember when I was a teenager and it was like not cool to care about absolutely anything <laugh>.

Maggie Baird (24:37):

That's a very good point. I mean, I do think they really do care. First of all, we have saddled our youth with a <laugh> vulnerable set of circumstances. You know, I mean, what they are looking at, the climate anxiety, the anxiety about all the major issues they're dealing with. So we've, we have saddled them with that. And I don't really subscribe to the youth will save us because it's our job. If we're still kicking, you better be going into your grave fighting, you know what I mean? Like you don't get to stop and let young people suffer.

Katelan Cunningham (25:13):

People are feeling more discouraged and isolated than ever. And I think that doing volunteer work, doing mutual aid work is a big part of getting you out of that isolation, but also like finding hope. How do you get people to keep showing up years after the fires, right? How do you keep motivating people to show up for this? Cause

Maggie Baird (25:30):

Such a good question. I mean, I think it feeds itself, you know, because, and I, you know, it's Joan Baez I think who's credited with saying that, you know, the antidote to action is the antidote to despair, right? Something, I might be paraphrasing, but I think we get back as much as we give 100%. I think volunteering, taking action, I mean going to a protest, all of these things, you actually feel better because part of what feels so scary is the lack of control that we have. Especially now. Especially we're like, what is happening in the government? I didn't think this was possible, right? I thought we had checks and balances. So you feel a hundred percent powerless. So how do you take back power? You do something and you take action. And so I think it's the doing that keeps you involved. I do think as an organization at Support and Feed, what we've learned is we really need to help foster community within our volunteers.

Maggie Baird (26:27):

Because our volunteers, sometimes they're doing things like interacting with the public, like they are here today. Sometimes they're like solo driving food from A to B, and they're not maybe getting that same connection. So creating opportunities for volunteers to get to know each other, to share their experiences, to feel involved, to feel appreciated. Because if our mission is intersectional, can we also add into that community building? So I think we are learning like how can we help keep our volunteers afloat? How can we support and make this a place of joy and meaning in an era of real anxiety and trauma? Um, but it is, it's an effort. And I, and also when extreme weather events do happen, we do get more donations, you know? And fortunately that allows us to support that additional work. But getting people to go, it's still there. <laugh>, we are still there. We're still feeding people. People still need food. Climate crisis isn't going anywhere. That is very hard. And also funds are tight and funds have a lot of different places to go. So vigilance,

Katelan Cunningham (27:49):

We've talked a lot on the show, especially this season about the true cost of things like flights for example. The true cost takes into consideration the toll on the environment and takes into account the quote unquote savings we see as a result of subsidies. It's been a real eye-opener for me to really understand the amount of high emissions industries that our tax dollars are keeping in business. And the meat industry is one of them. Our tax dollars are going to these huge animal agriculture businesses whose interests operate in opposition to the environment, the animals it's raising, and even our health. I wanted to understand this a little bit better and follow the money with commons founders and Sanchali Seth Pal to find out more about the true cost of meat. All right, Elli, let's just start with the basics here, because I think most people have a vague sense that the government is subsidizing farming, but what does that actually mean in practice?

Sanchali Seth Pal (28:50):

So the first thing to get a grasp on is the scale. We're talking about over $20 billion a year in federal agricultural subsidies.

Katelan Cunningham (28:58):

Wow. Who? Who's getting all this cash?

Sanchali Seth Pal (29:01):

Well, most of it goes to a handful of large wealthy farms that are growing commodity crops, mostly corn and soy. One study found that among the three largest programs, 60% of subsidies go to just the largest 10% of farms.

Katelan Cunningham (29:15):

So these are not your mom and pop farms, and most of this corn and soy isn't even ending up on grocery store shelves. Is that right?

Sanchali Seth Pal (29:21):

Yeah, that's right. About 40% of US corn is grown for animal feed like cattle. And globally, 80% of soy production feeds livestock, not people.

Katelan Cunningham (29:31):

That's a lot of hungry cows.

Sanchali Seth Pal (29:33):

Exactly. This is why animal agriculture has such a high environmental toll. Basically you could grow food and eat it directly or you can grow even more food, need additional land and water to raise cattle feed and grow that cattle, then kill it, transport it, and eat it. So that's why the carbon footprint of meat products is so much higher. Pat Brown from Impossible Foods has this phrase he uses that I feel like explains it really well. Cows are a very inefficient technology to give us food and protein. Hmm. So when you trace back food subsidy dollars to soy and corn, it's basically underwriting the cost of producing meat and dairy.

Katelan Cunningham (30:09):

So the most subsidized foods are the ones with the most outsized effect on the climate. Yes.

Sanchali Seth Pal (30:15):

And it's really coming back to bite us. Our food system is built up around propping up meat and dairy, which over consuming also poses risks to our health. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. But our entire food supply chain is struggling due to climate change, which which

Katelan Cunningham (30:30):

Is being driven in part by animal agriculture.

