Climate Smart from Farm to Fork: Building an Affordable and Resilient Food Supply Chain
Summary
This is the printed record of Climate Smart from Farm to Fork: Building an Affordable and Resilient Food Supply Chain, a hearing of the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis held July 15, 2022, Serial No. 117–21. Chair Kathy Castor of Florida and Ranking Member Garret Graves of Louisiana gave opening statements. The witnesses were Dana Gunders of ReFED, Kent Swisher of the North American Renderers Association, Dr. Melinda Cep of the National Audubon Society and Elly Brown of the San Diego Food System Alliance. The record also holds a July 15, 2022 letter from the Biotechnology Innovation Organization and Graves's questions for the record to Swisher.
Summary drafted by a model from the document's text below and checked by script against that text before publication. It is a navigation aid, not a reading of what the document proves. Where AI is used
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“Climate Smart from Farm to Fork: Building an Affordable and Resilient Food Supply Chain.”
Original at www.govinfo.gov. Archived at Pandemic Darlings, https://pandemicdarlings.com/source-documents/chrg-chrg-117hhrg48854-chrg-117hhrg48854-dd3053f5fc/
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CLIMATE SMART FROM FARM TO FORK:
BUILDING AN AFFORDABLE AND RESILIENT
FOOD SUPPLY CHAIN
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SELECT COMMITTEE ON THE
CLIMATE CRISIS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
HEARING HELD
JULY 15, 2022
Serial No. 117–21
(
www.govinfo.gov
Printed for the use of the Select Committee on the Climate Crisis
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
48–854 WASHINGTON : 2022
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SELECT COMMITTEE ON THE CLIMATE CRISIS
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS
KATHY CASTOR, Florida, Chair
SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon GARRET GRAVES, Louisiana,
JULIA BROWNLEY, Calfornia Ranking Member
JARED HUFFMAN, California GARY PALMER, Alabama
A. DONALD MCEACHIN, Virginia BUDDY CARTER, Georgia
MIKE LEVIN, California CAROL MILLER, West Virginia
SEAN CASTEN, Illinois KELLY ARMSTRONG, North Dakota
JOE NEGUSE, Colorado DAN CRENSHAW, Texas
VERONICA ESCOBAR, Texas ANTHONY GONZALEZ, Ohio
ANA UNRUH COHEN, Majority Staff Director
SARAH JORGENSON, Minority Staff Director
climatecrisis.house.gov
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CONTENTS
STATEMENTS OF MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
Page
Hon. Kathy Castor, a Representative in Congress from the State of Florida,
and Chair, Select Committee on the Climate Crisis:
Opening Statement ........................................................................................... 1
Prepared Statement ......................................................................................... 3
Hon. Garrett Graves, a Representative in Congress from the State of Lou-
isiana, and Ranking Member, Select Committee on the Climate Crisis:
Opening Statement .............................................................................................. 4
Hon. Suzanne Bonamici, a Representative in Congress from the State of
Oregon, and Member, Select Committee on the Climate Crisis:
Prepared Statement ......................................................................................... 5
WITNESSES
Dana Gunders, Executive Director, ReFED
Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 7
Prepared Statement ......................................................................................... 9
Kent Swisher, President and CEO, North American Renderers Association
Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 22
Prepared Statement ......................................................................................... 23
Dr. Melinda Cep, Vice President, Natural Solutions and Working Lands,
National Audubon Society
Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 25
Prepared Statement ......................................................................................... 27
Elly Brown, Co-Executive Director, San Diego Food System Alliance
Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 29
Prepared Statement ......................................................................................... 31
SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD
A July 15, 2022 letter from the Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO),
to the Select Committee on the Climate Crisis, submitted for the record
by Ms. Castor ....................................................................................................... 53
APPENDIX
Questions for the Record from Hon. Garret Graves to Kent Swisher ................. 56
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CLIMATE SMART FROM FARM TO FORK:
BUILDING AN AFFORDABLE AND RESILIENT
FOOD SUPPLY CHAIN
FRIDAY, JULY 15, 2022
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
SELECT COMMITTEE ON THE CLIMATE CRISIS,
Washington, DC.
The committee met, pursuant to call, at 9:09 a.m., in Room 1334,
Longworth House Office Building, the Hon. Kathy Castor [Chair-
woman of the Committee] presiding.
Present: Representatives Castor, Bonamici, Brownley, Huffman,
Levin, Casten, Escobar, Graves, Palmer, Carter, Miller, and Cren-
shaw.
Ms. CASTOR. The committee will come to order.
Without objection, the Chair is authorized to declare a recess at
any time.
As a reminder, members participating in the hearing remotely
should be visible on camera throughout the hearing. Members are
responsible for controlling their own microphones. Members can be
muted by staff only to avoid inadvertent background noise.
As a reminder, statements, documents, motions must be sub-
mitted to the electronic repository, to scccrepository@mail.house.
gov.
Finally, members or witnesses experiencing technical problems
should inform committee staff immediately.
Well, thank you all for being here and joining this hybrid hearing
on ‘‘Climate Smart From Farm to Fork: Building an Affordable and
Resilient Food Supply Chain.’’
Today, we will review pathways to create a sustainable, afford-
able food supply chain that is resilient in the face of climate
change. We will examine opportunities for the food system to be a
climate solution while also supporting human health and liveli-
hood.
I will now recognize myself for 5 minutes for an opening state-
ment.
Scorching temperatures and widespread disasters are putting
lives at risk and harming communities across America. This week,
families in southwest Virginia were the latest to face deadly floods
like those that swept through Yellowstone National Park just a few
weeks ago. At the same time, there is too little water across much
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of the West, leading to frequent wildfires and dangerously low river
and lake levels.
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2
In Texas, scorching hot temperatures almost stretched the grid
to its limit, forcing families and industry alike to conserve elec-
tricity or risk a potential blackout. And Europe is facing what could
be its worst heat wave in over 200 years.
So it was very disappointing to learn that Senator Manchin is
joining Republicans in rejecting investments to address this crisis,
investments that would reduce our dependence on expensive fossil
fuels while helping to create jobs and cut dangerous heat-trapping
pollution.
The American people have consistently supported cleaner, cheap-
er energy, like wind and solar. So while this is quite disappointing
this morning, we must move forward and use all of the tools that
we have to solve the climate crisis. The costs of inaction are too
high, and climate injustice is too great, and our kids’ futures are
too precious.
The climate crisis is also challenging our ability to put food on
supermarket shelves and dining room tables across America. Ac-
cording to the American Farm Bureau Federation, major disasters
left $12.5 billion in damages to crops and rangelands just last year.
In North Dakota, persistent drought damaged over $2.4 billion
worth of wheat, soybeans, corn, and other crops. Texas lost $2 bil-
lion dollars in the aftermath of that weird winter storm, a hurri-
cane, and other disasters. And extreme weather in California has
led to the loss of about a half billion dollars’ worth of fruit and nut
crops. These impacts will worsen if we do not address them, and
their costs are being passed on to consumers.
And that is why Congress must invest in a climate smart food
system that lowers cost, increases food security, and incorporates
solutions from farm to fork. Every person along the food chain,
from producers to consumers to everyone in between, can make our
food supply chain more sustainable. And each step in the supply
chain presents an opportunity for innovation. That includes updat-
ing laws around food donation and labeling, strengthening sustain-
able school lunch programs, and increasing technical assistance for
producers. It also includes supporting urban agriculture, improving
food distribution at the local level, and working to reduce food
waste and loss.
Many of these solutions have an immediate impact. We can cut
methane pollution by reducing food waste. We can drive down
methane emissions from livestock by expanding the use of innova-
tive feed additives, like seaweed. And we can help farmers adopt
proper regenerative grazing techniques that help the soil sequester
more carbon.
Moving quickly on these solutions will be crucial as we clean up
the food supply system, which makes up nearly 30 percent of global
heat-trapping pollution. And it will help us make progress on re-
ducing biodiversity loss, deforestation, degraded soils,
desertification and water scarcity.
With the support of President Biden, we have taken steps in the
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right direction. The American Rescue Plan included $3.6 billion to
enhance food distribution, expand local and regional food systems,
and support historically disadvantaged farmers.
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3
We also made progress through this year’s government funding
legislation, which invested in initiatives like the Urban Agriculture
and Innovative Production program and Farm to School grants.
And finally, the Biden-Harris administration just announced a
new framework to shore up the food supply chain, leveraging more
than $2 billion in investments that will reduce pollution and make
nutritious food more affordable for families.
So as we move closer to the net-zero economy, we have an oppor-
tunity to create a food system that works for Americans, ensuring
access to safe, healthy food for generations to come. And we are
going to get some good advice from our witnesses here today, and
I look forward to that.
At this time, I will recognize Ranking Member Graves for his 5-
minute opening statement. Welcome.
[The statement of Ms. Castor follows:]
Opening Statement of Chair Kathy Castor
Hearing on ‘‘Climate Smart from Farm to Fork:
Building an Affordable and Resilient Food Supply Chain’’
July 15, 2022
As prepared for delivery
Scorching temperatures and widespread disasters are putting lives at risk and
harming communities across America. This week, families in Southwest Virginia
were the latest to face deadly floods like those that swept through Yellowstone Na-
tional Park a few weeks ago. At the same time, there is too little water across much
of the West, leading to frequent wildfires and dangerously-low river and lake levels.
In Texas, scorching hot temperatures almost stretched the grid to its limit, forcing
families and industry alike to conserve electricity or risk a potential blackout. And
Europe is facing what could be its worst heat wave in over 200 years. So it was
disappointing to learn that Sen. Manchin is joining Republicans in rejecting invest-
ments to address this crisis: investments that would reduce our dependence on ex-
pensive fossil fuels while helping us create jobs and cut dangerous heat-trapping
pollution. The American people have consistently supported cleaner, cheaper energy
like wind and solar. So while this is a disappointing setback, we must move forward
and use all the tools we have to solve the climate crisis. The costs of inaction are
too high. Climate injustice is too great. And young peoples’ futures are too precious.
The climate crisis is also challenging our ability to put food on supermarket
shelves and dining room tables across America. According to the American Farm
Bureau Federation, major disasters left $12.5 billion in damages to crops and range-
lands just last year. In North Dakota, persistent drought damaged over 2.4 billion
dollars’ worth of wheat, soybeans, corn, and other crops. Texas lost about $2 billion
in the aftermath of a winter storm, a hurricane, and other disasters. And extreme
weather in California led to the loss of about half a billion dollars’ worth of fruit
and nut crops. These impacts will worsen if we don’t address them—and their costs
will be passed on to consumers.
That’s why Congress must invest in a climate-smart food system that lowers
costs, increases food security, and incorporates solutions from farm to fork. Every
person along the food chain—from producers to consumers and everyone in be-
tween—can make our food supply chain more sustainable. And each step in the sup-
ply chain presents an opportunity for innovations. That includes updating laws
around food donation and labelling; strengthening sustainable school lunch pro-
grams; and increasing technical assistance for producers. It also includes supporting
urban agriculture; improving food distribution at the local level; and working to re-
duce food waste and loss.
Many of these solutions can have an immediate impact. We can cut methane pol-
lution by reducing food waste. We can drive down methane emissions from livestock
by expanding the use of innovative feed additives like seaweed. And we can help
farmers adopt proper regenerative grazing techniques that help the soil sequester
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more carbon. Moving quickly on these solutions will be crucial as we clean up the
food supply system, which makes up nearly 30% of global heat-trapping pollution.
And it will help us make progress on reducing biodiversity loss, deforestation, de-
graded soils, desertification, and water scarcity.
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4
With the support of President Biden, we’ve taken steps in the right direction. The
American Rescue Plan law included $3.6 billion to enhance food distribution, expand
local and regional food systems, and support historically disadvantaged farmers. We
also made progress through this year’s government funding legislation, which in-
vested in initiatives like the Urban Agriculture and Innovative Production Program
and Farm to School grants. Finally, the Biden-Harris Administration just an-
nounced a new framework to shore up the food supply chain, leveraging more than
$2 billion in investments that will reduce pollution and make nutritious food more
affordable for families.
As we move closer to a net-zero economy, we have an opportunity to create a food
system that works for all Americans—ensuring access to safe, healthy food for gen-
erations to come. I look forward to today’s discussion.
Mr. GRAVES. Thank you, Madam Chair.
The Chair and I both represent coastal communities on the Gulf
of Mexico, and we absolutely share a strong desire to make sure
that our communities are protected, that they are safe, they are
sustainable. There is no division between us on that.
However, the opening statement that was made connecting flood-
ing in Virginia recently to climate change is a tenuous connection.
And I think that the only way we are going to solve this problem
is if we are sticking to science. And so let’s talk a little bit about
science.
The United States could cut emissions today. We could cut every
bit of emissions today, and it wouldn’t have a single impact. It
wouldn’t have a single impact on any changes in weather patterns
for 50 years. According to the United Nations Framework Conven-
tion on Climate Change, the IPCC models, maybe 75 years or
maybe even 100 years.
In fact—well, actually, I take that back. If we cut them in the
United States, it wouldn’t have an impact globally for probably in
excess of 100 years. If the entire world cuts emissions, we are look-
ing at 50, 75, or 100 years away before you would actually see
changes in weather patterns if the models, if the models are accu-
rate.
And let me tell you something else that is really important for
us to keep in mind that is also science-based. For every one ton of
emissions that the United States has reduced over about the last
17 years, for every one ton we have reduced in the United States,
China has increased by four. It is a global environment.
We are headed in the wrong direction, even under the Paris Cli-
mate Accords. China gets to increase their emissions another 50
percent between now and 2030, despite the fact that today they are
releasing more than the United States, the European Union,
Japan, South Korea.
But we can sit here and talk all day long about all—we can sit
here and say all these things and make people feel good. The truth
is is that the policies that are being pushed today by this adminis-
tration are actually causing greater harm to the environment.
We just saw inflation numbers come out this week at 9.1 percent,
the highest number in over 40 years. We have seen gas prices dou-
ble. We have seen natural gas prices nearly triple. We are pushing
people into energy poverty and, and we are having greater emis-
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sions as a result of this administration’s strategy. You failed on af-
fordability, you failed on emissions, and you failed on energy secu-
rity.
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The President of the United States is in Saudi Arabia today,
today in Saudi Arabia asking that nation for more oil; choosing car-
tels, OPEC plus cartels over my home state Cajuns. I can keep
having fun and say terrorist over Terrebonne, which is one of our
parishes, but I will stop with the rhyming and come back to reality.
Look, we are talking about farms today. We are talking about
farms to table. You know, fertilizer right now, we have seen a huge
decrease in the availability of fertilizer. One of the largest inputs
in fertilizer? Natural gas. You are driving up cost for farmers.
Since the 1950s, since the 1950s, you have seen an efficiency in
the United States increase in terms of our farm production. Excuse
me, since the 1940s. By over 300 percent, we have the most effi-
cient farming operations in the world in terms of emissions per
bushels or acres of crops produced.
We are looking right now at pushing 13.1 million people into a
hunger crisis as a result of what is happening globally with
Ukraine, with U.S. energy policies, but we are making it
unaffordable to farm in the United States as a result of diesel
prices going up and spiking as a result of gasoline prices, the un-
availability or unaffordability of fertilizer.
This administration’s energy policies are causing all of these
problems. And the thing is, there is a solution. The solution is, as
we have shown, as science proves, more domestic energy production
actually results in lower global emissions, because we produce it
safer with cleaner emissions than virtually anywhere else in the
world.
Just this week, just this week, we had a bill in the Natural Re-
sources Committee right down that hallway where we were ban-
ning, we are banning critical minerals production in the United
States, critical minerals like lithium, graphite, cobalt, nickel, cop-
per, things that are required for renewable energy. You have to
have these critical minerals. It is projected we are going to have
a 400 to 600 percent increase in demand for those minerals; for
graphite and lithium, a 4,000 percent increase.
Look, we can’t just wish this stuff to happen. We have got to
have a cohesive strategy. This administration says no to oil and gas
from the United States, yes to Saudi Arabia and Iran and Ven-
ezuela. They say no to critical minerals that are needed for renew-
able energy. That is a none-of-the-above energy strategy. It is fail-
ing the American people, it is failing the environment, and it is,
unfortunately, failing our energy security and economic impacts as
well.
I yield back.
Statement for the Record
Rep. Suzanne Bonamici
Hearing on ‘‘Climate Smart from Farm to Fork: Building an Affordable and
Resilient Food Supply Chain’’
Select Committee on the Climate Crisis
July 15, 2022
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Thank you, Chair Castor, and thank you to our witnesses. Strengthening our food
supply chain and addressing food waste is critical to combatting the climate crisis.
The Environmental Protection Agency projected in a 2021 report that food loss and
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6
waste in the United States contributes to an estimated 170 million metric tons of
carbon emissions annually.1 Helping schools address food waste and supporting nu-
trition standards will benefit our students and our planet.
As Chair of the Education and Labor Committee’s Civil Rights and Human Serv-
ices Subcommittee, I have been working for the past year to develop a comprehen-
sive plan to update our federal child nutrition programs. The Child Nutrition Reau-
thorization is long overdue and strengthening these programs would help reduce
food waste in our school systems.
In 2010, President Obama signed into law the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, di-
recting the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to improve the nutrition stand-
ards in the Child Nutrition programs, including the National School Lunch Program
and School Breakfast Program. Critics of the initiative allege that these improve-
ments to school nutrition standards have increased food waste in our public schools.
This criticism is unfounded. A study by the National Institutes of Health found
that updated nutrition standards did not lead to increased food waste and positively
improved child nutrition.2 Child nutrition programs are a key component of overall
student health and an important way to provide students with nutrient-dense foods.
Although nutrition standards have not resulted in more food waste, we can do more
to help schools address the food waste issue. Food service in institutional settings,
such as school systems, is responsible for approximately 8 percent of total food
waste.3 Providing school food authorities with best practices, enhancing school food
service training, and investing in kitchen equipment upgrades are better ways to
address food waste than undermining nutrition standards.
I am leading the Healthy Meals, Healthy Kids Act, a new Child Nutrition Reau-
thorization, with Chairman Bobby Scott. This bill would support new funding to
help schools acquire equipment and training to expand scratch cooking capacity,
which will both reduce food waste and enhance opportunities for students to eat
fresh, nutritious foods. This bill would also provide $10,000,000 to schools to imple-
ment food waste auditing, prevention, and education. These much-needed provisions
in the Healthy Meals, Healthy Kids Act are similar to the bipartisan School Food
Recovery Act that I co-lead with Representatives Pingree and Newhouse.
Additionally, the timing of lunch in schools has an important effect on food waste.
For example, schools that schedule recess before lunch are shown to have lower food
waste.4 The Healthy Meals, Healthy Kids Act directs USDA to commission a study
on the time lunch is served and when recess is scheduled, then establish a taskforce
to issue guidance and best practices using this information. This is similar to legis-
lation, the Healthy Meal Time Act, that I lead with Congresswoman Schrier. Pro-
viding schools with the resources and information they need to best support stu-
dents will empower them to lead on food waste prevention.
As members of Congress, we must focus on the health of our children, and that
includes both ending food insecurity and protecting our planet. By committing to
evidence-based policies, including strong nutrition standards and food waste reduc-
tion programs, we can further our goal of making sure every child has an oppor-
tunity to meet their potential and live healthy, productive lives.
Ms. CASTOR. Now I am going to welcome our witnesses. Thank
you all for being here. We are very focused on how we improve the
food supply chain to lower cost for consumers, so please keep that
at the center of your testimony, along with the climate solutions,
how we reduce the impacts of the climate crisis.
Ms. Dana Gunders is the Executive Director of ReFED. Ms.
Gunders’ leads ReFED’s work to end food waste and loss across the
1 Buzby, Jean, Food Waste and its Links to Greenhouse Gases and Climate Change, United
States Department of Agriculture, January 24, 2022.
https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2022/01/24/food-waste-and-its-links-greenhouse-gases-and-
climate-change
2 Cohen et al., Impact of the New U.S. Department of Agriculture School Meal Standards on
Food Selection, Consumption, and Waste, National Institute of Health, April 2014, https://
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3994463/.
3 Gunders et al, Wasted: How America is Losing up to 40 Percent of its Food from Farm to
Fork to Landfill, Natural Resources Defense Council,
https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/wasted-2017-report.pdf.
