By Breanna Draxler for Yes! Magazine.
Broadcast version by Alex Gonzalez for Arizona News Connection reporting for the Yes! Magazine-Public News Service Collaboration

Aidee Guzman, 30, grew up the daughter of immigrants in California’s Central Valley, among massive fields of monocrops that epitomize intense, industrial agriculture. Her parents were farmworkers, and despite spending their days producing food, they relied on food banks to eat. 

The cognitive dissonance of these circumstances hit home when, in 2003, at age 10, Guzman first visited her grandparents and family still living in her parents’ hometown in Mexico. Here, in the small community of El Pedregal de San Juan, in the state of Hidalgo, Guzman says she was amazed by the rain-fed milpa system of growing corn, wheat, and squash that her uncles still maintained, using seeds that have been in her family for generations. 

“I was just so enamored,” she says. But anger and sadness followed as she came to understand the forces that caused her parents to migrate in search of employment in the United States. “People like my parents, they were pushed off the land.” 

Guzman’s parents gave up caring for the soil and growing food that nourished them in pursuit of greater opportunities that involved growing crops for export and other people’s profit. It’s an ironic yet common occurrence: Although Western agriculture has begun embracing regenerative farming principles, the very people who have been using these practices since time immemorial have been socially, economically, and politically forced from the lands that sustain them.

“That’s not the society we should be living in,” says Guzman. Instead, she and a host of scientists, educators, farmers, organizers, and activists around the world are working to implement these regenerative principles and reciprocal practices, literally from the ground up.

Living History

“When I think about soil, I think about the ecosystem and I think about history,” says Briana Alfaro, administrative program manager at Soul Fire Farm in upstate New York. “I think about the geology that helped create the makeup of what minerals are in the soil.”

But soil is not just bits of rock and dust. In addition to minerals, it is composed of gas, water, living organisms, and the organic remains of once-living creatures. And the process of turning these components into soil is incredibly slow and microscopic. In the prairie, it takes between 100 and 1,000 years to develop one inch of topsoil. In alpine environments it can take even longer. 

But destroying that formation, hundreds and thousands of years in the making, happens quickly. Humans can compact the soil in a matter of seconds with a bulldozer or a slab of concrete. During the Dust Bowl in the 1930s, due to massive disturbance of the soil through over-tilling, the center of the American continent lost 850 million tons of topsoil to the wind. And today, even when the soil stays on the ground, we’re actively destroying it through the use of pesticides, herbicides, synthetic fertilizers, and more. 

Soil is alive. It is filled with life, and it supports the lives of so many living creatures—including us. Recognizing and tending to this reciprocal relationship could help shift our understanding of sustenance and what it takes to achieve lasting prosperity for both people and the planet. 

Alfaro suggests using the term “soil livestock,” which she recently heard and feels best encapsulates the true work of caring for the soil. “It’s another part of farming, right?” Alfaro explains. “It’s another set of beings that you’re responsible for.” 

How we respond to that responsibility will have compounding effects for the Earth—and all of us who live here. As the climate warms, and the human population grows, soil will be foundational to our thriving—or our downfall. At a core level, our collective survival will depend on how humans choose to interact with soil. 

“The soil to me is the source of life. That is, it nurtures many of the lives—not just humans, but also the plants and animals and all those tiny things that we can’t even see,” says Miwa Aoki Takeuchi, associate professor in the University of Calgary’s department of education. “When we say ‘rich soil,’ we imagine the soil itself is populated with so many lives and diverse networks.”

And that richness can translate into the systems we use to impart value to other things in our lives and our economy.

“I think a healthy soil is a form of community wealth,” says Liz Carlisle, associate professor in the environmental studies program at University of California, Santa Barbara. “It’s an intergenerational form of community wealth.”

Carlisle studies the deep history of regenerative agriculture, going well beyond the buzzword it has become in environmental circles of late. She says it started with her grandmother, Helen, who had grown up on a farm in western Nebraska that the family eventually lost in the Dust Bowl. “As a child, I remember my grandmother saying, ‘You know, we need to learn how to take better care of the soil,’” recalls Carlisle. “It felt like a responsibility—having been born into this family that made some really big mistakes—to be part of a process of repair.”