Sanchali Seth Pal (30:32):

Exactly. Even

Katelan Cunningham (30:33):

With these subsidies though, the price of beef is still skyrocketing recently.

Sanchali Seth Pal (30:38):

It's true. Beef prices are up about 17% from this time last year, and almost 80% since 2020.

Katelan Cunningham (30:45):

So are the subsidies even really helping us?

Sanchali Seth Pal (30:48):

They actually still are a 2021 analysis estimated that if we cost in the environmental and health impacts of food production, the retail price of beef would be more than double. What it currently is, there's a big gap between what you pay at the register and what production actually costs. And that gap is being filled by government subsidies.

Katelan Cunningham (31:08):

So how big of a deal is this environmentally?

Sanchali Seth Pal (31:11):

It's a really big deal. The livestock sector alone accounts for 14.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions. That's about five times larger than the global aviation industry and nearly double the global fashion industry. The scary thing is that when public money artificially lowers the price of our highest emission foods and promotes them through marketing efforts, it shapes consumer behavior to make the most costly choices. The most financially accessible and appealing ones

Katelan Cunningham (31:41):

Are fruits and veggies, getting this kind of subsidy support,

Sanchali Seth Pal (31:45):

Not even a little bit. Corn and soil alone received over 50% of all federal farm subsidies, cotton, wheat, and pasture, which is basically for ranchers and grazers and their cattle are the next most supported.

Katelan Cunningham (31:59):

Dang. So fruit and veggies are really not getting that much help. That's why they're so expensive. Why is this still a thing?

Sanchali Seth Pal (32:06):

It's mainly because of something called the Farm Bill. It gets renewed roughly every five years, and it's one of the most heavily lobbied pieces of legislation in Washington. Big meat producers are some of the groups doing the lobbying like Cargill, Tyson, and the National Pork Producers Council from 2023 to 2024 groups spent about a hundred million dollars on agriculture lobbying.

Katelan Cunningham (32:30):

So let's just say we wanted to restructure this farm bill. I'm sure I'm not the first person to have that idea. <laugh>, how does this happen?

Sanchali Seth Pal (32:38):

Well, I mean, one thing we can do starting today is just spend way less on meat and dairy. We can show that our financial priorities are elsewhere and divert more money away from animal agriculture, but that's not gonna do it alone. We will also need to push our representatives to spend time and effort reworking the farm bill to prioritize human needs over the animal agriculture industry. Researchers have modeled what an alternative subsidy structure could look like. It would incentivize the production of foods with beneficial health and environmental characteristics by distributing subsidy payments more equally.

Katelan Cunningham (33:13):

So this rework Farm Bill is not a proposal to strip money from all the farmers.

Sanchali Seth Pal (33:18):

Not at all. Basically, we would take those funds and redirect them towards farms and outcomes that are actually in, in our human and public interest, which is inherently also our climate interest. Right now, we're funding a system that works against us and we're seeing the effects of it. Extreme climate events, strains on our food supply, rising costs of groceries, changing the kinds of farms we incentivize would go a long way to course correct.

Katelan Cunningham (33:43):

Thank you so much for helping us connect the dots once again.

Sanchali Seth Pal (33:46):

Thanks, Katelan.

Katelan Cunningham (33:59):

Looking at our grocery carts filled with perfectly portioned foods packaged in plastic, it is easy to forget that it does indeed come from the land, from the soil, from the sun, and when fields of crops get hit with extreme weather, suffer from lack of pollinators or poor soil, or become highly vulnerable to disease, we pay the price in more ways than one. But there are some things we can do to make our food supply chain more resilient and easier on the planet. We can make our voices heard on an environmentally sound farm bill. We can support local food sources that are regenerating the soil and bringing back pollinators, and it can't be overlooked. How our systemic reliance on animal agriculture is putting our food system at risk.

Katelan Cunningham (34:46):

Listen, I know the transition away from the animal agriculture industry can be difficult. Full disclosure, I'm not all the way there myself, but one thing I found that helps me is when we give up the idea of aspiring for a label or identity like vegan or vegetarian, I think that eases the pressure a little bit. If you're still searching for your why, your motivation to start making some changes, please scroll back through our episode archive. We'd done an episode on eating plant-based When Your Family Doesn't. We did an episode called The Beef with Beef, all about the health impacts of meat. And in our very first episode, we talked about how much it actually matters if you eat less meat. If you need no other motivation, take a good look at your grocery bill. Thanks to the folks in our community who shared their grocery shopping woes, which I think we can all identify with today, you heard from [credits]. this episode was edited and engineered by Evan Goodchild. It was written and produced by me, Katelan Cunningham, with research support from McKenna. Ty, stick around for one more minute to hear from someone in the climate community doing the work. Who needs your help? We'll catch you back here next week.