What is the value of a tree? It can provide a cool place to rest in the shade, a snack in the form of fruit, lumber to build a home, and cleaner air. But trees are increasingly being prized for one thing: their ability to capture carbon and counteract climate change. 

Billions of dollars are flowing into projects to plant and protect trees so that governments and businesses can claim they’ve canceled out their emissions. Saving forests and planting trees are often portrayed as a “triple win” for the environment, economy, and people. According to a major report being presented on Friday at the United Nations Forum on Forests, however, that goal is proving more complicated than expected.

The conversation about how to manage forests “has been overtaken by the climate discussion,” said Daniela Kleinschmit, an author of the report and the vice president of the International Union of Forest Research Organizations, the network behind the research. The result? Indigenous peoples are getting pushed out of their lands because of carbon offset projects. Native grasslands are getting turned into forests, even though grasslands themselves are huge, overlooked reservoirs of carbon. And offset projects in forests, more often than not, fail to achieve all of the emissions benefits their backers had promised. 

The new report, the first comprehensive assessment of how the world is governing its forests in 14 years, offers some good news—global deforestation rates have slowed down slightly, from 32 million acres a year in 2010 to 25 million in 2020. But what the report calls the “climatization” of forests has led to the rise of carbon sequestration markets that prioritize short-term profits over long-term sustainability, it found.

Experts say that it’s possible to pursue the global goal of sequestering carbon in forests while also keeping locals happy—it would just take a more thoughtful approach that considers the tradeoffs and involves the people most affected.

Daniel Miller, a professor of environmental policy at the University of Notre Dame, said that a narrow focus on forests’ environmental benefits misses “a huge part of the story.” Miller’s research has shown that forests can help fight poverty, since the edible goods found in them are often available during times of the year when people might go hungry. Having forests nearby can make land more productive, increasing crop yields by more than 50 percent in some cases. That’s because forests can enrich the soil, increase rainfall, and help with pollination. More than 3 billion people live within 1 kilometer (a little over half a mile) of forests and depend on them for jobs, like harvesting timber, and for food like nuts and mushrooms. 

Forests can also help people adapt to a warming world. They regulate floods and landslides and sustain livelihoods that are jeopardized by climate change, said Ida Djenontin, a professor of geography at Penn State.

But what looks like a promising carbon sequestration effort can have unexpected consequences that undermine those benefits. For example, Finland’s ministry of agriculture is trying to fertilize its forests to make them grow faster, in the hope that they will suck up carbon quickly and help the country meet its goal of going carbon-neutral by 2035. But according to the new report, the government didn’t account for the energy-intensive process of producing and transporting fertilizer, a large source of carbon emissions. The report also points out that fertilizing forests can end up hurting reindeer herding, since it stifles the growth of lichen that reindeer eat; one study found that it could also reduce berry production in forests by 70 percent. “It seems that the ongoing climate crisis has, to some extent, legitimized excessive forest management techniques, such as fertilization,” the report concludes. 

Many forest offset projects don’t work as intended. An investigation last year found that only eight out of 29 rainforest offset projects approved by Verra, the world’s biggest certifier, had meaningfully reduced deforestation. The rest of the projects “had no climate benefit,” according to The Guardian, partially because the threat of those forests getting cut down had been vastly overstated.

The narrative that forests can save the world from climate change is a tempting one for businesses and politicians—they can seemingly take care of their climate pledges if they’re willing to fork over the money, without having to do the hard work of reducing emissions. It also allows people to skip the hard conversations about cutting down on consumption, Kleinschmit said. The market for voluntary carbon offsets—the ones companies choose to buy—is predicted to grow from around $2 billion in 2021 to $250 billion by 2030. 

Another problem is that “carbon cowboys”—a term for those seeking to profit off carbon offset schemes—can end up evicting Indigenous peoples from their homes. In 2015, Cambodian officials set aside more than 1,900 square miles of rainforest in the country’s Cardamom Mountains for a carbon offset project without consulting the Chong people that had lived there for centuries. Villagers were forced from their lands, and some were even arrested for collecting resin from trees, since carbon offset areas were monitored to stop locals from using the forest’s resources.

In the United Arab Emirates, the company Blue Carbon has negotiated deals for millions of acres so it can launch offset projects aimed at protecting forests across Liberia, Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Much of that land has been held by Indigenous peoples. Since 1990, an estimated quarter-million people around the world have been pushed out of their homes in the name of conservation. 

Global climate goals, of course, don’t have to come into conflict with local needs. Experts say it’s possible to balance the two effectively. Prakash Kashwan, an environmental studies professor at Brandeis University, said that locals can use resources from trees, at least on a smaller scale, without hurting a forest’s ability to sequester carbon, according to his research. Studies have demonstrated that involving Indigenous peoples and local residents in the process of decision-making is key to better social and environmental outcomes—including carbon sequestration. 

“Allowing communities a say in how forests are managed is absolutely vital to more effective, lasting, and just forest governance, and for tackling these big global challenges that we face,” Miller said.

About five miles south of Broken Bow, in the heart of central Nebraska, thousands of cattle stand in feedlots at Adams Land & Cattle Co., a supplier of beef to the meat giant Tyson Foods.

From the air, the feedlots look dusty brown and packed with cows—not a vision of happy animals grazing on open pastureland, enriching the soil with carbon. But when the animals are slaughtered, processed, and sent onward to consumers, labels on the final product can claim that they were raised in a “climate friendly” way.  

In late 2022, Tyson—one of the country’s “big four” meat packers—applied to the US Department of Agriculture, seeking a “climate friendly” label for its Brazen Beef brand. The production of Brazen Beef, the label claims, achieves a “10 percent greenhouse gas reduction.” Soon after, the USDA approved the label.