Carlisle now focuses her research on Indigenous food systems that existed for thousands of years on the North American continent, on the African continent, on the Asian continent—all over the world. She contrasts these enduring practices with the hierarchical approach to industrial agriculture we see today: “Extracting from soil for short-term financial gain only makes sense in a world where certain people and other living beings fall outside of our circle of care. Whereas if we really believe that everybody’s life matters, it makes all kinds of sense to steward this common resource of soil for everyone and for those beings yet to come.”

Such a fundamental shift would upend how our society defines prosperity today. 

When it comes to soils and what they’re producing, “we always seem to be using a cost-benefit analysis,” says Michael Kotutwa Johnson, assistant specialist at the University of Arizona’s Indigenous Resilience Center as well as its School of Natural Resources and the Environment. “Why can’t we look at a social-benefit analysis instead?”

In October 2023, Kotutwa Johnson hosted a group of scientists and educators from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and he said the number one problem they wanted to address was not pollution or agricultural runoff—it was diabetes. He believes the spread of this disease is a direct result of the U.S. exporting its ideas of food and food policy. 

“We need to rethink our policies, our agricultural policies, in the United States to focus more on quality, not quantity and efficiency,” he says. 

Kotutwa Johnson is a Hopi farmer who evaluates the success of his farming not only on the corn he produces but also on other impacts it has in his community: Are our bodies becoming healthier? Are these communities doing well? 

For the Hopi, a matrilineal agricultural society, there is no distinction between their agricultural system, their belief system, and their social structures, Kotutwa Johnson explains. One cannot exist without the others, and they can only thrive together. 

“The act of planting alone for us is an act of faith,” he says. “We live in a climate that only gives 6 to 10 inches of annual precipitation a year, but yet we’re able to raise things like corn, beans, melons, and squash, which I was told, when I went to Cornell, needed 33 inches of rain.” 

But creating a nurturing, respectful relationship with the soil and what grows from it has allowed these crops to thrive under Hopi stewardship.

“Those plants are like our people to us,” says Kotutwa Johnson. “We take care of those plants from when they’re little babies coming up out of the ground to when they get old and they pass on; and we lay them down at the end, and they provide us seeds for another generation.”

Laying down the cornstalks at the end of the plants’ lives, to Kotutwa Johnson, is a means of thanking them and giving them well-deserved rest. In Western terms, keeping the ground covered is a means of holding the soil in place to prevent erosion. As the organic ground cover breaks down, it also adds nutrients to the soil. So whatever the worldview behind it, this practice unquestionably leads to better soil health. 

Reciprocity Over Extraction

Shifting from a relationship of extraction from soil to one of reciprocity with soil is central to Indigenous ways of knowing and growing—both food and community prosperity. 

“Our ancestors revered soil and had such a relationship with it,” says Alfaro. “And that’s such a huge part of what we do at Soul Fire Farm: help bridge that connection, catalyze that connection for people—to land and to that ancestral knowledge.”

Central to this connection is an understanding that this type of relationship involves both give and take. For Alfaro, a multiracial Mexican American farmer and activist, this comes in many forms. “I feel better when I go spend time in my garden for so many reasons, you know, but I know that one of them is that I process and leave something behind every time I’m there.” She describes this process in natural terms, as the composting of sadness and grief. “I’m inevitably also growing myself food, growing my community food, growing my community flowers—all the things that help lighten me up and provide nutrition.” And the benefits of that relationship go both ways: “If we’re healthier, then we can give back to the soil more.”

Likewise, Aoki Takeuchi respects and finds inspiration in the way soil cooperates with others to decompose what humans consider garbage. “As someone who has experienced the intersectional system of oppression, I sometimes didn’t have a way to metabolize or decompose all the traumas,” she explains. But she uses soils as a literal and metaphorical lesson in her teaching. “How can [soils] metabolize that trauma, that historical trauma, and transform that into a source of nurturing and a source of growth?” says Aoki Takeuchi. 

