In a landfill, food and organic materials are dumped into the landfill, with more waste continually piled on top, creating compacted, oxygen-deprived areas where bacteria flourishes to break down the organic matter. The decomposition process generates methane, a greenhouse gas. According to the EPA, “municipal solid waste landfills are the third largest source of human-related methane emissions in the US.” 

Put another way: The majority of things we casually toss into the trash can be composted, with big benefits for the planet. 

Composting is a pretty basic concept, although there are several ways to go about it. Essentially, composting speeds up the decomposition process by adding organic matter to an oxygen-rich environment and then letting the bugs and fungi that break down matter do their thing. There are small, backyard-scale composting setups with worms (known as vermicomposting), large, industrial-sized bins that rotate the matter consistently to ensure the right airflow and all sizes in between. Whatever method you use, eventually, the end result is compost—a nutrient-rich soil that can be used as a soil amendment. 

Roughly 15 million American households have access to a food-waste compost program, with about 400 programs spread across 25 states. That’s about 12 percent of households across the country. If composting is a big win for cities—taking waste out of landfills, producing fertilizer and engaging citizens in the recycling process—why doesn’t everyone do it? Well, like most public works initiatives, it’s not that simple. 

To learn more about which municipalities offer composting across the US and Canada—and to add your city to our list—check out our compost map here. 

The curbside pickup truck from Washington’s pilot program. Photography submitted by the City of Washington, DC.

‘One size doesn’t fit all’

So, what does it take to implement a new composting program? In 2017, Washington, DC’s Department of Public Works put together a survey to assess the feasibility of a compost program for local residents. There are a lot of considerations; in this case, it found that the main obstacle was processing capacity. For a city of about 700,000 people, where does all of that waste actually go? 

The city just did not have the space to divert waste from the landfill at that time. However, in the intervening years, industrial composting programs in DC-adjacent Prince George’s County have increased, and other cities such as Boston have started composting—a development that Rachel Manning, a program analyst within Washington’s Department of Public Works, and her team have watched with interest. Finally, in August of 2023, seven years after its initial study, Washington launched its pilot compost program. 

The city now has about 10,000 households participating in the pilot program, with regular curbside pickup of compost, along with trash and recycling. Manning says the team sends out regular surveys to participants to see how things are going throughout the program, which is scheduled to last for a year. “Something that’s interesting to us is understanding that one size doesn’t fit all,” Manning says of the issues that have popped up from resident responses. “Maybe not everyone fills up a five-gallon bin, maybe some people want more than five gallons…so there’s a little bit of thinking about what are the right sizes of these containers? What type of [truck] fleets do we need to serve all these homes? Right now, it’s not the same size as our trash packer trucks, because we’re not servicing as many people. But also, food has a lot of moisture in it, so you need a particular vehicle for that. Also, [the Department of Public Works] has a goal to electrify all of their fleet. So, we need to think about electric vehicles, and what the capacity is there.” 

So far, Manning says the program has been a success. It has about a 70-percent adoption rate among participants and has diverted more than 400 tons of waste from the landfill. The city also brings the compost back to residents (if they ask for it) to use in their gardens, so there’s even more incentive for residents to compost. This summer, when the program is scheduled to come to an end, Manning and the team will evaluate moving forward with composting on an even larger scale. 

Photography submitted by they city of Kansas City, MO.

‘We’re willing to pivot’

“I’m going to tell you a secret,” says Melissa Kozakiewicz, assistant city engineer in Kansas City, Missouri. “I always start with pilots, and using the word ‘pilot,’ I can pivot and be flexible when things are working and when they’re not….but we aren’t going to take it away.” 

Kozakiewicz, who has previously built up a compost program in Jersey City, New Jersey, is now spearheading the compost pilot program in Kansas City. She’s hoping to replicate some of her previous successes, particularly in how she makes the program available to residents. “You have to be really deliberate and careful with how you introduce [a compost program]. You don’t want anybody to feel like you’re jamming something down their throat, because then they’re out,” says Kozakiewicz. Instead, she works at a pace with which the community is comfortable and integrates demonstrations at big public events, such as a Fourth of July parade. That way, residents get comfortable with composting as part of their public life and might be more inclined to continue doing it at home. 

[RELATED: Map: Who Composts?]

Kansas City also doesn’t currently offer a curbside pickup of compost. Instead, its model is a drop-off program. The city has five current drop-off locations, with 10 more to come around the city this year. Kozakiewicz says that helps prevent contamination of waste, because compost bins aren’t lying around next to trash or recycling containers. If residents make a trip to a special, designated location, it helps to reinforce what that location is for. It also helps ward against another common concern for cities: vermin and pests. “We have one of our drop-off spots inside of City Hall’s garage. It’s a publicly accessible space that anybody can use,” says Kozakiewicz, and the regular foot traffic allows for a lot of feedback if something’s amiss. “If you call me and say ‘Hey, I was at the City Hall garage, and it looks terrible,’ I can call somebody right this minute to go check it out.” (Data on adoption rates for composting are harder to find, but studies suggest that in the case of recycling programs, residents are more likely to participate when the programs offer curbside pickup.)

Both Kansas City and Washington, DC, are experimenting with programs at the municipal level and with just a portion of their residents so far. But can these programs scale up? Recent state-wide legislation is trying to answer that question. 

In Vermont, a state-wide food scrap ban went into effect in 2020. Residents separate their food scraps and either compost them in their own homes, drop them off at a designated station or sign up for curb-side pick-up. The law also prioritizes reducing food waste upstream, ensuring more food goes to food banks or is turned into animal feed. At the time of implementation, Josh Kelly, materials management section chief at the state’s department of environmental conservation, told Vermont Public that state legislators had been working on reducing waste since 2012. “We have had a state goal to have 50 percent of the waste that we produce separated and recycled, reused or composted. And that goal has never been met in all the years that it’s been in place.” In the year following the ban’s implementation, sales of backyard composters in Vermont more than doubled, and a survey last year found that 61 percent of Vermont residents felt a “moral obligation” to keep food out of landfills (although the state is still not meeting that 50-percent goal).

California is hoping to see some of that success, after it implemented state-wide legislation in January of 2022. The goal of the law, says Lance Klug, with CalRecycle’s office of public affairs, is to reduce the amount of organic waste in landfills by 75 percent and reroute 20 percent of fresh, unsold food to Californians in need, both by 2025. The law requires all cities and counties in the state to implement programs to collect organic waste and increase food recovery from sites such as grocery stores. So far, says Klug, the program is chugging along, although it’s run into issues ranging from COVID-related supply chain slowdowns to a slower adoption rate than hoped for. Roughly 75 percent of jurisdictions in California now have a composting program in place, and in 2022, about 200,000 tons of unsold food was recovered and redistributed to folks who needed it. However, as reported by the Associated Press, it’s unlikely the state will meet its 2025 goals. 

Photography submitted by they city of Kansas City, MO.

‘Education can’t be understated’

Not everyone has a state or even a city supporting them in the effort to compost. But for some folks, that doesn’t matter—they just do it anyway. 

