News – The Counter

U.S. farmers ramp up sunflower planting as war in Ukraine disrupts the global cooking oil supply

The Counter — Thu, 07 Apr 2022 21:35:01 +0000

U.S. farmers will likely plant double the expected acreage of sunflowers this season, as Ukraine’s agricultural production is disrupted and oil prices climb amid the Russian invasion. Ukraine is the world’s largest producer of sunflower oil, used in products such as potato chips and shampoo. While the oil’s exports have dropped, farmers from the Midwest to the Deep South have ramped up production to benefit from the “highest prices on record” at about $34 per 100 pounds for new-crop sunflowers, Bloomberg reports. The previous all-time high was in 2008 at $30.50 per hundred pounds. The Department of Agriculture estimated last week that farmers would likely plant 10 percent more acreage this season; the National Sunflower Association trade group doubled that projection. The war in Europe adds to a list of complicating factors that have caused the cost of U.S. cooking oil to rise in recent years; it’s tripled since 2020 due in part to unfavorable weather conditions affecting crops across the globe, Covid-19 supply chain disruptions, and a dip in palm oil production. —Safiya Charles

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Zimbabweans abroad are increasingly turning to delivery apps to send food to relatives back home

The Counter — Thu, 07 Apr 2022 21:34:27 +0000

You may envision delivery-app customers as convenience-driven Americans tapping away to fulfill their culinary desires or blithely buying takeout. But these apps are helping Zimbabweans abroad provide for their families back home, The Guardian reports. Zimbabweans living outside their homeland have been increasingly turning to newer local Zimbabwe-based startups such as Fresh in a Box to get their relatives the items they need. “It is a big part of staying in touch with my roots, staying connected to who I am. It’s more than just sending groceries,” said Sharonrose Manhiri, who orders supplies monthly for her 85-year-old grandmother from her own home in the United Kingdom. Sending groceries directly via an in-country service is also cheaper than sending actual money; for example, it costs $3.50 to send cooking oil to someone in the southern African country via delivery apps, while it costs $4.50 to buy it directly in Zimbabwe, where food prices are high and can fluctuate wildly. —Alex Hinton

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Los Angeles moves to phase out the use of Styrofoam

The Counter — Thu, 07 Apr 2022 21:33:52 +0000

Los Angeles County is making an ambitious effort to phase out the use of Styrofoam. This week, the L.A. County Board of Supervisors preliminarily approved an ordinance that would require “all disposable food service ware provided with ready-to-eat food be either compostable or recyclable,” KTLA reports. This includes containers, cups, dishes, and utensils given out by restaurants, food trucks, and temporary food service providers like farmers markets (street vendors are exempt). The ordinance is expected to be approved at the board’s next meeting, but food businesses will have time to transition to new products. The push behind the effort is simple: Consumer goods packaging represents about 50 percent of all plastic packaging and of the nearly 30 million tons of waste generated by Angelenos each year, plastic waste is the largest contributor. It’s not a secret that plastic waste enters the food system, but given the new research that recently found plastic in the lungs of living people, it seems high time to ditch these products wherever possible. —Tina Vasquez

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In lieu of champagne showers, winning NASCAR driver Ross Chastain smashes a watermelon, a tribute to his family business

The Counter — Thu, 07 Apr 2022 21:33:25 +0000

After squeaking past his competitors to win the NASCAR Cup series race in late March, driver Ross Chastain got up on his Camaro, held a watermelon aloft, and smashed the fruit on the ground. In an interview with Sports Illustrated, Chastain explained that beyond good social media fodder, the watermelon is a reminder of his family’s farm in South Florida and a shout-out to the agriculture industry, which supported the racer early in his driving career. “When people ask me what I do [who] don’t know me—I’m a watermelon farmer, and that’s it,” Chastain said. —Matthew Sedacca

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Congress unlikely to refill restaurant relief funds until before Easter recess

The Counter — Thu, 07 Apr 2022 21:32:52 +0000

Congress probably won’t pass another round of Covid-19 relief for restaurants this week, Roll Call reported on Tuesday. While the U.S. House is expected to vote on a $55 billion small business aid package—including $42 billion for restaurants specifically—the Senate doesn’t plan to address the issue until after the coming two-week Easter recess. This news surely disappoints restaurant industry advocates, who have been calling on legislators to refill the Restaurant Revitalization Fund—a $28 billion fund that was rapidly depleted due to high demand for relief in 2021. Groups like the Independent Restaurant Coalition maintain that replenishing the program is crucial to the survival of countless businesses bearing the economic brunt of the Covid-19 pandemic. “Let’s save the businesses,” said the group’s executive director, Erika Polmar, in a previous interview with The Counter. “And then make them work in ways that are more equitable, sustainable, and resilient.” We’ll check back in two weeks to see if Congress agrees. —Jessica Fu

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The last Japanese-American farmer on Bainbridge Island near Seattle would have turned 100 this year

The Counter — Thu, 07 Apr 2022 21:32:14 +0000

This year would have marked the 100-year birthday of strawberry farmer Akil Suyematsu, “the last Japanese American farmer on Bainbridge Island,” The Seattle Times reports. Suyematsu passed away in 2012, having co-owned 40 acres of Washington land since he was 8 years old. His parents, immigrants born in Japan, were not allowed to own it themselves under 1920s U.S. law, so they registered the farm under the names of Akil and his sister. As a senior in high school, Suyematsu and his family were sent to Manzanar, an internment camp in California, along with many other Japanese Americans. More and more of this history continues to make its way into the media. California’s “Rice King,” Keisaburo Koda, was also forcibly removed from his land as a result of World War II-era U.S. policy that incarcerated people of Japanese descent (many U.S. citizens) who had no role in the war. He returned three years later to find “more than 30 years of his life’s work simply taken,” Kitchn reported last year. —H. Claire Brown

