By Seth Millstein for Sentient.
Broadcast version by Danielle Smith for Tennessee News Service reporting for the Sentient-Public News Service Collaboration

Since the beginning of April, President Trump has announced a number of new tariffs on countries around the globe, most notably China. While exactly which tariffs will remain in place long-term is changing day-to-day, the trade war with China appears to only be escalating. This is certain to have major impacts on the agriculture industry, and the consumers who rely on it for food.

Trump’s tariff plan, as originally announced, contained two different “layers.” The first was a 10 percent tariff on exports from all countries, while the second was an additional, “reciprocal” tariff on 60 specific countries. The reciprocal tariff rates differed from country to country, and were ostensibly going to be applied to countries with large trade deficits with the U.S.

Just hours after the tariffs took effect, however, Trump reversed course and announced a 90-day “pause” on the reciprocal tariffs. The first layer of tariffs remains in place, however.

In the same announcement, Trump said that tariffs on China will be increased to 125 percent. This comes after the Chinese government, as widely expected, imposed retaliatory tariffs on American exports in response to Trump’s initial announcement.

How the Tariffs Will Impact Agriculture

Trump’s tariffs will have major impacts on a wide swath of American industry, and agriculture is no exception. The exact nature of those impacts, however, may not be what the president is expecting.

Ultimately, the goal of tariffs is to incentivize domestic production and disincentivize imports — in other words, to reduce international trade. But this is a mistake, says Andrew Muhammad, professor of agricultural and resource economics at the University of Tennessee Knoxville.

“International trade is a means by which you can consume beyond your ability to produce,” Muhammad tells Sentient. “It’s good for an individual. It’s good for a city, it’s good for a state and, of course, it’s good for a country.”

“Good,” of course, is relative. Increasing our consumption options in this regard might make our lives feel more plentiful, and more consumption is certainly good for producers’ bottom lines. But overconsumption is a problem; we already consume the planet’s resources at an unsustainable rate, and this definitely is not good for the environment, animals or our long term prospects as a species.

Nevertheless, it’s helpful to look at what happens when international trade is artificially restricted via taxation in the way Muhammad describes. And that’s exactly what Trump’s tariffs — and all tariffs — aim to do.

   Higher Costs & Lower Profits for Producers

Although it’s impossible to say with certainty how this trade war will pan out, it’s almost certain to result in higher prices and lower profits for Americans, at least in the short term.

   Higher Costs & Lower Profits for Producers

From an economic standpoint, Trump’s tariffs will likely cause pain for both agricultural producers and everyday Americans. That’s because tariffs usually cause what’s called a price wedge — a type of economic inefficiency that results in buyers paying more, and sellers earning less, than they otherwise would have.

On the production side, the tariffs will make business less profitable and more costly. Retaliatory tariffs on the U.S. will result in less international demand for American agricultural products, which will hurt agricultural exporters’ bottom lines.

Any American company that sells beef to China, for instance, will see a dip in their profits thanks to the tariffs, as their products will suddenly cost more for Chinese buyers. This, in turn, will incentivize Chinese importers to buy from non-American sources instead, and it’s already started happening: Since Trump’s tariff announcements, China has started buying more beef from Brazilian producers, a move that experts predict will lead to increased deforestation in the Amazon.

But it’s not just exporters. A whole lot of farming equipment is manufactured abroad, and even products that are built in America are often sourced from foreign parts. Because of this, any agricultural producer who uses foreign products at all will have to pay more for them than they would without the tariffs. This applies to tractors, backhoes, combine harvesters, captive bolt pistols and any other piece of equipment that might reasonably be used on a farm.

Muhammad points out that, thanks to the complex and highly interconnected nature of modern economic markets, plenty of agricultural producers who might not think of themselves as exporters or importers are nevertheless deeply enmeshed in international trade, and will be impacted by the tariffs.

“Whether you think you’re connected to global markets or not, there’s a high likelihood that a retaliatory tariff will depress the prices you receive in the market,” Muhammad says. “Trade dynamics with China will filter down into the market prices [producers] receive.”

   Higher Prices for Consumers

All of the above factors mean that American food producers will likely make less money than they were before as a result of Trump’s tariffs. The cost of doing business will go up, and if history is any guide, producers will respond to this by charging more for their goods.

A key factor for producers is whether the Trump administration’s U.S. Department of Agriculture will provide financial relief to farmers as the Department did during President Trump’s first term.