4 Ethan A. Bergman, PhD, RD, CD, FADA; Nancy S. Buergel, MS, RD, CD; Timothy F.
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Englund, PhD; and Annaka Femrite, MS, RD, The Relationship of Meal and Recess Schedules
to Plate Waste in Elementary Schools, Journal of Child and Nutrition Management, School Nu-
trition Association, Fall 2004.
https://docs.schoolnutrition.org/newsroom/jcnm/04fall/bergman/bergman1.asp
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U.S. food system. She authored a landmark 2012 report ‘‘Wasted:
How America is Losing Up to 40 Percent of its Food from Farm to
Fork to Landfill,’’ and wrote the ‘‘Waste-Free Kitchen Handbook.’’
Ms. Gunders has previously worked as a Senior Scientist with the
National Resources Defense Council.
Mr. Kent Swisher is the President and CEO of the North Amer-
ican Renderers Association. Mr. Swisher leads NARA’s work to rep-
resent the rendering industry, which repurposes meat products
that would otherwise be considered inedible, such as fat and bone.
He is a member of the USDA’s Trade Advisory Committee on Ani-
mals and Animal Products, and previously worked at the Conti-
nental Grain Company, U.S. Grains Council, and the American
Seed Trade Association.
Dr. Melinda Cep is the Vice President for Natural Solutions and
Working Lands at National Audubon Society. Dr. Cep works to ad-
vance natural climate solutions and conservation on working lands,
such as rice fields, ranchlands, and forests. A trained veterinarian,
she previously served as a Senior Advisor and Deputy Chief of
Staff at the United States Department of Agriculture.
Ms. Elly Brown is Co-Executive Director of the San Diego Food
System Alliance. Ms. Brown co-leads the Alliance’s work to build
a healthy and sustainable food system in San Diego County. Prior
to joining the Alliance, Ms. Brown worked in nonprofit consulting
at Root Causes, and is an independent advisor to nonprofits, foun-
dations, and social enterprises.
Without objection, the witnesses’ written statements will be
made part of the record.
With that, Ms. Gunders, you are now recognized to give a 5-
minute presentation of your testimony. You are recognized.
STATEMENTS OF DANA GUNDERS, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR,
REFED; KENT SWISHER, PRESIDENT AND CEO, NORTH
AMERICAN RENDERERS ASSOCIATION; DR. MELINDA CEP,
VICE PRESIDENT, NATURAL SOLUTIONS AND WORKING
LANDS, NATIONAL AUDUBON SOCIETY; AND ELLY BROWN,
CO–EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, SAN DIEGO FOOD SYSTEM ALLI-
ANCE
STATEMENT OF DANA GUNDERS
Ms. GUNDERS. Good morning. Thank you for that introduction. In
addition to that, I am also the mother of two children, who last
summer had 5 weeks of canceled camp and postponed school due
to wildfires and smoke. My 7-year-old sometimes has trouble sleep-
ing because she is afraid a fire will come during the night.
Climate change is real and present in our lives, and I truly ap-
preciate your action on the issue.
I was asked to present the climate impacts of the entire food sys-
tem and food waste. That is like covering all of energy and energy
efficiency in 5 short minutes. Yet, unlike energy, food is an often
overlooked and massive factor in the climate crisis. It produces 23
to 42 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions globally. Just the
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footprint of uneaten food is more than that of the entire aviation
industry. And without interventions, that footprint is projected to
increase by one-third by 2050.
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8
Beyond causing emissions, the food system is part of the solution.
It also deeply is vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, with
agricultural productivity already estimated to have declined 21 per-
cent due to changes in climate.
Given this critical role, one hearing on food is simply not enough,
and I encourage a much deeper dive, perhaps even adding a food
section to your Congressional Action Plan.
One often overlooked component of climate solutions is timing.
Because greenhouse gases are cumulative, saving one ton of green-
house gases annually is 10 times more valuable if it can start next
year than if it starts 10 years from now. As one key climate leader
said, time is more important than tech. New is good, but now is
better.
In contrast to other sectors, food solutions are available now. In
addition, they are fundamental to addressing methane, whose
short-term impacts make it critical to address sooner.
And beyond just climate, improving our food system offers oppor-
tunities to address food insecurity, biodiversity loss, water scarcity
and even create jobs.
In my written testimony, I go into more detail on four solution
areas to consider. The first is encouraging a shift in diet away from
animal products, which are the largest source of U.S. methane.
Beef in particular has by far the largest footprint. Just offering the
Impossible Whopper, a meat alternative, allowed Burger King to
save emissions equivalent to over 500 million passenger car miles
in 1 year.
Next, a move towards climate-friendly ag practices is a huge op-
portunity to both reduce emissions and sequester carbon in the soil.
Third, protecting grasslands from being converted to cropland is
critical, especially in this moment when rising food and fuel prices
create additional incentives for farmers to expand into new land.
Lastly, and my focus area, reducing food waste is an immediate
strategy that inherently addresses all of the above mentioned im-
pacts. Imagine walking out of the grocery store with three bags,
dropping one in the parking lot and not bothering to pick it up. It
seems crazy, but that is essentially what is happening across the
country today.
Thirty-five percent of food in the U.S. goes uneaten, over $400
billion worth. The average family of four spent almost $2,000 in
2019 on food they never ate. And just imagine how that dropped
grocery bag must look to the 38 million food-insecure Americans
who could be fed three times over with the amount of food that is
wasted.
If all of our country’s uneaten food was grown in one place, this
megafarm would cover more land than Nebraska, Missouri, and
Oklahoma combined, and use as much water as more than 50 mil-
lion American homes. It would harvest enough food to fill a
semitruck every 20 seconds all year. But instead of being eaten,
that food would go straight to a landfill, where it would emit meth-
ane as it decomposed. In fact, food is the number one contributor
to landfills today, and landfills are the third largest source of meth-
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ane.
All told, the climate impact of uneaten food in the U.S. is equiva-
lent to 58 million cars annually. Wasting less food increases sup-
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9
ply, which makes food more affordable. Often people jump to solu-
tions like composting, but preventing food waste is far more effec-
tive from a financial and a climate perspective.
The good news is, unlike many of the thorny issues I am sure
you deal with, this one is solvable. We have seen momentum start
to build, with over 200 global food companies making commit-
ments; companies, including Kroger, General Mills, Compass
Group, successfully reporting reductions of 19 to 33 percent; and
huge growth in private investment, including $2 billion in 2021
alone, more than double the previous year.
Nevertheless, even with all this momentum, at best, we have re-
duced our food waste by only 2 percent per capita since 2016. The
U.K. has achieved a 27 percent reduction in food waste.
Some key steps to consider include funding a national awareness
campaign to target consumers and a national public-private part-
nership to engage businesses; incentivizing local action through
funding for state and local governments; increasing donation
through adjustments to tax incentives and liability protections; and
what I think is the lowest hanging fruit, standardizing food date
labels to prevent consumers from discarding food prematurely.
Wasting less food is something everyone can get behind, and in
some cases, there is even money to be saved. The time to act is
now.
Thank you.
[The statement of Ms. Gunders follows:]
TESTIMONY OF
DANA GUNDERS, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF ReFED
HEARING ENTITLED ‘‘CLIMATE SMART FROM FIELD TO FORK:
BUILDING AN AFFORDABLE AND RESILIENT FOOD SUPPLY CHAIN’’
BEFORE THE HOUSE SELECT COMMITTEE ON THE CLIMATE CRISIS
MAY 24, 2022
Good afternoon, Chairwoman Castor, Ranking Member Graves, and Members of
the Committee. Thank you for inviting me to testify today. My name is Dana
Gunders, and I am the Executive Director of ReFED, a national nonprofit whose
mission is to end U.S. food loss and waste by advancing data-driven solutions. I’m
also the author of a widely-quoted report on food waste, Wasted: How America is
Losing Up to 40 Percent of Its Food from Farm to Fork to Landfill and the Waste-
Free Kitchen Handbook, a consumer guide to wasting less food. Pertinent to this
conversation, my organization has researched the impact of U.S. food, and wasting
it, on the U.S. greenhouse gas footprint.
I’m also the mother of two children who last summer, living in the Lake Tahoe
area, had five weeks of canceled camp and the start of elementary school postponed,
all due to wildfires and smoke. My seven-year-old daughter sometimes has trouble
sleeping because she’s afraid a fire will come during the night. Climate change is
real and present in our lives, and thus I truly appreciate that you’re taking inten-
tional action on this issue.
I was asked to present a larger look at the climate impacts of the food system
in addition to touching on food waste. That’s a bit like asking someone to cover all
of energy, and then cover energy efficiency as well, all in five minutes. So, if there’s
one thing I’d like you to take away from my testimony, it’s that food and agri-
culture is a massive, yet often overlooked, factor in the climate crisis. Each
of the aspects you’ll learn about today merit their own hearing if you’re to walk
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away with a true sense of the legislative possibilities. Please consider this very
much an overview.
Food has a complex relationship to the climate crisis with four distinct aspects
to consider:
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• First, it is a driver by producing greenhouse gasses. The most recent report
from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
published this February estimated our food system is responsible for 23%-42%
of total greenhouse gas emissions globally.1 In the U.S, food system emissions
are about 1.15–1.5 Gt/year, or about 22% of total emissions.2 And that’s without
including the methane emissions from landfills, which are the third largest
source of methane. Just the greenhouse gas footprint of uneaten food is more
than that of the entire aviation industry (commercial, military, and private).
• Second, agriculture is a solution, as soils on farms offer more potential to absorb
carbon than almost any other mitigation strategy.
• Third, it is a risk, as growing food demand is one of the main drivers of defor-
estation and other land conversion. If we do not deploy interventions to mitigate
greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture and the food system, they are pro-
jected to increase 30–40% by 2050 in order to feed our growing population.3
• Lastly, it is extremely vulnerable to the effects of climate change. Agricultural
productivity has been estimated to already have declined 21% due to changes
in climate.4 Crop failures, droughts, and other natural disasters are, at this
point, inevitable. They will impact the livelihoods of farmers and food workers
and lead to less available and more expensive food. Indigenous communities,
communities of color, low-income communities, and the elderly will continue to
be disproportionately affected by climate change. Today, more than 820 million
people suffer from undernourishment worldwide—that number will only grow
as global warming further raises temperatures.
The timing of solutions is critical. We often talk about emission goals for 2030 or
2050, but that discussion ignores the fact that greenhouse gasses are cumu-
lative. A change that will save one ton of greenhouse gasses annually is ten times
more valuable if it can start next year than if it starts ten years from now. Food
and agriculture solutions are available now. In contrast to other sectors, many
food and agriculture solutions do not need five years of research and development
(R&D) followed by another five years of scaling and deployment, making them an
extremely important lever for us to deploy now. In addition, they are fundamental
to addressing methane, which is critical to address in the short term because of
its higher intensity short term impacts.
Put more simply by Dr. Jonathan Foley, Executive Director of the well-known cli-
mate mitigation organization Project Drawdown, ‘‘Time is more important than
tech, new is good but now is better.’’
And beyond just climate, improving our food system offers opportunities to ad-
dress food insecurity, biodiversity loss, and water scarcity.
Considered together, this makes investing in comprehensive and aggressive miti-
gation and adaptation efforts for food and agriculture an enormous opportunity
within the climate action puzzle. At the end of this document, I have included a key
chart from the most recent IPCC report that illustrates the greenhouse gas mitiga-
tion opportunities associated with some of these solutions, as well as how they com-
pare with mitigation strategies in other sectors. Within that, there are four solution
areas to consider.
Dietary Shifts
Livestock-related emissions represent about 42% of U.S. agricultural emissions,5
and that doesn’t even include the emissions from feed, to which approximately half
of U.S. cropland is devoted. Direct livestock emissions come from two main drivers,
both of which mainly produce methane, and when considered together, are the
largest source of U.S. methane.6
The first driver is enteric fermentation, a result of the way cattle digest food, and
is due to beef and dairy production. The second driver is emissions from manure—
while a much smaller component than enteric fermentation, it is interesting to note
that methane from manure management has increased by 70% since 1990, primarily
due to the increasing use of liquid systems in manure management.7
1 IPCC Sixth Assessment Report, pdf page 152 https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg3/
2 Crippa et al, https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-021-00225-9
3 IPCC 2019 Special Report on Climate Change and Land, Chapter 5,
https://www.ipcc.ch/srccl/chapter/chapter-5/
#:∼:text=emissions%20from%20crop%20and%20livestock%20are,
4 Lobell, et al, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-021-01000-1
5 EPA, Chapter 5, https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/inventory-us-greenhouse-gas-emissions-
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and-sinks-1990-2020
6 EPA,, https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/overview-greenhouse-gases#methane
7 EPA, Chapter 5, https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/inventory-us-greenhouse-gas-emissions-
and-sinks-1990-2020
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A comprehensive report by the EAT-Lancet Commission estimates that in North
America, we need to cut our beef consumption in the U.S. to one-sixth of
what it is today in order to stay within the climate goals set forth in the
Paris Agreement.8 While there is some work being done to impact cattle digestion
with feed additives, the main solution to these livestock-related emissions is a tran-
sition to menus and diets with a larger percentage of grains, legumes, and vegeta-
bles, and a lower percentage of meat, especially beef. This is a mitigation strat-
egy that is available to us immediately and is projected to have a larger
mitigation potential than shifts to electric vehicles, public transportation,
and efficiency in aviation—combined.
Ultimately, the climate footprint of beef is far larger than that of any other food,
as illustrated by this chart:
Some key policy initiatives that have been suggested include:
• Support for plant-based meat alternatives. These alternatives are proving
successful with consumers and food businesses alike, as evidenced by nearly
every fast-food chain now offering a plant-based option. Policy support includes
funding for alternative protein R&D and facilitating the entry of plant-based
meat alternatives to the market via allowing for labeling that consumers recog-
nize. In its Fiscal Year 2022 budget, Congress dedicated $4.5 million in appro-
priations to alternative protein research through U.S. Department of Agri-
culture’s (USDA) Agricultural Research Service. This offers a program that
could be built up further.
• Support for regenerative grazing. There is initial evidence that regenerative
grazing operations create potential to sequester carbon in grasslands. Funding
more extensive research on this may identify new potential to lower the beef
footprint.
• Research for feed additives. Funding research can help identify feed addi-
tives that can lower emissions related to cattle’s digestion. While this will not
offset the need to lower overall meat consumption, it is nevertheless an impor-
tant component for the meat production that will continue.
Climate-Friendly Agricultural Practices
Agricultural soil management represents 53% of U.S. agricultural emis-
sions. The largest source is synthetic fertilizer application, but this category also
includes application of crop residues, organic fertilizer such as compost, and land
application of sludge. Nitrogen—one of the main nutrients in fertilizer—can interact
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8 EAT-Lancet Commission,
https://eatforum.org/eat-lancet-commission/eat-lancet-commission-summary-report/
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12
with the soil to produce nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas more than 300 times more
potent in its warming potential than CO2.
Separately, soil offers enormous potential as a carbon sequestration sink.
Finding ways to both reduce the emissions and promote sequestration in agriculture
has great potential. However, changing agricultural practices and building soil car-
bon is not a fast process. We must begin now if we are to truly see the bene-
fits.
With the Farm Bill around the corner, we have a key opportunity to inte-
grate policies that enlist farmers as a key part of the climate solution. Some of the
main aspects to consider include:
• Amending conservation compliance requirements and expanding them
to all recipients of Farm Bill commodity support programs. With about
400 million acres enrolled in crop insurance programs, expanding conservation
compliance requirements to go beyond Title I commodities and include Title XI
crop insurance premium subsidies is a key opportunity with great potential for
quick and widespread adoption of climate-focused practices on farms. Increasing
both technical assistance and enforcement mechanisms would also be critical to
success.
• Promoting perennial crops. Providing funding for breeding research and
technical assistance to promote perennial crops in grain and oilseeds can help
to transition to cropping systems that are more drought tolerant, use less fer-
tilizer, and store more carbon.
• Supporting a broad transition to proven agroforestry practices. Experts
estimate that a nationwide transition to proven practices such as silvopasture
and alley cropping could offset 33% of domestic fuel emissions. These practices
can be promoted by providing technical assistance, adding a specific funding
pool to the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), and creating tai-
lored agroforestry crop insurance and microloan programs.
Prevent Grassland Conversion
Like forests, grasslands play a critical role in sequestering and storing carbon,
and similar to global deforestation, destruction of grasslands can also have dev-
astating climate impacts. During each year over the last decade, we’ve seen the
grasslands of the Great Plains being replaced by croplands at comparable rates to
the clearing of the Brazilian Amazon. When grasslands are tilled, soil organic
carbon stocks are reduced by 30% on average, releasing vast amounts of
carbon into the atmosphere. Restoring the full amount of carbon to croplands
can take 350 years.9 Thus, protecting these native ecosystems in the first place is
the most effective climate strategy.
Across the U.S. and Canadian Great Plains, approximately 2.6 million acres of in-
tact grassland—an area larger than Yellowstone National Park—were plowed up in
2019 to make room for row-crop production, primarily wheat, corn, and soy. Nearly
600,000 acres were lost to the plow in the Northern Great Plains region alone—one
of the world’s only remaining intact grassland habitats and home to important wild-
life including the black footed ferret, plains bison, and several species of birds not
found anywhere else.10
Preventing conversion to cropland is key at this moment, as rising food
and fuel prices create additional incentives for farmers to expand into new
land. Some key policy opportunities to preserve these critical native ecosystems in-
clude:
• Support the proposed North American Grasslands Conservation Act.
Modeled after the North American Wetland Conservation Act, this legislation
will help to kickstart the voluntary protection and restoration of our grasslands.
• Expand Sodsaver nationwide. Expansion of this program will greatly reduce
the negative impacts of crop insurance.
• Rethink renewable fuel standards and policies. Discourage the conversion
of grasslands to row crops for biofuel production and incentivize the planting
of perennial grasslands on marginal cropland.
Food Loss and Waste
Reducing food loss and waste is an immediate mitigation strategy that inherently
addresses all of the above-mentioned impacts by reducing overproduction, and all
of the impacts that are associated with it. In addition, it reduces unnecessary meth-
ane in disposal. As this is my primary area of expertise, I will spend the remainder
of my testimony focused on it.
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9 World Wildlife Fund, https://www.worldwildlife.org/projects/plowprint-report
10 Ibid.
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Imagine walking out of the grocery store with three bags, dropping one in the
parking lot, and not bothering to pick it up. Seems crazy, but that is essentially
what is happening across the country today—35% of food in the United States
today goes uneaten.
We are leaving entire fields unharvested, eliminating produce solely for its cos-
metics, throwing out food just because it’s past or even close to its ‘‘sell-by’’ date
even though it’s perfectly safe to eat, inundating restaurant patrons with massive
portions, and eating out instead of using what’s in our fridge.
As a country, our food waste amounts to over $400 billion, or nearly 2%
of GDP, 11 spent each year on wasted food. The average family of four spent over
$1,900 in 2019 on food they never ate, a number that is sure to be higher with to-
day’s food prices.
Beyond money, we are missing an opportunity to provide sustenance and nutri-
tion—just one third of the country’s wasted food could provide the caloric
equivalent of the entire diet for the 38 million food insecure Americans, 12
if only it could be distributed properly.
Furthermore, we are investing tremendous amounts of resources in this uneaten
food. If all of our country’s wasted food was grown in one place, this mega-
farm would cover more land than Nebraska, Missouri, and Oklahoma com-
bined, use as much water as more than 50 million American homes, and
enough fertilizer to grow all the plant-based foods in the country. The farm
would harvest enough food to fill a 40-ton tractor trailer every 20 seconds. Many
of those trailers would travel thousands of miles, distributing food to be kept cold
in refrigerators and grocery stores for weeks. But instead of being purchased, pre-
pared, and eaten, this perfectly good food would be loaded onto another line of
trucks and hauled to a landfill, where it would emit methane as it decomposed.
In fact, food is the number one contributor to landfills today, more than
any other material. And landfills are the third largest source of methane
in the U.S. Furthermore, food decomposing in those landfills is one of the biggest
sources of that landfill methane.