Immediately, environmental groups questioned the claim and petitioned the agency to stop using it, citing livestock’s significant greenhouse gas emissions and the growing pile of research that documents them. These groups and journalism outlets, including Inside Climate News, have asked the agency for the data it used to support its rubber-stamping of Tyson’s label but have essentially gotten nowhere.

“There are lots of misleading claims on food, but it’s hard to imagine a claim that’s more misleading than ‘climate friendly’ beef,” said Scott Faber, a senior vice president at the Environmental Working Group (EWG). “It’s like putting a cancer-free label on a cigarette. There’s no worse food choice for the climate than beef.”

The USDA has since confirmed it is currently considering and has approved similar labels for more livestock companies, but would not say which ones.

On Wednesday, the EWG, a longtime watchdog of the USDA, published a new analysis, outlining its efforts over the last year to push the agency for more transparency, including asking it to provide the specific rationale for allowing Brazen Beef to carry the “climate friendly” label. Last year, the group filed a Freedom of Information Act request, seeking the data that Tyson supplied to the agency in support of its application, but received only a heavily redacted response. EWG also petitioned the agency to not allow climate friendly or low-carbon claims on beef.

To earn the “climate friendly” label, Tyson requires ranchers to meet the criteria of its internal “Climate-Smart Beef” program, but EWG notes that the company fails to provide information about the practices that farmers are required to adopt or about which farmers participate in the program. The only farm it has publicly identified is the Adams company in Nebraska.

A USDA spokesperson told Inside Climate News it can only rely on a third-party verification company to substantiate a label claim and could not provide the data Tyson submitted for its review.  

“Because Congress did not provide USDA with on-farm oversight authority that would enable it to verify these types of labeling claims, companies must use third-party certifying organizations to substantiate these claims,” the spokesperson wrote in an email, directing Inside Climate News to the third-party verifier or Tyson for more information. 

The third-party verification company, Where Food Comes From, did not respond to emailed questions from Inside Climate News, and Tyson did not respond to emails seeking comment.

The USDA said it is reviewing EWG’s petitions and announced in June 2023 that it’s working on strengthening the “substantiation of animal-raising claims, which includes the type of claim affixed to the Brazen Beef product.”

The agency said other livestock companies were seeking similar labels and that the agency has approved them, but would not identify those companies, saying Inside Climate News would have to seek the information through a Freedom of Information Act request.

“They’re being incredibly obstinate about sharing anything right now,” said Matthew Hayek, a researcher with New York University who studies the environmental and climate impacts of the food system. “Speaking as a scientist, it’s not transparent and it’s a scandal in its own right that the government can’t provide this information.”

This lack of transparency from the agency worries environmental and legal advocacy groups, especially now that billions of dollars in taxpayer funds are available for agricultural practices deemed to have benefits for the climate. The Biden administration’s signature climate legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act, appropriated nearly $20 billion for these practices; another $3.1 billion is available through a Biden-era program called the Partnership for Climate-Smart Commodities.

The funds for the Climate-Smart Commodities program come from the agency’s Commodity Credit Corporation and are not subject to Congressional approval or oversight. 

Last year, the Center for Biological Diversity submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the USDA, asking for details about funding to support “low carbon” beef. The agency’s response was heavily redacted and the Center is now appealing.

“The industry continues to make big claims about sequestering carbon, with no science or scale to back it up, and uses very fuzzy accounting for their methane emissions, even though cattle are the main agricultural source of domestic methane emissions,” explained Jennifer Molidor, a senior campaigner for the group, in an email to Inside Climate News. “Brazen Beef has used a third party auditor, but it’s not clear what baseline and metrics they are using either.”

“If the USDA wants climate-smart agriculture, propping up the beef industry isn’t the smartest way to go about it,” Molidor added.

On its website, Tyson claims to reach its 10 percent greenhouse gas reduction through improved grazing methods and practices that reduce emissions from growing feed. But it does not publish the data and it says farmers can “customize their practices depending on their unique geographic location and circumstances.”

The company also says it worked with two environmental advocacy groups, the Environmental Defense Fund and The Nature Conservancy, to develop its carbon accounting methodology. 

Katie Anderson, a senior director with the Environmental Defense Fund, said the organization’s role in Tyson’s Climate Smart Beef program was limited to sharing its method for measuring nitrogen, the major component of fertilizer used to grow livestock feed. When nitrogen-based fertilizer is applied to farm fields, much of it is lost to the air as nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas 300 times more powerful than carbon dioxide.

The organization’s method calculates nitrous oxide emissions across watersheds or “entire sourcing regions,” making it less cumbersome for individual farms to calculate. “The models make it easier and more accurate for food and agriculture companies to report progress toward the nitrogen-related parts of their climate and water quality goals for their direct operations and supply chains,” Anderson said.   

Tyson did not pay the group for its contribution.

The Nature Conservancy, which has received funding from Tyson for some of its conservation projects in the company’s home state of Arkansas, was paid to share some of its expertise on sustainable agriculture and translating data from farmers.

“We only shared knowledge and advice, which Tyson took into consideration when working on the model,” said Nancy Labbe, the co-director of TNC’s Regenerative Grazing Lands program, who noted that the data on Tyson’s accounting methodology would have to come from the company itself. 

Both the Environmental Defense Fund and The Nature Conservancy have received funding from the USDA via the Climate-Smart Commodities program. Silvia Secchi, a natural resource economist at the University of Iowa and outspoken critic of U.S. agricultural policy, said the environmental groups, universities, and corporations taking money from the USDA for climate-focused efforts should all be subject to the same rules.