For now, it appears Americans will almost certainly be paying more money for groceries than they were before. Foods that are primarily or largely sourced from other countries will likely face the highest price hikes, and Muhammad cites hamburgers as a prime example of this.

   Beef As Case Study

The U.S. beef trade is a complicated topic, as America is both a leading exporter and a leading importer of beef. This might seem odd, but it’s because beef is sourced and produced in different ways depending on the country. Generally speaking, the U.S. imports lower-quality forms of beef and exports higher-quality cuts.

Burgers are made from ground beef, and between 20 and 30 percent of ground beef in America is imported from abroad. American burger producers are especially reliant on imported lean trimmings, a lower-quality form of meat that they combine with domestically produced fat trimmings to create ground beef.

Tariffs will make it more expensive for these producers to acquire lean trimmings from abroad. You might think that this would compel them to purchase more trimmings from American cattle farmers; however, due to the way cattle is fed in the U.S., American beef farmers are not well-equipped to produce lean trimmings at the volumes needed to replace foreign trimmings.

Of course, retaliatory tariffs make it less profitable to export beef, too. With that being the case, couldn’t U.S. farmers simply use high-quality, domestically produced cuts of beef that they otherwise would have exported to fill the gap in lean trimmings?

Not exactly. In addition to the fact that this would result in a different-tasting burger that customers might not prefer, ground beef goes for a cheaper price on a per-pound basis than steaks, roasts and other products made using high-quality cuts of beef. It wouldn’t make economic sense for beef producers to grind up that meat and sell it for a lower price than they were receiving before.

“It has sort of two compounding effects,” Muhammad says. “You have depressing beef prices in terms of what we export, but inflating beef prices in terms of what we import. And since we export something very different from what we import, that’s not going to balance out.”

No matter how you slice it, the end result is the same: more expensive burgers.

   (Some) Empty Shelves

In addition to raising prices for everybody, buyers of agricultural goods could face an additional consequence due to the tariffs: shortages.

This doesn’t mean Americans will suddenly be facing a food scarcity crisis. What it does mean is that some manufacturers might be disincentivized to produce certain foods, specifically those with very low margins.

Blueberries, for instance, have a very low markup. They’re only sold for slightly more than they cost to produce, and so in order to be profitable, producers need to sell them in very high quantities. But if the price of importing them increases, even by a little bit, it may no longer be profitable to sell blueberries at all.

“If you are an importer of blueberries, you’re making your money off the fact that a bunch of people will buy blueberries, not that on a per-unit basis, you’re making a high [profit],” Muhammad says. “When tariffs make that low markup non-competitive — when you can’t pass the price along to consumers, because they’re only going to pay so much for blueberries — you could actually then see some decreases in availability, as well as higher prices.”

In a broader sense, any agricultural goods that can’t be produced domestically, or can only be produced in relatively small quantities, may be in short supply as well. This includes out-of-season fruit and vegetables, and goods that are required to be made in another country, such as Mexican beer or Scotch whiskey.

Will Tariffs Increase Domestic Food Production?

The “upside” of tariffs, at least according to their proponents, is that they make domestic producers more competitive with their foreign rivals. Will U.S. food producers “rise to the challenge,” and begin producing more food domestically?

Not necessarily. Making more food in the U.S. would require farmers to increase their production capacities, and this costs money. But such an investment would only be worthwhile for as long as the tariff is in place; the moment it’s gone, this excess production capacity becomes a wasted investment, as there’s no longer a market for the extra food being produced.

As Trump has already shown, tariffs often don’t remain in place for very long. The administration has even stated that the tariffs are a “negotiating strategy,” and as such, American firms have little incentive to treat them as anything other than temporary. 

“All they’re gonna do when they’re temporary is just raise prices,” Muhammad says. “In theory, they’re supposed to also increase domestic production. But unless there’s some excess capacity unrealized, where we can ramp up production without investment, you won’t get any increase in output unless someone can guarantee that the tariffs are permanent. But the problem is, even if they last four years, that’s still not permanent.”

Will Tariffs Increase Farm Consolidation?

Over the last half-century or so, small farms have increasingly been acquired or put out of business by large agricultural producers. This phenomenon is referred to as consolidation, and because tariffs will hurt farmers’ bottom lines, they could accelerate consolidation in the agricultural sector.