Globally, if food waste were a country, it would use more water than any
other country on the planet and rank third in its greenhouse gas footprint
after China and the U.S. In America alone, the greenhouse gas footprint of
uneaten food is estimated to be equivalent to 58 million cars annually.13
This is because we are both creating huge impacts through overproduction, but also
through emissions once food decomposes in landfills. The IPCC shows that the miti-
gation potential of addressing it would be equivalent to that of a shift to public
transportation.
11 ReFED Insights Engine,
https://insights-engine.refed.org/food-waste-monitor?break_by=destination&indicator=us-dollars-
surplus&view=detail&year=2019
12 USDA,
https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/food-security-in-the-u-s/key-statistics-graphics/
#:∼:text=In%202020%3A,with%20adults%2C%20were%20food%20
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insecure.
13 ReFED Insights Engine,
https://insights-engine.refed.org/food-waste-monitor?break_by=sector&indicator=total-mtco2e-
footprint&view=detail&year=2019
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Much climate discussion has focused around energy, and there’s a clear parallel
between wasting less food and energy efficiency. Both food and energy are resource
intensive industries that face increasing global demand as a result of population
growth and increasing standards of living. At some point, we realized the easiest,
cheapest way to meet growing demand for energy was to reduce it in the first place.
We are only now starting to realize the same approach is merited for food. Without
taking waste reduction into account, the United Nations Food and Agri-
culture Organization projects that food production will grow 60 percent by
2050 in order to match projected demand. 14 It’s estimated almost a quarter
of that projected demand could be offset through halving the amount of
food that goes to waste. 15
We have not always been so wasteful. In the U.S., we waste 50% more food per
capita than we did in the 1970s.16 This means that there was once a time when
we wasted far less, and that therefore gives me hope we could waste less today.
To help evaluate solutions, the EPA has established a ‘‘food recovery hierarchy.’’
It essentially echoes the traditional ‘‘reduce, reuse, recycle’’ ethic that says first and
foremost we should prevent waste from happening in the first place. In fact, pre-
venting food waste is at least twice as effective than composting it from a
climate mitigation perspective, and some estimates are far greater. 17 When
that’s not possible, we should aim to use surplus to feed those in need. After that
animal feed is preferred, and then uses such as composting and anaerobic digestion.
14 United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, ‘‘World Agriculture Towards 2030/2050,
The 2012 Revision.’’ 2012. http://www.fao.org/docrep/016/ap106e/ap106e.pdf
15 Lipinski, B. et al. ‘‘Reducing Food Loss and Waste’’ World Resources Institute. 2013.
www.wri.org/sites/default/files/reducing_food_loss_and_waste.pdf. Estimate is 22% of projected
demand could be offset through halving the amount of food lost or wasted.
16 K.D. Hall, J. Guo, M. Dore, C.C. Chow, National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and
Kidney Diseases, ‘‘The Progressive Increase of Food Waste in America and Its Environmental
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Impact,’’ PLoS ONE 4(11):e7940, 2009.
17 This varies by food type. On average, ReFED greenhouse has factors show source reduction
to be more than 4 times as effective, but EPA’s WARM tool shows a value for source reduction
that is 30 times better than composting.
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15
Causes of Food Waste
Food waste is a complex problem with losses occurring throughout the supply
chain from ‘‘farm to fork.’’ There are far too many reasons to cover in a few short
minutes. But I expect that over the course of the next week, as you go about your
lives, you will notice a few yourselves. Nevertheless, I will try to give you a sense
of a few:
• Crops are sometimes left unharvested because their appearance does not meet
strict quality standards imposed by supermarkets, or because of damage caused
by pests, disease, labor shortages, or weather. When market prices are too low,
growers may leave some crops in the field if the price will not cover their costs
to harvest, wash, sort, package, and transport the product.
• In catching seafood, there is enough bycatch discarded to provide total yearly
protein for 1.6 to 2 million people.18
• Grocery stores are in the challenging position of having to carry a vast array
of products at every hour of the day. This high level of inventory—the cost of
consumer convenience—inevitably leads to waste.
• At restaurants, large portions, large menus, and poor training for food handlers
contribute to food waste. All-you-can-eat settings have a particularly egregious
amount of waste between consumers taking too much and the challenge of do-
nating excess product that’s been left out.
• Lastly, consumers represent the largest portion of food waste of any segment
of the supply chain. Poor food management, lack of kitchen knowledge, and
larger portions are key contributors there.
A detailed description of many drivers at each stage of the supply chain can be
found in the report Wasted.19
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18 D.C. Love, et al. ‘‘Wasted Seafood in the United States: From Net to Plate’’. Global Environ-
mental Change 35 (2015) 116–124
19 NRDC, https://www.nrdc.org/resources/wasted-how-america-losing-40-percent-its-food-farm-
fork-landfill
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Promising Examples
The good news is, unlike many of the thorny issues I’m sure you deal with, this
one is solvable. No one wants to waste food. And somehow, people strangely love
diving into this topic. I’ve been amazed at how much energy and enthusiasm people
have for telling me about the new way they found to use up wrinkled tomatoes, or
the effort they made to wrap up the leftovers from their office lunch.
And because there are direct savings to be had, this enthusiasm has extended to
the business and entrepreneurial communities as well. At ReFED, we have analyzed
over 40 solutions to food waste, and most of them net positive in both the financial
and climate lens. A list of the top twenty solutions from a climate perspective is
at the end of this testimony, and a full list can be seen on our site.20 Some key ex-
amples to cite include:
• More than 200 global food companies have committed to reducing food loss and
waste via a handful of platforms that encourage these commitments.
• Companies including Kroger, Campbell’s, General Mills, and Compass Group
are successfully reducing their food waste, reporting reductions of 19–33% over
just the past few years.
• Entrepreneurs abound with all sorts of solutions to food waste leading to suc-
cessful businesses. At ReFED, we have more than 1,000 for-profit and non-prof-
it organizations in our ‘‘solution provider’’ directory. And many of them are re-
ceiving significant investment from various types of funders. We have docu-
mented huge growth in private investment, including $2 billion in 2021 alone—
more than double the previous year.21
• The United Kingdom achieved a 27% reduction in food waste from 2007–
2018 with a longstanding consumer campaign and a large public-private part-
nership as two strategies vital to this success.
Policy Solutions
In the U.S., there are a range of policy solutions that can help reduce food loss
and waste. More than 50 signatories including Kroger, Unilever, Marriott, and
Google, supported the U.S. Food Loss and Waste Policy Action Plan which includes
a range of policy recommendations.22 In addition, ReFED and other key nonprofits
in the space recently published recommendations specific to the Farm Bill.23
It should also be noted that in 2015, the USDA, Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA), and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) signed on to a national goal
of reducing food waste by 50% by 2030. While I appreciate the sentiment, none of
the agencies have put a concerted effort or budget into addressing the issue in the
seven years since those goals have been in effect. For instance, it took inclusion in
the last Farm Bill to create just one position in all of USDA focused on the topic.
Of the $4 billion in American Rescue Plan Act funding that went to USDA to im-
prove food supply chains, none has been committed to this issue. In fact, our models
show that the amount of uneaten food in the U.S. rose until 2016 and has stayed
constant since. Even per capita, we have only declined by 2% since that 2016 peak.
Thus, a much more concerted effort is needed if we are to come anywhere near the
U.S. national goals.
Thus, it’s clear that Congressional action is essential. The two documents I men-
tioned above are much more thorough, but some key opportunities to highlight in-
clude:
Fund State and Local Efforts
Because waste is legislated at the state and local level, federal funding can be di-
rected to encourage and support their transition to lower waste economies. To accel-
erate the widespread adoption of prevention, measurement, rescue, and recycling
strategies and build the nation’s organic waste recycling infrastructure, the Admin-
istration and Congress should provide annual funding for states and cities
that adopt targets in line with the national target to reduce food loss and
waste by 50% by 2030 and outline strategies that include prevention and measure-
ment along with infrastructure for rescue and composting. The Zero Food Waste
Act introduced in the 117th Congress and sponsored by Representatives
Brownley (D-California), Kuster (D-New Hampshire), and Pingree (D-Maine) as well
as Senator Booker (D-New Jersey) would provide funding to states, tribes, and mu-
nicipalities for food waste prevention, reduction, and measurement.
20 ReFED Solutions Database, https://insights-engine.refed.org/solution-database
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21 ReFED Capital Tracker, https://insights-engine.refed.org/capital-tracker
22 Food Waste Action Plan, https://foodwasteactionplan.org/
23 Opportunities to Reduce Food Waste in the 2023 Farm Bill,
https://chlpi.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/2023-Farm-Bill-Food-Waste.pdf
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Addressing Consumer Waste
Engaging the public is critical because 1) much of the waste occurs in households
and by consumers in restaurants, and addressing it will require a change in con-
sumer behavior; 2) consumer expectations drive many of the business practices that
lead to waste, so changing those expectations could allow social license for busi-
nesses to change those practices; and 3) engaging the public can also channel indi-
viduals to impact change through their work or other spheres of influence, be they
restaurant workers or college educators. Efforts in the U.K. to address this have
been quite successful, showing a 31% reduction in consumer food waste, and actions
in Denmark have shown similar success. The most successful model seems to be na-
tional-scale campaigns that create a core library of assets that can then be cus-
tomized and used by the food industry, local and national governments, and commu-
nity organizations. Funding should be provided for a national scale consumer
education campaign.
In addition, a range of opportunities exist to both educate and address waste in
K–12 settings. The bipartisan School Food Recovery Act, introduced by Rep-
resentatives Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) and Dan Newhouse (R-Washington) in the
117th Congress, would direct the USDA to provide funding for schools to engage in
food loss and waste reduction efforts—enlisting teachers and students to turn cafe-
terias into classrooms by measuring and reducing their waste, publicly aggregating
and reporting waste data, and driving greater awareness of food loss and waste so-
lutions across our communities. This model has already been piloted, demonstrating
possibilities in decreasing student plate waste, increasing students’ fruit and vege-
table consumption, and cutting down on cafeteria plastic and packaging waste.
Fund a National Public-Private Partnership
Public-private sector partnerships can accelerate food waste reduction, with an es-
timated 80:1 return. In the U.K., the Courtauld Commitment has engaged almost
every major food company in the country in reducing food loss and waste. It is now
in its fourth iteration due to continued success.
In the U.S., the Pacific Coast Food Waste Commitment has now engaged seven
key retailers including Albertsons, Kroger, and Walmart in its efforts to show how
cities, states, and businesses can work together pre-competitively to share best prac-
tices, discuss common-sense policymaking, and address shared sustainability chal-
lenges around food loss and waste. Expanding this program nationally offers the
best way for the government to directly engage with the food industry to understand
helpful policy drivers and encourage business action. The current United States
Food Loss and Waste 2030 Champions program, co-hosted by the USDA and EPA,
has tripled since it began in 2016 and has a strong group of companies.24 However,
it lacks the aspects that have made public-private partnership programs successful
in other countries. Congress could direct the agencies and provide funding
to create a platinum tier of the U.S. Food Loss and Waste 2030 Champions
program in a way that requires companies to measure and report their waste lev-
els, provides more assistance and dialogue around policy, and enables pre-competi-
tive collaboration.
Standardizing Food Date Labels
Refining and standardizing the system of date labeling on food offers one of the
most concrete steps to quickly reducing the amount of edible food being thrown out
both in households and businesses. Date label confusion is a key cause of consumer
food waste, estimated to drive nearly 85% of Americans to, at times, prematurely
toss food that is still safe to eat.25 Perhaps you may not even be aware that those
dates you see on food are not federally regulated and typically do not indicate the
safety of food, but rather when it’s at its freshest. Food can often safely be consumed
weeks or even months after those dates.
Instead of federal regulation, each state decides whether and how to regulate date
labels, leading to a patchwork of inconsistent regulations and myriad date labeling
terms such as ‘‘sell by,’’ ‘‘best by,’’ ‘‘expires on,’’ and ‘‘use by.’’ Manufacturers have
broad discretion over what dates to affix to their food products, often using dates
that typically reflect food quality and taste rather than food safety. Yet businesses,
individuals, and even state regulators frequently misunderstand date labels and in-
terpret them to be indicators of safety, leading to the unnecessary waste of whole-
24 See either USDA site, https://www.usda.gov/foodlossandwaste/champions, or EPA site,
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https://www.epa.gov/sustainable-management-food/united-states-food-loss-and-waste-2030-
champions
25 Johns Hopkins University, https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2019/survey-misunderstanding-food-
date-labels-linked-with-higher-food-discards
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18
some food. Some states—currently about 20—even restrict or forbid the sale or do-
nation of past-date foods that are still safe to donate and eat. These inconsistent
and misguided state laws lead to wholesome foods unnecessarily being discarded
rather than donated.
The bipartisan Food Date Labeling Act, introduced in the 117th Congress by
Representatives Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) and Dan Newhouse (R-Washington) and
Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut), which establishes a nationwide stand-
ard for these two types of dates. The bill also critically requires FDA and USDA
to educate consumers about the meaning of these date-label terms. Effective imple-
mentation of consumer education is essential for date label reform to result in
meaningful change in consumer behavior.
Enable Surplus Food Donation
Nationally, less than 10% of food is donated rather than wasted. A handful of key
legislations could help increase the amount of rescued food significantly.
Under current law, the federal enhanced tax deduction for food donations can only
be claimed when food is donated to a non-profit that does not charge the end recipi-
ent for the food. Expanding the federal tax deduction to include nonprofit
sales can incentivize donations to more recipients, including social supermarkets
that sell donated food at an extremely discounted price or food rescue organizations
that charge recipients a minimal fee to help offset the costs of home delivery. Add-
ing transport services for donated food as a separate cost eligible for an
enhanced tax deduction will also help overcome one of the most expensive bar-
riers for businesses and food rescue organizations to get excess food to those in need.
Furthermore, the existing federal enhanced tax deduction for food donations is not
well-suited to farmers and is not often claimed by them, as many farmers operate
at low profit margins and do not make enough income to claim a tax deduction. To
incentivize farmers to donate surplus crops and offset some of the costs of donation
(including labor), Congress could provide an alternative tax credit that farmers
could opt to claim instead of the existing enhanced deduction.
The bipartisan FIND Food Act, introduced in the 117th Congress by Representa-
tives Shontel Brown (D-Ohio), Chellie Pingree (D-Maine), Fred Keller (R-Pennsyl-
vania), and Troy Balderson (R-Ohio), would broaden existing tax incentives for food
donation in order to cover donated food sold at a low cost, to provide a deduction
for transport of donated food, and to offer a tailored tax credit that farmers can
claim as an alternative to the enhanced deduction.
Congress could also appropriate additional funds to support programs—such as
the Farm to Food Bank Program created within The Emergency Food Assistance
Program (TEFAP) in the 2018 Farm Bill—to help cover the harvesting, proc-
essing, packaging, and transportation costs of donating agricultural prod-
ucts to local food banks.
Lastly, Congress could strengthen liability protections for food donation in a num-
ber of ways, including: 1) broadening protections to include food items sold at a low
cost and ‘‘direct donations,’’ or food donations offered directly from certain food busi-
ness donors to end recipients; 2) granting administrative authority of the federal
Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Food Donation Act to USDA and directing USDA to
write regulations that clarify the language of the Act; and, 3) requiring USDA to
implement an education campaign on donation liability protection for potential food
donors and food rescue organizations.
The bipartisan Food Donation Improvement Act, introduced in the 117th Con-
gress by Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut) and Patrick Toomey (R-
Pennsylvania) and Representatives James McGovern (D-Massachusetts), Chellie
Pingree (D-Maine), Dan Newhouse (R-Washington), and Jackie Walorski (R-Indi-
ana), would expand liability protection along these lines, and would require USDA
to issue regulations demystifying the liability protection.
Encourage Food Scrap Recycling, Especially to Feed
Bananas will always have peels. With even the most aggressive efforts to prevent
and rescue food that’s currently going to waste, there will always be food scraps.
When those scraps are used for animal feed, they offset the need for dedicated feed
crops. Sophisticated approaches are emerging such as start-up Do Good Foods,
which pasteurizes and pelletizes food waste from grocery stores and converts it into
poultry feed. Having recently received $169 million in funding, they are planning
to replicate their model quickly.
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State laws vary and some restrict waste to feed in some ways. To maximize the
potential for food scraps diversion to animal feed, Congress should require the
USDA to write guidance encouraging states to update their laws around food scrap
feeding to animals, explaining why states should remove any unnecessary restric-
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19
tions that do not exist within the federal-level animal feed laws. Congress should
also create a tax incentive for private businesses to divert food waste to animal feed
that is lesser than the enhanced tax deduction for businesses to donate surplus food
to food insecure individuals in order to ensure food goes to its most beneficial use.
In Conclusion
Changes within food and agriculture offer an enormous opportunity to reduce our
greenhouse gas emissions now, while time is of the essence, and policy has a huge
role to play in doing so. I hope today will be just the beginning of your inquiries,
and that you’ll make space to investigate solutions to different aspects of the food
system individually, as they merit.
In particular, reducing food waste entails a set of solutions that are available im-
mediately, without any major technological advances required. It’s also something
everyone can get behind. No one wants to see good food going to waste and, in many
cases, there is even money to be saved. Should you pursue solutions to this problem,
you’ll find there is a broad base of support behind you. Thank you for the oppor-
tunity to discuss these issues with you today.
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Ms. CASTOR. All right. Thank you. Thank you for your testimony.
Next, Mr. Swisher, you are now recognized for 5 minutes to give
a summary of your testimony.
STATEMENT OF KENT SWISHER
Mr. SWISHER. Good morning, Chairwoman Castor, Ranking Mem-
ber Graves, and members of the Select Committee. I am Kent
Swisher, President of the North American Renderers Association.
Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today.
NARA is the trade association representing the interests of the
rendering industry in the United States and Canada. NARA’s 32
member companies operate 178 rendering plants and represent
over 95 percent of the North American production. The industry in-
cludes independent renderers, many of which are multigeneration
family-owned companies, as well as integrated packer-renderers
that process only their own animal byproducts.
The rendering industry accounts for over $10 billion in U.S. eco-
nomic activity and employs tens of thousands of people across the
country in full-time jobs with benefits. Renderers have operations
in both rural and urban communities.
Rendering is the cooking and drying of meat and other animal
byproducts not used for human consumption. Renderers are often
referred to as the original recyclers and are a major force in ensur-
ing a clean and healthy environment, upcycling the animal prod-
ucts that we do not want to or cannot eat into valuable proteins
and fats for livestock feed, pet food, and industrial uses.
The U.S. rendering industry is essential to the reduction of car-
bon emissions into the atmosphere. Americans consider only about
50 to 60 percent of an animal edible, which means the other 40 to
50 percent is deemed inedible. Instead of wasting about half the
meat we produce, rendering upscales these leftovers into essential
ingredients for countless new products.
I would like to make three key points in my testimony today.
First, the rendering industry is an essential pathway in creating a
sustainable food system. Each year, renderers recycle a huge vol-
ume, more than 56 billion pounds of meat and bone leftovers. Ren-
dering saves cropland. More than 13.6 million additional acres
would have to be planted to make up for the protein and energy
deficit that would result without rendered ingredients used in pet
food, biofuels, and livestock feed.
Rendering prevents alternative disposal methods which lead to
unnecessary GHG emissions. In fact, an average rendering plant
sequesters five times more greenhouse gas emissions from the envi-
ronment than it emits. If not for rendering, the nationwide capacity
of available landfill space would be full in only 4 years. And if the
byproducts were disposed of in landfills, during decomposition, they
would emit large volumes of greenhouse gases detrimental to air
quality, and runoff could threaten surface water quality.
Rendering is important and a critical part of the solution to re-
ducing food waste. It is a solution that directly addresses food
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waste by finding practical uses for a wide range of leftovers that
consumers consider inedible. Rendering makes the food production
footprint smaller.
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23
Second, renderers recycle billions of pounds of used cooking oil
from food items like french fries into biodiesel and renewable die-
sel. Biodiesel and renewable diesel are important to reduce carbon
emissions in the transportation sectors. In 2010, the EPA con-
cluded that biomass-based diesel produced from used cooking oil
and other recycled waste greases reduced lifecycle greenhouse gas
emission by 86 percent compared to 2005 petroleum emissions.
Finally, renderers have been collecting and repurposing animal
byproducts for decades, transforming them into valuable new prod-
ucts. These products are used extensively as ingredients in live-
stock and aquaculture feeds and pet food. Rendered proteins and
fats provide essential nutrients and energy to keep animal agri-
culture and pets healthy and growing. In addition, rendered pro-
tein meals are a source of calcium and phosphorus, which can be
used in animal feeds and organic fertilizer, helping reduce the reli-
ance on imported fertilizer.