For Bob Ferretti, that was no small feat. He’s the associate director of administrative services at Yale University, which at any given time has about 25,000 students, staff and faculty on the campus. That’s a lot of waste. 

About 15 years ago, Ferretti and his team began the process of figuring out how to facilitate a composting program on campus—made more difficult by the fact that, at the time, the city of New Haven, Connecticut, where Yale is located, did not have a program in place municipally. (Currently, there’s still no residential program for would-be composters in New Haven. However, the city does mandate that if you are a large business, produce enough compost and are located within 20 miles of a compost facility, then you are required to use it.) “There’s really no composting infrastructure within the state at an industrial scale,” says Ferretti. “There were small organic operations within local farms and things like that, but nothing that could handle the volume we were producing.” 

[RELATED: He Wanted to Start Up a Composting Operation. Outdated Zoning Laws Stood in the Way.]

At first, Ferretti recalls, Yale had to hire trucks to cart the compost daily from campus to a facility on the New York State border, which was a few hours round-trip. It wasn’t the best environmental solution, Ferretti says, for an effort aiming to curb greenhouse emissions. “We did meet with the city to try and come up with something even more local,” says Ferretti. “I don’t think there was a ton of real estate available for it.” Plus, says Ferretti, there were questions about who would own that kind of project. Would it be a municipally run program that only serves Yale? A private program for the university but that utilizes local government? Ultimately, Ferretti and his team found an industrial composter within the state, only about 30 minutes from campus, and partnered with it. 

There were some initial wins for the Yale project. As students who lived on campus mostly lived in residence halls and ate at large dining facilities, much of the waste was already centralized, making it less difficult to collect than in a spread-out city. But this was more than a decade ago, and Ferretti says they had needed to do a lot of education to get everyone on board. “We did a lot of waste stream audits for visual awareness, you know, where we dumped out bags of trash across campus and had people in Tyvek suits sorting through and showing people what’s in our waste stream so that they became aware of how much could be diverted,” says Ferretti. “We would have the students actively weigh plates after every meal, to see how much food was scraped into this bucket, so that they know how much was being composted.” There were still challenges with cross contamination, as silverware, latex gloves or other generic trash was easily dropped into the wrong container. “Education can’t be understated,” says Ferretti. 

There’s a lot to consider when starting up a new compost program. Even if your municipality offers curbside trash and recycling collection, adding compost to the mix isn’t as simple as buying a few more trucks and hiring some new workers. But with each new program that gets introduced, there are more examples of how to make composting work for cities, towns and even private entities of any size. 

In Kansas City, Kozakiewicz says the important thing to remember is not to wait for things to be perfect—you’ll be waiting a long time. “You’ve got to kind of push a little, using the resources that you have,” she says. “Nobody’s interested here in building a new landfill.” 

The post Composting Makes Sense. Why Don’t More Cities Do It? appeared first on Modern Farmer.

For decades, Cairo—wedged between the Missouri and Kentucky border at the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers—has struggled to grow its local economy and population. One hundred years ago, Cairo boasted more than 15,000 citizens; today, its population has shrunk below 1,700. Median household income hovers just above $30,000, with about 24 percent of residents living in poverty—more than double the average in Illinois. Cairo doesn’t even have a gas station. Town residents have felt its lack of a grocery store more acutely, often having to cross state lines to get the most basic supplies.

But recently that trend has begun to change. Last summer, Rise Community Market opened its doors in Cairo, marking the first time in more than eight years town residents could go to a local grocery store. It was the result of more than two years of hard work and planning by community organizers, city officials and public service agencies. One reason behind their success: the grocery store’s model.

In 2021, Illinois Lieutenant Governor Juliana Stratton connected Cairo Mayor Thomas Simpson with a team at Western Illinois University about opening a community-owned cooperative grocery store right off Cairo’s main street. Sean Park is the program manager of the Value-Added Sustainable Development Center (VASDC), a unit of the Illinois Institute for Rural Affairs at Western Illinois University in Macomb. “That particular area had been beat down so much,” says Park, who has more than a decade of experience owning and operating an independent grocery store, as well as a background in rural development. Working with the Institute, Park has found unlikely success in rejuvenating small town businesses like grocery stores in a time when they face persistent distress.

Cairo’s situation may be unique, but it’s not unusual in losing its grocery store. Limited or no access to food tends to be thought of as an urban phenomenon, but it affects rural communities just as much. Seventy-six counties nationwide don’t have a single grocery store—and 34 of those counties are in the Midwest and Great Plains. According to a 2021 Illinois Department of Public Health report and the US Department of Agriculture’s Food Access Research Atlas, 3.3 million Illinois residents live in food deserts. (The USDA defines a rural food desert as any low-income community where the nearest grocery store is 10 or more miles away). To combat this growing reality, in August 2023, Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) signed into law the Illinois Grocery Initiative, a first-of-its-kind $20 million program that will provide capital, technical assistance and a range of services to open or expand grocery stores in underserved and low-income neighborhoods across the state.

Even before Illinois’ new initiative, rural and small town communities in Illinois like Mount Pulaski, Farmer City and Carlinville have been working with VASDC, organizing their communities to pave the way for cooperatively owned, community-based grocers. Cooperative grocery stores were once perceived as the stuff of elite, granola-munching college towns and coastal enclaves. But today’s co-op advocates emphasize the power of cooperative ownership structures to provide local, democratic control of a community’s essential needs. While the economies of mass-scale production and logistics that sustain and supply traditional chain store or conglomerate grocers like Walmart and Dollar General are often deemed “efficient,” the Covid-19 pandemic revealed their underlying fragility and susceptibility to supply chain disruption.

It’s estimated that Walmart now sells just over a quarter of all groceries in the United States. In his forthcoming book Barons: Money, Power and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry, antitrust expert Austin Frerick writes that the gutting of New Deal-era price floor regulations has allowed companies like Walmart to amass a level of dominance not seen in US history. To do so, he writes, Walmart “demands that a supplier decrease the price or improve the quality of an item each year,” in addition to giving Walmart delivery priority.

In contrast, local, cooperative ownership helps guarantee that decision making about how a store is run and what it stocks are based on the community benefit. The items on the shelves of co-ops like Cairo’s Rise Community Market aren’t the stuff of Whole Foods, but these stores help bring needed items close to the community, like fresh produce and meat, which tend to be sourced from farmers and producers nearby. Robert Edwards, Rise Community Market’s store manager, says that local stores may not be able to match the extensive inventory and cost a little more than the Walmarts of the world, but “what you get for those few extra cents you spend is the ability to help those in your community” by ensuring that  goods are available “for those in your community who lack the ability to travel for them.”

Illinois Lieutenant Governor Juliana Stratton, center, cuts the ribbon at Rise Community Market’s opening ceremony.