“USDA should have a transparent methodology that’s applicable to everyone—the outsourcing, the monitoring, the verification—for all these groups that have incentives to make things look better than they are,” Secchi said. “There’s no transparency. How are they actually going to verify that farmers are reducing nitrogen? Are they getting GPS coordinates for tractors every day of the year? I think it’s complete bullshit. They’re only looking at select indicators, not the whole system.”i

Already, the agency has expanded its definition of “climate smart” to practices critics say are not climate smart and may actually lead to more greenhouse gas emissions.

Though it has long worked to downplay its climate impact, the livestock industry has become increasingly sensitive to growing consumer awareness of livestock’s huge carbon footprint. It has spent millions lobbying against climate action and courting academic specialists to minimize the greenhouse gas emissions of livestock. 

Last month the American Farm Bureau Federation, the country’s most powerful farm lobbying group, which had long denied the science behind human-caused climate change, celebrated a drop in agricultural greenhouse gas emissions reported by the Environmental Protection Agency.

“America’s farmers and ranchers are leading the way in greenhouse gas emission reduction through voluntary conservation efforts and market-based incentives,” the Farm Bureau said, noting that agricultural emissions fell by 2 percent from 2021 to 2022, “ the largest decrease of any economic sector.”

But Ben Lilliston, the director of rural strategies and climate change for the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, noted that the drop was not the result of voluntary farm practices. High fertilizer prices, in part caused by the war in Ukraine, resulted in less fertilizer use as farmers switched to planting soybeans rather than corn, which is especially nitrogen intensive. Less corn and less fertilizer led to lower nitrous oxide emissions. Over roughly the same period, a multi-year drought killed thousands of cattle, resulting in lower methane emissions from cattle. (Cattle are the biggest source of agricultural methane, largely from their belches and from the way their manure is stored.)

“Those are the two drivers that reduced emissions,” Lilliston said. “It wasn’t anything the industry did or anything farmers did.”

“When we do reduce the number of cattle, we reduce emissions, and when we do plant other crops besides corn—crops that aren’t as fertilizer intensive—emissions go down,” Lilliston added. “This is the pathway to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.”

The downplaying of livestock’s carbon impact isn’t just the work of the American farm and livestock lobbies. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations last year came under fire as reporters revealed that researchers had been pressured to downplay livestock’s climate impact in a landmark report. 

Last month, Hayek, of NYU, accused the FAO of misusing his data in a subsequent report that he and others say downplayed the importance of reducing beef and dairy consumption to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which research has demonstrated is critical, especially in developing countries. 

The food system, from farm to consumer, accounts for about one-third of all human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, with livestock production accounting for about two-thirds of that. It is now widely understood that emissions from the food system alone will push temperatures past the 1.5 degree Celsius target set in the Paris Agreement. Assuming the world continues to eat meat and dairy the way it does now, most of the warming projected to come from the food system will come from livestock, recent research has found.

Industry efforts to pursue “low carbon” and “climate friendly” labeling are another step toward minimizing its climate and broader environmental impacts—and they further mislead consumers, critics say. “It implies there’s a beef choice that’s good for the climate,” Faber said.

The debate over low carbon beef claims could, in theory, end up facing legal challenges. In February, the New York Attorney General’s office sued the world’s largest beef company, Brazil-based JBS, for misleading consumers by promising to achieve “net zero” emissions by 2040, even though the company clearly has a growth strategy that relies on ramping up beef production. 

“It would be difficult to achieve if not impossible,” said Peter Lehner, an attorney for Earthjustice whose work focuses on agriculture. “The measures JBS are taking are not enough and that would overlap with Tyson.”

“You can’t claim to be climate friendly or net zero because beef production ineluctably uses an enormous amount of land and emits an enormous amount of methane and nitrous oxide,” he added. “You can reduce that, but you’re still not close to a climate friendly food.”

On April 1, it was confirmed that H5N1 had spread to at least one person who worked with cattle—as of April 30, 36 dairy herds have been confirmed to have had cases of bird flu, although that’s a likely undercount based on limited testing. On April 25, the FDA announced its finding that one in five milk samples from grocery stores had trace amounts of H5N1. Colombia has restricted the import of beef from US states where the virus has been detected in cows, and the USDA is now testing ground beef for H5N1. The World Health Organization reported that between January 2003 and March 2024, 56 percent of bird flu cases detected in humans were fatal. Half the domestic cats on a Texas farm also recently died after drinking raw milk from cows infected with H5N1.

Pasteurization eliminates this risk. “Raw milk does not go through this process, so consuming [it] could unknowingly place you at risk of infection with H5N1,” said Brian Labus, a University of Nevada, Las Vegas public health professor and epidemiologist. There are still other ways that H5N1 can spread besides drinking raw milk, such as to dairy workers (human-to-human transmission hasn’t been detected in the US yet). But according to the Conversation, that’s not a common vector. And if other animals drink unpasteurized cow’s milk, they also risk contracting H5N1, just like any human would. 

Raw milk influencers have a sizable following, including some whose content doesn’t center solely on diet. Take model Liz Siebert, who has over a million followers on TikTok, and who made videos last year on how she gets her raw milk from a nearby Amish farm, claiming raw milk was helping get her health back on track and reduced her allergy symptoms (most of these clips have now been deleted, but the reaction videos debunking her claims have not). Raw milk is also a big hit among fitness influencers and “crunchy” moms—parents who want food that’s “natural,” like in the good old days, when viruses killed a lot more people.

“People are seeing more influencers talk about raw milk over the last year or more,”  said Jessica Gall Myrick, a Pennsylvania State University health communications professor. Myrick says that trend “follows the changes in state laws allowing more retail and on-farm sales.” As a result, more and more people are buying raw milk: Ambrook Research reports that sales “jumped 27 percent, from $12 million in 2021 to $19.4 million” in 2023. 