Renderers are early adopters of a resilient bio-based solution to
reclaim and upcycle food waste. We are an essential element to the
Select Committee’s goal of achieving substantial and permanent re-
ductions in pollution and other activities that contribute to climate
crisis.
NARA supports a level playing field among recyclers to prevent
unfair market advantage and unequal competition for animal by-
products. Renderers understand the need to fairly compete for raw
material and goods, but not against companies receiving govern-
ment financial incentives, providing them with added advantage.
Federal support should not divert leftover meat and bones and
other animal byproducts from traditional renderers to other recy-
clers.
In closing, NARA looks forward to being a part of the discussion
as your committee considers future legislative initiatives. We would
appreciate your recognition of the important role of rendering in
sustainability and reducing carbon emissions. The rendering indus-
try respectfully recommends that any legislative effort adequately
recognize the early leaders in GHG reduction in order to avoid un-
intended consequences in the future.
Thank you.
[The statement of Mr. Swisher follows:]
TESTIMONY OF KENT SWISHER
PRESIDENT & CEO
NORTH AMERICAN RENDERERS ASSOCIATION
July 15, 2022
‘‘Select Committee on the Climate Crisis hearing entitled ‘‘Climate Smart from Farm
to Fork: Building an Affordable and Resilient Food Supply Chain’’
Good morning Chairwoman Castor, Ranking Member Graves and members of the
Select Committee. I am Kent Swisher, President & CEO of the North American
Renderers Association (NARA). Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you
to discuss pathways to create a sustainable food system that is resilient in the face
of climate change.
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NARA is the trade association representing the interests of the rendering industry
in the United States and Canada. NARA’s 32 member companies operate 178 ren-
dering plants and represent over 95 percent of North American production. The in-
dustry includes independent renderers, many of which are multi-generation family-
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24
owned companies, as well as integrated packer-renderers that process only their
own animal by-products.
The rendering industry accounts for $10 billion in U.S. economic activity and em-
ploys tens of thousands of people across the country in full-time jobs with benefits.
Rendering is unique among agricultural industries with operations in rural and
urban communities. Rendering is the cooking and drying of meat and/or other ani-
mal by-products not used for human consumption.
Renderers are often referred to as the original recyclers. For centuries, the U.S.
rendering industry has enabled society to follow this wise advice: ‘‘Nothing should
go to waste.’’ Renderers are a major force in ensuring a clean and healthy environ-
ment, upcycling the things we do not want to or cannot eat—animal bones, fat, or
hides—into sustainable, usable, and higher-value new products for farmers, con-
sumers, and industrial uses.
The U.S. rendering industry is essential to the reduction of carbon emissions into
the atmosphere. Americans consider only about 50–60 percent of an animal edible,
which means the other 40–50 percent is deemed inedible. Instead of wasting about
half of the meat we farm and buy, rendering reclaims these unwanted ‘‘leftovers’’
in huge volumes and upcycles them into ingredients for countless new products—
recycling 99 percent of this unwanted meat.
I would like to make three key points in my testimony today.
First, the rendering industry is an essential pathway in creating a sustainable
food system. Each year, renderers recycle a huge volume—more than 56 billion
pounds—of meat and bone leftovers from livestock and poultry farming, meat proc-
essing, supermarkets, meat lockers, and restaurants. Rendering also saves cropland.
More than 13.6 million additional acres would have to be planted to make up for
the protein and energy (fats/oils) deficit that would result without rendered ingredi-
ents used in pet food, biofuels, and livestock feed.
Rendering prevents alternative disposal methods which lead to unnecessary
greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In fact, an average rendering plant sequesters 5
times more greenhouse gas emissions from the environment than it emits. If not for
rendering, the nationwide capacity of available landfill space would be full in only
four years. And if by-products were disposed of in landfills, during decomposition
they would emit large volumes of greenhouse gases detrimental to air quality and
runoff could threaten surface water quality.
Rendering is an important and critical part of the solution to reducing food
waste—and one that many do not know of or talk about when having the sustain-
ability conversation. It’s a solution that directly addresses food waste worldwide by
finding practical uses for a wide range of meat products, used oil, and other food
materials consumers consider inedible. Rendering recycles and reuses this material
to create nutritious pet food, animal and aquaculture feed, biodiesel, and countless
other useful products—making rendering one of the most sustainable ways to reduce
food waste. By reclaiming and upcycling otherwise discarded meat leftovers, ren-
derers make our food production footprint smaller.
Second, renderers recycle billions of pounds of used cooking oil from food items
like french fries into biodiesel, renewable diesel, and other essential ingredients.
The rendering industry contributes to reduction of carbon emissions by providing a
large volume of its recycled ingredients as feedstock to produce biodiesel and renew-
able diesel. Used cooking oil reclaimed by renderers provides 18 percent of biodiesel
feedstock and rendered animal fats, 13 percent. Biodiesel and renewable diesel are
important to reduce carbon emissions in the transportation sector. Biodiesel’s feed-
stocks supplied by rendering have very low lifecycle carbon emissions. In 2010, EPA
concluded that biomass-based diesel produced from used cooking oil and other recy-
cled waste greases reduced lifecycle GHG emission by 86 percent compared to aver-
age 2005 petroleum emissions.
Finally, renderers have been collecting and repurposing these animal by-products
for decades. Using technology-intensive controls running high temperature cookers,
centrifuges, and presses, renderers transform this leftover material into valuable
new products, i.e., high quality animal proteins and fats. These products are used
extensively as ingredients in food for livestock, poultry, aquaculture, and family
pets. Rendered proteins and fats provide essential nutrients and energy to keep ani-
mal agriculture and pets healthy and growing. In addition, rendered protein meals
are a source of calcium and phosphorous, which can be used in animal feeds and
organic fertilizer, helping reduce the reliance on imported fertilizer. Consumers need
and use other products made from rendered proteins and fats, such as soaps, paints,
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varnishes, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, crayons, textiles, lubricants, rubber products,
plastics, agricultural fertilizers, and even explosives and fireworks. Renderers are
early adopters of a resilient, bio-based solution to reclaim and upcycle food waste.
We are an essential element to the Select Committee’s goal of achieving substantial
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25
and permanent reductions in pollution and other activities that contribute to the cli-
mate crisis.
NARA supports a level playing field among recyclers to prevent unfair market ad-
vantage and unequal competition for animal by-products. Renderers understand the
need to fairly compete for raw material inputs but not against companies receiving
government financial incentives providing them with added advantage. Federal sup-
port should not divert leftover meat, bones, other animal by-products from tradi-
tional renderers to other recyclers.
Moreover, the livestock, poultry and pet food industries need the essential protein
and nutrients provided by rendered animal proteins. Renderers want to be able con-
tinue supplying these important customers with an ample and competitively-priced
supply of animal feed and pet food.
In closing, NARA looks forward to being a part of the discussion as your com-
mittee considers future legislative initiatives. We would appreciate your recognition
of the important role of rendering in sustainability and reducing carbon emissions.
The rendering industry respectfully recommends that any legislative effort ade-
quately recognize the early leaders in GHG reduction in order to avoid unintended
consequences in the future.
Thank you for this opportunity to appear before the Committee today and discuss
the role of rendering in ensuring the U.S. has a sustainable, climate-smart food sup-
ply chain, and I look forward to your questions.
Ms. CASTOR. Thank you, Mr. Swisher.
Dr. Cep, you are now recognized for 5 minutes to provide a sum-
mary of your testimony. Welcome.
STATEMENT OF DR. MELINDA CEP
Dr. CEP. Thank you. I am honored to testify this morning on be-
half of the National Audubon Society, representing more than 1.8
million members together with 45 million Americans who enjoy
birdwatching. I appreciate the opportunity to discuss how we can
mitigate climate change and support biodiversity on working lands
while building a resilient supply chain.
I would like to start by telling you about a visit to the Dakotas.
I was meeting with ranchers, and one of them told me he knew the
conservation plan that had been developed through our Conserva-
tion Ranching Initiative was working. He knew because his 90-
year-old father, who still lived on the ranch, told him that the front
pasture sounded like it had when he was a kid, because long-ab-
sent birds had returned. And he knew that a healthy grassland
landscape, once again teeming with birds, was a sign of its im-
proved productivity for grazing.
I could explain our bird survey results or share a lot of statistics
with you this morning, but I think that stories like that dem-
onstrate the impact of Audubon’s partnership with farming, ranch-
ing, forestry, and fishing families across America. They know intu-
itively that birds are indicators of the health of the places that they
love. So just the way they track the amount of grass during a
drought or the water level during a rainy season, they talk about
bird songs as the sound of success. They know from experience
what scientists have proven: that their livelihoods are intertwined
with biodiversity and climate change.
Global experts have concluded that one of the most important
available actions we can take is implementation of sustainable ag-
riculture and forestry practices. Doing so would increase carbon
stores, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, support wildlife habitat,
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and improve our capacity to adapt to climate change. People who
farm, ranch, fish, and produce timber feel the effects of climate
change firsthand.
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26
From 1980 through 2016, weather and climate disasters with
losses of $1 billion or more averaged 6.3 events per year. But for
the last 5 years, that has nearly tripled, to 17.8. We think of the
wildfires in California, Oregon, Washington, and Colorado, the hail
storms in Texas, the flooding in Louisiana, the hurricanes, tropical
storms, and tornadoes in Florida and all around the Southeast, the
derechos in the Midwest, and the droughts and heat waves in the
West. That list is not the last 5 years. Those were all last year.
That escalation happened alongside the accelerating loss of bio-
diversity. North America today has only two-thirds of the wildlife
it had in the 1970s, two-thirds. Wild bird populations have likewise
plummeted by 30 percent, but the good news is that not every bird
has suffered that fate. Species that communities and governments
have committed to protecting through financial investments and
legislative safeguards have rebounded.
I believe that the success stories shared in my written testimony
demonstrate how climate smart agriculture and forestry can sup-
port biodiversity, resilient supply chains, and other important out-
comes like water quality and quantity.
Those stories—the sharp-tailed grouse, which thrives in grass-
lands that are sustainably grazed and also store carbon and water;
the swamp candle, which nests in bottomland hardwood forests
that soak up floodwater and improve water quality; and the tri-
colored blackbird, adapting to habitat loss by nesting in forage
fields at dairy farms—lift up the many benefits of optimizing work-
ing lands to support carbon storage, wildlife habitat, food produc-
tion, water and more.
Audubon believes that such conservation must be and can be
beneficial for all, including private landowners across the country
and consumers. We recognize that different solutions are needed in
different places, and we work to support durable conservation
across communities and landscapes.
The conservation forestry research and extension policies and
programs authorized in the Farm Bill are important to delivering
those promises, but there is significant more interest in these pro-
grams than there is capacity. For example, 46 percent of valid ap-
plications for a single Federal conservation program went un-
funded, meaning producers submitted and were interested in im-
plementing $1.1 billion worth of voluntary conservation proposals
above and beyond what the program could deliver in just 1 year.
We can and should expand these programs while also promoting
the marketplace, private sector investments, and innovative part-
nerships like the ones in my written testimony. Such work is only
part of what is needed to stem the tide of climate change and bio-
diversity loss. If we can scale up these programs to meet their de-
mand, we can work together to improve climate, biodiversity, and
water outcomes while simultaneously supporting a resilient supply
chain and thriving communities. We do not face a zero-sum sce-
nario. These goals are not in conflict with one another.
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Thank you for the opportunity today, and I would be happy to
answer any questions.
[The statement of Dr. Cep follows:]
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27
‘‘Climate Smart From Farm to Fork: Building an Affordable and Resilient
Food Supply Chain’’
House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis
May 24, 2022
Written Testimony of Melinda Cep
Vice President, Natural Solutions & Working Lands, National Audubon
Society
Good afternoon. Thank you, Chairwoman Castor, Ranking Member Graves, and
Members of the Committee for convening this hearing.
I am honored to testify on behalf of the National Audubon Society, representing
more than 1.8 million members together with the 45 million Americans who enjoy
birdwatching.1 We have over 460 affiliated chapters, 23 state and regional pro-
grams, and 41 sanctuaries and nature centers across the country. I appreciate the
opportunity to discuss how we can mitigate climate change and support biodiversity
on working lands while building a resilient supply chain.
I would like to start by telling you about a visit I made last year to one of our
ranching partners in the Dakotas. Audubon was meeting with ranchers for our Con-
servation Ranching initiative, and one of them, the third generation to raise cattle
on that land, told me he knew our conservation plan was working. He knew because
his ninety-year-old father had told him that for the first time in forever, the front
pasture sounded like it did when he was a boy because long-absent birds had re-
turned.
I could explain our Bird Friendliness Index or bird survey results, but stories like
that one from South Dakota demonstrate the impact of Audubon’s partnerships with
farming, ranching, logging, and fishing families across America. These men and
women know intuitively that birds are indicators of the health of the places they
love, so just the way they track the amount of grass during a drought or the water
level of their streams during the rainy season, they talk about bird songs as the
sound of success. They know from experience what scientists have proven by experi-
ment: that their livelihoods are inextricably intertwined with biodiversity and cli-
mate change.
Two years ago, when global experts on biodiversity and climate change came to-
gether for a first-of-its-kind workshop, they concluded that one of the ‘‘most impor-
tant available actions’’ to simultaneously protect biodiversity and mitigate the ef-
fects of a changing climate is implementing sustainable agricultural and forestry
practices at scale.2 With these practices, we can increase carbon storage in farm-
land, grasslands, and forests; reduce greenhouse gas emissions; support wildlife
habitat; and improve our capacity to adapt to climate change.3
Through partnerships like the one I just told you about, Audubon connects land-
owners and managers with the technical and financial resources they need to imple-
ment conservation practices that promote biodiversity and fight climate change.
The people who farm, ranch, log, and fish in this country feel the effects of climate
change every day. We hear from ranchers who are considering hay to supplement
grazing; farmers who have seen a spring so wet they wonder when they can plant
and a fall so wet they worry when they will have a harvest; fishermen who say that
salinity changes are devastating their catches while rising sea levels threaten their
family homesteads; and foresters who have watched storms like Hurricane Michael
devastate timber stands.
Since fiscal year 2018, Congress has provided the US Department of Agriculture
(USDA) $15 billion for ad hoc disaster assistance to agricultural producers, on top
of the federal crop insurance program and another $2.6 billion through farm bill dis-
aster programs.4 From 1980 to 2016, weather and climate disasters that entailed
losses of over $1 billion averaged 6.3 per year; but for the last five years, that aver-
age has nearly tripled, with an average of 17.8 weather or climate disasters topping
1 U.S. Census Bureau. (2018, October). National Survey of Fishing, Hunting, & Wildlife-Asso-
ciated Recreation, https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2018/demo/fhw-16-nat.html
2 IPBES. (2021, June 10). Tackling Biodiversity & Climate Crises Together and Their Com-
bined Social Impacts [press release].
https://ipbes.net/sites/default/files/2021–06/
20210606%20Media%20Release%20EMBARGO%203pm%20CEST%2010%20June.pdf
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3 Portner, H., Scholes, R., Agard, J. 2021. IPBES–IPCC co-sponsored workshop report on bio-
diversity and climate change. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.4782538
4 Congressional Research Service. (2022, May 9). Farm Bill Primer: Disaster Assistance.
https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF12101
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$1 billion every single year.5 Think of the wildfires in California, Oregon, Wash-
ington, and Colorado; the hailstorms in Texas; the flooding in Louisiana; the hurri-
canes, tropical storms, and tornadoes in Florida, Alabama, and all around the
Southeast; the derecho in the midwest; and, the droughts and heatwaves in the
West. That’s not the last five years, those were all last year, in 2021.
The escalation in weather and climate disasters has happened alongside the accel-
erating loss of biodiversity. North America today has only two-thirds of the wildlife
it had in the 1970s, which is to say that in only a half century, we have lost one-
third of all the wildlife that called this continent home. Wild bird populations in the
United States and Canada have likewise plummeted by thirty percent in that same
period.6 But the good news is that not every bird has suffered this fate: those spe-
cies that communities and governments have committed to protecting through finan-
cial investments and legislative safeguards have rebounded, including waterfowl,
game birds, and some raptors.
We at Audubon are honored to be part of saving these species, including through
our innovative partnerships with landowners and managers to conserve and restore
bird habitats. We recognize that different types of solutions and interventions are
needed in different places, and we work to support durable conservation across com-
munities and landscapes. I would like to tell you more about some of our success
stories, which I believe demonstrate how compatible climate-smart agriculture is
with biodiversity.
Take the sharp-tailed grouse, a charismatic bird with brown, gold, white, and
black plumage. Its habitat is threatened by the disappearance of America’s grass-
lands. When those lands are converted from long-rooted, native grasses to anything
else, we lose more than one-third of the carbon stored in the soil as well as habitat
for grassland wildlife. To date, we have lost more than sixty percent of this unique
landscape and more than half of its bird population.7 8 But in places like California,
Colorado, North Dakota, Oregon, and Texas, Audubon supports keeping ranchers on
the ranch through our conservation ranching initiative. Through this program, Au-
dubon works with ranchers to develop conservation plans, certify the ranch as bird
friendly, and support those value added products in the marketplace through an Au-
dubon certification seal. Why would a wildlife organization develop and operate a
program that puts a bird friendly land seal on packages of beef and bison products?
Because this pioneering, market-based program supports the voluntary conservation
and restoration of grasslands—which in turn supports grassland birds, climate miti-
gation, water quantity, and water quality. It is because of this program that a nine-
ty-year-old rancher heard the sounds of his childhood again when the sharp-tailed
grouse, upland sandpipers, and other birds returned to his ranch. We have seen an
increase in both bird abundance and functional diversity of birds on certified
ranches.9
In a different landscape, eastern forests, Audubon works with certified foresters
and landowners to voluntarily integrate bird-friendly management. Our work shows
that landowners can earn an income from private timberland, maintain the land-
scape, and support wildlife—including birds like the prothonotary warbler, nick-
named the ‘‘swamp candle’’ because of its brilliant colors, which breeds nearly exclu-
sively in wet bottomland hardwood forests. Active forest management that preserves
the swamp candle’s habitat also helps create a more resilient landscape, as these
forests soak up flood water, improve water quality, sequester carbon, and contribute
to the surrounding rural economies. Audubon is protecting other warblers through
similar forest management partnerships and programs, so if you are looking for
maple syrup to pour on your pancakes this weekend, look for our ‘‘produced in bird
friendly habitats’’ seal, another one of our important market-based programs, con-
necting maple producers with consumers.
Similarly, out in California, we work with dairy farmers and the Natural Re-
sources Conservation Service to support the imperiled tricolored blackbird. This fas-
cinating species is the last remaining large-scale, land-based colonial nesting bird.
They nest in large colonies, sometimes as many as one hundred thousand nests be-
5 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Dis-
asters. Retrieved May 12, 2022, from https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/billions/
6 Rosenberg, K., Dokter, A., Blancher, P. (2019). Decline of the North American Avifauna.
Science, 366 (6461), 120–124. DOI: 10.1126/science.aaw1313
7 National Audubon Society. (2019). North American Grasslands and Birds Report. https://nas-
national-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/audubon_north_american_grasslands_birds_report-final.pdf
8 Rosenberg, K., Dokter, A., Blancher, P. (2019). Decline of the North American Avifauna.
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Science, 366 (6461), 120–124. DOI: 10.1126/science.aaw1313
9 National Audubon Society. (2021, March 16). Bird Friendliness Index Shows Audubon Con-
servation Ranching is Bringing Grassland Birds Back. https://www.audubon.org/news/bird-
friendliness-index-shows-audubon-conservation-ranching-bringing-grassland
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29
fore their numbers plummeted. Adapting to the disappearance of their natural habi-
tat, the tricolored blackbird now nests in forage fields at dairy farms in California’s
Central Valley. Audubon works with dairy farmers to provide technical and finan-
cial assistance for their operations, so they can continue to deliver safe, affordable
dairy products to the American people.