Interest in bringing community-owned stores to rural America isn’t limited to Illinois. Across the country, communities are experimenting with new ways to address the disappearance of rural and small town grocery stores. The Institute for Self-Reliance has detailed examples of innovative models in Pennsylvania and North Dakota, including self-service grocers, rural grocery delivery and nonprofit grocers. Food cooperative programs are now active at state universities in Kansas, Nebraska, Wisconsin and elsewhere, and in recent years rural cooperative development centers have been active in almost all 50 states.

“Cooperative development is once again ascendant,” says Stacey Sutton, director of the Solidarity Economy Research, Policy and Law Project and associate professor in the Department of Urban Planning and Policy at the University of Illinois Chicago. “And it’s rising in areas that have not seen sufficient support in the past.”

Even though agricultural cooperatives, or farmers’ co-ops, have long been a cornerstone in rural communities, Sutton explains that there has been a significant gap in cooperative development for other types of collectively owned, democratically managed enterprises. Part of this is due to the influence of institutions like the USDA and land grant universities in rural communities, which have traditionally invested their resources in agricultural cooperatives, pooling resources around commodity crop and livestock production. “What’s missing is exactly what’s happening at Western Illinois, in terms of supporting other types of cooperatives, such as food cooperatives, which are essential in disinvested communities,” says Sutton.

One of the major challenges facing cooperative development in rural communities is access to technical services, or the process of providing specialized know-how and business acumen to help communities plan and build capacity for creating models of collective ownership. This is where the VASDC team comes in.

Unlike chain grocers or corporate juggernauts that take a one-size-fits-all approach, VASDC’s methods are more artisanal, tailored to the specific needs of developing a sustainable community-owned grocer. “The financial calculations of a full business plan require everything down to the floor plan,” Park says. “If we change the floor plan and some of the refrigeration section, it’s going to change your utility bill and the amount that you sell in each department. From there it’s going to change the profit margin in both those departments.”

Facing stiff competition discount stores like Walmart means that a cooperative’s success is totally dependent on community buy-in and organizing. For many communities, there’s an educational component to VASDC’s consulting. The kind of ongoing, sustainable collective action and community organizing required to keep a cooperative vibrant, coupled with learning and navigating the practice of democratic ownership, can be taxing and messy. Cooperatives often require more than just showing up to vote. It can take anywhere from six months to seven years to build a cooperative grocery, and it may not always work the first time.

Park says it can also be a hurdle to inform residents that cooperative grocers are open to non-members for shopping and that member-ownership is more about investing in a store’s sustainability than earning Costco-like membership privileges. On the flip side, member-owners who are unfamiliar with cooperative concepts sometimes expect Gordon Gecko-like returns on their investment. That’s just not possible in an industry where profits can be razor thin or in a cooperative where profits are typically reinvested in the store. Yet, Park says that for the communities he serves, the process is often worth it. “When you can guide them from concept to that opening day, that’s really rewarding.”

In the 12 years that Park has led VASDC, he has helped countless rural communities throughout Illinois and the Midwest develop community ownership models for grocery stores. Edwards, the manager of the Cairo co-op, credits Park’s successes to his previous work owning and managing a grocery store. “I find solace in knowing that he understands the hurdles of managerial responsibilities and the stress this can bring.” Park’s advice, he says, has been “invaluable in helping me navigate challenges,” and was vital to him in making a smooth transition into the manager role when he started in January 2023, six months before the opening. “Sean is unafraid of telling you when you’re making a mistake or that an idea is ridiculous,” Edwards says, “Knowing that you have a partner like that instills trust and that makes it easier to turn to him when you find yourself in doubt.”

This coming year will be the first of what Park describes as the “2.0” version of the center, with the addition of new staff members timed to address the expected interest generated by the Illinois Grocery Initiative. The additional staff will increase the center’s capacity to provide holistic solutions to tackle the challenges that affect grocers, small producers and growers, and rural communities across the state.

Given the demands on their time, the center’s staff is pragmatic. Kristin Terry, one of the center’s recent hires, who previously worked in economic development for Macomb, Illinois, says that if you’re within 10 or 15 miles of a Walmart or the new iteration of dollar stores that sell groceries, a community cooperative will not be viable, because too many people will still opt for the superstore. In this respect, it’s a Walmart economy, Terry says, and residents are stuck living in it.

While the speed with which Rise Community Market developed is a testament to Park’s work and the efforts of community organizers, the cooperative has faced some setbacks. A set of brand-new cooler cases malfunctioned and a walk-in cooler broke down overnight, leading to product loss and a decline in revenue. However, a USDA grant in combination with community backing and a GoFundMe campaign have helped address such setbacks.

“Fortunately, we have a community that believes in this project and wants to support the store regardless of the struggles we’ve faced,” Edwards says. As volunteer and community-owner support continue to grow, Edwards and the co-op members are optimistic that their store will be able to meet its fundraising and revenue goals. “The most important part of building a community-owned store is getting long-term community buy-in. It doesn’t end with the grand opening,” Edwards says. “You have to be committed to a long-term project.”

That appears to be true on the consulting side, as well. Recently, Park and the VASDC team held a meeting in a community that Park had visited a few years ago and had only found one person interested in the idea of building a cooperative grocer. This time, they found 10.

The post How Illinois Is Bringing Grocery Stores Back to Main Street appeared first on Modern Farmer.

The human pressures on the river’s resources have come about through a combination of the valley as attractive farmland, significant urban growth and an influx of tourists wanting to hike, boat, bike and bird-watch. The population of Phoenix, which relies on water from a combination of the Verde and Colorado rivers, has grown to 4.75 million in 2024 from 221,000 in 1950, now the fifth largest city in the US, while climate change and agricultural demands have placed additional pressure on the river’s supply. 

Global environmental nonprofit The Nature Conservancy has been working on the Verde River for more than 50 years, and as the issue of low water flow became increasingly critical about 15 years ago, it began working with local communities to effect change and save water. This was the launch of Sinagua Malt, Arizona’s first malt house, a Certified B Corp public benefit corporation, which works by incentivizing farmers to transition from water-intensive summer crops such as corn and alfalfa to barley, by providing them with a stable market and offering local breweries and distilleries the opportunity to use locally sourced malt. This measure has saved more than 725 million gallons of Verde River water between 2016 and 2023, according to data from The Nature Conservancy—or more than 50 gallons per pint of beer.

Kim Schonek and Chip Norton inside the Singua Malt malt house. Photography by Justin Brummer.

Barley to the rescue

It was a 2015 meeting between The Nature Conservancy’s Kim Schonek and the Verde Conservation District’s Chip Norton that resulted in the game-changing plan to conserve the Verde River flow. The idea for Sinagua Malt came about through Schonek’s and Norton’s shared goals, approached from different perspectives. For Schonek, the key objective was elevating flows in the river, along with protecting farmland and ensuring its viability. Having tried fallowing agreements, where farmers were paid not to farm, and drip irrigation, which was hard for farmers to manage in large areas, they needed a new initiative. “We were also looking for a crop that would still be profitable while using significantly less water in the area—and barley was an obvious choice,” explains Schonek. 