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Applebee’s franchise executive fired over leaked emails that said high gas prices could mean cheaper labor

The Counter — Thu, 31 Mar 2022 21:31:41 +0000

As one Applebee’s franchise executive recently demonstrated, the old adage “no bad ideas in a brainstorm” may need some caveats. American Franchise Capital, which owns over 100 Applebee’s and Taco Bell locations in the Midwest, fired an executive, Wayne Pankratz, after an email he sent this month went viral, reports Insider. The subject line? “Why gas increase is good for hiring.” Channeling what seems to be his inner comedy antagonist, Pankratz laid out a theory that rising gas prices and inflation would cut into people’s disposable income, ultimately forcing more people to return to work and giving Applebee’s the leverage to lowball on pay. Shockingly, the leaked email didn’t go over well with the staff at an Applebee’s location in Lawrence, Kansas, where at least four managers and 10 other employees quit on the spot or handed in their notice, reports Vice. With Pankratz now on the job hunt, it remains to be seen whether any hiring managers will apply his thinking to their own salary offers. —Matthew Sedacca

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When a shopper in Texas signed up for Walgreens’ loyalty program with his email, a journalist in New York stalked their purchases

The Counter — Thu, 31 Mar 2022 21:31:14 +0000

As the pandemic unfurled, many of us have developed interesting habits, like the classic newfound obsession with baking sourdough bread or doing puzzles. For New York-based journalist Adam Chandler, the passage of time was marked by spying on the shopping habits of an unknown person in Texas. Well, perhaps “spying” is too strong of a word. Someone in El Paso signed up for Walgreens’ loyalty program using Chandler’s email address and, in doing so, primed his inbox “for a wacky collision course with American drugstore commerce.” After each Walgreens visit, Chandler received an emailed copy of the shopper’s receipt. As a person who picks grocery lists off the ground just to get a sneak peak into a stranger’s shopping life, I found Chandler’s essay for Vox charming, though admittedly odd. At one point, the shopper’s decision to buy a pound of Oscar Mayer bologna seemed to push Chandler over the edge, a tizzy I could not understand as a person who knows the beauty of a fried bologna sandwich. Personally, I found it far more intriguing that at one point, the shopper appeared to be stockpiling beer- and bourbon-scented soap. —Tina Vasquez

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Scientists have embarked on an expedition to figure out how a warming Pacific is causing salmon populations to plummet

The Counter — Thu, 31 Mar 2022 21:30:29 +0000

Alaska’s Yukon River typically sees up to a million chum salmon in its waters each year—last year, that number was only 82,000. A similar plummet was found in Canada’s Fraser River, where a record low of 293,000 sockeye salmon appeared. (It usually sees almost 10 million.) What’s with the decrease? That’s what the largest-ever salmon research expedition in the North Pacific is trying to figure out, reports The Washington Post. Five ships from the U.S., Canada, and Russia are collecting samples and studying ocean conditions across a million square miles. They’re mapping where salmon from different rivers spend their winter months and examining how warming waters are affecting salmon populations. Scientists are already learning a lot simply by gathering previously unseen data on how climate affects the populations of these fish. But there will be gaps in that data gathering. Like so much else right now, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has impeded the expedition—the U.S. government has blocked Russia’s ship from doing research in any of its economic zone waters. —Mike Dang

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Organic Maine farmers face a surprised PFAS contamination crisis

The Counter — Thu, 31 Mar 2022 21:29:51 +0000

A pair of organic farmers in Maine got a nasty shock last December when they tested their soil and well water and found high levels of PFAS, Modern Farmer reports. They halted all farming operations, and soon learned sludge and wastewater containing PFAS—or so-called “forever chemicals,” which have been linked to a broad range of negative health impacts—had been spread on their land in the early 1990s. Thirty years later, the groundwater still contains 400 times the state’s threshold for the chemicals. A few months after the initial discovery, nearby farmers discovered a similar problem in their cows’ milk. Local farming organizations have now rallied around farmers in the impacted area, and the state legislature is considering bills that would stop the further spread of PFAS. —H. Claire Brown

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In Anchorage, Alaska, a growing Muslim community is in full swing preparing for Ramadan—with a few additional obstacles

The Counter — Thu, 31 Mar 2022 21:28:45 +0000

In Anchorage, Alaska, one of the nation’s most ethnically diverse cities, and home to a growing Muslim community, celebrating Ramadan looks a little different—and requires a little more ingenuity—than in other parts of the world. The New York Times reports on how Muslims break the Ramadan fast at America’s northmost mosque, where geography poses a major problem for sourcing necessary foods and spices. Alaska already imports 95 percent of its food, and is continuing to feel the fallout effects of supply-chain disruptions. And while there are more halal options than there used to be in Anchorage—including three halal specialty shops—it can still be a challenge to find many ingredients. Residents start stocking up over a month in advance; bringing spices in from their hometowns of Senegal or Pakistan; practicing making dishes ahead of time; and even, for at least one resident, securing some hyper-local meat from a neighbor who hunts according to Islamic law and recently shared some halal caribou. —Alex Hinton

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