But they might not, either. Muhammad says that, although increased consolidation is a possibility, large producers may be reluctant to buy up smaller farms, given that the tariffs may only be temporary.

“If I wanted to acquire another firm, I would need to know that these tariffs are in place for life,” Muhammad says. “What’s the point of investing in expanding capacity to take advantage of economies of scale when I need a tariff to still be competitive?”

The Bottom Line

This isn’t the first time Trump has waged a trade war. He did so during his first term as well, and the results were not good: The U.S. economy shrank, American companies lost nearly $46 billion and an estimated 300,000 Americans were put out of work.

It’s too soon to say exactly what the results of these new tariffs will be. But there’s little reason to believe that they’ll be any different than the last time, and if that’s the case, things are going to get a lot worse before they get any better, including in the agricultural sector.


Seth Millstein wrote this article for Sentient.


get more stories like this via email

With more than 95,000 farms, Missouri ranks among the top farming states in the nation. Now, a national agriculture group is warning that bills moving through Congress could hurt rural communities.
According to the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, the Senate's reconciliation bill, sometimes called "The Big Beautiful Bill Act," would deepen hunger and hinder small farmers. At the same time, the group contends the House's 2026 spending plan slashes funding for conservation, research and local food programs.

Mike Lavender, the coalition's policy director, said the consequences of these cuts will be felt directly by those working the land.

"These cuts, even to relatively small programs, are going to mean that fewer farmers have access to resources and information that help them have a successful livelihood, help their business work and help them be successful in providing for their family," he said.

Supporters have said the bills promote responsible budgeting by cutting spending and boosting efficiency. The Senate's agriculture bill awaits full debate, while the House's 2026 funding bill has cleared committee.

Nearly 90% of Missouri's farms are family-owned. Lavender said his organization has been working closely with members of the Senate and the Appropriations Committee to make sure they understand the importance of these programs for farmers across the country.

"Don't do what the House did. Don't undercut farmers, don't undercut rural communities by reducing funding for these programs," he said, "but rather they deliver funding for these programs based on demand, and we know there's a high demand and a high need for these programs across the country."

Lavender added that the 2026 spending bill has "one bright spot" in its support for direct purchases from local producers, but he said that's overshadowed by cuts that hurt those very farmers.


get more stories like this via email

By Seth Millstein for Sentient.
Broadcast version by Chrystal Blair for Missouri News Service reporting for the Sentient-Public News Service Collaboration

An estimated 99 percent of farm animals in the U.S. live in what the government calls Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, or CAFOs. But what exactly makes something a CAFO, and are they the same as factory farms? Generally speaking, CAFOs are large industrial facilities where hundreds, thousands or hundreds of thousands of farmed animals are densely packed in sheds or feed yards. They're an example of what's also called intensive farming, in which the goal is to produce the maximum amount of product using the least amount of physical space.maximum amount of product using the least amount of physical space.

"They work like an industry," John Ikerd, professor emeritus of agricultural economics at the University of Missouri, tells Sentient. "The basic characteristics of an industrial operation is to specialize. You specialize in just doing one thing, so you can do it more effectively. And once you specialize, then you can routinize the process. And once you routinize, you can mechanize, and once you mechanize, then you simplify the whole production process, so that you can consolidate into larger and larger operations."

The argument for farming more like an industrialized factory came from agriculture researchers in the mid-20th century, according to agricultural economist Jayson Lusk, and it wasn't seen as a bad thing. Getting bigger was a way for farms to become more efficient and, therefore, more economically sustainable. Unfortunately, that efficiency comes with a multitude of tradeoffs, for animals, workers and the environment.

What Is a CAFO?

The term "CAFO" was created by the U.S. government in the 1970s as part of a federal effort to reduce water pollution. It began in 1972, when Congress passed the Clean Water Act. This law authorized the EPA to regulate point source pollution, or water pollution that comes from a single identifiable source; while the law didn't include the acronym "CAFO," it did mention "concentrated animal feeding operations" as an example of point source pollution.

Ikerd says the amount of water pollution a farm emits is directly tied to how densely concentrated the animals on the farm are.

"If you have the animals dispersed out across the land, as they were before we had CAFOs, then you're not concentrating the waste in one place," Ikerd says. "When you concentrate the animals, then you concentrate the manure, and the urine and all the waste from the animals."