The tricolored blackbird, the swamp candle, the sprague’s pipit: these are just a
few of the incredible species we are working to save while promoting climate mitiga-
tion and sustainable agriculture and forestry. Audubon believes that durable con-
servation must be, and can be, beneficial for all, including the dairy farmer, the
rancher, and the private landowners across the country. We see the conservation,
forestry, research, and extension policies and programs authorized in the farm bill
as an important part of supporting such durable conservation. We rely on a mix of
federal funds—including USDA programs like Regional Conservation Partnership
Program (RCPP), Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), Conservation
Stewardship Program (CSP), and Conservation Reserve Program (CRP); and the
Fish and Wildlife Service—state funds, the National Fish & Wildlife Foundation,
and private funding.
But there is significantly more producer and owner interest in these programs
than they have the capacity to deliver. For example, the most recent data from
USDA shows that 46 percent of valid applications for EQIP went unfunded, which
means producers submitted $1.1 billion of voluntary conservation proposals above
and beyond what the program could deliver in a single year.10 In testimony before
the House Committee on Agriculture earlier this year, Dr. Joe Outlaw of the Agri-
cultural and Food Policy Center at Texas A&M University noted that ‘‘USDA con-
servation programs (CRP, CSP, and EQIP) that have incentivized a broad array of
conservation practices have worked well in the past. They have just been under-
funded.’’ 11 Based on what we hear from our partners, Audubon believes that we can
and should expand these federal programs while also promoting the carbon and eco-
system marketplace, private sector investments, and innovative nonprofit partner-
ships like the ones I have described today.
Such work is only part of what is needed to stem the tide of climate change and
biodiversity loss. We must also achieve net-zero emissions and invest in natural in-
frastructure.
For example, in Louisiana, the state has partnered with federal agencies to pro-
tect the Mississippi River, which much of America relies on as a superhighway for
food and commercial goods and which countless other species rely on, too. Diversion
projects, like the Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion and the River Reintroduction
into Maurepas Swamp Project, make the wetlands more resilient, serve as storm
surge protection for communities along the Mississippi, and provide crucial habitat
for species like the bald eagle. And, in Florida the state has invested in climate re-
silience efforts, including restoration of the Everglades.
Audubon’s work across the country points to the same conclusion: we do not face
a zero sum scenario. Protecting the bald eagle or the swamp candle or the actual
swamp does not threaten our supply chain, but can strengthen it. And far from re-
sisting our conservation programs, our partners on ranches, rivers, farms, and for-
ests across the country have an even greater appetite for these programs than we
can presently meet. If we can scale up these programs to meet their demand we
can work together to improve climate, biodiversity, and water outcomes while simul-
taneously creating a resilient food supply chain and helping our rural and coastal
communities thrive. Thank you.
Ms. CASTOR. Thank you, Dr. Cep.
Next, Ms. Brown, you are recognized for 5 minutes to provide a
summary of your testimony.
STATEMENT OF ELLY BROWN
Ms. BROWN. Thank you.
Chair Castor, Ranking Member Graves, and members of the Se-
lect Committee, thank you so much for the invitation today. I am
10 U.S. Department of Agriculture. 2023 USDA Explanatory Notes—Natural Resources Con-
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servation Service. https://www.usda.gov/sites/default/files/documents/29-2023-NRCS.pdf
11 Outlaw, J. (2022, March 16). Testimony Before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee
on Agriculture. https://docs.house.gov/meetings/AG/AG00/20220316/114494/HHRG-117-AG00-
Wstate-OutlawJ-20220316.pdf
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30
Elly Brown, Co-Executive Director of San Diego Food System Alli-
ance.
We are a diverse and inclusive network in the San Diego region
committed to cultivating an equitable and sustainable food system.
Most recently, we launched a 10-year plan and movement, San
Diego Food Vision 2030, with the understanding that the time to
reimagine and reconfigure our food system is now, and change
must take root at the community level.
Food Vision 2030 was created through a 2-year participatory
process, including over 250 organizations and 3,000 individuals,
primarily individuals that are most marginalized by our dominant
system: low-income residents, Tribal communities, farmers, fisher-
man, food and farmworkers, immigrant-owned food businesses.
And Food Vision 2030 outlines a set of objectives to achieve three
goals: cultivate justice, fight climate change, build resilience.
For cultivating justice, access to resources connected to our food
system are divided along racial lines, whether it is access to
healthy food, access to capital, land, housing, business ownership,
due to history and continued inequities.
Second, fighting climate change. As Dana pointed out, the truth
is our industrialized dominant food system is the biggest culprit to
the climate crisis. And at the same time, a localized food system
that regenerates and recirculates resources is the most natural way
to go, and truly is an impactful solution.
Third, building resilience. The pandemic has truly disrupted the
food system, increase in food insecurity, business impacts. We have
small-scale food producers in our region, small farmers and fisher-
men, small local food businesses that really struggle to survive
every single day.
We need to do a better job of creating better safety nets for com-
munities and more nimble systems that can really tap into these
local assets that we have and not reliant on the larger industri-
alized system that is just not nimble enough.
As we look beyond the impacts of the pandemic, there is a sig-
nificant opportunity to invest in a more localized food system to in-
crease the amount of local food that is retained in our region, cre-
ating a multiplier effect.
According to a 2019 analysis by the San Diego Regional EDC,
food system activities in our region generate over $35 billion in eco-
nomic output and account for 15 percent of jobs in the region, rep-
resenting a major contribution to the regional economy.
So my requests for the Federal Government, two really big ideas
but very necessary: one, shifting power of the food system to com-
munity governance, to bioregional community governance. The cur-
rent racial and climate inequities of the food system can directly
be attributed to where power resides. We must shift power away
from top-down control to local community governance and bio-
regions, a region that is defined by the characteristics of the nat-
ural environment rather than man-made. We need to center equity
and values in our governance and allow for there to be adaptability
for each foodshed. ‘‘Foodshed’’ is a term that is defined by the food
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resources in a particular bioregion.
Second, simultaneously the second ask is to resource, fund nim-
bly, and humanize the processes. Resources from the U.S. Govern-
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31
ment rarely move nimbly to support community food projects led
by communities. We need to remove burdensome barriers around
permitting, applications, monitoring, compliance, and reporting if
we are to truly create a supportive environment and resource
impactful projects on the ground. Climate dollars, even if acces-
sible, come with too many strings attached around monitoring and
reporting. We need to build resource funding mechanisms which in-
clude both trust and accountability. Currently, the system feels off-
balance, placing way too much emphasis on accountability mecha-
nisms that is excessive and unrealistic.
We need to humanize, simplify, and streamline if we are truly
to meet the climate and equity goals.
I wanted to end with an emphasis that, really, our goal should
not be to fix our supply chain or fix our broken food system. It
should be to transform it completely by confronting the injustices
that underpin it and redistributing power across communities. And
yes, it is a multigenerational effort.
Our Federal Government is one of the most important stake-
holders in this transformation, and I encourage all of us to ap-
proach this issue with open minds and creativity.
Thank you very much.
[The statement of Ms. Brown follows:]
Testimony of Elly Brown
Co-Executive Director
San Diego Food System Alliance
U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on the Climate Crisis
Community-Driven Regional Food System: Healing from the Climate Crisis
May 24, 2022
Chair Castor, Ranking Member Graves, and members of the Select Committee,
thank you for the invitation today and recognizing the important role that the food
system plays in the climate crisis. I am Elly Brown, Co-Executive Director of San
Diego Food System Alliance (Alliance).
The Alliance is a diverse and inclusive network that works across sectors to pro-
mote collaboration, influence policy, and catalyze transformation in the food system.
Our work is grounded in our shared platform, San Diego County Food Vision 2030,1
and is informed by the experience and expertise of our network and the broader
community. Together, we are working to cultivate justice, fight climate change, and
build resilience in our food system.
Food System and the Climate
The food system is interconnected to the climate crisis. The industrialized global
food system is one of the biggest drivers for global greenhouse gases (GHGs), while
simultaneously being extremely vulnerable to the changing climate. On the other
hand, a regionalized and community-driven food system is one of the most prom-
ising solutions to the climate crisis. Building soil health and closely connecting to
our food sources, while confronting the injustices and redistributing power, allows
us to ensure sustainability into our future.
We have really lost our way as a society. The industrialization of the global food
system has directly contributed to the climate crisis. Land use changes like cutting
down forests to make fields, practices that lead to soil erosion, fossil fuel use for
equipment, transportation, refrigeration, and processing, and methane emissions
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1 San Diego County Food Vision 2030, https://sdfoodvision2030.org/
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32
from livestock and food rotting in landfills make up 21–37% of global greenhouse
gas emissions 2.
Increased greenhouse gas emissions in turn trigger climate changes—droughts,
fires, and other extreme weather events—that threaten our food supply, the viabil-
ity of farms and fisheries, producer and worker livelihoods, ecosystem resilience,
and human health. Low-income, Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC)
communities, and other socially disadvantaged communities are disproportionately
impacted by the consequences of climate change.
These negative impacts, both for nature and society, can be directly attributed to
the consolidated power within the dominant economic system. Market concentration
has created a culture of cheap and fast food for short-term gains. Rather than nour-
ishing communities, the industrialized food system, heavily influenced by the deci-
sions of this country, often plays a destructive role. Instead of keeping us healthy,
it fuels chronic disease. Instead of supporting resilient communities, it exploits
workers, worsens racial and income inequality, and drains money from local econo-
mies. Instead of working with nature in a regenerative, sustainable way, today’s in-
dustrial farming methods devastate ecosystems, pollute air and water, and accel-
erate climate change. There is a significant cost to these social and environmental
externalities, making us vulnerable and limiting our ability to build resilience in our
food system and our society as a whole.
A way forward is to recognize interdependence as a core value, as indigenous com-
munities have been for millennia. Interdependence is the recognition that one’s well-
being is tied to another’s, as well as nature’s. The earth is needing us now to heal
and restore balance by shifting power to communities and respecting nature in the
highest regard.
San Diego County Food Vision 2030
Rooted in a participatory process, the Alliance launched San Diego County Food
Vision 2030 3 with the understanding that the time to reimagine and reconfigure our
food system is now. The development process of Food Vision 2030 involved in-depth
research and broad engagement, including over 250 cross-sector organizations and
nearly 3,000 individuals, primarily low-income residents, tribal communities, food
producers, businesses, and workers. Food Vision 2030, visualized through a report
and an interactive website and indicator dashboard, outlines 10 objectives posi-
tioned to transform our regional food system to accomplish 3 goals: 1) cultivate jus-
tice, 2) fight climate change, and 3) build resilience. The 10 objectives are to:
1. Preserve agricultural land and soils, and invest in long-term food production
2. Increase the viability of local farms, fisheries, food businesses, and workers
3. Scale up local, sustainable, and equitable food value chains
4. Expand integrated nutrition and food security
5. Improve community food environments
6. Scale up food waste prevention, recovery, and recycling initiatives
7. Elevate wages and working conditions, and improve career opportunities
8. Build a movement that uplifts a local, sustainable, and equitable food system
9. Increase leadership by BIPOC communities across the food system
10. Plan for a resilient food system
There is no question that the current path of our food system is unsustainable
and transformations must take root at the community level. Decisions made about
food have a powerful ripple effect in all aspects of society. Changing the way we
grow food, move food, share food, and think about food ultimately changes the way
we treat the planet and each other. The food system is a powerful lever for trans-
forming our communities, and provides significant opportunities to elevate social,
environmental, and economic equity for all.
As we look beyond the impacts of the pandemic, there is a significant opportunity
to invest in a more localized food system and increase the amount of local food that
is retained in the regional food economy, creating a multiplier effect. According to
a 2019 food system economic impact baseline analysis the Alliance commissioned
with the San Diego Regional Economic Development Corp, food system activities in
San Diego County generate over $35 billion in economic output and account for 15%
of all jobs in the region, representing a major contribution to the regional economy.
2 IPCC, 2019, Climate Change and Land: an IPCC special report on climate change,
desertification, land degradation, sustainable land management, food security, and greenhouse
gas fluxes in terrestrial ecosystems, [P.R. Shukla, J. Skea, E. Calvo Buendia, V. Masson-
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Delmotte, H.-O. Pörtner, D. C. Roberts, P. Zhai, R. Slade, S. Connors, R. van Diemen, M. Ferrat,
E. Haughey, S. Luz, S. Neogi, M. Pathak, J. Petzold, J. Portugal Pereira, P. Vyas, E. Huntley,
K. Kissick, M. Belkacemi, J. Malley, (eds.)], https://www.ipcc.ch/srccl.
3 San Diego County Food Vision 2030, https://sdfoodvision2030.org/
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33
The role of the Alliance to steward Food Vision 2030 forward is through our four
Operating Strategy tactics: 1) Build Networks, 2) Influence Policy, 3) Shift Culture,
and 4) Increase Capacity. Our work is guided by a 21-member diverse Food Vision
2030 Stewardship Committee, a governing body for the broad network around this
movement. Food Vision 2030 Stewardship Committee is a multi-sector committee
representing the diverse set of strategies addressed in Food Vision 2030. The major-
ity of the Food Vision 2030 Stewardship Committee members are organizers from
communities most marginalized by the industrialized food system including food in-
secure neighborhoods, tribal communities, food and farm workers, immigrant owned
businesses, and small farmers and fishermen. Our community organizing partner
committee members are compensated for their involvement with the committee as
well as support with community accountability and inclusion.
Some of the initial policy priority areas to move Food Vision 2030 forward include
public land access and ownership for urban agriculture, wages and conditions for
worker justice, supportive environments for community-wealth building models, and
food recovery infrastructure. The Alliance has taken on an intentional community-
led approach to policy development and prioritization, leveraging the wisdom of the
Food Vision 2030 Stewardship Committee members and the communities they are
engaging with.
The Alliance has also recently completed a co-design process with beneficiaries to
launch the Local Food Economy Lab, a key program of the ‘‘Increase Capacity’’ pil-
lar. The Lab centers equity and community ownership and works to support the via-
bility of small farmers, fishermen, food business owners, and the communities they
serve in San Diego County. We have recently received a 3-year U.S. Department of
Agriculture Regional Food System Partnership implementation grant for the incuba-
tion of the Lab. Through the Lab, we plan to continue our partnership with the Fed-
eral government to achieve the mission of building a local food economy that works
for everyone.
Requests for our Federal Government
To combat the climate crisis, we request the Federal government to engage in a
comprehensive effort to reform the food system through two strategic initiatives:
1. Community Governance: Shift power of the food system to community con-
trol
The current racial and climate inequities of the food system can directly be at-
tributed to where power resides. We must shift power away from industry and
top-down government control to local community governance. We must elevate
the leadership of BIPOC communities who not only bear the brunt of climate
change impacts but also actively practice the traditional wisdom and
worldviews, living in harmony with nature.
While the Federal government has proactively made investments to community
food projects, it has also facilitated the industry-control of the food system
through subsidization and broadly speaking, an economic system tainted by in-
stitutionalized inequities. In order to truly address the climate crisis for the
food system, we must reimagine what democratic governance of our food system
looks like and how to scale this out through in a decentralized manner. A truly
community-governed and accountable food system is the only pathway to ulti-
mately resolving the climate crisis.
2. Resource Nimbly & Enable: Eliminate barriers and move resources to com-
munity-driven food system work nimbly and without strings attached
Resources from the U.S. government rarely move nimbly to support community
food projects led by communities marginalized by the industrial food system
(BIPOC grassroots groups, small farmers, small fishermen, small food entre-
preneurs, etc.). We need to remove burdensome barriers around permitting, ap-
plications, monitoring, compliance, and reporting if we are to create a sup-
portive environment and resource impactful projects on the ground. Climate dol-
lars, even if accessible, come with too many strings attached around monitoring
and reporting. We need to build resource distribution systems which include
both trust and accountability. Currently, the system is off-balance, placing too
much emphasis around excessive and unrealistic accountability mechanisms.
For example, our network partner Foodshed Distro, a small farm aggregation
hub, has recently taken on the leadership challenge of applying for a $5 million
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Federal grant to launch a ‘‘Carbon Sink Incentive Fund Pilot’’. While it’s great
these types of funds are available for small farmers, the match requirement and
other strings make these types of applications incredibly difficult (and nearly
impossible for most).
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34
If we are serious about achieving climate and Justice40 goals, we need to place
our energy on process, governance, and cultural innovations. We need to figure
out how we can humanize and make these processes much more accessible. A
local community-governed mechanism is a way in which decisions can be dis-
tributed about how these resources move to communities more directly. Mean-
while, our U.S. government should invest in deep capacity building and human-
ize processes to eliminate administrative barriers and move resources nimbly
and quickly to community-driven food projects without excessive and unrealistic
accountability requirements.
The common narrative told is that our food system is broken. However, further
examination of the power dynamics illustrates that the system is actually working
in the way it was designed. It concentrates wealth and power in the hands of a few,
while externalizing social and environmental costs.
We produce more than enough food to feed our population. Scarcity is not the
problem. As Frances Moore Lappé has highlighted, people do not go hungry from
a lack of food but rather, from a lack of power—power to access food and power to
acquire land to grow food.
Our goal should not be to ‘‘fix’’ our broken food system. It should be to transform
it completely by confronting the injustices that underpin it and redistributing power
across communities. Our Federal government is one of the most important stake-
holders in this transformation and we encourage all of us to approach this issue
with open-minds and creativity.
Thank you for your commitment to cultivating a just, sustainable, and healthy
food system and addressing the climate crisis.
Ms. CASTOR. Well, thank you, Ms. Brown.
And thanks to all of our witnesses for your insightful and inform-
ative testimony.
Now we will move to member questions. And I am going to recog-
nize Mr. Casten of Illinois first for 5 minutes.
Mr. CASTEN. Thank you, Madam Chair. And thanks to all our
witnesses.
You know, this committee has been around for about 4 years,
and it makes me sad that, after 4 years, many of our same mem-
bership, we continue to tell stories that are about trying to score
political points and calling it science.
You know, our Ranking Member led off by criticizing the Presi-
dent for going to Saudi Arabia. But a while ago you criticized the
President for tapping into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Both of
those are to increase supply, to cut the cost of energy, to cut the
cost of energy for our farmers, to cut the cost of natural gas so that
our fertilizer cost will go down.
And I don’t recall any noise when Donald Trump went to the
Saudis and said, I am going to remove the military from your coun-
try unless you cut down on oil production so that we can increase
the cost of oil so that we can save our oil industry. Price of oil went
up double digits the next day. Crickets.
You do an admirable job of representing your district, Mr.
Graves. You do an admirable job of repeating the talking points of
your party. Your district depends on exporting fossil fuel.
Our fossil fuel industry is trying to sell and produce as much fuel
as they can because they want access to European markets. That
doesn’t make them bad people; it makes them profit-seeking busi-
nesses. We just saw an example of that when that LNG terminal
in Maine caught fire and the domestic price of gas fell.
So what are we going to do for the people who matter? How are
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we going to actually lower cost? We are going to do it by decoupling
from fossil fuel, by not being beholden to Vladimir Putin. We are
not going to do it by scoring cheap talking points.
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35
So let’s talk about the actual science here. If we are going to give
a stable planet to our kids, to not have your kids staying home
from school as the result of a wildfire, we have to not only stop
emitting fossil fuels, we have to go backwards. We have to get back
to 300 and 350 parts per million in the atmosphere.
In order to do that, the only ways that I have seen that actually
profitably take CO2 out of the atmosphere in the agricultural sec-
tor, we can put, you know, direct air capture in, but we are going
to have to pay a lot of money for those.
And so, Dr. Cep, I would like to start with you. As you think
about what tools we have—we hear a lot about approaches from
biochart to short-rotation grazing to cover crops—what are the
ways that we can actually increase the wealth for our farmers that
would reduce as much CO2 from the atmosphere as possible? Be-
cause we are out of time for politicking and we have got to start
doing these things today.
So if you were queen, what are the areas you would like to see
in the agriculture sector that we really focus on pulling CO2 out of
the atmosphere as quickly as possible that make sense for our
farmers?
Dr. CEP. Great question. Thank you, Congressman. I would like
to, if I can, kind of talk a little bit about the structure that is need-
ed to implement the practices in addition to the practices them-
selves.
And I just want to underscore, so much of the type of conserva-
tion work and the type of sustainable practices that need to be im-
plemented in the field at scale, not just kind of isolated, require
substantial technical assistance as you are learning to implement
them. And, frankly, right, like every field is different, every forest
tract is different.