Dubious claims about raw milk predate social media (as does research debunking the supposed benefits), but it’s given those claims a new life. A 2022 research paper estimates that around four and a half percent of Americans are consuming raw milk at least once annually. In videos on TikTok, some influencers do acknowledge that there are people who think their raw milk obsession is bizarre—but they still claim that they’re drinking it because it improves their health. Which is ironic: besides bird flu, raw milk consumption has been linked to cases of the diseases salmonella and listeriosis. But you’re not going to hear about that in a podcast clip on TikTok of Gwyneth Paltrow talking about unpasteurized milk. 

“Seeing an attractive influencer claim to be healthier and happier thanks to drinking raw milk can inspire people and give them hope for a similar outcome,” Gall Myrick said. “We remember anecdotes better than statistics about risk, too.” But Gall Myrick does think that people with significant online platforms can also be helpful in dispelling health misinformation about raw milk in a clear and engaging way, pointing to a video of author John Green talking about its dangers as an example.

 

 

 

 

 

View this post on Instagram

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A post shared by John Green (@johngreenwritesbooks)

It also doesn’t help that social media feeds quickly become echo chambers by design. “The more people see of this type of pro-raw-milk content in their social media feeds, algorithms will keep giving them more of it, and then they are less likely to see stories about people harmed by raw milk,” Gall Myrick said. 

Many states still do not allow raw milk to be sold in stores, with some exceptions for farms, meaning that people inspired by raw milk influencers may have to go through more hurdles to buy it. “You can’t find raw milk in most grocery stores, and social media likes and shares are not going to change that,” Labus said. For now, that is.

This article was produced by The Bittman Project and the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, which supports independent journalists as they forward fresh narratives about inequality. It is co-published here with permission. EHRP’s high-quality journalism is co-published with mainstream media outlets, to help readers understand and address systemic hardship.

Cooking and food shopping are very different in America than they used to be.

For one thing, there’s an often overwhelming “time tax” on many workers, leaving us with mere minutes for cooking–the average American has only about 39 minutes to devote to food preparation and clean up per day, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics from 2022. (It’s still mostly mothers doing that cooking—80 percent as of 2019—and the shopping as well.) And if it isn’t time, it’s money: Groceries cost 25 percent more than they did 4 years ago; that’s considerably above the rate of inflation. And when we shop for vegetables, we sometimes have to “forget” that the regular kind are often grown with loads of chemicals: organic vegetables are simply too expensive—or not even available—at our local supermarkets. Recent layoffs across several important sectors have accelerated the growing income precarity of the people doing the cooking. Finally, it’s difficult to shop with the earth and animal welfare in mind when many of us are already on tight budgets.

Yet little of this has much impact on the way most recipes are written, and that needs to change.

We—this is a joint effort of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project and The Bittman Project—wanted to try to address all of these issues through some recipes that try to get at the complexity, cost, and conscience involved in making our meals. And we wanted to do that while avoiding the pitfalls of condescending cooking initiatives like the “Blue Apron-style” SNAP proposal of the Trump administration?

We believe the following recipes accomplish this well. We’re using fish and meat as condiments, or centering vegetables; these two strategies make dishes both cheaper and more conscientious. We’re also including links that explain the political, health, and animal justice context of certain ingredients. We’re offering substitutions for tricky, costly, or recherche ingredients. (While selecting the right fish may seem fraught with complexity, we demystify the process by offering a range of possibilities there, as well.) We’re also showing you the total cost of ingredients for each recipe, and suggesting uses for leftovers, so that nothing is wasted.

Recipes that take on board things like time, class, income, and sustainability may be few and far between. But they are, we believe, representative of how recipes should start to look.

How to Shop for Good Ingredients in Tough Times

Getting a meal on the table is an act of love and beauty. Grocery shopping maybe not so much. Here are six ideas for making the most efficient, economical, and sustainable choices while you dash through the supermarket.

1. Prioritize your purchases.

Whether you make a list or not, consider what is most important to you—be it fresh vegetables, beans, pasta, meat, or ice cream—and start at that part of the store.

2. Beware the hidden cost of sale prices.

Five pounds of boneless chicken at half price with a sell-by date of today only works if you have room in your freezer and time to bust the package up into usable portions, or a plan to cook and eat it right away. Better to look—and maybe wait—for value in something you’ve identified as a priority.

3. Pay attention to shelf tags.

This means reading some fine print. But details like price per pound can help you decide if a bulk purchase is worth the extra storage space or whether the brand name might actually be a better choice than the store label. Some supermarkets even tag WIC-eligible items on the shelf, and of course sales are always flagged, though not always prominently.

4. Be open to substitutions.

Maybe the recipe calls for asparagus, but the green beans look much better. Knowing how to adjust cooking times for substitute ingredients (as these recipes do) helps you take advantage of what’s in season, what’s on sale, and what you and those you cook for like best.

5. Beware of garnishes.

Pretty fresh herbs look great on social media. They’re just not always practical, given the cost, time it takes to prepare them, and potential for waste. A few good-quality dried herbs and spices are almost always a better value. (Unless you have a kitchen garden.) Here again, knowing how and when to make swaps helps. That and caring more about how something tastes than how it looks.

6. Consider sustainable choices whenever you can.

How and where our food is raised is crucial for the health of humans and our environment. But knowing how and when to buy organic and sorting through confusing labeling adds another layer to the work of cooking. Here are two tools to help you search ingredients while you’re shopping. For produce, the Environmental Working Group “Dirty Dozen” List includes “The Clean Fifteen” and all the fruits and vegetables in between. And for fish and shellfish, Seafood Watch is both helpful and comprehensive. Sorting through the terms of meat, poultry, and egg labels is a deeper dive. This site from the US Department of Agriculture is a good place to start.