Barley is planted in January and February, so it receives a lot of water from the winter rains as it irrigates. It dries out through May and is harvested in June, when the river is at its lowest. Conversely, alfalfa or corn need one foot of water per acre of irrigation during June, which places a significant burden on the river. 

Norton came to the issue of water flow through his work on habitat preservation in the Verde. During this time, Schonek and Norton had both built strong relationships with local farmers, and they were able to convince nearby Hauser Farms to take part. 

The initial test batch of 15 acres of Harrington two-row malt barley was planted and harvested in 2016, but it had to be sent to Austin for malting, as there were no malting houses in Arizona. When the returning malt was tested by local breweries, including Arizona Wilderness and Sedona Brewing, and found to be of saleable, usable quality, Norton and Schonek were left with a conundrum: The transportation costs and environmental impact of sending their barley all the way to Central Texas negated any savings for local farmers and brewers, as well as some of the benefit to the river. They needed to malt closer to the source, and the only way to do that was to build their own malt house.

Chip Norton with some of the barley now grown along the Verde River. Photography submitted. Photography by Justin Brummer.

Learn by doing

“It worked because Chip didn’t expect anyone else to do stuff—he just jumped in and did it. He was willing to be the guy to make it happen,” says Schonek. Norton came out of retirement to start the business. His background as a project manager in water and wastewater plant construction came in handy. “I had a great deal of experience with automated process equipment in my previous career, but I knew nothing about farming or grain processing,” he says. “My training as a maltster was essentially being thrown in the lake and learning to swim. It has been a steep learning curve.” 

After researching technique and recipes through various resources, including the equipment manufacturer and the Craft Maltsters Guild, Norton “just started doing it.” Although Norton says his first batch was “the easiest I’ve ever made,” it wasn’t long before the realities of running a malt house single-handedly set in. “Malting needs cool weather, and there was no air conditioning, which was very challenging in the summer as it was 95 degrees inside—I had to go and buy blocks of ice to throw in the steep water by hand to keep things cool,” he says. There was also a great deal to learn, and batches didn’t always go to plan. Norton says he “learned the correlation between fields that didn’t yield well by quality of barley, so good communication with farmers was crucial. I didn’t have a mentor so I had to self teach—so we learned which fields not to harvest, what techniques gave the best consistency of quality and, over time, we’re making good malt on a small pilot scale.”

Photography by Justin Brummer.

Communication is key

Schonek emphasizes the importance of Norton’s persistence but also of strong communication and integrated goals shared between herself and Norton, the farmers and the brewers. “The brewers’ willingness to try malt that maybe wasn’t the greatest was critical,” she says. Sinagua’s stable of three to four breweries kept them at full capacity, until additional investors funded a new malthouse, which has scaled up production to 1,700 tons from 150 tons per year. Sinagua is now operating at a capacity where it is looking for new farms and new breweries and distilleries to work with. 

The Nature Conservancy measures the change in the Verde River watershed by evaluating the change in crop and how much water each crop uses. It compares the volume of water used to grow barley to that which alfalfa and corn require per acre to see the savings. Measurements are taken during the summer months when the river is at its lowest ebb, and the pair estimates that its initiative has saved 725 million gallons of water. They’ve been able to grow to 610 acres this year from 95 acres of barley produced in 2016. Sinagua Malt now works with five farms, including Hauser, the Yavapai-Apache Nation’s Cloverleaf Ranch and the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community’s Hatler Farm. They estimate they will be able to supply upwards of 25 local breweries and distilleries by the end of 2024.

Schonek says there has definitely been more water in the last few years. “You can go boating again now,” she says, “and we expect the impact on the river to at least triple with the new production facility.”

“It’s a dream come true to have such a meaningful impact on the river flow,” says Norton. However, the pair is keen to highlight that there were things they could have done differently along the way and things that have been essential to making the project work. 

“Looking back, one more year of assessment before launching would have been beneficial,” says Norton. They both emphasize that you can’t second-guess the future, but that thorough planning, communication and responsibility are essential when working with multiple partners. “It is critical to listen to agricultural partners and understand what their options are—and to have partners who are on board with shared goals and willing to take some level of risk but also help them manage that risk,” says Schonek. The Nature Conservancy initially helped farmers manage the risk by offering compensation for failed batches, although this has now ceased. It also played an integral role in getting investment from donors, a process by which both Norton and Schonek had to present the venture as practical and profitable. The pair emphasizes goal alignment with other complementary initiatives, such as Friends of the Verde River’s Verde River Exchange Water Offset Program, to which Sinagua contributes, and The Nature Conservancy’s work on eliminating waste in water conveyance and ground water management to ensure the best possible outcomes. 

When it comes to solving the kind of social and environmental issue that the Verde River flow raised, persistence is the key for Norton. “To achieve results, you have to keep plugging away and not quit—things don’t fall in your lap,” he says. Schonek puts creative problem-solving at the forefront. “We can’t just do what we did last year or what we did a decade ago. We must learn from what we’ve done, scale up and invest in better infrastructure,” she says, highlighting the need for greater funding and policy work across the board. 

The post How Two Committed Conservationists Revitalized a River With Beer appeared first on Modern Farmer.

A recent visit to the northern city of Montreal in February, when temperatures hovered around 10 degrees Fahrenheit, found restaurants and bars that still managed to serve locally grown and produced food and beverages. It drove home the point that, if they can make it work here—we can do it anywhere. 

Photography by Anne-Marie Pellerin – Tourisme Montréal

A long history 

Decades before cities began actively encouraging the growing and consumption of local food, Montreal was on it. In 1936, Montreal launched the first community garden initiative, alongside the Relief Gardens, and later, the Victory Gardens that sprang up as a result of the world wars. Community gardens continued to grow in popularity over the century, with new branches and chapters flourishing in the 1970s. That’s when the concept of “guerilla gardening” became popular in the city, as groups of Portuguese and Italian immigrants began gardening in unused spaces around the city. In 1973, the Victoria Community Garden was founded by the Jewish General Hospital and the Golden Age Foundation, which aimed to create a gardening space for residents over age 55. It’s now the second-largest garden on the island. 

Today, growing and consuming food feels like a cultural imperative.

“We have always valued culture and the arts, and to us, food and wine is part of that,” says Julie Martel, a longtime advocate for local produce and a project manager at the annual food-centric festival Montreal en Lumiere. “As we have all become increasingly aware of the impact of consuming food that is grown far away, Montreal’s institutions and its regular people have become more invested in supporting the local food movement.”

Today, there are 57 urban farming companies in Montreal, including the first urban rooftop greenhouse and the world’s largest urban farming project, Lufa Farms, at 300,000 square feet. 

A view inside one of Lufa Farms greenhouses. Photography submitted.

A culture of support

A proliferation of locally grown food won’t make an impact without a hungry and supportive culture. In Montreal specifically, and Quebec more broadly, that culture is specifically and purposefully fostered.