In 1974, the EPA formalized and expanded upon this designation, issuing a rule that defined CAFOs as a subset of AFOs, or (non-concentrated) animal feeding operations.

The difference between an AFO and a CAFO is important, as CAFOs are subject to more stringent regulations.

AFOs vs. CAFOs

The size designation of any given AFO depends on a number of factors, the primary one being the number of animals in the facility and the species of animal in question. For instance, a dairy AFO is considered large (and therefore a CAFO) if it has over 700 dairy cows; a turkey AFO, meanwhile, needs 55,000 or more turkeys to qualify as a CAFO.

There are a few other factors that determine whether a facility qualifies as a CAFO. With pig farms, the weight of the animal is taken into consideration. On chicken farms, the size designation depends on whether the birds are being farmed for meat or eggs.

Manure Processing

There's another important factor in determining whether or not a farm qualifies as a CAFO, and that's the manner in which it processes and stores manure. This is because manure storage plays a big role in determining how much water pollution a CAFO creates, and managing water pollution was the government's impetus for coining the term "CAFO" in the first place.

Each year, industrial livestock operations create a staggering amount of manure and other farm animal waste; 941 billion pounds, according to a Food and Water Watch report from 2024.

For poultry farms, the threshold to qualify as medium- or large-sized is lower if the facility uses liquid manure handling systems, as these systems are more prone to leakage, and thus polluting nearby waterways, than dry systems.

Finally, the director of the EPA has the authority to designate individual facilities as CAFOs on a case-by-case basis, should they determine that the facility in question is a significant contributor to water pollution.

Are CAFOs the Same as Factory Farms?

Unlike "CAFO," the term "factory farm" isn't a legal term with a statutory definition. It's more of a general concept that's used colloquially to describe CAFO-like facilities.

Merriam-Webster defines a factory farm as one in which "large numbers of livestock are raised indoors in conditions intended to maximize production at minimal cost." That's a simpler, less specific and potentially more expansive definition than the government's definition of a CAFO; depending on how one interprets the word "large," it's easy to imagine a facility that meets the dictionary definition of factory farm but doesn't technically qualify as a CAFO.

Ikerd, however, defines "factory farm" a bit differently. He says that it's a "farming operation that basically functions like a factory."

"You put [the animals] into this factory-like setting, and then you apply certain routine procedures to them that are specified by the people that are contracting with them," Ikerd says. "And then you come out with a finished product on the other end, whether that's meat, or milk or eggs."

CAFOs, by the Numbers

According to the EPA's latest numbers, there are 21,179 CAFOs in the United States.

Most U.S. states have at least one CAFO, but they're not evenly distributed across the country. Iowa is home to the most CAFOs (around 4,025), and another five states have over 1,000 CAFOs in their borders. The majority of states (28) have between 100 and 1,000 CAFOs, while a small handful have under 10.

How CAFOs Pollute the Water

CAFOs generate an estimated 941 billion pounds of manure each year, and dealing with that manure is a major challenge for farm operators. Typically, it's either stored on-site in a lagoon or similar structure until it can be sprayed onto nearby crops for use as untreated fertilizer.

Nutrient Runoff

Manure lagoons can be prone to leaks and malfunctions, especially during storms, and even a light rain can wash the fertilizer on cropland into nearby rivers, lakes and streams. This is what's known as nutrient runoff, and it's especially common when manure is overapplied as fertilizer, which Ikerd says is common on CAFOs.

Algal Blooms

The impacts of CAFO-sourced water pollution has severe consequences for humans, animals and the environment. Along with other pollution, it leads to harmful algal blooms, an overgrowth of algae that can cause mass fish die-offs and extensive damage to aquatic ecosystems. Harmful algal blooms can also contaminate drinking and recreational water, and have been linked to at least one fatal case of paralytic shellfish poisoning in a human.

Disease Risk & Antibiotic Resistance

Livestock manure can also contain infectious bacteria, such as E.coli and salmonella, that can end up in the air and water nearby CAFOs, and even nearby fruit and vegetable farms.

The antibiotics that farmers administer to animals on CAFOs are also fueling the world's antibiotic resistance problem, a public health threat that kills over one million people every year.

How Are CAFOs Regulated?

Facilities that meet the government's definition of a CAFO have to abide by a few modest requirements relating to its manure and waste management.