Her belief in the power of this work is part of what inspired Aoki Takeuchi to create Soil Camp, a program for refugee youth in Canada to rediscover and reconnect with land after they’ve been forcibly removed from their own. The goal of the summer research program is to “listen to the silenced voices of the soil, land, and displaced communities.”

And that reciprocity goes beyond the simple exchange of materials. 

“How do we give back to the land for everything that the land has given us, including scientific and mathematical knowledge?” asks Kori Czuy, one of the instructors at Soil Camp and the manager of Indigenous science connections at the TELUS Spark Science Centre in Calgary. Western science always wants to name and categorize things definitively, but that’s not how Czuy teaches students. She de-emphasizes scientific hierarchies and rigid categorization.

“I always distinguish between the word[s] ‘knowing’ and ‘knowledge,’” Czuy says. “Knowledge is set. It’s the written word. It can’t be changed. It’s static. Knowing is alive.”

Land Matters

But reconnecting with soil isn’t always possible, easy, or even desirable. Too many communities and people have been forced to work the soil on other people’s terms. 

Carlisle says race is implicated in current U.S. food production in profound ways: “If you think about why we had a plantation system, and why we now have a system that still looks a lot like that, you could argue that it’s not because it’s the most productive way to produce food, but it is a very effective way to produce racial hierarchy.”

Carlisle says the pattern is painfully consistent around the world: “You have a global majority of people who carry traditions of regenerative food systems who are being excluded from land ownership, and yet who are being asked to labor in industrial agriculture, [who] are so infrequently in decision-making positions about how that land is cared for.” 

“People have persisted and maintained these regenerative ways of relating to land in the face of hundreds of years of brutally oppressive structural violence,” she says. “It’s an instructive pathway of what it means to continually articulate a vision of reciprocal care—even in the face of the most tremendous obstacles.”

Carlisle says we can’t make meaningful strides toward regenerative agriculture if we don’t simultaneously insist on a transformative shift toward racial justice. “That’s work for all of us,” she says, “and I think it is especially work for those of us who identify as white.”

Guzman agrees that the transformation of our agricultural system needs to come from a place of inclusion and equity. “When we think of soil, and really trying to support soil and build up soil, we can’t forget … the human piece: that we need people who care about it to be able to have access.” 

If that access were widely granted, Alfaro at Soul Fire Farms imagines a parallel shift in the way farmers relate to and invest in the soil. Without the limitations of one-year leases or the risk of displacement, she dreams of the beauty of transitioning away from annual crops that are planted and harvested every year, to perennial crops, which stay rooted in the ground more permanently, offering their benefits to the soil year-round and year after year. She says it was a profound moment when she learned “how beneficial it is to have perennials, to grow perennials, and what it means to be able to grow perennials, and what a privilege that is.”

The Humanity of Soil

As people, our bodies are deeply shaped by our environment and teem with microbial life in various forms of symbiosis. Maybe we’re not so different from soil after all. 

“We’re all made of the same thing, you know, from rocks to microbes to everything,” Czuy says. “We’re all stardust. We’re all made of particles that are in motion constantly.” 

Indigenous growers prioritize those personal connections and relationships with soil. 

“It takes time to know your soil,” says Alfaro. “And there’s a lot of different ways you can get to know your soil. Start where you are: What is this soil? What does it like? What likes to grow here?”

In her soil camps, Aoki Takeuchi encourages students to connect with the soil in whatever way feels right for them.

“We really would like to foster a space for humbly listening, and listening in plural forms, so that we can listen to the very quiet voice of the soil.” She says that voice is easy to miss if we don’t pay attention—or if we limit our listening to ableist notions of the idea—but that there are many ways to listen to the story and honor the soil’s voice. “One could be seeing the color of the soil, another may be smelling different horizons of the soil.” 