One-Pot Pasta with Tomatoes and Eggs 

Makes: 4 to 6 main-dish servings

Time: 30 minutes

Cost: $20 (not including salad or side vegetable and using previously purchased soy sauce; but with extra ingredients for the fridge and pantry)

Leftovers: Add the sauced pasta to beaten eggs and scramble or bake into a frittata. Or reheat in a hot skillet, stirring occasionally, until the noodles sizzle and crisp in places.

A sort of magic happens when you cook pasta and sauce together at the same time in a big pot, season it robustly, and toss in modest portions of economical proteins. The sauce forms right before your eyes, coating the noodles perfectly. It’s almost as fast as packaged mac-and-cheese, and we’d like to think way better in every way, except perhaps the nostalgia factor. Whole wheat pasta adds more fiber and nutrients than noodles made from durum wheat, and we like the way it tastes. Though of course we eat traditional pasta sometimes, too. This recipe makes a lot of food, but you’ll probably still want some simply cooked vegetables on the side, or maybe a salad.

Ingredients

4 scallions

4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) butter or neutral-tasting vegetable oil (like grapeseed or canola)

1 large can (28-ounces) whole tomatoes

Salt

1 pound spaghetti (or any pasta shape)

Pepper

6 eggs

Soy sauce for serving

Instructions

1. Trim and rinse the scallions. Cut the green and white parts and chop them separately; set aside the green tops for garnish. Get at least 2 cups water ready by the stove.
2. Put 2 tablespoons of the butter or oil in a large pot over medium heat. When it is hot, add the sliced white part of the scallions and cook, stirring occasionally, until they soften, just a minute or so. Stir in about 1 cup of water. Carefully take a tomato from the can, crush it with your hands and remove the tough core, and drop it into the pot. Repeat with the remaining tomatoes; then pour in the juice. (Or you can cut the tomatoes in the can with scissors or pour the whole can in at once and break them up with a potato masher in the pot.) Sprinkle the sauce with salt.
3. Raise the heat to medium high. When the sauce comes to a boil, stir in the pasta, either whole or broken in half. Keep stirring and tossing until the noodles bend and soften, about 3 minutes. Then stir occasionally to keep them from sticking together. After a few more minutes, when the tomatoes break down and the pot gets dry, start adding water, 1/2 cup at a time, stirring after each addition. When the liquid is just about absorbed, add more. Keep the heat at medium, stir frequently, and repeat adding water as necessary; you’ll need almost all of the 2 cups you measured earlier.
4. Begin tasting the pasta 10 minutes after you added it; the strands should be tender but have some firmness when you bite. (It could take as long as 15 minutes to reach this stage.) When the pasta is ready, stir in the remaining butter or oil and enough additional water to make the noodles glossy and thickly coated. Taste and add more salt and some pepper, spread the pasta into the bottom of the pot, and crack in the eggs.
5. Cover the pot, remove it from the heat and let it sit until the yolks are as runny or solid as you like, 4 to 8 minutes. You can serve the eggs whole, or stir them into the noodles (or do a combination as shown in the photo). To serve, scoop out the noodles with a large spoon and tongs and garnish with the reserved scallion tops. Pass the soy sauce at the table.

Variations

One-Pot Pasta with Tomatoes and Tinned Fish. Substitute a small chopped onion for the scallions; you probably won’t need some or all of the butter or oil. Replace the eggs with 8 to 12 ounces canned or jarred fish packed in olive oil. If you like tuna, look for sustainably caught yellowfin, albacore (white), or skipjack (chunk light). Salmon, sardines, or mackerel are also good choices. In Step 1, start by opening the cans or jars and measuring the olive oil into the pot for cooking the onion. Then follow the recipe until Step 4 where you will add the tuna (or other fish) to the pot, along with a sprinkling of dried Italian seasoning blend and the remaining oil in the tin and more butter or olive oil if you need it. Instead of the soy sauce, pass red chili flakes at the table.

One-Pot Pasta with Tomatoes and Cheese. Substitute olive oil for the vegetable oil (or use butter). Instead of the eggs, crumble 8 ounces of a flavorful cheese, like feta or queso fresco, which have better quality and flavor than inexpensive Parmesan cheese. Add the cheese to the pot at the end of Step 4 along with a pinch of smoked paprika or chili powder.

One-Pot Pasta with Tomatoes and Leftovers. This recipe is a great place to use leftover bits of simply cooked roasted, grilled, or steamed meats; seafood; tofu; or vegetables. Just chop, slice, or shred whatever you have in the fridge—up to 2 cups. Add the leftovers to the pasta when you start tasting for doneness at the 10 minute mark in Step 4. You may need to add more butter or some olive oil. Skip the eggs but still cover the pot and let it sit at the end of that step so the extra bits heat through and the pasta is steaming hot when you serve it.

Recipes developed by The Bittman Project for the Economic Hardship Reporting Project

Warm Spring Vegetable Salad with Drumsticks and Crisp Croutons

About: 1 hour, including prep

Makes: 4 meal-size salads

Cost: $11.50 (not including olive oil or mustard)

Leftovers: Pull extra chicken from the bone and chop the cold vegetables; stir in some mayonnaise, if you like, for a sandwich.

The foundation of this one-skillet meal are chicken drumsticks, a flavorful, fast-cooking, and inexpensive cut that’s often on sale. But instead of cooking a lot of them, you use their rich pan drippings to crisp day-old bread into croutons for a warm vegetable salad. This less-meat-more-vegetable approach to eating—which is actually practiced throughout most of the world—treats animal protein as a seasoning. The results are satisfying, nourishing, and economical.