In 2020, Quebec Agriculture Minister André Lamontagne and Energy and Natural Resources Minister Jonatan Julien earmarked $100 million to double the size of the province’s greenhouse operations by 2025. Already, the province is 50 percent self-sufficient, providing its citizens with locally grown produce year round, with the goal of reaching 80-percent sufficiency. 

In Montreal, the government-funded convention center—the Palais des congrés de Montreal—is carbon neutral and has invested in several innovative food and ecological initiatives. The Urban Agriculture Lab, which has Canada’s first urban rooftop vineyard, extensive rooftop gardens and pollinating beehives, is housed there. 

But perhaps more importantly, the citizens, event planners and chefs of Montreal actively support these institutions.

“Did you know that spinach grown in the winter is sweeter?” asks Martel. “It’s because it is struggling, and that process releases a chemical that makes it taste sweeter. You discover that, and so much more, as a food lover in Montreal as we all get more creative growing and eating local food year-round.”

Martel treats her robust CSA—which grows its own produce and brings in dairy, poultry and meat from nearby farms in Quebec—like many of us do our grocery store, shopping online and ordering for the week. But she also uses her position of power to ensure that Montreal en Lumiere, a festival that draws in 500,000 visitors and includes events with 52 restaurants in the city, is hyper-local focused. 

“We bring in Michelin-starred chefs and iconic winemakers from across the world to create meals and pairings for the event,” says Martel. “But they are all using locally produced ingredients. When the festival began 25 years ago, it was all about Italian truffles and lemons. Now it’s about Montreal-raised fish, locally grown produce.”

Indeed, there are several now-iconic Montreal food and drinks companies that are regionally beloved but largely unknown outside of the city, simply because most of their goods are consumed by local gourmands.

Lufa Farms, the world’s first commercial rooftop greenhouse, was founded in 2009, employs more than 600 people and grows 50+ types of produce (including 10 varieties of tomatoes and three varieties of eggplant) across 300,000 square feet on four rooftops. That bounty totals 25,000 pounds a week and goes to 20,000 customers who are able to order customized food baskets. Lufa offers more than 400 pick-up points around the city, and the farm also delivers straight to customers’ doors. 

Several restaurants in Montreal proudly showcase their connection to Lufa Farms and another new local-famous innovator: Opercule. 

Founded in 2017, Opercule farms arctic char sustainably, consuming, it says, 100 to 200 times less water than classic open-circuit fish farms. (It is also powered by hydropower, which is ample in Quebec and much cleaner than alternatives such as coal). The fish are raised without antibiotics or hormones and delivered to the dozens of grocery stores and restaurants with which it works, just hours after being harvested via electric vehicles. Opercule produces around 25 tons of fish per year and harvests fish only once an order is placed.

Other, less obvious locally produced food and drinks businesses are also thriving. Take Distillerie de Montreal. 

Founded by fifth-generation distiller Lilian Wolfelsberger and lawyer and entrepreneur Stéphane Dion, the Distillerie produces about 300,000 bottles across more than two dozen different products, many of them using all local ingredients, says production manager Alexandre Arpin. “We buy mash from our local brewery that sources grain locally, and in a few years, we’ll be using our own grains, which we plan to source from our friends nearby.”

The vast majority of the production is purchased locally, although it does have a cult following in certain pockets of Europe. 

Distillerie also creates several spirits and liqueurs from locally farmed or foraged fruit, including La Pomme Blanche Marie-Jo (made with locally grown apples) and Sureau Elderberry (made with locally harvested elderflowers and berries). 

“We’ve ended up with some of our more interesting products because of things our forager Guy has brought us,” says Arpin. “I have at least 74 plants and mushrooms in some stage of distillation from things he’s brought us.”

Chef Maxime Lizotte. Photography submitted.

Looking ahead

Montreal rides its fame for bagels, poutine and smoked meat hard. But it is also increasingly seeking to honor the traditions and cuisines from the 120 ethnicities that live and thrive there, especially that of its First Nations people. 

In addition to supporting museum collections and festivals highlighting First Peoples’ culture, a First Nations Garden has been opened in the city’s Botanical Garden, and the city’s large-scale festivals are working to bring in and highlight the work of First Nations producer chefs. 

“We have so much to learn from the history and culture of the Indigenous people,” says Martel. “We decided to spotlight Indigenous cuisine at the festival this year, because we recognize how much Indigenous people have to offer in terms of knowledge of the edible plants and spices we still have to discover all around us.”

Maxime Lizotte, an Indigenous chef who worked at some of the country’s top kitchens, agrees. 

“During the pandemic, I decided it was time to focus on my Indigenous roots,” he explains. “I want to not only honor the traditions and lands of my ancestors of the Wolastoqiyik Wahsipekuk First Nation but also merge them with the cuisines that influenced me and made me fall in love with cooking and food.”

Much of the food that his ancestors cooked and ate was for survival, he explains. 

“The conditions were harsh,” he says. “A lot of our produce and meat was smoked or dried or both. It was an excellent way to preserve the food and sustain life, but maybe it’s not the way we want to eat today.” 

So, instead of serving up dried berries and simply smoked seal meat, he combines the best of both worlds. 

“I use Indigenous ingredients like seal and wild plants but also pork raised on my ancestral land,” he says. “To me, that’s more logical than serving deer flown in from New Zealand.”

Montreal’s spirit of using what you have on hand but prepared with inspiration from a wide swath of histories and cultures feels extraordinarily 22nd century. 

Hungry to find your own local, progressive, home-grown flavor? Check out the USDA’s CSA finder and LocalHarvest. Then write your local political representative and tell them to take a few pages out of our northern neighbor’s playbook and start funding local farming institutions.

The post If Montreal Can Feed Itself Year-Round, More Cities Can appeared first on Modern Farmer.

For Audrey Speyer, founder of PuriFungi, seeing fungi blooming on cigarette butts is proof that they’re at work, doing what they do best: decomposing matter. Her Belgian start-up cultivates mycelium—the thread-like root structure of fungus—using the plastic- and toxin-laden stubs as fodder.

As digestive enzymes break down the hazardous mix, the mycelium grows into a lightweight, styrofoam-like material that gets molded into ashtrays. Distributed at music festivals and public events and in municipalities throughout Belgium, France and Luxembourg, the upcycled product, which looks like a hollowed-out wheel of camembert, brings the process full circle by reining in the world’s most discarded waste item.

Since the dawn of civilization, humans have harnessed the remarkable power of fungi—an entire kingdom of multicellular organisms that includes mold, mushrooms and truffles—to digest complex organic matter into simpler structures. Yeast feeds on sugars, for example, to produce alcohol, while certain mold strains churn out penicillin and other antibiotics. And mushrooms of all kinds sprout as they feast on crop waste, coffee grounds and horse manure.

More recently, mycologists have been unleashing fungi on common industrial and consumer waste. With a voracious appetite for environmental pollutants such as petroleum, plastics and chemicals, these natural bioreactors safely digest and transform toxins into mycelium. Along with ashtrays, the lightweight, durable and fire-resistant substrate can be molded and fabricated into an array of applications such as insulation panels, a leather alternative and even a biodegradable casket.