For Guzman, the connection to soil comes in the form of her passion for pottery, as well as her Ph.D. research with farmers much like her parents—who care deeply about the land but have been forced by economic circumstances to become cogs in the industrial food system. She holds fast to a reminder a professor once gave her: “‘When the revolution comes, we’re gonna need everyone—we’re also gonna need scientists.’”

Guzman says she considers herself a “cynical optimist.” “I’m kind of a shit-talker and hateful about where the system is … but really optimistic about the future.” 

That optimism is important—because the stakes are only getting higher. 

“In the face of the climate crisis, growing food has only become more and more difficult,” Carlisle says. “Farmers face flooding, droughts, extreme heat, new pest and disease challenges; and all of these are things that healthier soils can help farmers to weather.”

A soil with more organic matter is going to hold more water, which can prevent flooding in heavy rains and can help through long dry seasons and excessive heat. Healthier soils also make for healthier plants, which can better withstand pests and diseases. And those plants make for more dependable and nutritious food sources for people. 

“It’s never been more important to steward this common resource of a healthy soil, as a matter of climate justice and food justice for those populations that will be most heavily impacted by the ways that these extreme weather events impact people’s ability to produce food,” Carlisle says.

Or, as Alfaro puts it: “There’s life in the soil, and we also have to take care of that so that we can be resilient.”


Breanna Draxlerg wrote this article for Yes! Magazine.


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By Naoki Nitta for Civil Eats.
Broadcast version by Suzanne Potter for California News Service reporting for the Solutions Journalism Network-Public News Service Collaboration

It's no wonder that hospital food gets a bad rap, says Santana Diaz, executive chef at the University of California Davis Medical Center, a sprawling, 142-acre campus located in Sacramento, California. As a seeming compromise between nutrition and institutional efficiency, food has long been dished up as an afterthought to patient care. “That was never the focus of hospitals,” he adds.

But for Diaz, good food is key to good health. Since taking the helm of the facility’s nutrition and dining services in 2018, he has worked to revamp the cuisine, including sourcing almost half of ingredients from farms and ranches within a 250-mile radius of the Sacramento Valley. Food grown in local fields, orchards, and pastures with healthy soil management practices simply make for healthier, more nutritious, and more flavorful meals, he says—the perfect ingredients for changing the “stigma” associated with hospital fare.

Diaz is not alone in making this shift, but he may be ahead of the game. In 2022, the University of California (U.C.) system—a network of 10 campuses and five medical centers—committed to supporting regenerative farming as part of U.C. President Michael Drake’s vision to mitigate the effects of climate change and drive a more equitable food system. And as an advisor to an initiative lead by the nonprofit organization Roots of Change, Diaz is helping to steer the larger institution toward local agriculture—through the system-wide procurement of regeneratively ranched beef.

The term, a general reference to pasture management that prioritizes soil health and perennial plants by grazing livestock through rotated paddocks, encompasses a set of practices that advocates say results in healthier animals and pastures. Research also shows that beef from cattle raised strictly on grass is more nutritious than conventional beef, although it’s not yet clear how regenerative practices may impact those findings.

Cumulatively, the U.C. dining system serves more than 600,000 meals a day during the academic year. By ensuring reliable demand for regeneratively raised meat, proponents of the system’s new procurement pledge see the sizable volume giving the state’s independent ranchers and rural economy a huge boost, and bolstering the local and regional meat supply chain.

It’s a tall order, but Diaz knows the sway that comes with institutional demand. The former executive chef at the Sacramento Kings’ Golden 1 Center and the San Francisco 49ers’ Levi’s Stadium is also a founding member of Beef2Institution, a non-profit program helping K-12 schools, hospitals, and sports venues in California source beef from local, family-owned ranches.

Institutions are the perfect outlet, says Diaz, for ground, braising, and stewing meat and the other lower-value, secondary cuts that make up nearly two-thirds of every beef carcass. So featuring hamburgers, boneless short ribs, and carne asada as part of a local farm-to-fork menu offers nearby ranchers a prime bread-and-butter opportunity, he says—all the while exposing a captive audience to the value of beef raised on regenerative pasture.