So part of that really relies on having a strong technical delivery
service and system. So whether that is the Natural Resources Con-
servation Service, the technical assistance funding and the staffing
capacity that they have, state agencies, partners, including Audu-
bon staff. You know, we have rangeland ecologists out in the field
helping develop management plans and conservation plans. We
have certified foresters on staff.
So it is both about supporting the practice implementation, but
also supporting the technical assistance, so that local solutions and
what works best for specific soil types and specific microclimates
that folks are producing in is really able to be delivered.
Mr. CASTEN. I know I am tight on time. We have got a program
in Illinois where we have been paying farmers, allow them to re-
duce their crop insurance payments for every acre they put into
cover crops. We have got a program to try to do that nationally.
Do you have any thoughts and comments on that and how broad-
ly applicable that might be for the country?
Dr. CEP. Sure. So I am happy to follow up with you and your
staff on that specific bill. I will admit just, you know, another anec-
dote. I am from the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Maryland has a
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really great state cover crop program that, again, was intended
to—you know, that one was developed with an eye to the Chesa-
peake Bay health, and really resulted in a substantial adoption of
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36
cover crops across—at a voluntary level across private working
lands across the state.
And there are certainly different models and different ways to
work to scale that, so I am happy to work with your office on that
specific bill. But I think that creative solutions to make it finan-
cially feasible for producers to implement those practices across
landscapes, not just in individual fields, is what is needed.
Mr. CASTEN. Okay. I am out of time. Thank you very much.
If anybody does have further comments with our office, I would
also be interested in thoughts on short-rotation grazing and what
that might do to improve soil health, but that is a longer conversa-
tion.
I yield back, Madam Chair.
Ms. CASTOR. Representative Miller, you are recognized for 5 min-
utes.
Mrs. MILLER. Thank you, Chair Castor, thank you Ranking
Member Graves, for having this today.
I don’t think anyone on this committee denies climate change.
Our world has been changing ever since it was created, and we
now have the science in order to deal with it, and we are learning
every day what we can do to change it.
And, Chair Castor, I appreciate your concern over the flooding in
southern West Virginia and Virginia, and recognizing the unique
phenomenon that we have that often when it rains too much, be-
cause of our mountainous terrain, it has to go somewhere, and
when there is too much rain it goes down. My community in Hun-
tington had a flash flood because there were 4 inches of rain that
hit somewhere else, and, boom, there it was. And, you know, my
friends had 9 feet of water in their basements.
So I think what we need to do is work together on proactive solu-
tions that fit our individual communities instead of trying one-size-
fits-all mandates.
I am a bison farmer, and I have owned Swan Ridge Bison Farm
near Milton, West Virginia, for the past 28 years. I am also a mem-
ber of the Farm Bureau. I understand things like epizootic hemor-
rhagic disease, which occurs during droughts. I understand that
sometimes the government does make suggestions or policies that
end up not working, like multiflora rose as a living fence, which
then became a nightmare later for farmers because they were fight-
ing those multiflora roses all through their cropland. And I under-
stand the lack of meat processing plants.
I am acutely aware of the struggles that our farmers and our
ranchers face bringing their goods to the market. They often oper-
ate on such thin margins just trying to make a living, but they
work hard. And I have seen bad years, where they face—when the
harvest isn’t particularly good, and I have seen it when herds suc-
cumb to disease.
As a farmer and a rancher, these things happen, and they are
often out of our control. But there are some crises that we can play
a role in fixing. Unfortunately, those bad policy decisions that have
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pushed inflation and gas prices and diesel prices to record high.
Just this week, we learned that inflation last month was at 9.1 per-
cent, the highest in 40 years.
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For our food supply chains to thrive, it must first have the re-
sources to do so. That means ensuring that we are making it easier
to hire drivers to fix the worsening trucker shortage, lowering fuel
costs for both transportation and farm work, and producing more
fertilizer here in the United States.
It also means not allowing the liberal activists to dictate our en-
ergy and agriculture policies but, instead, why don’t we listen and
take some commonsense approach that balances the needs of our
people with conserving our country for future generations.
Unfortunately, many of the people that live on both coasts where
there is just so much population, they don’t understand that it real-
ly is flyover country that not only feeds you but it heats you.
Mr. Swisher, as a bison farmer myself, I am aware of how impor-
tant it is to make full use of the herd that we raise on our lands.
Those who lived on the lands before us knew that they had to use
every part of the animals they hunted in order to survive. And that
is why I have such respect for your industry.
In your testimony, you mentioned the high-tech process that
some rendering techniques use. Can you explain the supply chain
crisis that we are facing today and how it has impacted your indus-
try and whether that—through deliveries or equipment shortages?
Mr. SWISHER. Thank you, Congresswoman. Yes, the supply chain
crisis has affected us in multiple ways. In one way, on our shipping
of our products, so exporting our proteins. And we are highly de-
pendent on the export markets.
We fill containers and ship product on containers. And, of course,
you all know that there was a major issue getting containers to our
plants, and containers were going back to Asia empty when we
have product to put in those containers.
On the other side, we move a lot of raw material into our plants.
We have a huge trucking fleet. We have pickups. Every grocery
store you see, we probably have a truck going there picking up ex-
pired meat.
Every restaurant, even up here on Capitol Hill, will have a vat
behind the restaurant that used cooking oil goes, and our trucks
pick up used cooking oil.
But the cost of fuel, any disruptions in the supply chain affects
our business on both ends.
Mrs. MILLER. Can you explain a little bit how the rendering in-
dustry actually uses all the food that isn’t consumed and what they
do, and what are some of the top products that you create?
Ms. CASTOR. And I think we will have to take that question for
the record.
Mrs. MILLER. Thank you. I yield back the balance of my time.
Ms. CASTOR. Thank you very much.
Ms. Bonamici, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Ms. BONAMICI. Thank you, Chair Castor and Ranking Member
Graves. And thank you to our witnesses.
The food supply chain is both contributing to and being harmed
by rising emissions and climate change. In the 2021 report, the
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U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization found that the food sup-
ply chain accounts for as much as 30 percent of human-caused
greenhouse gas emissions.
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Last year, the northwest cherry growers, including my home
state of Oregon—they represent Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Mon-
tana and Utah—they estimated that the heat dome event of last
June and July resulted in the loss of about 20 percent of the state’s
cherry crop. That is equivalent to 4 million pound boxes that never
went to market.
I also want to recognize the passing of Sebastian Francisco
Perez, a 38-year-old farmworker who died last year during the 115-
degree heat wave in Oregon.
We must make our food supply chains more climate change re-
sistant and resilient, but also mitigate the role that they play in
fueling emissions, creating unnecessary waste and straining our
natural resources.
So in Portland, Neutral Foods is a small business producing car-
bon neutral milk. They purchase verified carbon offsets and work
with dairy farmers to reduce their overall carbon footprint through
changes to grazing, manure, nutrient management. They recently
applied for a USDA Climate-Smart Commodities grant to expand
their important work to tackle emissions from beef production.
So I want to ask Ms. Brown, how can the Federal Government
help small businesses and nonprofits that are seeking to address
emissions in the agricultural sector to more effectively be able to
access Federal grants, and which Federal programs have been most
helpful in allowing you to meet your organization’s goals?
Ms. BROWN. Thank you for the question. My second ask was real-
ly to conduct a comprehensive effort to examine how government
can streamline and humanize these processes so they are a lot
more accessible.
Currently, it is just not accessible, unless you have trusted tech-
nical assistance facilitators in the region to support with accessing
these resources for farmers, low-income communities, grassroots
groups.
For us, USDA Regional Food System Partnership was an inter-
esting example which allowed us to create a new program that will
help support us being the facilitator of further resources and sup-
port our communities.
And another example that I wanted to highlight is, recently, our
partner, Foodshed, which is a small farm aggregation hub in San
Diego County, has taken on a leadership challenge to apply for a
$5 million Federal grant for a Carbon Sink Incentive Fund pilot.
And they have really smart people in that team that has experi-
ence in grant writing, and they have been complaining of how cum-
bersome that process is. Finding matching funds is pretty much
nearly impossible, and most farming groups do not have profes-
sional grant writers on the team.
Ms. BONAMICI. Thank you. That is really helpful. In fact, I just
met with a vineyard owner in Oregon recently. They used some
Federal assistance to transform their energy and now have almost
all their energy coming from solar panels, and it is going to pay
for itself in just a few years.
I have a question for Ms. Gunders. In your testimony, you out-
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lined a number of bills that have been introduced and, if enacted,
would address food waste challenges. What food waste related
issues have not received sufficient attention from Congress?
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39
Ms. GUNDERS. Well, I think the ones that are starting to receive
more attention are the extension of liability protections for food do-
nation. There has been quite a lot of attention toward food dona-
tion lately.
What is not receiving attention is how to prevent the food from
going to waste in the first place. You know, whenever food is wast-
ed, there is money wasted with it. So things like how much food
is being wasted in food that is purchased by the Federal Govern-
ment, you know, any sort of measurement techniques to under-
stand how much does the Department of Defense, a huge purchaser
of food, actually wind up throwing out and all of the cost of that
with it.
So that has been something that has not received very much at-
tention lately at all, or ever.
Ms. BONAMICI. I appreciate that. And, you know, I think it is im-
portant to note that in many places in this country we have signifi-
cant amounts of food insecurity, and we can do a much better job
of aligning the food waste issues and addressing the serious prob-
lem of hunger in our communities.
And I am going to yield back the few seconds I have remaining.
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Ms. CASTOR. Thank you.
Next, we will go to Mr. Levin. You are recognized for 5 minutes.
Oh, excuse me. Excuse me. My fault.
Mr. Palmer, good morning, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. PALMER. Thank you, Madam Chairman.
On the food waste, I would just like to point out that a lot of food
waste in our country is in our public schools and the direct result
of government food programs that began with the Obama adminis-
tration. After Michelle Obama’s nutrition program went into effect,
there were over a million, almost 1.1 million school kids just quit
eating school lunches altogether. And it is now estimated that
roughly somewhere between 30 and 50 percent of all food in the
public school systems is thrown away. So I think that needs to be
part of the discussion.
I am also—it is interesting to me how—and both sides are guilty
of this, of politicizing this. But the facts are the facts. And if it
weren’t for fossil fuel, we would have hundreds of millions of people
malnourished and possibly starving to death.
But the fact of the matter is, since we have introduced modern
farming techniques that are fueled with fossil fuels, machinery like
tractors, harvesters, planters, transportation vehicles, processing
equipment, refrigeration—I mean, these are all things that are by-
products of the fossil fuel industry—even though the world popu-
lation has doubled, you can’t see this, but the number of people
who are dying from starvation has gone down, I mean, like a sink-
ing ship. That is a good thing.
And what we found is that when you introduce these policies
that are being advocated for how we produce food and how we pro-
vide energy, it can have catastrophic results.
Just look at Sri Lanka. You have got people marching on the
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government capitol, because in Sri Lanka and the Netherlands, we
have just seen this, of the dire crisis that government mandates
create. Poor attempts at environmental policy through government
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40
mandated chemical fertilizer bans in Sri Lanka created a food price
spike and economic peril that the people are suffering through
right now. The country is on the verge of collapse.
I mean, you have got to think about the unintended con-
sequences. My colleague mentioned someone who died from heat
exposure. And I keep pointing this out and they don’t like me to
point it out, but Lancet, other medical journals in the world, have
made it clear that there are 17 times or more people die from cold-
related issues than heat.
I grew up dirt poor. We grew most of our own food. I am thankful
that my grandpa had a tractor. I am thankful that we had a freez-
er and a refrigerator. I am thankful that there were places that we
could go that utilized modern techniques to process some of the
food that we produced.
I just don’t understand why we want to go so headlong into
adopting policies that are clearly going to have a very negative im-
pact on people’s lives. That is astounding to me. It is almost like
we have people who think that we need to enforce some form of
population control and that that might include starvation. I am not
accusing anybody of that. I am just saying that what is happening
in Sri Lanka is, I think, evidence of going too far too fast.
Mr. Swisher, I appreciate the work that you are doing. I just
wonder if in your efforts in food rendering and the work that you
are doing, if you have contacted the public school systems to get
access to the food that is going out in the trash cans every day.
Mr. SWISHER. Thank you. We have, as I said earlier, networks
of trucks that go to restaurants, and that would include schools,
but we pick up meat scraps. So the meat scraps from any, you
know, commercial establishment or restaurant would be a place
that we would visit and recycle that material.
Mr. PALMER. I don’t think they are throwing out the meat. I
think it is the other stuff.
With that, I yield back.
Ms. CASTOR. Next, Mr. Levin, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. LEVIN. Thank you, Chair Castor.
You know, today is a tough day for those of us that want to see
climate action commensurate with what science demands. But
make no mistake, to those who demand action, particularly the
next generation, we see you, we hear you, and we will not stop
until the actions that we need are taken.
Now, on to the topic of today’s hearing. I am particularly glad
that the Select Committee gets the opportunity to hear from Elly
Brown, Co-Executive Director of the San Diego Food System Alli-
ance.
San Diego Food System Alliance is a visionary organization in
our region, fostering collaboration across all aspects of our food sys-
tem in order to build a more sustainable, healthy, and fair food sys-
tem.
San Diego County Food Vision 2030, which the Alliance devel-
oped over 2 years and created in collaboration with our community,
is a testament to that vision. Food Vision 2030 provides a 10-year
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roadmap for a food system that enhances the vitality of our local
communities, protects our environment, and creates additional eco-
nomic opportunities within our county.
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For those who don’t know, San Diego County is home to a robust
food system. Across the county, food system activities generate over
$35 billion in economic output and account for 15 percent of all jobs
in the region. However, our local food system faces a myriad of
challenges, from high operating costs to entrenched systems of in-
equality to a climate crisis that exacerbates water scarcity and
other environmental stressors.
With this context, let me start off with a basic but important
question for Ms. Brown. Given all the challenges farmers and other
producers in our region face, why is a strong local food economy
and agricultural sector key to San Diego’s success?
Ms. BROWN. Thank you, Congressman Levin. It is an honor to be
here to represent San Diego and our work in our region.
As I mentioned, $35 billion in economic output, that is signifi-
cant. The majority of the food that is produced in our region, small
farms, small fisheries, most of this food is exported. During the
pandemic, the entire supply chain shut down, and many of us real-
ly had to step up to support our local food producers.
So imagine if we can create a more just food system for our local
food producers and one that really looks at the environment and
one that really looks at equity. There is a significant opportunity
here. And keeping things localized can help us build more human
relationships and really address that pain that everybody is talking
about in the need for transition to one that we are really looking
at the economy from many different ways.
So I love the local work, because it allows us to have real rela-
tionships and understand the needs on the ground and the realities
on the ground of these farmers, fishermen, food businesses.
Mr. LEVIN. Thank you for that answer.
How can investing in local food systems help communities, espe-
cially underserved communities, become more resilient to the im-
pacts of climate change, like drought and water scarcity?
Ms. BROWN. Yeah. Well, in terms of communities, there are a lot
of issues. Food insecurity. These communities are at the front lines
of climate change impact. So we need to address the issues, the
symptoms first, the current inequities, through all tools available
by government, public assistance grants, local incentives, to try to
flow more resources into communities and towards a healthy local
food economy.
And I speak specifically from the food system lens because that
is the work that I am in. But at the same time, we also really need
to address the root, and that these issues were not just created
through the food system; it was through the history of injustices of
the dominant economic system, and we need to redistribute power.
I wanted to provide a quote of Frances Moore Lappe: People do
not go hungry from a lack of food, but rather from a lack of
power—power to access food and power to access land to grow food.
Mr. LEVIN. I was also impressed by your local food economy lab
and excited to hear about the USDA grant that you received. Can
you expand on your vision for this lab and explain why building ca-
pacity at the local level is a key element of strengthening and in-
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creasing the resilience of a regional food system?
Ms. BROWN. Yes. This new program, through the Regional Food
System Partnership grant, we have just co-created this program,
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42
the Local Food Economy Lab, with the beneficiaries—farmers, fish-
ermen, and food businesses—in our region in terms of what they
were looking for. And the program is now a pretty robust program,
which includes peer mentoring, customized support services, as
well as financial support for these businesses. And we intend to
work with an ecosystem of technical assistance providers in this re-
gion.
The intention is to really support the viability of these businesses
and to treat it as sort of an experiment that we are observing over
time in terms of how we are doing, setting ourselves accountable
in terms of the goals that we want to see, and also to supporting
with models that are different type of economic models that will
help build community wealth, cooperatives, worker-owned busi-
nesses. These businesses, it is just not a common thing here in the
United States, so we want to see how we can make these busi-
nesses viable in our region.
Mr. LEVIN. Thank you again. I am out of time, but thank you for
your work on behalf of all of San Diego County.
And, Chair, I will yield back.
Ms. BROWN. Thank you.
Ms. CASTOR. Mr. Carter, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. CARTER. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank all the wit-
nesses for being here.
And I want to say right off that I really appreciate the fact that
we are having this hearing about rural America. A big part of my
district is rural, a lot of ag, a lot of forestry. And this is important
because, just as I don’t feel like the United States gets the credit
for the decrease in carbon emissions that we have achieved over
the years, I don’t think our farmers, I don’t think our foresters get
the credit that they deserve for what they have done with sustain-
able forests serving as carbon sinks.
Our farmers who are producing more food, more fiber, more feed
and renewable fuels without many using more resources. The
United States farmer feeds the world, and here we are trying to
criticize them for carbon emissions, for—it just baffles me.
I want to read you a couple of things here. First of all, agri-
culture productivity in the U.S. increased 287 percent from 1948 to
2017. American farmers now require 40 million fewer acres or 33
percent fewer acres in 2018 to produce the same amount of corn
it would have had to in 1990. Four million fewer or 27 percent
fewer for cotton.
And, you know, perhaps the most attacked part of farming, of ag-
riculture, is livestock, but they continue to reduce their emissions.
Emissions per unit of beef production have declined 8 percent since
1990, eighteen percent unit of pork, and 25 percent unit of milk.
Even the Secretary of Agriculture appointed by President Biden,
the Democratic Secretary of Agriculture said, and I quote, ‘‘I do not
think we have to reduce the amount of meat or livestock produced
in the U.S. And a significant percentage is exported. It is not a
question of eating more or less or producing more or less. The ques-
tion is making production more sustainable.’’ End quote.
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That is the Secretary of Agriculture. The Democratic Secretary
of Agriculture said that. American farmers are part of the solution.
They are not part of the problem.
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Mr. Swisher, I appreciate you being here. And I want to start by
saying that one of your members is located in my district, in Alma,
Georgia in Bacon County. And I have visited there often and quite
impressed with the work that they are doing there. But when I was
listening to your testimony on the magnitude of animal byproducts
that are recycled every day across the U.S., it reminds me of the
critical role that renderers play in the sustainability of animal pro-
duction systems by utilizing nearly all of the byproducts, almost all
of the byproducts from the production of meat. In addition to pre-
venting waste, they are also providing sustainability produced in-
puts of multiple consumer products we use each and every day.
So let me ask you, can you talk about some of the key inputs
that renderers provide for the supply chain that would not exist
without your industry?
Mr. SWISHER. Yes. Thank you. We produce meals in fats and oils,
so one really positive success story that we have is that we re-
placed fishmeal in aquatic rations so over time fishmeal production
has been flat. Since the eighties, it hasn’t increased. And aqua-
culture production has skyrocketed. And so because we are an ani-
mal protein, we fit in those rations much better because of our
amino acid complex and things like that. So we are replacing
fishmeal on a global level in Indonesia and other countries as well.
And then our fats and oils, you know, back in the early 1800s,
we produced candles and things out of beef tallow, and those mar-
kets have changed over time. And now, we are producing more re-
newable diesel and biofuel as a complement to the liquid fuel.
Mr. CARTER. Well, let me ask you this. Earlier one of the other
witnesses indicated that most of our landfills were animal prod-
ucts. Do your members, are they filling up the landfills or are they
recycling byproducts?
Mr. SWISHER. We are recycling byproducts. We are keeping the
raw material from going to landfills. And we are producing things
like meals and fertilizers and fuels.
Mr. CARTER. You know, that is the one thing that bothers me
about this committee. If I could, Madam Chair, just please indulge
me. You know, the whole cycle—you got to look at the whole cycle.
