Tag: Shawn Peebles

COVID-19 Takes A Toll On Our Food Supply

The coronavirus highlights many of our vulnerabilities, including the system we use to get food from the farm to the table.  Lately, the pandemic has forced U.S. farmers to face the unthinkable. They plowed under perfectly good vegetables when schools and restaurants shut down and their market vanished. Livestock producers have euthanized hogs and chickens. They couldn’t get the meat to consumers when workers got sick and packing plants closed.

The growing season also brings migrant workers to U.S. farms. They come for jobs they need. But this year, some come wearing face masks, worried they may take the virus home to their families.

For this episode, Trey speaks with his colleague Loretta Williams about her conversations with American farmers about their challenges of producing food in the age of COVID-19.

 

This episode of Us & Them is presented with support from the West Virginia Humanities Council and the CRC Foundation.

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Farm Wars

America’s trade war with China is fueling a long-running battle over weedkillers in American farm fields. It’s a tough time to be an American farmer — especially if you grow soybean. They are a $40 billion business in the U.S., but the price of soybeans plummeted last year because of the trade war. Soybean farmers are desperate to restore their profits and one way to do that is to boost their harvest.

Weeds can get in the way of that goal. For years, farmers have been able to keep weeds at bay with products like Monsanto’s herbicide Roundup, but now, some weeds are resistant to the chemical. Monsanto and other chemical companies have  another effective weedkiller that relies on an herbicide called “dicamba.” But there’s a problem: besides killing weeds, dicamba can harm other sensitive plants. In fact, in 2017, the drifting chemical damaged some three and half million acres of valuable crops.

There are petitions and lawsuits in the works.  One farmer died in a fight over the weedkiller.  It’s forcing farmers to ask: where’s the line between doing what’s good for my business and doing what’s good for my neighbors?

In this episode, host Trey Kay and his colleague Loretta Williams travel to Arkansas to report on a simmering battle — more like a civil war — that pits farmer against farmer.

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