“Obviously, we’re not going to change patient behavior . . . in [one] hospital stay,” Diaz notes. But because diet plays a major role in raising the risk of heart disease, diabetes, and other chronic conditions, there’s huge merit, he adds, in educating them about preventative and nutritional approaches to health management.

And with his kitchen alone churning out 6,500 meals a day—along with patients, the medical center feeds an army of clinicians, staff, and medical and nursing students—the appetite of the entire U.C. system will likely have a resounding impact on the larger beef market in the state. “That’s how institutions can flex their buying power,” Diaz says.

A Premium Product

Despite research showing that eating less beef has significant health and environmental benefits, including shrinking an individual’s carbon footprint by as much as 75 percent, America’s steak and burger consumption is on the rise.

Currently, the vast majority of U.S. beef comes from cows raised on pasture for about the first year of their lives, then moved to concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs)—large-scale industrial facilities that grain-finish cattle in confinement for six to eight months before slaughter. Along with concentrated levels of environmental pollution, critics deride beef feedlots as places where hundreds if not thousands of cattle are crowded together. These conditions typically require antibiotics to prevent herds from getting sick; subsequently, this “subtherapeutic” use has also been linked to antibiotic resistance.

Nevertheless, CAFOs are also the basis of a “hyper-efficient” commodity system, says Renee Cheung, managing partner at Bonterra Partners, an impact investment advisory firm for regenerative agriculture and co-author of a market analysis of grass-fed beef. These operations pump out a consistent, year-round supply of beef for the meatpacking industry, a sector dominated by a handful of multinational giants that control more than 80 percent of the country’s beef market.

Grazing cattle on pasture for the entirety of their lives, on the other hand, is far less productive. As such, strictly grass-fed or grass-finished operations tend to be modest in scale, says Cheung, with the majority of ranches in the U.S. herding around 50 heads. The smaller volumes and seasonality of pastures create more variability in slaughter weight and harvest windows, running counter to the conventional year-round commodity model.

As a result, non-CAFO operations don’t benefit from the economy of scale built into the heavily consolidated processing and marketing infrastructure, Cheung says. With limited access to centralized meatpacking facilities, these producers are often saddled with high overhead for transport, cold storage, and market delivery—all of which add to premium prices at the meat counter.

The cost, however, also reflects a more superior product. Compared to conventionally raised beef, studies show that strictly pasture-fed beef contain higher nutrients with less fat, often with lower levels of antibiotics, hormones, and risk of food contamination. And grass-fed cuts simply taste better, according to Chef Dan Barber, sustainable and ethical farming advocate and author of The Third Plate, who extols its rich, complex, and “undeniably beefy” flavor.

Not all pasture-based ranchers have adopted paddock-based regenerative practices, but the number appears to be growing. That’s in part because the holistic principles of regenerative ranching go hand in hand with land stewardship and animal welfare, says Michael Dimock, executive director of Roots of Change. By “mimicking nature,” the grazing patterns of ruminants benefit from natural forage and room to roam, all the while “maximizing soil health and biodiversity” of plants, insects, and other animals.

Regardless, recent research shows that 100 percent grass-fed cattle have a larger carbon footprint than those finished on grain because they fatten at a slower rate, yet also weigh as much as 20 percent less at maturity. And while regeneratively managed pastures have been shown to sequester carbon, the science behind the potential for “carbon-neutral beef” has been overblown. Still, Dimock adds that well-managed, rotational grazing enhances pasture productivity, helps restore spent cropland, and prevents wildfires by keeping invasive grasses and dry brush in check.

It’s also a highly efficient use of marginal land, notes Dimock—a classification of the 70 percent of the world’s arable regions unsuited for crop production due to poor soil, aridity, or steepness. As he sees it, regenerative ranching is also accessible and practical for smaller operations because it’s scalable, and lowers the financial risks associated with compliance-centered practices like organic farming.