“Fungi are nature’s recyclers,” says Speyer. Cost-effective and low-impact, she and other mycoenthusiasts see huge potential for mushrooms to power a full-circle economy, creating a renewable material source while extinguishing common sources of toxic waste.

Mycelium breaks down the toxins in cigarette butts and grows into a styrofoam-like material that can be molded into different shapes. (Photos courtesy of PuriFungi)

No silver bullet

Mycoremediation—the practice of using fungi to clean up pollutants such as petroleum, chemicals and plastics—has long been studied as a promising solution to decontaminating oil spills, pesticide-laced soil and toxic wildfire ash. But, so far, efforts have been limited mostly to small-scale and trial applications.

“Contamination is not a straightforward problem,” says Kawina Robichaud, a mycologist at Biopterre, a Quebec-based research center specializing in bio-industrial innovation. Addressing site-specific variables—including the mix and concentration of contaminants, soil composition, climate and temperature—often requires a highly tailored approach to remediation, so “there’s no silver bullet,” she says.

One of Robichaud’s research projects explored the clean-up of a remote Yukon Territory site worthy of a Superfund designation: an abandoned waste oil dump built over an old copper mine. Besides foraging for fungi adapted to the subarctic environment, taming the stew of toxins required a larger bioremediation strategy, using local willows to concentrate inorganic contaminants such as heavy metals, as well as municipal compost, which added microbes and nutrients to help spur decomposition. (Inorganic compounds, by nature, don’t decompose but can be sequestered by organisms including mushrooms, plants and animals.)

The results were encouraging, says Robichaud, with test plots showing a 75-percent decrease in petroleum hydrocarbons. Yet, they also underscored the fact that, in nature, “fungi don’t work alone,” so site remediation tends to take “a community of organisms” to get the job done.

However, the ecosystem-based approach inherently comes with unknowns in consistency and timeline—factors that can make on-site applications a difficult business model, says Robichaud, especially in situations that call for quick and aggressive responses. “Nature takes time,” she adds. “That’s often not compatible with the world that we live in, where we want things fixed now.”

Still, the field holds clear advantages over conventional practices, which frequently involve chemical treatments and resource-intensive pumping, dredging and extraction. Using local resources to remediate waste, particularly in remote regions, also means “we’re not trucking raw materials hundreds of kilometers,” says Robichaud, “burning fuel to clean up fuel.”

For now, mycoremediation may be most effective when targeted on a singular waste source. Robichaud is currently studying the mycoremediation of retired railroad ties laced with creosote, a toxic compound used to make heavy lumber rot-resistant. The selective emphasis on one material allows for a controllable, predictable and scalable means of managing pollutants—an approach more amenable, she says, to garnering industry support.

Narrowing the scope

Because pollutant-laden waste is everywhere, narrow targets can still have huge impact, says PuriFungi’s Speyer. Take cigarette butts: With more than 4,000 contaminants, including 50 known carcinogens, “it’s a big cocktail of very bad things that spreads everywhere,” she says, noting that one stub can pollute 500 liters (132 gallons) of water. And the recent rise in smoking only heightens the need to find safe and effective ways to treat toxic waste that’s literally “under our feet.”

A designer by training, Speyer stumbled on fungi while searching for a sustainable and easy-to-cultivate material. In addition to being durable, fast-growing and adaptable to a range of applications, discovering that mycelium could render pollutants safe made it an attractive bio-based product, she says.

“Fungi are nature’s recyclers,” says PuriFungi’s Audrey Speyer. (Photo courtesy of PuriFungi)

Speyer and her crew cultivate fungi in a humidity- and temperature-controlled environment much like an indoor mushroom farm, inoculating a mix of cigarette butts and hemp with oyster mushroom spores. After the initial incubation period, they break up the substrate by hand and set the clumps into molds. Over the next few weeks, the mycelium grows as it eats away at organic pollutants and fruit mushrooms that concentrate heavy metals. As it fills into its prescribed shape, the fruits are plucked away; the final product is then heat pasteurized to completion.

Speckled with straw-like remnants of disintegrated butts, PuriFungi’s bloomy rind-covered ashtrays have steadily caught the eyes of municipal officials and event organizers looking to promote awareness—and develop outlets—for proper cigarette disposal. And as consumers learn about their provenance, it helps spur responsible behavior towards curbing litter, says Speyer.

With more reliable outcomes, waste-specific approaches to mycoremediation may make it an easier sell to industry. Robichaud’s lab recently partnered with Atelier du Partage, a Goodwill-like organization based outside of Quebec, to find an alternative to disposing the 66 percent of donated clothing that the non-profit is unable to sell—a staggering amount that totals nearly 30 tons every year. Using fungi to decompose the heaps of fabric keeps plastic fibers, fire retardants and other pollutants out of landfills and incinerators, says Robichaud. And as a bonus, the mycelium-treated threads, which retain some of their original colors, mold into shabby chic Christmas tree ornaments, making for a surprise hit among Atelier shoppers last holiday season.

With clothing and textiles responsible for 20 percent of global refuse, it’s an end-of-life solution that, at scale, could chart a new course for the high-volume waste stream.

Left: Native fungus isolated from creosote-treated wood. Right: Mycelium-treated threads molded into Christmas ornaments. (Photos courtesy of Biopterre)

The fungi-powered circular economy is also taking root in the construction industry, which produces nearly a third of the nation’s waste, contributing vast amounts of material produced from petrochemicals. Tech giant Meta has partnered with a mycoproduct company to upcycle demolished drywall from its Tennessee data center into new insulation and acoustic panels, and Lendlease, a military housing developer, is embarking on a similar venture using old asphalt shingles.

Despite the mushrooming waste problem generated by industry, the current push towards sustainable waste solutions is largely driven by external forces. But really, it’s “the [product] producers who have a responsibility to make it happen,” says Speyer. She sees the broader extension of Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) policies, which hold manufacturers responsible for collection, recycling and disposal of their products, as key to fueling regenerative waste management practices and supply chains.

Although EPR mandates have taken effect in an increasing range of countries and jurisdictions, including the European Union, Canadian provinces and a handful of US states, most focus on single-use plastics and packaging materials. Last year, the EU extended the obligation to tobacco manufacturers, although critics report that the regulations lack teeth.

Nevertheless, Speyer notes that a few cigarette companies have expressed interest in PuriFungi’s technology—although that’s posed a certain dilemma, she says, because “you don’t want to give them an excuse to keep producing more [of the same].” Ultimately, she’d like to see the development of a non-toxic, naturally biodegradable product.

While that might run counter to her current business model, “the [waste] problem is at such a massive scale,” says Speyer, that, at this point, there’s really no shortage of solutions.

The post Can Mushrooms Help Extinguish Toxic Waste? appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan spoke first. He touched on the importance of having representation for urban agriculture within city government. “I felt like I was supportive of farming, but our bureaucracy wasn’t supportive,” he said in the announcement.