The recipe here also describes how to move ingredients in and out of a single pan as you prepare the components, so you’re busy but not frantic, and clean-up is easy. For the spring vegetables, choose your favorites from whatever looks best at the supermarket: asparagus, spinach, radishes (they’re delicious lightly cooked!), snap or sugar peas, or chard or romaine lettuce. Cook them just long enough to become crisp-tender—or keep going if you like your vegetables soft—toss in lemony-mustard dressing, nestle in a drumstick or two, and top with those delicious croutons.

Ingredients

1 small or 1/2 medium onion (any kind you like)

Salt to taste

11/2 to 2 pounds spring vegetables (see the recipe note for ideas)

1 lemon, halved

1 tablespoon mustard (Dijon, coarse grain, or yellow)

4 tablespoons olive oil

11/2 pounds chicken drumsticks (4 to 6, depending on the size)

4 to 8 slices slightly old bread, preferably whole wheat (or 4 buns or English muffins)

Pepper to taste

Instructions

1. Prepare the vegetables before you start cooking and keep them separate as you work. Halve the onion in either direction and slice thinly; trim and rinse the vegetables or greens, then leave them whole or slice or chop as you like best. (You can do all this up to several hours before cooking; cover and refrigerate until it’s time to eat.) Cut the lemon and put it near the stove with the mustard, olive oil, and the measuring spoons.
2. Put 1 tablespoon of the oil in a large skillet over medium heat. When it’s hot but not yet smoking, add the chicken and sprinkle with salt. Adjust the heat so the pieces sizzle without burning and cook undisturbed, until the skin browns and releases easily from the pan, 3 to 5 minutes. Continue to cook and turn the drumsticks often to help them brown in places all over, about 5 minutes more.
3. Turn the heat to medium-low, add 1/3 cup water, and scrape up any browned bits from the bottom of the pan with a spatula. Cover and cook until the thickest part of a drumstick is no longer pink at the bone, 10 to 15 min. (Use a small knife to cut into one and peek.)
4. While the chicken cooks, chop or tear the bread into bite-size bits. When the chicken is ready, move it to a plate, measure 2 tablespoons of the remaining tablespoons oil into the skillet with the drippings and return the pan to medium heat. Fry the bread, stirring and scraping almost constantly with a spatula, until the bread is crisp in some places but still soft in others, about 5 minutes. Transfer the croutons to a serving bowl and let sit.
5. Rinse out pan if it’s got dark bits in the bottom and get 1/2 cup water handy by the stove. Set the skillet back on medium heat and add the remaining tablespoon of oil. Cook the onion first, stirring occasionally until it softens and starts to turn golden, about 3 minutes. Then add the vegetables, starting with the firmest vegetables first (like the radishes and asparagus) and ending with the tenderest greens. Cook and stir until the vegetables are a little bit crisper than you ultimately want them, 5 to 10 minutes depending on what you chose. To test, poke them with a fork often.
6. Raise the heat to high and stir the water into the skillet. When it starts to steam and bubble away, turn off the heat. Squeeze the juice from the lemon halves into the pan, using your fingers or a strainer to catch the seeds. Add the mustard and stir until the dressing is combined. (It’s fine if it separates a little.) Taste and adjust the seasoning, adding more salt and pepper if you like. Serve with the chicken, passing the croutons at the table.

Variations

Warm Spring Vegetable Salad with Fish and Crisp Croutons. Substitute fish fillets about 1 inch thick for the chicken; the other ingredients stay the same. To choose fish that is sustainably caught or raised, you can search the Seafood Watch for recommendations. (Some stores also have reliable labeling.) Frozen is often a good option; to thaw it quickly, put it in a bowl of tap water in the sink for 15 to 30 minutes and use that time to prepare the vegetables. Cut or tear the bread as described in Step 4 before starting. When you’re ready to cook, pat the fish dry with a clean towel and cook it as described in Steps 2 and 3, only you’ll drastically reduce the cooking time. The browning stage will take about 1 minute per side, and after adding water and covering, the fish will be ready after 3 to 5 minutes simmering. Peek with a knife as described to check the inside–the fish is ready when it’s firm, opaque at the center, and flaky without looking dry. Transfer it to a plate and wash the pan well before continuing with the recipe with Step 4.

Warm Spring Vegetable Salad with Pork Chops and Crisp Croutons. You can simply swap 4 small or two large 1-inch thick bone-in or boneless pork chops for the chicken. The directions and visual cues remain the same.

Recipes developed by The Bittman Project for the Economic Hardship Reporting Project

Rice-and Lentil “Paella” in a Cake Pan

Makes: 4 meal-size servings, plus leftovers

Time: 20 minutes prep plus 1 hour roasting time

Cost: $20 (with extra olive oil, brown rice, lentils, and spice for the pantry)

Leftovers: Reheat servings of paella in a covered dish in the microwave. Or chop the carrots and toss them with the rice and lentils; add lemon juice or a spoonful of any vinegar for a quick, hearty salad to serve over greens.

You don’t need a paella pan—or even a broad, ovenproof skillet—to make this vegan spin on the national dish of Spain. The bulk of the action happens efficiently with a big pot on the stove and moves to an oblong cake pan in the oven. Then you walk away and do something else for a while. And instead of saffron, you get some everyday seasoning choices in the ingredient list below. Be sure to check out the meatless variations and list of seasonal vegetable ideas that follow. The lentils become creamy and form a bit of a sauce, but feel free to serve with a dollop of non-dairy (or dairy) yogurt, a squeeze from a wedge of fresh orange, or a splash of hot sauce or salsa. In other words, this recipe is easy to customize.