The Power of Procurement

Making regenerative beef a more attainable business model requires developing a resilient supply chain, says Dimock, one that caters primarily to smaller producers. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the vulnerabilities of a heavily consolidated industry, including bottlenecks in meat processing due to labor shortages and transportation breakdowns. Along with the USDA’s recent $1 billion investment in expanding the nation’s meat and poultry processing capacity, he sees California’s $600 million Community Economic Resilience Fund (CERF) giving a major boost to the state’s meat supply infrastructure.

The targeted funding includes shoring up the network of smaller, regional harvest, processing, and storage facilities, he adds, and will help rural communities develop stronger economic hubs that decentralize the current top-heavy model. But those new and expanded facilities won’t succeed if there isn’t a consistent market for the kind of meat they process.

“If we want to give small-scale ranchers a fair shot,” Dimock says, “we have to break up [the current corporate stronghold].”

Going up against the commodity system, however, comes with additional challenges. While grass-fed beef accounts for roughly $4 billion, or 4 percent of the overall U.S. market, an estimated 80 percent of the supply consists of imports, largely from Australia, Uruguay and Brazil—countries where raising livestock on pasture is far more economical. Passed through a USDA-inspected plant, these products can be labeled “domestic,” leaving true domestic producers at an economic disadvantage.

In fact, the general lack of standards and regulations for the grass-fed sector has created a Wild West landscape of labels, says Bonterra’s Cheung. For its part, the USDA has recently announced stepping up its labeling guidelines, which distinguish true grass-fed beef from confusing claims such as “pasture-raised,” “50 percent grass-fed,” and “grass-fed and grain-finished.” These are highly misleading terms, she notes, given that most cattle are pastured for the first year of their lives. And “there has been a lot of outright cheating in the industry,” she adds—for instance, grass-fed labels can still apply to confined cattle raised on grass pellets.

The fundamental practices of regenerative ranching align with California’s efforts to promote farming “in a manner that restores and maintains natural systems,” says California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) Secretary Karen Ross. The approach also complements the state’s climate smart initiatives and efforts to advance social equity through the support of small-scale farms and ranches.

Still, Ross acknowledges that the term’s inherent flexibility can make it a fuzzy concept. That’s especially true in California, where regional variations in microclimates, precipitation levels, and soil structure reflect a wide practice spectrum—some ranches in the state’s mountainous reaches, for example, may winter their herds on dried silage when fields are bare, while others may have the means to transport them to greener pastures.

“If you talk to 12 people about regenerative [practices], you’ll get 12 different definitions,” Ross says.

Currently, several certifications such as the American Grassfed Association (AGA), Regenerative Organic Certified, and Land to Market provide a range of overlapping criteria that ensure the regenerative provenance of meat. By outlining transparent measures, these voluntary labels are intended to legitimize and safeguard the premium nature of regeneratively produced beef.

Last month, the CDFA began work on officially defining regenerative ranching and agriculture. Rather than developing standards for state certification, and the goal is “to make sure that when we use the term, we have a shared understanding of what the practices are,” says Ross. The “inclusive” set of parameters will help inform state policy around regenerative food production, she adds—including public procurement initiatives.

Public institutions are “a ready-made way” to spur and ensure market demand for healthy food from sustainable sources, adds Ross, who has been involved in discussions about the UC initiative. “We’re investing in better outcomes for farmers, the community, and the environment,” she says. “That’s the power of procurement.”

Building the Supply Pipeline

Balancing supply and demand is nonetheless a delicate endeavor, says Tom Richards, co-owner of Richards Grassfed Beef in Yuba County, California. The fifth-generation rancher has been a key voice in both the UC initiative and Beef2Institution.

Most of California’s pasture-grazing operations focus on a premium, direct-to-consumer market. Between online sales, farmers markets, restaurants, and specialty retailers, year-to-year demand tends to be stable—and manageable.