And then Rushdan moved in front of the microphone, to the sound of loud cheering.

By appointing Rushdan, Detroit joined a small handful of cities that are creating positions within city government for urban agriculture. Urban farming is known for connecting city dwellers with their food source, increasing food security and creating beautiful green spaces. Although urban agriculture has deep roots in many cities, these directors are giving city food spaces an institutional voice within the government, complementing the agency and advocacy that has long accompanied the practice.

“It really shows that community that they’re valuable to the city, because they have an advocate at that level,” Rushdan said later to Modern Farmer. 

Detroit, Michigan

Mayor Duggan’s proposed Land Value Tax Plan, on which Detroit may get to vote in 2024, would cut property taxes on structures such as houses while dramatically increasing the taxes for vacant lots. The idea is to reduce taxes for homeowners, without losing tax revenue for the city and simultaneously encouraging owners of vacant land to develop it. But the initial plans also created a problem: Urban farmers were caught in the middle, potentially facing big tax burdens if the plan was passed.

Urban farmers began meeting with Duggan to discuss the issue, leading to an exemption for urban farms under the proposed tax increases. Another byproduct of these meetings was the realization by the city that they needed the voices of urban farmers represented in government. Shortly after, Rushdan’s position was created.

In her speech at the ceremony, Rushdan made sure to acknowledge that while she’s the first in this position, she stands on the shoulders of giants in the Detroit agriculture scene. She referenced multiple local leaders who had helped build and expand urban agriculture in Detroit, such as Kathryn Underwood of the City Planning Commission and Malik Yakini of the Detroit Black Community Food Sovereignty Network.

“Even though this is a new iteration… I do see this as like a little bit of a continuation of that spirit,” said Rushdan later to Modern Farmer. “I think it’s important to always uplift that history.” 

Farming has a long history in Detroit, and many cities can say the same. In her position, Rushdan can help urban farmers navigate the challenges that remain—acquiring land is difficult, and finding land that has access to public water is an additional challenge. It can also be hard to compete with developers. In some cases, developers have bought up land where cultivation was taking place, and farmers lost decades of work.

“We really got aggressive over the last five years—we’re trying to figure out how to make people land secure,” says Rushdan.

But Detroit is in a unique position, because there’s a lot of vacant land. “It’s like re-imagining what a city could be with a lens of green space or the lens of sustainability,” says Rushdan.

Charlestown Sprouts Community Garden. (Photo by City of Boston)

Boston, Massachusetts

Shani Fletcher is the first director of GrowBoston, the city’s office of urban agriculture. In 2013, Boston adopted Article 89, which brought urban agriculture into the city zoning code. But there weren’t a lot of city programs to move urban farming initiatives forward. 

“We just saw this need for more kinds of programming and more kinds of investments beyond capital investments,” says Fletcher. In response, the mayor created GrowBoston, and Fletcher, whose career was driven by food justice, was appointed to the helm.

Part of Fletcher’s work at GrowBoston is to meet with other city departments that have an impact on urban agriculture—Public Health, Water and Sewer, Parks and Recreation and many more—which is part of why having a voice for urban agriculture in city government is so important. 

“Because of just the nature of urban agriculture, there’s so many departments that can have an impact on it, in a positive or negative way,” says Fletcher. “And so I think having an office and some staff who are actually focused on addressing the whole of urban agriculture and can kind of work with other departments to strategize is really a big benefit.”

The fact that urban agriculture is influenced by multiple departments is evidenced by the fact that in the cities that have an office for urban agriculture, it is housed in different departments. Boston’s is in Housing. DC’s is in Energy & Environment. Atlanta, City Planning. Philadelphia, Parks and Recreation.

As in Detroit, accessing land for urban agriculture and the upfront costs associated with making land suitable for farming is a significant obstacle in Boston. Fletcher says for people looking to begin urban agriculture in cities facing similar access issues, creatively engaging with others about how to use existing space is a good way to begin. This could be connecting with public officials or private landowners or rethinking what garden space can be.

“I really get excited thinking about growing food in weird places,” says Fletcher, such as vertically, on rooftops or in other creative spaces. “I like the idea of it just being kind of everywhere you go, there could be food growing, and that that’s being eaten, and that’s getting to people who need it.”

Eastie Farm greenhouse. (Photo by City of Boston)

Washington, DC and beyond

Kate Lee became the director of the Office of Urban Agriculture in Washington, DC in March 2020, but the need for her position arose several years earlier. In 2014, the District passed an environmental sustainability plan called Sustainable DC. One goal of this plan was to increase the amount of land under cultivation in the District by 20 acres. Urban agriculturists wanted to step to the plate, but they hit a common barrier—how to access land for this purpose? 

“The community advocated more and more vocally that we need a position embedded in this government, we need someone with know-how to run these programs to liaise between the government and the stakeholders,” says Lee.

In response, DC passed legislation in 2019 to create the Office of Urban Agriculture and Lee’s position.

DC is and has been gentrifying rapidly, and there’s a lot of value in supporting long-term residents of the District, says Lee. “The office is driven by community ownership, food sovereignty and self-determination … using our resources and our opportunity to advocate for self-determination.”

Although some of the cities with official urban agriculture positions might look far apart on a map, they don’t exist in silos. The directors have self-organized into a group that meets regularly and shares ideas and feedback with each other. The name of the group, of which Lee and Fletcher are co-chairs, is the Urban Agriculture Directors Network (part of the Urban Sustainability Directors Network), but you don’t actually have to be a director to join, as long as you’re a municipal government employee influencing urban agriculture in your area. Four years after its inception, this cohort now includes about 20 different municipalities. In the meetings, participants share best practices, support and coach each other and even celebrate victories, such as the creation of a new urban agriculture liaison in New Orleans.

“Our three cities [DC, Boston and Austin, Texas] wrote to the mayor of New Orleans [and] said, ‘Based on this position, please join this echelon of other cities leading in this work,’” says Lee. “And they did. New Orleans just funded an urban agriculture liaison position. And so that is the type of stuff that is really keeping me going.”

Edgewater Food Forest. (Photo by City of Boston)

Are you thinking about getting started in urban agriculture?: Look into local ordinances so that you can stay safe from accidentally breaking the law. Make connections with your neighbors and let them know what you’re doing. If your city doesn’t have an office of agriculture (yet), Rushdan says: “Find some advocates within the city. In a city that doesn’t have any office of agriculture that you can turn to, you [have] to find those advocates within the departments that believe in what you’re doing, so that they can figure out the internal systems.”

Fletcher echoes the sentiment of building connections with others who are engaged in urban agriculture. “I think there’s so much about urban agriculture that is about building community. And I think if someone’s interested in getting involved in urban agriculture, looking around your community and seeing who’s doing that already is a really good starting point.”

Are you a local government employee with some influence on urban agriculture in your area? Reach out to the Urban Agriculture Directors Network. The network meets regularly and is a good space for education and collaboration.

The post Urban Ag is Nothing New. Representing it in City Government is. appeared first on Modern Farmer.