You cannot look at just one part of it. This is the whole cycle, and
recycling the byproducts is part of the cycle.
Thank you. And I yield back.
Ms. CASTOR. Next, Ms. Brownley, you are recognized for 5 min-
utes.
Ms. BROWNLEY. Thank you, Madam Chair. And thanks for hold-
ing this hearing. I have been looking forward to it.
So my first question goes to Ms. Gunders. Food waste is a very
large contributor, as we know, to greenhouse gas emissions, and as
you have said, there are bills in Congress to address a myriad of
labeling confusion. Can you speak to the labeling issue and its—
and its contribution to food waste and climate change?
Ms. GUNDERS. Absolutely. Thank you. And first, I would like to
clarify that I actually did not say animal products were filling up
landfills, but food scraps overall, all types of food are the number
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one product entering landfills today.
On your question for date labels, yes. So the used by, best by,
sell by, enjoy by, the many words that you see to describe the dates
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44
on food are actually quite confusing to consumers, and consumers
are misinterpreting those dates to mean that they are supposed to
throw the food out. So about 86 percent of consumers are somewhat
confused around the dates and are, therefore, throwing food away
prematurely.
There is no Federal regulation for these dates. Consumers and
many—I am sorry—manufactures can put whatever they want onto
the product.
The solution that we see is to standardize the food date labels
to have two phrases—one that is about quality and one that is
about safety—and to require only those two phrases be used as a
way to create actual definitions and be able to communicate with
certainty to consumers and reduce confusion up there.
There is a bill that is currently introduced in this Congress to
create that standardization. There is an industry voluntary agree-
ment. And much of the industry is actually behind this change, in-
cluding companies like Unilever.
Ms. BROWNLEY. Thank you for that. And staying on the same
subject of labeling, what impact do you think labeling restrictions
on alternative proteins, milks, and cheeses may have on their adop-
tion, and how important is adoption to combatting climate change?
Ms. GUNDERS. Yes. Well, my understanding of the alternative
protein realm is quite limited, but I understand that there are
some labeling issues that, you know, that they would like to be
able to call things—like almond milk, they would like to be able to
call that milk still.
I think that, you know, there is no single bullet, but offering al-
ternative products that are similar to animal products is one of the
tools in the toolkit to having us reduce our overall consumption of
meat as we look forward. And I think it is important to note that
food demand is predicted to increase quite a bit by—the U.N. Pre-
dicts we will need about 50 percent more food by 2050 to feed our
global population than we do today.
So I think when we are talking about reducing consumption, it
is not necessarily reducing production but, rather, trying to freeze
the footprint of food at what it is today in order to feed a growing
population and that growing demand.
Ms. BROWNLEY. Thank you.
And staying on the same theme, Ms. Cep, so recently in grocery
stores I have noticed that some food producers have begun to label
their foods as carbon neutral. Do you believe creating a uniform cli-
mate-friendly labeling standard would help address climate im-
pacts of food production and incentivize consumers to choose more
climate-friendly alternatives just similar to calorie labeling and nu-
trition labeling?
Dr. CEP. Thank you for the question. So I think more generally,
market-based conservation programs have the potential to diversify
income opportunities for producers, which is great, and provide a
signal from the marketplace to support durable on-the-ground con-
servation of climate smart, like adoption and large scale adoption
in particular of climate-smart practices.
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I think that there are certainly, you know, a wealth of different
ways of approaching front-of-package labeling and doing so in a
way that is consistent, fair, and transparent for consumers, and
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45
also reflects the science of the practices and the outcomes in the
field. And balancing that so that it is accessible for consumers in
the marketplace is certainly needed. But those signals do have the
potential to really help support large scale adoption of the prac-
tices, which is what we have talked about today is really being
needed to realize the natural solutions potential of working lands.
Ms. BROWNLEY. Thank you.
With that, I will yield back. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Ms. CASTOR. Thank you.
Representative Graves, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. GRAVES. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Madam Chair, I want to respond to some comments that were
made earlier.
First of all, comments were made that President Trump asked
Saudi Arabia to cut oil production. I read the same reports, and
that was in April of 2020. And I want to make note that oil prices
at the time were actually in the negative range. They were in the
negative range. You know, so if we are going to sit here and we
are going to talk about oil prices, let’s do that.
Can you come hold these for me, Huffman?
So look at what has happened with gas prices. This is during the
Biden administration. So we were talking about prices—my friend
was talking about prices when they were negative, literally the oil
futures were negative. And so, yes, he did go to the cartel and ask
them to cut production so we could continue to have energy produc-
tion in the United States.
And here is why. We have some of the lowest emissions in the
world for units of energy produced here. Why would you want to
kill that industry? So this is what has happened during this admin-
istration. So to suggest that there were issues with that conversa-
tion, fascinating.
Now, look, I don’t have a crystal ball. As Mr. Huffman will tell
you, I am not even very smart, but this was January 27 of 2021,
okay, last year, January of last year. I could recognize what was
going to happen with energy prices, and I said then, as a result of
the executive orders and the other actions the Biden administra-
tion was taking, we are going to have higher electricity bills; higher
prices at the gas pump; lost revenue sharing for hurricane protec-
tion, flood control, and coastal restoration in my home state of Lou-
isiana, Alabama, Texas, Mississippi, and others; higher delivery
costs for products being delivered all across the United States;
more dependence on foreign energy from China, Russia, Iran, and
other countries; a net increase in global emissions as a result of
getting energy from other countries and off-shoring services. I have
got to tell you, that is batting a thousand. That is better than I
ever did in college.
So, you know, I don’t think that this stuff is really rocket science
here. In fact, it is so much not rocket science, you could make a
cartoon off of what has happening right now and somebody appar-
ently did. President Biden saying we don’t want to pollute the air
with our fossil fuels, so then he is going to Saudi and saying, can
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we use yours? That is exactly what has happening right now. This
is completely baffling to me that that is what we see have going
on—that is what we have going on.
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46
The last thing is, is this right here. This is a letter from Senator
Cantwell, Senator Menendez, Senator Markey, and Senator Schu-
mer. Just read this one: ‘‘The current runup in world oil prices is
effectively a tax on every American family’s discretionary budget,
except that the money goes to the OPEC cartel rather than the
U.S. Treasury.’’ Couldn’t agree with them more.
I want to highlight this word ‘‘tax,’’ because when you go back
and you look at—you go back and you look at this one right here.
That, that is a tax. President of the United States said that no one
making less than $400,000 was going to get a tax. Cantwell, Schu-
mer, Menendez, and somebody else—Markey—thanks—and Mar-
key said that is a tax. That is a tax. Every American is paying it.
It is pushing people into energy poverty. People have the false
choice of deciding if they are going to open up—excuse me—if they
are going to pay their electricity bill, fuel their car, or get groceries.
This is unbelievable. And I am going to say it again, it is resulting
in higher emissions.
I want to ask, I believe, you, Doctor, when you carry out better
farming practices, as you noted, I assume that that results in se-
questered greenhouse gases, improves sequestration of greenhouse
gases. Is that accurate, or potentially?
Dr. CEP. Right. Yes, sir. The hope, right, is that by implementing
sustainable practices you are storing more carbon in the soil, you
are improving the water infiltration rate, right, like, and the list
of co-benefits goes on. It is also improved habitat potential for wild-
life. Yes.
Mr. GRAVES. Thank you. I didn’t mean to go off on a diatribe, as
I just kind of ate all of my time. So I am going to—I didn’t have
much coffee today. But I am going to yield back. I am going to sub-
mit some questions for the record because I do have a number of
them. But I do want to note to my friend, Mr. Huffman, that your
witness just said that sequestration is an option.
Ms. CASTOR. And we will go to Mr. Huffman for 5 minutes.
You are recognized.
Mr. HUFFMAN. Well, thank you, Madam Chair. I want to com-
mend you for trying to have a serious conversation about how agri-
culture and our food supply can be part of the climate solution, how
we can build a more affordable and resilient food supply chain.
So just for those maybe watching this hearing, this is not an-
other rerun of the I love oil show. We see that rerun all the time
around here. We are trying to talk about food security and resil-
ience. And the piece of this that I am most interested in is food
waste. And for those of our witnesses who work in this field, I just
want to tell you, I think your work is so important. I want to make
sure you know that it is appreciated.
And I would think food waste could be just something we would
find common cause on. It seems like such an obvious thing to tack-
le together. It is a huge contributor to climate change. A report by
the EPA found that annual greenhouse gas emissions of food loss
and waste alone equals that of 42 coal-fired power plants. The an-
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nual water and energy used in food waste is enough to supply 50
million homes. So why would we not want to tackle this together,
use our food better, reduce waste, and improve food security?
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47
And by the way, there is a lot of methane involved in that food
waste. And if we care about inflation, addressing food waste actu-
ally saves families money. So it is a win on so many levels.
Ms. Gunders, I want to ask you for some ideas for how Congress
can tackle this issue. What are some thoughts about how we in
Congress can invest upstream to try to reduce food waste?
Ms. GUNDERS. Thank you so much. And absolutely, I think it is
a solution to the increasing prices that we are seeing today. You
know, even—several studies have shown that lower income house-
holds and higher income households actually waste approximately
the same percentage of their food budgets. And so helping those
folks, especially in lower incomes, stretch those food budgets is a
really important component especially today. And that is where
really focusing on consumer food waste is an important place to
focus, such as a national consumer campaign that really helps edu-
cate consumers, gives them the tools to stretch those food budgets.
Another place further upstream is creating a national public-pri-
vate partnership. There is a really successful start to a public-pri-
vate partnership on the West Coast right now. We have seven re-
tail signatories, including Walmart, Kroger, Albertsons, some of the
largest who are participating and working precompetitively to iden-
tify opportunities, and taking that type of partnership national can
really expand the potential. They are piloting all sorts of new
projects. They are sharing learning. They are looking at specific
sectors, like dairy and produce, and how can they reduce waste,
you know, through the manufacturer, even in production all the
way through to retail. And so really looking at some of those part-
nerships is critical, and funding a national one would be a key step.
Another is looking at opportunities in schools. There are things
that can be done, such as share tables being put out. All around
the country, share tables are popping up where students who don’t
want their food can put it on a table and those who would like
more or to take some home are able to take that food. Simple solu-
tions like that can be elegant.
Another are milk dispensers. So instead of putting milk in little
cartons, it can be in a dispenser, and those students who care for
milk can take what they would like, and those who don’t, don’t
have to just take the carton and put it straight into the garbage.
Lastly, I think, you know, waste is often a locally governed or
jurisdicted issue. And so really providing funding to local and state
jurisdictions to explore policies in this area, to fund technical as-
sistance, food waste prevention programming can be a great solu-
tion as well.
Mr. HUFFMAN. Yeah. Well, thank you. And in the time that I
have left, let me just respond to the suggestion earlier that by pro-
moting healthier school lunches, Michele Obama somehow contrib-
uted to food waste because a million kids stopped eating their
school lunches. Let’s be clear. If Michele Obama had endorsed
Twinkies, FOX News and right wing media would have promptly
declared that Twinkies are yucky and a million people would have
stopped eating them because that is what their parents and FOX
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News told them to do.
I have seen in my district and in my state and around the coun-
try that healthy food can also be yummy food. And so I hope we
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48
can dispose of that canard and get back to the subject of healthy,
nutritious food and reducing food waste and having a more resil-
ient food system.
So thanks. I yield back.
Ms. CASTOR. All right. And next, we will go to Ms. Escobar. You
are recognized for 5 minutes.
Ms. ESCOBAR. Thank you, Madam Chair. And many thanks to
our panelists who are here today, both in person and virtually.
Really grateful to all of you for your work.
Food is a really critical component of the effort to tackle the cli-
mate crisis. And so, Madam Chair, thank you for bringing us back
to focus on really practical solutions and ideas around food. And I
think too many Americans don’t realize the power of their decisions
as consumers and the impact that those decisions have on the cli-
mate crisis and the climate emergency.
Our country wastes between 30 to 40 percent of the food supply.
This is not just immoral, but it is devastating to the environment.
I do applaud communities and people across the country who are
working to change that.
In my own home district of El Paso, Texas, we have seen a rise
in urban farms, such as Fossil Face Farms, helping tackle food in-
security in our community and helping educate the community by
showing individuals how to farm and garden effectively at a low
cost.
There are also local organizations, such as No Lost Food, that
provides meals to families in need by also focusing on reducing the
food waste that goes into our landfills.
Congress has to do more, but we have to support, not just the
local urban farmers, agricultural organizations, and ranchers who
face climate-related risks to the food supply chain, but we also
have to do everything possible to legislate around that and educate
the public as well.
Ms. Gunders, I have a couple of questions for you—actually, I
have one question for you. Can you please talk a little bit more
about the importance of adopting existing technologies to reduce
food waste and what Congress must do to encourage food waste
technology innovation?
Ms. GUNDERS. Absolutely. There is an explosion of innovation
right now happening around food waste reduction, and some of it
is incredibly successful. So we are seeing things like using big data
and machine learning to improve forecasting for retailers, using
new types of imaging and technical vision to evaluate the quality
of products, using sensors to evaluate how much temperature expo-
sure has happened and allowing companies to route products that
have a shorter life to places that are closer and that have a longer
life to places that are further.
There is a ton of technology popping up. And yet it is, you know,
taking some time to innovate and to be adopted. And so, certainly,
incentives that would help both create more incentives for R&D
and innovation as well as for early deployment and adoption of
some of the technologies that are proven would be hugely
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impactful.
Ms. ESCOBAR. Well, I agree. I think those incentives are really
important so that we can ensure that there is an urgency to that
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49
innovation and we get it into the marketplace as quickly as pos-
sible.
I have a question for Elly Brown. Ensuring that families have af-
fordable and healthy foods is crucial, especially in economically dis-
advantaged communities like my own. Not having healthy options
leads to health risks and environmental impacts that affect the
most vulnerable.
Can you please explain the importance of improving community
food environments, especially in economically disadvantaged com-
munities, and what policies, specifically what Federal policies, are
necessary to ensure that food environments improve?
Ms. BROWN. Thank you for this question. Really, the reality is
that our current dominant food system, that is, one that is very top
down fuels chronic disease, and most of the folks that live in com-
munities where, you know, they are struggling, do have issues
around accessing healthy food. Some folks call it food deserts or
food apartheid. Ultimately, really reclaiming the type of food that
is available in these communities. Like you mentioned, urban farm-
ing. This is a movement for communities, in terms of their own
power to reclaim their food system and food sovereignty.
So really what is important ultimately is a more community driv-
en food system, more community governed food system. But in the
short term, we could do everything that we have in our government
toolkit to support these communities from economic incentives. Of
course, public assistance dollars that really help match resources to
flow into the local food economy. We have seen a lot of great things
happen from EBT matching, farmers markets, different programs
that exist around incentives for that. And grants really to really
support grassroots organizations in their access through these
grants that are available. We often are trying to navigate the sys-
tem with grassroots organizations. That really is hard to get these
resources to flow into communities.
So in the short term, there is a lot of tools that we could get the
government to support more access to healthy food. However, in
the long term, we need to really shift the power so communities
can really decide for themselves the type of food environment they
would like to see.
Ms. ESCOBAR. Thank you so much. I am out of time.
Madam Chair, I yield back.
Ms. CASTOR. Well, thank you very much.
And I agree with you, this has been a—it is a hearing that we
intended to focus on those practical solutions. And we know with
the escalading climate crisis, higher temperatures, the higher en-
ergy and food cost, the food system can provide a lot of those solu-
tions. And I want to thank our witnesses for helping us today.
Ms. Gunders, you have been very clear on the call to action.
Thank you. You have now given us some practical solutions on food
labeling, how we fund and empower public-private partnerships.
Ms. Brown, I have been impressed with what you are doing in
San Diego for many years on reimagining and reconfiguring the
food system. But we—as Ms. Gunders said, the innovative tech-
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nologies are exciting, but we need action right away. And one of
the solutions I think we need to add to the list, and talk about, is
preventing the conversion of cropland. I see it in Florida as popu-
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50
lation growth and other stressors try to expand into our—into crit-
ical areas. You want food and everything produced nearby.
So, Ms. Gunders, what is the most important, right now, policy
at the Federal level to ensure that we are more efficient on the
cropland we have now and we don’t continue to convert that crop-
land to other uses?
Ms. GUNDERS. Yes. I think there are a few. One is supporting the
North American Grasslands Conservation Act. There is already a
great program called the Sod Saver that has been part of our bills
in the past, that expanding this program could reduce negative im-
pacts of—that happen out there. And then also, rethinking renew-
able fuel standards and policies is the other.
And I would point you towards a report that has been written
on this by the World Wildlife Fund, who are really kind of the ex-
perts on the policies about this.
Ms. CASTOR. And, Dr. Cep, you focused on this as well, and I do
appreciate how you pointed out early that our farmers and pro-
ducers need help. I met with farmers in Florida not too long ago
across all industries—citrus, cattle, dairy, the plant nurseries, the
specialty crops—and they are hungry for help because their produc-
tivity is suffering under extreme temperatures, extreme rainfall
events.
So what do you point out to us are the most important policies
that we need to be focused on to help our farmers and to conserve
cropland?
Dr. CEP. Yes. Thank you for the question. I would like to come
back to just a few points that, frankly, you know, I think apply a
lot across a lot of different landscapes in the producer community
that you are talking with, right, whether they are grow crop pro-
ducers, cattle producers, they are thinking about orchard or private
timber stands. And that is, we already have an existing suite of
Federal and state conservation programs that producers know,
they are familiar with. There are recommendations about how to
improve, streamline those, make them more accessible, make them
more equitable. But also, those programs are already heavily over-
subscribed, right?
Just the one example that I gave earlier, in a single year, $1.1
billion in one program of interested but unfunded applications. And
those are producers coming in. They have already done the re-
search. They have a proposal. They have submitted it for a com-
petitive review process.
So when we think about how we can scale up the action of now,
right, like, scale up sustainable agriculture and forestry practices
across landscapes across the country, it really is about helping
meat producers where they are with what they need, when it is
technical assistance and cost share for practice implementation.
And then I would say also recognizing the value of the private
marketplace. So that is back to the opportunity around some of
those market-based conservation signals to really think about how
those can connect and tie in with increased revenue and share of
profit for producers.
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Ms. CASTOR. Thank you very much.
And, Ms. Brown, San Diego, the alliance there, can be a model
for other communities across the country. But I am worried there
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51
are many communities that simply don’t have the resources to im-
plement that kind of local grassroots effort. What can we be doing
to encourage that model and empowering people at the local level
across the country?
Ms. BROWN. You would be surprised. Johns Hopkins facilitates a
food policy network nationally. And I know several years ago there
was at least 250 organizations in various different communities
across the nation, city level, county level, state level, really orga-
nizing around food policy, very bottom-up, grassroots approach. So
you would be surprised. A lot of folks are really getting together
around this issue. I think it really crosses political lines. Food is
a necessity. We want to support our local farmers. We want to sup-
port our local businesses. How do we do that together? So there is
a lot of groups out there; you just really have to listen.
Ms. CASTOR. Thank you very much.
Next, I see Mr. Crenshaw has joined us virtually.
Mr. Crenshaw, you are recognized for 5 minutes for questions.
Mr. CRENSHAW. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to the
Ranking Member, for holding this hearing.
And, look, listening to the testimony, there are some real prag-
matic ideas here on how to reduce food waste and improve farming
practices. And I am sure there is a lot of space for bipartisan legis-
lation there.
But like many of these hearings, what we also hear is these good
ideas crowded out by more radical ideas that end up hurting Amer-
icans, especially on their most basic needs: energy and food. And
it is worth pointing out some of the other countries very recently
that have taken these radical approaches.
Sri Lanka banned pesticides, herbicides, and other chemicals
that provide crop protection. That was because of their environ-
mentalist lobby. They are currently in a devastating humanitarian
crisis because they have not been able to produce enough food to
eat. Don’t worry, because Sri Lanka has a near perfect ESG score
of 98, so that makes them feel good.
Environmental groups sued the Netherlands into enforcing a lim-
itation on carbon emissions in their country. Now the Netherlands
is bound by their Supreme Court to enforcing this, and it started
enforcing bans on agricultural emissions. To meet that goal, the
Prime Minister said the only way they can do it is to cut cattle by
30 percent. You can imagine what is going on in their country right
now as there is an uprising and a potential food shortage.