First, any CAFO that discharges pollutants into waters of the United States - a legal term that we'll discuss in a moment - is required to obtain a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit. These permits place limits on the amount and type of pollutants that the CAFO in question is allowed to discharge. The EPA defines a pollutant as "any industrial, municipal and agricultural waste."

Second, any CAFOs with a NPDES permit - and all large CAFOs, regardless of whether they have a permit - must present the EPA with a nutrient management plan. This is simply a description of the procedures the CAFO will use to manage the manure, animal parts, wastewater and other potential pollutants it produces, and ensure that they don't contaminate nearby water in excess of the limits imposed by the NPDES.

Environmental Loopholes to CAFO Regulation

There are some loopholes in this system. The first concerns which types of waterways a CAFO isn't allowed to discharge pollutants into without a permit. EPA rules use the phrase "waters of the United States" (WOTUS), a legal designation created by the Clean Water Act that's been subject to significant litigation and modification over the decades, most recently in 2023.

The nuances of WOTUS designations are incredibly complex and technical, but broadly speaking, the term covers most major and permanent waterways while excluding some smaller, unofficial and impermanent ones.

As a result, there are some CAFOs that don't need to obtain an NPDES permit, or abide by any limits that such a permit would impose. CAFOs that discharge their waste into non-WOTUS designated waterways are exempt from permitting, and so are those whose waste indirectly ends up in waterways. This latter category includes farms that store their manure in lagoons or apply it as untreated fertilizer to crops.

This might sound like a small loophole, but it has enormous implications. According to the EPA's own data, less than one-third of all CAFOs in the U.S. have an NPDES permit. In Iowa, the state with the most CAFOs, less than four percent are NPDES-permitted.

If CAFOs violate the terms of their NPDES permit - and they often do - the EPA can fine them. But this brings us to another problem with the regulatory framework around CAFOs: When the water is polluted, it's tough to figure out exactly where that pollution came from.

"It's very difficult to prove a violation, and link a violation to a particular CAFO," Ikerd explains. "If you've got pollution in a stream, it's very hard to bring that back to one particular operation. So you've got to go through the process of saying, 'it came from this particular operation rather than another,' and that's really made it difficult to enforce."

Some states have created their own permitting regimes for CAFOs that go above and beyond the EPA's requirements. Oregon, for instance, allows its state environmental agency to require NPDES permits for all enclosed animal farms, regardless of their size. As a result, the state has issued more than twice as many NPDES permits as there are CAFOs within its borders.

Some Community Groups Are Pushing Back on New CAFOs

The rising number of CAFOs in the United States are driven by a growing global population with a massive appetite for cheap meat. But a relatively new phenomenon is emerging in communities across the United States: small groups of residents who oppose the construction of new CAFOs are working together to block factory farm expansion. And some of them, like one that formed in Linn County, Oregon, are even finding success. Of course, it's highly unlikely that the CAFO industry will be put out of business anytime soon, but still, the nascent anti-factory farm movement is one to watch.


Seth Millstein wrote this article for Sentient.


get more stories like this via email

By Jessica Scott-Reid for Sentient.
Broadcast version by Terri Dee for Ohio News Connection reporting for the Sentient-Public News Service Collaboration

Regenerative agriculture continues to capture attention - praised in star‑studded documentaries like "Kiss the Ground" and "Common Ground," and featured heavily in Biden's "climate-smart agriculture" programs. The promise sounds compelling. With the right type of cattle grazing and soil-enhancing farming practices, we can eat all the beef we want, guilt-free. But as climate scientist Jonathan Foley explained in a recent webinar hosted by the Food and Farming Journalism Network: "We're finding that the results of real field trials, replicated at scale, aren't producing the results we see in the movies." According to Foley, many of the promises of regenerative agriculture "have been overhyped."

Around a third of global greenhouse gas emissions come from food, with most of those emissions driven by meat -- especially beef. Regenerative agriculture has remained a popular initiative for many, but the math that its carbon-saving calculations are based on simply doesn't pencil out.

There's no way to make regenerative agriculture work, at least not if Americans and others in Global North countries continue to eat the same amount of meat. "Regenerative [agriculture] can only happen if our thinking, our philosophy, our diet and our food, changes," Rattan Lal, distinguished professor of soil science at Ohio State University, tells Sentient. That includes drastically reducing meat consumption, not just making meat "better."

What Does 'Regenerative Agriculture' Mean?