According to Jaret Daniels, curator at the Florida Museum of Natural History, we no longer have the luxury of relying only on conservation lands to address biodiversity loss. Climate change, pollution, pesticides and habitat destruction are putting increasing pressure on pollinators, such as bees and butterflies. He says we need to look at nontraditional spaces as well, such as agricultural margins, utility corridors and roadsides. Although roads commonly fragment habitat for wildlife, pollinator programs, present in many states, flip the script and provide opportunities for conservation. 

Daniels is the lead of a new $155,000 grant from the Florida Department of Transportation that will plant 9,000 milkweed plants along Florida highways over the next three years to support monarch breeding habitat. Monarchs depend on diverse ecosystems, but they only lay their eggs on milkweed.

Monarchs are a “gateway bug” to improving habitat, says Daniels. Planting the roadsides for monarchs will also be good for insect pollinators in general. Beyond that, pollinators such as bees are key participants in agriculture, and we depend on them for our food. These roadside plantings aim to connect habitat, rather than fragment it. State Departments of Transportation (DOTs), often managing some of the most land in the state, are uniquely positioned to address this task.

“Even these fairly urbanized areas still harbor a lot of diversity,” says Daniels. “And if you connect those spaces, then it enhances it even more to provide connectivity between populations and movement.”

A milkweed plant grows along an FDOT roadway. (Photo by Jaret Daniels)

From beautification to conservation

Planting flowers along roadsides isn’t a new idea. Lady Bird Johnson’s beautification efforts in the 1960s spread beyond cities and to the highways, and many states have been planting flowers on roadways for years.

But some of these beautification efforts have taken up a second purpose—pollinator conservation. North Carolina began its Wildflower Program in 1985, and it now manages 1,500 acres of wildflowers along major North Carolina thoroughfares.

About 15 years ago, says Derek Smith, roadside management engineering supervisor for the North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT), discussion of pollinators entered the picture when a North Carolina State University scientist, Danesha Seth Carley, started studying the effects these plantings were having on pollinators. NCSU research confirmed that these roadside plantings drew in a higher number of bees and greater bee diversity.

The efforts then became intentional. The NCDOT planted gardens for monarchs at highway rest areas, welcome centers and wetland mitigation sites. Two of these welcome centers are certified monarch waystations on MonarchWatch.org.

An adult monarch. (Photo by Jaret Daniels)

Besides milkweed, NCDOT also plants a mix of perennial, annual and native plants. “Monarchs will nectar on all kinds of plants,” says Smith.

The decision to plant perennials and natives means that the NCDOT doesn’t need to go back every year to re-establish the plot. Additionally, it’s worked with the North Carolina Department of Agriculture to support farmers who want to grow flowers on their farm margins in support of pollinators.

“Transportation departments are one of the largest landowners in various states,” says Smith. “Why not take advantage of it if we can, and create habitat.”

More than milkweed

The milkweed movement is commonly associated with a way to help the monarch butterfly. In recent years, it’s become a popular way to support the species—since milkweed is the only type of plant on which monarchs will lay their eggs. 

However, landscape designer and author Benjamin Vogt cautions against leaning too much on milkweed as the silver bullet for monarch conservation. Adult monarchs need a diversity of plants on which to nectar.

“A more diverse habitat planting fosters a thriving ecosystem, one in which countless other interactions are occurring, which not only benefit monarchs but all sorts of other butterfly and insect and bug species,” wrote Vogt to Modern Farmer in an email. “Gardening for monarchs means gardening for everyone else.”

[RELATED: Meet the Milkweed Man on a Quest to Help Monarch Butterflies]

Michael McClanahan of the Tennessee Department of Transportation is very familiar with the public’s love for milkweed. In 2023, the TDOT launched a program called Project Milkweed—free mail-order milkweed seeds for people to plant in their gardens to support monarchs. It ran out of seeds pretty quickly, restocked and ran out again. All in all, it received 130,903 individual orders, sending out a total of 799,601 packets of seeds. 

“I think we were shocked,” says McClanahan. “It’s really shown us that people want to do the right thing. And that people are really passionate about trying to preserve their space and create these waystations for migrating pollinators.”

A meadow planted by TDOT at a highway interchange. (Photo by TDOT)

In Tennessee’s planting program, though, it goes beyond milkweed. It started a few years ago when NCDOT wanted to “up [its] game,” says McClanahan. It didn’t start with planting but with other pollinator-friendly practices on the roadsides. TDOT started mowing less. It began deploying fewer herbicides and changing up their herbicide mixes. 

“That’s really kind of the genesis of our Pollinator Habitat Program is we started looking at our internal practices,” says McClanahan.

The program now boasts 11 sites, including welcome centers and state parks. Here, people can find diverse native plants, trees, bushes and grasses—such as partridge pea, false sunflower, frost aster and more.

For some of the roadside planting, McClanahan says sometimes people expect to see manicured,  blooming gardens. But many of their plantings are focused on native diversity and won’t always be in full color. Habitat restoration goes beyond pretty blooms and improves the ecosystem as a whole. 

“I think when you tell people that they’re native [plants], they’re more receptive to what’s out there.”

Use the space you have. Vogt doesn’t think you can necessarily “restore habitat” for pollinators in your backyard, but you can create a little island of resources. “Every plant matters,” says Vogt. “Every native plant matters more.” And if that island can connect to other islands, pollinators will be better off for it. “The more habitat we have in all shapes and form[s] the better,” says Vogt. He has published a few helpful books on this subject, including A New Garden Ethic: Cultivating Defiant Compassion for an Uncertain Future and Prairie Up.

Think local and make connections. “You can make simple steps in your own landscape to enhance and attract wildlife—plant native vegetation, reduce your lawn a little bit, diversify your landscape,” says Daniels. “And then as you’re going in and around your community, look at other spaces that have potential.” This could mean connecting with DOT officials, local government or even your homeowner’s association.

Use your resources if able. Smith says North Carolina’s Wildflower Program is not funded through tax dollars but through the purchase of personalized license plates. If you live in North Carolina, that’s a good way to support the continuance of the program. Other states have similar programs, such as Oregon, Colorado and Pennsylvania.  

Go beyond planting. Pollinators experience pressures from pollution, chemical pesticides/herbicides and climate change. Addressing these issues in your community through advocacy or policy is an important way to support pollinators. 

Learn more. There are many resources online for learning more about pollinator health and how to support them. Here are a few:

• Florida Wildflower Foundation.“They also have wildflower resolution templates on their website to work with local communities to try to increase planting along roadways or get areas designated as wildflower areas where mowing is reduced during spring bloom,” says Daniels.
• The Xerces Society. You can take part in nationwide movements for pollinators such as No Mow May.
• Tennessee DOT has a short series of educational videos online led by “Polli, the Bee from Tennessee.”
• Remember that there are some things that might seem helpful for pollinators but actually aren’t. Read about that here.

The post Pollinator Habitat is Falling to the Side of the Road—in a Good Way appeared first on Modern Farmer.