Ingredients

11/4 cups long-grain brown rice

11/4 brown lentils

2 large or 3 medium leeks (about 1 pound)

4 tablespoons olive oil

1 tablespoon spice (like curry or chili powder, za’atar, or a mix of cumin and smoked paprika)

11/2 pounds carrots (any size, with tops if possible)

3 tablespoons chopped carrot tops or fresh dill, for garnish (optional)

Instructions

1. Heat the oven to 425°F. Get a 9- by 13-inch metal or ceramic cake pan handy. (No need to grease it.) Measure the rice and lentils into a strainer, and rinse under running water, working through with your hands to discard anything that doesn’t quite look like lentils or rice. Let the mixture sit to drain.
2. Trim the leeks so some green parts remain. Slice them crosswise into 1/2 inch rounds; you should have 3 to 4 cups. Rinse the leeks under running water, working with your fingers to separate layers and dislodge any grit.
3. If your carrots came with greens on top, pinch off a handful of the nicest ones and put them in a bowl of cold tap water to use for garnish later. Trim the carrots and scrub with a clean brush or scouring pad (or peel them if you prefer). Carefully split lengthwise any that are wider than 11/2 inches in half. Toss with 1 tablespoon of olive oil and the salt and pepper and let them sit on the cutting board.
4. Put the remaining 3 tablespoons of the olive oil in a large pot over medium heat. When it’s shimmering, add the leeks and cook, stirring frequently, until they’re soft and beginning to color, about 3 minutes. Add the lentils and rice, the spice, and a big pinch of salt and stir constantly until the mixture is glossy and fragrant, about 1 minute. Stir in 4 cups water, raise the heat to high, and bring to a boil. Remove the pot from the heat.
5. Use a ladle to transfer the mixture to the cake pan, scraping out the last bits with a rubber spatula. Put the pan in the oven and roast undisturbed for 45 minutes.
6. When the time is up, peek under the carrots with a fork to grab a taste of the rice and lentils and check the pan for liquid. If the rice is still chalky at the center and the pan is dry, pour another cup of water over the top of the paella and return it to the oven to cook for another 15 minutes. (If you saved some carrot greens, drain and chop them.) The paella is ready when the rice is tender, the lentils are broken up, and the carrots are browned in spots. Serve hot or at room temperature, sprinkled with an extra dusting of salt and pepper (or scatter the carrot greens over the top if you have them.)

Variations

Rice-and-Tofu “Paella” in a Cake Pan. Instead of the lentils, put 1 pound firm or extra-firm tofu in a bowl or large glass measuring cup and crumble with your fingers or a fork. (You should have about 2 cups.) In Step 1 rinse the rice by itself. The rest of the recipe remains the same. You probably won’t need to add extra water when you check for doneness in Step 6.

Rice-and-Nut “Paella” in a Cake Pan. Instead of the lentils, increase the rice to 11/2 cups and chop 1 cup nuts—like peanuts, almonds, pistachios, walnuts, or cashews. In Step 1 rinse the rice by itself. The rest of the recipe remains the same. You probably won’t need to add extra water when you check for doneness in Step 6.

Changing Paella for the Seasons

Carrots are great on top of this paella all year long, but it’s always nice to take advantage of seasonal produce by changing the vegetable you roast on top. In winter, try 1-inch thick cabbage wedges or sliced celery root or parsnips. In spring, thickly sliced fennel or giant asparagus stalks are lovely, as is a heap of spinach leaves; they’ll cook down to almost form a crust. For summer, green beans, fresh cherry tomatoes, or wedges cut from ripe tomatoes of any size will concentrate and soften to the point of practically melting away. And in fall, broccoli or cauliflower florets, or whole or halved Brussels sprouts make a lovely vegan main dish for the Thanksgiving table.

—Recipes developed by The Bittman Project for the Economic Hardship Reporting Project

© 2024 Mark Bittman. All Rights Reserved.

One of the biggest battles over Colorado River water is being staged in one of the west’s smallest rural enclaves.

Tucked into the bends of the lower Colorado River, Cibola, Arizona, is a community of about 200 people. Maybe 300, if you count the weekenders who come to boat and hunt. Dusty shrublands run into sleepy residential streets, which run into neat fields of cotton and alfalfa.

Nearly a decade ago, Greenstone Resource Partners LLC, a private company backed by global investors, bought almost 500 acres of agricultural land here in Cibola. In a first-of-its-kind deal, the company recently sold the water rights tied to the land to the town of Queen Creek, a suburb of Phoenix, for a $14 million gross profit. More than 2,000 acre-feet of water from the Colorado River that was once used to irrigate farmland is now flowing, through a canal system, to the taps of homes more than 200 miles away.

A Guardian investigation into the unprecedented water transfer, and how it took shape, reveals that Greenstone strategically purchased land and influence to advance the deal. The company was able to do so by exploiting the arcane water policies governing the Colorado River.

Experts expect that such transfers will become more common as thirsty towns across the west seek increasingly scarce water. The climate crisis and chronic overuse have sapped the Colorado River watershed, leaving cities and farmers alike to contend with shortages. Amid a deepening drought and declines in the river’s reservoirs, Greenstone and firms like it have been discreetly acquiring thousands of acres of farmland.

As US states negotiate how they will divide up the river’s dwindling supplies, officials challenging the Greenstone transfer in court fear it will open the floodgates to many more private water sales, allowing investors to profit from scarcity. The purchases have alarmed local residents, who worry that water speculators scavenging agricultural land for valuable water rights will leave rural communities like Cibola in the dust.

“Here we are in the middle of a drought and trying to preserve the Colorado River, and we’re allowing water to be transferred off of the river,” said Regina Cobb, a former Republican state representative who has tried to limit transfers. “And in the process, we’re picking winners and losers.”