The supply of better beef “isn’t something you can just dial up,” says Richards. Increasing herds is a risky investment—“it takes three years to raise one of these animals,” he notes—so clear market forecasts are imperative. “The biggest thing that we need from the industry is for somebody like a Santana [Diaz] or UC to say, ‘we’re committed to [helping you] map out a three- to five-year plan to grow your supply,’” he says.

“Right now, the market’s operating on a push,” Richards adds. “But what the industry needs is the pull”—with heavy strings attached.

For smaller-scale operations in particular, committed relationships all along the supply chain are essential to staying afloat. Yet that business model runs counter to industry approach, says Clifford Pollard, the founder of Cream Co. Meats. The Oakland, California-based meat processor “bridges the gap” between regenerative ranches and broadline product distribution on the West Coast, and has played a central role in promoting Beef2Institution’s efforts.

Conventional meat processors “trade in commodities,” Pollard says, sourcing raw material at the lowest price possible. Cream Co., on the other hand, cultivates its supply pipeline “over many years of sustained [purchasing] commitments” to individual operations, he says.

Ultimately, with demand driving supply, the large-scale procurement will undoubtedly influence the equation. Nevertheless, even incremental steps by institutions can pave the way for meaningful change, Pollard notes. “There’s often a hesitation that it has to be all or nothing, but shifting even a small portion of your spend towards [regeneratively minded sourcing] is impactful,” he says, and U.C.’s commitment really gives regenerative producers “a seat at the table.”

“We don’t need the whole table,” Pollard adds. “Just a seat.”


Naoki Nitta wrote this article for Civil Eats.


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The chair of the Federal Trade Commission will be in rural Iowa this weekend to hear from farmers and other residents about the proposed sale of Iowa Fertilizer to Koch Industries.

The sale is pending FTC approval. Iowa spent $500 million to build an Iowa Fertilizer factory in Weverly to create competition in an already consolidated industry.

Aaron Lehman, president of the Iowa Farmers Union, said he plans to tell FTC Chair Linda Khan a sale to Koch Industries would backtrack on any competitive progress the state has made.

"Our concern is that an industry that already lacks competition and has all sorts of monopoly problems would only get worse if this sale is allowed to go through," Lehman explained.

Koch and other corporate ag conglomerates have said consolidating allows them to provide better products to farmers more efficiently. The hearing is set for Saturday on Main Street in Nevada.

In addition to reducing competition for fertilizer, Lehman argued the sale would increase prices for farmers, and ultimately mean higher food prices for Iowans. He wants Khan to hear stories firsthand, from the people on the ground in Nevada.

"We know that we might not be able to have a dialogue with the people who are investigating this situation, because they need to be impartial," Lehman acknowledged. "But our farmers need to tell their story about how the industry is already in a monopoly state."

Some 18 other ag organizations have joined the Iowa Farmers Union calling on the FTC and the Justice Department to investigate the proposed sale.

A farm group is helping Iowa agriculture producers find ways to reduce the amount of nitrogen they use on their crops.

Excess nitrates can wind up in ground and surface water, and cause health problems.

Practical Farmers of Iowa is encouraging farmers to find just the right amount of nitrogen they need for their crops - while avoiding applying too much, which the group says is common.

PFI's Field Crops Viability Coordinator - Chelsea Ferrie - said thanks to federal grants and private funding, the group will pay farmers up to $35 for every acre that has a lower than normal yield if they didn't apply enough nitrogen.

"No cost to the farmer, either," said Ferrie. "We're trying to help incentivize them. This is something that farmers want to do - I mean, they want to be good stewards of the land - but also, that they need to have a profitable farm."

The application period for the program is open through the end of April.

To help them reach the right nitrogen balance, Ferrie said PFI will help farmers on the front end of the process, too - so they aren't left guessing how much to apply.

"Talk through what your typical fertilizer plan is, and what your reduction plan would be," said Ferrie. "Then you would implement this year, going into the spring and into the season."

Farmers have relied on nitrogen-based fertilizers for generations - but when applied in excess, nitrates run off into ground and surface water, posing health concerns for animals and people.




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