In the United States, the EPA has said that the Supreme Court
won’t stop them from perusing hardline emission targets for indus-
try, which suggested the EPA is going to try to use a little known
authority called section 115 of the Clean Air Act to enforce the
emissions targets set out in the Paris Climate Agreement and po-
tentially put us on the same track as the Netherlands and Sri
Lanka.
When it comes to crop protection and the EPA, with crops going
unharvested, leading to an increase of both carbon and methane
emissions, and they often go unharvested because of damage
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caused by pests and disease. The EPA is restricting crop protection
products, restricting natural gas production for fertilizer, con-
straining the production of chlorine through restrictions on both of
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52
the ways we produce chlorine, and restricting the use of several
other commonly used herbicides and pesticides.
Ms. Gunders, this question is for you. Without immediately avail-
able affordable crop protection products, do you anticipate that
farmers increase the number of unharvested products?
Ms. GUNDERS. I apologize that I am not super familiar with var-
ious crop protection laws or regulations, but I do——
Mr. CRENSHAW. Well, you don’t need to be. I mean, just to be
clear, I mean, it is a basic question.
If you don’t have the materials necessary to fend off pests, then
do you think you are going to have more unharvested products in
the fields, which is a concern of yours, of course?
Ms. GUNDERS. I do believe that crop protection plays a role in
protecting crops. And therefore, yes, certainly saving crops from
pests can help lead to more harvest.
Mr. CRENSHAW. And you have indicated that crop waste leads to
higher carbon emissions. You make a good argument for that.
So these products would be good and helpful in reducing carbon
emissions overall. Would you agree with that? I am not trying to
trick you here. I promise you. I know that is what it feels like.
Ms. GUNDERS. I do believe that a certain level of crop protection
can help lead to full utilization of crops and better growth.
Mr. CRENSHAW. Thank you.
And on the subject of food prices, these actions I have been talk-
ing about are increasing costs for Americans. And I want us to con-
tinue what we know how to do. And we know how to do this actu-
ally pretty well in this country. Pursue environmental goals and
promote human flourishing at the same time. We can protect peo-
ple while also producing enough food and energy for Americans. I
truly believe that.
And I yield back. Thank you.
Ms. CASTOR. Great. Well, I would like to thank our witnesses for
your testimony today on how we build a climate smart food system
and lower costs for our neighbors, and lower pollution from farm
to fork, and build a more sustainable food supply chain.
Without objection, I would like to enter into the record a July 15,
2022 letter from the Biotechnology Innovation Organization in
favor of investments in policies supporting agricultural innovation
as a climate solution that helps farmers and ranchers be resilient
in a changing world.
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Submission for the Record
Representative Kathy Castor
Select Committee on the Climate Crisis
July 15, 2022
July 15, 2022
The Honorable Kathy Castor
Select Committee on the Climate Crisis
Chair
H2–359 Ford House Office Building
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515
The Honorable Garret Graves
Select Committee on the Climate Crisis
Ranking Member
H2–361 Ford House Office Building
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515
Dear Chair Castor, Ranking Member Graves, and Members of the Committee:
The Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO) is pleased to submit a state-
ment for the record to the United States House of Representatives Select Committee
on the Climate Crisis hearing entitled, ‘‘Climate Smart From Farm to Fork: Build-
ing an Affordable and Resilient Food Supply Chain.’’
Introduction
BIO 1 represents 1,000 members in a biotech ecosystem with a central mission—
to advance public policy that supports a wide range of companies and academic re-
search centers that are working to apply biology and technology in the energy, agri-
culture, manufacturing, and health sectors to improve the lives of people and the
health of the planet. BIO is committed to speaking up for the millions of families
around the globe who depend upon our success. We will drive a revolution that aims
to cure patients, protect our climate, and nourish humanity.
Addressing Climate Change with Innovation
BIO applauds the select Committee for exploring how to create a sustainable food
system that is resilient in the face of climate change. As many have rightly noted
in recent weeks, the impact Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has had on global food
prices, pales in comparison to the impact climate change will have on food supplies
in the future.2
Climate change is already impacting agricultural production. According to re-
search by Nature Climate Change 3 21 percent of global agriculture production, in-
cluding livestock, tree farming, and traditional crops such as corn and soybeans, has
been negatively impacted by climate change. A slowdown that is equivalent to losing
the last seven years of productivity growth.4
To meet the challenge of climate change, and foster resiliency and sustainability
throughout the agricultural value chain, it is crucial to lead with science and U.S.
innovation.
Biotechnology in plants, animals and microbes continues to develop and now in-
cludes more targeted and precise tools, which are the subject of significant agricul-
tural research and development efforts, as they offer exciting potential to address
growing challenges in agriculture and society generally. Innovation in agriculture
has the potential to provide solutions and tools that can increase crop yields, im-
prove crop quality, nutritional value, and food safety; increase resistance to pests
and diseases; reduce water use; improve carbon sequestration; enhance tolerance to
changes in climate and other environmental conditions; reduce food waste; improve
health and wellness; decrease reliance on costly crop inputs; and bolster animal wel-
1 https://www.bio.org/
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2 https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/war-in-ukraine-and-climate-change-could-combine-
to-create-a-food-crisis/
3 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-021-01000-1
4 https://www.ehn.org/climate-change-and-agriculture-2651320768.html
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fare. For additional information on these technologies and their benefits, please see
the attached op-ed by BIO President and CEO, Dr. Michelle McMurry-Heath in
STAT entitled, ‘‘To help solve climate change, look to the biosciences.’’ 5
We must incentivize the adoption of innovative, sustainable technologies and
practices; and streamline and expedite regulatory pathways for breakthrough tech-
nology solutions. Investment in and deployment of cutting-edge technologies will be
crucial to ensure farmers, ranchers, sustainable fuel producers, and manufacturers
are able to respond to climate change and maintain the U.S.’s global leadership in
agriculture. This includes removing barriers and assisting beginning and socially
disadvantaged farmers and ranchers to access and utilize these technologies, so all
producers can adapt to the challenges ahead.
Supporting Innovation
BIO supports administrative and legislative action on climate change that cata-
lyzes resilient and sustainable biobased economies. Policies centered on innovation
stand to incentivize the adoption of cutting-edge technologies and practices, result-
ing in benefits to the environment and rural economies.
The United States must employ a science-based regulatory system that evaluates
products based on human health and safety and potential benefits and risks to the
environment. Such a system must both foster public confidence in biotechnology and
avoid undue regulatory burdens. A regulatory climate that fosters innovation in ag-
ricultural biotechnology will be an important component in meeting that goal and
ensuring development of a set of precise yet flexible tools for meeting the challenges
facing U.S. farmers today and into the future.
Practical, workable regulations are key to harnessing the resources necessary to
address these challenges, and to providing opportunities for economic growth, job
creation, and environmental benefits. BIO is committed to maintaining a strong
partnership with the federal government to ensure the development and implemen-
tation of risk-proportionate regulations that underpin a workable, predictable, le-
gally defensible, durable, and science-based regulatory system that facilitates inno-
vation for all innovative biology-based products.
Legislatively, we urge the House of Representatives to take immediate action and
pass the bipartisan Growing Climate Solutions Act, H.R. 2820 6. This legislation will
help producers solve the technical entry barriers to participating in carbon credit
markets and incentivize the adoption of modern agricultural techniques and innova-
tive technologies. This bicameral, bipartisan bill passed the U.S. Senate last sum-
mer by a vote of 92–8,7 but is still awaiting consideration in the House.
The next farm bill also offers a timely opportunity to examine innovation’s influ-
ence on the resiliency of our economy in the face of global climate challenges. As
Congress examines how U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) programs can ad-
dress climate change, it will be critical to ensure USDA and other federal programs
keep pace and continue to foster acceptance for new technologies, thereby protecting
the stability of the agricultural supply chain.
Finally, BIO recognizes that long-term innovation successes are driven by more
than just sound regulatory policy. Public and marketplace support matter a great
deal in the successful introduction of new products. BIO is committed to proactive
transparency measures, including driving authentic dialogues with producers, stake-
holders, and consumers to identify shared values and energize public understanding
about innovation in food and agriculture.
Conclusion
The agricultural innovations that BIO’s member companies are developing will
allow producers to sustainably provide the food, feed, fuel, and fiber needed for a
growing world. The development and deployment of these technologies will be cru-
cial to helping farmers and ranchers be a part of the solution to climate change and
provide them with the tools to be self-sustaining and resilient to a volatile climate.
BIO is committed to working with the Select Committee toward developing poli-
cies to address the climate crisis and support innovation in agriculture.
Sincerely,
John A. Murphy III, Esq.
Chief Policy Officer
Biotechnology Innovation Organization
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5 https://www.statnews.com/2021/05/21/climate-change-solutions-from-biosciences/
6 https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/2820
7 https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/1251/actions
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55
ATTACHMENT: Stat, ‘‘To help solve climate change, look to the biosciences’’
https://www.statnews.com/2021/05/21/climate-change-solutions-from-biosciences/#
To help solve climate change, look to the biosciences
By Michelle McMurry-Heath
May 21, 2021
President Biden’s pledge to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 is
an admirable and ambitious undertaking. It’s nearly double the goal set by Presi-
dent Obama in 2015. And it establishes the United States as a world leader in bat-
tling climate change. But reaching the president’s target in just under 10 years is
a monumental task. It’s so big, in fact, that we’ll never get there by government
action alone. No amount of vehicle efficiency standards, forest conservation efforts,
or gas taxes can fully solve the problem.
We have to science our way out of it.
The biosciences, including biotechnology, will play a pivotal role in the fight
against climate change. It is already leading the way on several fronts. According
to a report from BIO, the organization I work for, the biotech industry’s green initia-
tives could mitigate the equivalent of 3 billion tons of carbon dioxide every year by
2030, or about half of the country’s annual CO2 emissions.
Take food, for example.
Food consumption—and production—is central to human existence. Global food
production accounts for one-quarter of greenhouse gas emissions. A recent report
from an international team of researchers concluded that even if all other fossil fuel
emissions were eliminated, emissions from food production alone would prevent us
from reaching a key goal of the climate change agreement signed in Paris: pre-
venting the global temperature from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius.
Halting food production isn’t an option, so biotech companies are helping farmers
become part of the climate solution. Take, for example, Boston-based Joyn Bio. It
is engineering bacteria that pull nitrogen directly from the atmosphere. These mi-
crobes then pass the nitrogen to crops like wheat and corn, reducing the need to
make, transport, and apply nitrogen fertilizers, which reduces greenhouse gas emis-
sions.
Minnesota-based Acceligen is using a technique it calls precision breeding that
improves the health of livestock while reducing their waste, greenhouse gas emis-
sions, and water usage.
Biotechnology can also help protect food from climate change. As fungal and bac-
terial infections accelerated by human-driven environmental disturbances threaten
to wipe out Cavendish bananas, Tropic Biosciences in the United Kingdom is using
CRISPR gene-editing technology to engineer infection-resistant bananas.
Companies are also rethinking how food is packaged to reduce plastic pollution
and open high-tech paths to broader adoption of biodegradables. This would be a
game-changer in the interlinked fight to modulate climate change and protect the
oceans.
Globally, 100 million tons of plastic are produced every year, 8 million of which
ends up in the oceans. The production of plastic requires at least 8% of the world’s
petroleum. Greenhouse gas emissions from plastic production and incineration could
rise from the current 850 million tons a year to 3 billion tons a year by 2050. And
discarded plastic that ends up in the ocean slowly breaks down in sunlight, releas-
ing greenhouse gases and toxic microplastics.
Georgia-based Danimer Scientific—partnering with the Mars Wrigley candy com-
pany—is working on biodegradable packaging that uses plant oils to manufacture
‘‘plastic’’ that dissolves in soil and water. Bioplastics and biopolymers can reduce
greenhouse gas emissions reductions by up to 80% more compared to their petro-
leum-based counterparts.
Fuel is another target for biotechnology. Transportation accounts for the highest
percentage of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. While electric cars are gaining popu-
larity, and the $174 billion allocated to support the transition to electrics in Biden’s
American Jobs Plan is important, biofuels—which are carbon neutral—will be need-
ed to help reduce emissions in transportation and need comparable support.
The biotech company Synthetic Genomics, for instance, is utilizing saltwater
algae, which convert sunlight and carbon dioxide into biomass, to make sustainable
auto fuel. By 2025, 10,000 barrels of the algal biofuel could be produced per day
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for commercial use.
Biofuels will also play an important role in air travel. While flying accounts for
less than 3% of global CO2 emissions a year, on a per-mile calculation it’s the least
green form of travel. With the number of air travel passengers expected to double
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56
by 2040, the Biden administration is upping the financial incentives—through tax
credits—for companies that produce sustainable aircraft fuels.
Biotech firms are already stepping up. Companies like Neste, Gevo, and World
Energy are using everything from algae to used or wasted cooking oil to create sus-
tainable jet fuels. LanzaTech recycles carbon from industrial emissions and other
sources and turns it into aviation fuel—and has recently partnered with other cor-
porations to bring that fuel to market for commercial airline use.
With help from biotechnology, the U.S. can achieve the climate change goals out-
lined by the Biden administration and the Paris Agreement. Human progress and
technology got us into this mess. That same ingenuity can help get us out.
Michelle McMurry-Heath is a physician-scientist and the president and CEO of the
Biotechnology Innovation Organization.
And, without objection, all members will have 10 business days
within which to submit additional written questions for the wit-
nesses. I ask our witnesses to respond as promptly as you are able.
Thanks again, everyone, for joining our climate-smart solutions
from farm to fork hearing today.
The meeting is adjourned.
[The information follows:]
[Whereupon, at 10:47 a.m., the committee was adjourned.]
United States House of Representatives
Select Committee on the Climate Crisis
Hearing on July 15, 2022
‘‘Climate Smart from Farm to Fork:
Building an Affordable and Resilient Food Supply Chain’’
Questions for the Record
Kent Swisher
President & CEO
North American Renderers Association
THE HONORABLE GARRET GRAVES
1. Mr. Swisher, Darling Ingredients and Valero Energy partnered to de-
velop the Diamond Green Diesel facility in Norco, Louisiana. The facility
is the largest renewable diesel production facility in North America and
has a production capacity of more than 50,000 barrels per day (bpd).
a. Can you talk about the role that the rendering industry plays in
this facility being productive and creating jobs in Louisiana?
Diamond Green Diesel (DGD) is a major user of waste fats including animal fat
and used cooking oil, both of which are traditionally processed by renderers. Such
waste fats allow DGD to produce low carbon renewable fuels which reduce green-
house gas emissions by up to 85%. In addition, to helping the environment, DGD
brings over one hundred green energy jobs to Norco, Louisiana and contributes to
the local tax base.
b. How does your industry help create jobs and make products that
encourage more efficient agriculture production?
The rendering industry takes waste products from the meat industry and res-
taurant industries and processes those wastes into value-added products that can
be used as inputs into other production processes that produce pet foods, animal
feeds, oleochemicals, and/or renewable fuels. As such, our industry supports other
industries thereby creating jobs. It does this while upcycling wastes in an environ-
mentally friendly manner and reducing agriculture’s carbon footprint.
Rendering provides tens of thousands of stable, full-time jobs with benefits, coast
to coast, in both urban and rural areas. These positions generate important eco-
nomic activity in rural areas and helps support the economic vitality of local com-
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munities.
Rendering companies and their employees are longstanding members of their com-
munities, improving the quality of life by volunteering and supporting local char-
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57
ities, providing jobs, and offering essential recycling services for farmers, res-
taurants, and food service.
2. Mr. Swisher, your testimony discussed that the rendering industry
helps to prevent animal by-products from ending up in landfills by creating
products that feed animals or lead to other industrial uses. This benefit is
illustrated in the Environmental Protection Agency’s Food Recovery Hier-
archy that is pictured above.
a. What steps has the rendering industry taken to help prevent food
waste from going to landfills?
Rendering is a large and integral part of the solution to reducing food waste.
By rendering the leftover material from the food we eat, like meat and bone
scraps, we stop it from going to the landfill, which saves huge volumes of landfill
space. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, food waste takes up more
space in landfills than any other material. Finding ways to reuse leftover meat ma-
terials offers a powerful solution for sustainable waste management. Renderers pro-
vide a critical solution to save landfill space and help protect the environment.
Rendering also stops greenhouse gasses from being released into the environment,
which they would, should that meat material be allowed to decompose in a landfill.
By diverting this material from landfills, we are upcycling it into new products like
nutritious pet food, biomass- based diesel, and while sustainably reducing food
waste.
The rendering industry supports recognition by federal and state governments of
the importance of rendering’s contribution to reducing food waste and diverting it
from landfills.
b. What are the environmental benefits posed by your members’
processes that prevent waste from ending up in landfills?
A huge volume, approximately fifty-six billion pounds, of unused animal meat is
left over in the U.S. from livestock and poultry farming, meat processing, super-
markets, and restaurants each year.
This volume of animal by-products is so massive that it would fill all U.S. landfills
in only four years if discarded there as waste. By preventing the disposal of animal
leftovers in U.S. landfills or other disposal methods, renderers prevent the release
of substantial amounts of GHGs into the atmosphere. Rendering’s carbon emissions
reduction and other environmental contributions are significant. Rendering seques-
ters five times more greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the environment (such
as carbon dioxide) than it emits. Rendering avoids at least 90 percent of the poten-
tial GHG emissions compared with industrial composting. The rendering industry’s
contribution to carbon emission reduction in the U.S. and Canada is equivalent to
removing 18.5 million cars from the road each year.
Rendering also reclaims and protects valuable water that could otherwise be wast-
ed or contaminated. Roughly four billion gallons of water are reclaimed during the
rendering process. That water meets federal, state, and local standards when re-
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turned to rivers and streams.
1 https://www.epa.gov/sustainable-management-food/food-recovery-hierarchy
48854A.006
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58
Rendering helps water in more ways than only output—renderer pickup of used
cooking grease and oil, saves municipal sewer and wastewater systems from becom-
ing clogged causing millions of dollars in damage, repairs and compromising water
quality. Thanks to rendering, that is not a concern.
3. We’ve also seen how Russia’s aggression in Ukraine is ‘‘putting the
world on the brink of a food crisis.’’ 2 One of the specific challenges from
the crisis in Ukraine that relates to the agriculture industry is sky-
rocketing fertilizer prices and a fertilizer shortage, 3 which will exacerbate
the food shortage and make it harder for American farmers to produce.
a. How can your members’ work alleviate the challenges posed by
this pending crisis?
Rendered protein products can be used for fertilizer or as a soil conditioner, pro-
viding an alternative to chemical fertilizers. Rendered products contain nitrogen, po-
tassium, phosphorous, and calcium and can be applied as an organic fertilizer. Bone
meal and blood meals are both a readily available fertilizer in garden centers na-
tionwide. Rendered fertilizers add to the domestic supply of fertilizer.
4. My colleagues and I often talk about the importance of American re-
sources and American production to supply as much as possible to the
global market—whether it’s energy, food, or manufactured goods. For the
agriculture industry, that means enacting policies that encourage greater
efficiency and greater productivity.
a. Can you talk about how the rendering process—and the proteins
that your members develop—help lead to more efficient agri-
culture practices that ultimately increase productivity and help
feed Americans and people all over the world?
Rendered animal proteins are a nutrient rich ingredient for livestock feed and
aquaculture feed. These proteins also have an amino acid profile that complements
grain-based diets. Hence, the inclusion of rendered protein meals help to lower the
cost of feed production, while providing a nutrient and energy dense ingredient. To
put this in perspective, for poultry, over 60 percent of the cost of production is the
feed cost. By lowering the cost of feed, our livestock and poultry industries can more
efficiently provide products more economical to consumers both in America and
overseas.
In addition, rendered animal protein meals are a good substitute for fishmeal in
aquatic rations, hence lowering the cost of production and reducing the pressure on
fishmeal as a feed ingredient in aquaculture feed. This, is in turn, alleviates pres-
sure on our marine fisheries.
Æ
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2 https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-food-crisis-russian-invasion/31797590.html
3 https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/06/a-fertilizer-shortage-worsened-by-war-in-ukraine-is-driving-up-
global-food-prices-and-scarcity.html#:∼:text=A%20fertilizer%20shortage
%20has%20added,exports%20were%20hit%20by%20sanctions.
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