Regenerative agriculture doesn't have a single, universally accepted definition, but core practices of regenerative farming tend to include planting cover crops, avoiding soil tillage and rotating livestock - especially cattle - across pastures to graze. Mainly drawn from Indigenous knowledge, these practices can benefit soil health.

As a climate solution, however, the evidence doesn't stack up. The basic idea behind regenerative meat as a climate solution goes like this: whatever emissions that are produced as a result of raising beef are offset by regenerative farming practices. Those practices, the argument goes, can capture carbon out of the air and into the soil permanently, which is what you need for an offset to be effective, so that the climate pollution from the meat doesn't count.

But research shows regenerative farming is not effective at permanent, or even long-lasting, carbon sequestration (again, that's what you need for a carbon offset to work).

Foley, who is also the Executive Director for the climate solutions research group Project Drawdown, summed it up this way in the webinar: "if you don't cherry pick the data, and you look at it more systematically, regenerative grazing in particular doesn't look quite as strong as it might at first appear."

Regenerative Grazing Has a Land Problem, Which Is Also a Climate Problem

Regenerative grazing can only do so much with carbon. Unlike what happens in native forests, prairies and wetlands, on a farm, carbon is indeed added into the ground, but only transiently and only in the topsoil.

At that depth, rapid microbial turnover releases much of the carbon back into the atmosphere, and does not store it permanently. In order to be an effective offset, the carbon needs to be stored in the ground permanently.

Regenerative grazing also uses more land. In addition to the methane burps, that's a big part of why beef - no matter how you farm it - has such a massive climate cost is the land.

A 2020 study found that regenerative ranching requires up to 2.5 times more land than conventional beef production. In practical terms, that means to produce the same amount of meat that we consume now but with regenerative farming practices, the "footprint of animal agriculture" would have to increase substantially.

Even switching from factory-farmed to grass-fed beef in the U.S. would take a heavy toll. Research shows that grass-fed beef production actually emits more greenhouse gas emissions than conventional farming.

That's because factory farms, for all of their problems, are just far more efficient at raising meat. And efficiency is a good thing, at least if you are solely focused on greenhouse gas emissions (critics of this perspective sometimes call this view "carbon tunnel vision"). Grass-fed beef production, being far less efficient, emits more methane per cow and requires more land.

One study from 2018 estimated that shifting the beef cattle population to grass-fed cows would require increasing the national cattle herd from 77 million to 100 million - about a 30 percent jump.

Eat Less Meat and Rewild More Land

Lal, who is supportive of regenerative agriculture, says that the only way for the regenerative approach to work at-scale is with a reduction in meat production and consumption, and a return of some agricultural lands to nature, otherwise known as rewilding.

"Agriculture has been a problem," Lal says, because over time, we humans have deforested massive amounts of carbon-storing forests and other native landscapes to produce food for a growing global population.

But that deforestation came with a major climate pollution cost, and our ongoing deforestation to feed our global meat habit today is only adding to that cost.

Now, both global temperatures and populations are continuing to increase, and if we want to stave off the worst effects of climate change, while also feeding a lot more people, we need to take a few important steps, both Lal and Foley agree.

According to Foley, "we've got to cut the emissions in the first place." One way of doing that is by eating less beef. In 2018, a report from the World Resources Institute found that U.S. beef consumption needs to be reduced by about 40 percent to limit global warming effectively.

There are other measures needed too. In addition to eating less meat, Foley said during the webinar, we need to "restore nature, shrink the footprint of agriculture, put back the forest, put back the natural prairies, put back the mangroves. If we could do that through curbing our diets and curbing our waste, that would be a great, great idea."

Lal describes the task ahead in stark terms. We have an obligation, he says, "not only technologically and economically, but also morally and ethically, to return some of that extra land back to nature."

In order to do that through regenerative practices, "some productivity has to be sacrificed. So we [have to] change our diet, [to eat less meat]." After all, "Do we need to eat meat three times a day?" asks Lal, rhetorically. "Three times a day meat-based, is not healthy for people and not healthy for the planet."

Lal has many big changes in mind: "our thinking, our diet, our way of life, our food habits, our food system - all that has to change. It is really transformation and regeneration [that's needed], not only of agriculture, but of our own thinking and lifestyle as well."


Jessica Scott-Reid wrote this article for Sentient.


get more stories like this via email