In February, a federal judge ruled that the Cibola-Queen Creek transfer was done without proper environmental review, ordering the federal Bureau of Reclamation to complete a more thorough evaluation. The Department of Justice, which is representing the bureau in the legal proceeding, declined to comment on whether the bureau would be appealing the decision.

Meanwhile, Greenstone—which appears to be the first water brokerage firm to sell rights to the Colorado River—could help chart the course of how the resource can be bought and sold in the west.

Greenstone first arrived in Cibola a decade ago—though few here knew anything of the company at the time. Through a subsidiary called GSC Farm LLC, the company purchased 485 acres of land in the Cibola valley in 2013 and 2014, for about $9.8 million. Hardly anyone in town took notice.

“Why would we?” said Holly Irwin, a supervisor for La Paz county, which encompasses Cibola.

Initially, Greenstone leased that land back to farmers, who planted fields of alfalfa and rows of puffball cotton.

Then, in 2018, the company sold the water tied to that farmland to Queen Creek, a fast-growing sprawl of gated communities on the outskirts of Arizona’s capital. The city’s government agreed to pay the company $24 million for the annual entitlement to 2,033 acre-feet of Colorado River water.

In July of last year, amid continuing legal challenges and national scrutiny, that water was finally diverted. The alfalfa and cotton fields were fallowed—reduced to dry brush and cracked earth. Many in town were blindsided. “We were all just like: ‘What the heck?’” Irwin recalled.

GSC Farm, she realized, wasn’t really a farm at all—it was part of a water investment firm that had brokered water transfer deals all across the south-west.

GSC Farm is one of at least 25 subsidiaries and affiliates of Greenstone, registered in Arizona and other states. Business registration records, deeds, loan documents and tax records show that these companies share the same executives. To local residents, including elected officials such as Irwin, it was initially unclear that the business—which had been acquiring thousands of acres of farmland not only in Cibola but across Arizona—went by so many names.

Greenstone’s executives and lawyers did not respond to the Guardian’s questions about the company’s corporate structure, its business model, and how it initiated the Queen Creek deal.

Public records revealed that Greenstone’s financial backers include the global investment firm MassMutual and its subsidiary Barings, as well as public pension funds. At least one of its acquisitions appears to be financed by Rabo AgriFinance, a subsidiary of the Dutch multinational banking and financial services company Rabobank.

On its website, Greenstone describes itself as “a water company” and as “a developer and owner of reliable, sustainable water supplies,” Its CEO, Mike Schlehuber, previously worked for Vidler Water Company—another firm that essentially brokers water supply—as well as Summit Global Management, a company that invests in water suppliers and water rights.

Greenstone’s managing director and vice-president, Mike Malano—a former realtor based in Phoenix who remains “active in the Arizona development community,” per his company bio—got himself elected to the board of the Cibola valley irrigation and drainage district, a quasi-governmental organization that oversees the distribution of water for agriculture in the region.

Irwin was horrified. She felt that a company with ties to big banks and real estate developers, posing as a farm, had infiltrated her small town and sold off its most precious resource.

The deal won’t have an immediate impact on Cibola’s residents. It doesn’t affect the municipal water supply. But she worries that the transfer will be the first of many. And if more and more farms are fallowed to feed water to cities, what will become of rural towns along the river?

“It’ll be like Owens Valley,” she said, referring to the water grab that inspired the movie Chinatown. In the early 20th century, agents working for the city of Los Angeles, posing as farmers or ranchers, bought up land in the valley and diverted its water to fuel their metropolis, leaving behind a dustbowl.

By allowing the Greenstone deal to go through, “I’m afraid we’ve opened Pandora’s box,” she said.

The Colorado River, which stretches from the Rocky Mountains into Mexico, has declined by about 20% since the turn of the century, amid the most severe drought the west has seen in 1,200 years. In a painfully negotiated deal, Arizona, Nevada and California agreed to reduce the amount of water they draw from the river by 13% through 2026. Experts warned that even deeper cuts would be necessary in the coming decade, but states are currently deadlocked over a longer-term conservation plan.

“With ongoing shortages on the river, driven by climate change, Colorado River water is going to become very valuable,” said Rhett Larson, a professor of water law at Arizona State University. “Anyone who understands this dynamic thinks, ‘Well, if I could buy Colorado River water rights, that’s more valuable than owning oil in this country at this stage.’”

Though the price Queen Creek paid for the water was remarkable—amounting to more than $11,500 per acre-foot—lawyers and water experts in Arizona told the Guardian it would probably sell for even more today.

The process of selling and transferring the water, however, can be bureaucratic and complicated. In most cases, a company like Greenstone would have to first convince fellow landowners in their local irrigation district to allow the sale, and then secure approvals from the state department of water resources and the US Bureau of Reclamation, the federal agency that manages water in the west.

What Irwin and many of Cibola’s residents didn’t realize was that in their sleepy, riverside town, a select group of farmers and landowners had been working for years to facilitate such deals.

Irrigation districts, as the name suggests, are designed to distribute water for irrigation across the US west. These districts were formed in the 19th and 20th centuries as cooperatives, allowing farmers to pool resources to develop water infrastructure. In the Colorado River basin, the districts contract with the Bureau of Reclamation to deliver water flowing through federal infrastructure to farms and ranches.

Farmers tend to be possessive of their precious water, explained Susanna Eden of the University of Arizona Water Resources Research Center. Most irrigation districts are set up to keep water for farming—and to keep it within their jurisdictions.

But in the Cibola valley irrigation and drainage district (CVIDD), landowners seem to have anticipated the market potential of their water. “It has been said, and I think it has been demonstrated, that the Cibola valley irrigation and drainage district was set up by people who were investing in water, rather than pure agriculturalists,” said Eden.

In 1992, long before Greenstone arrived on the scene, CVIDD amended its contract with the Bureau of Reclamation to explicitly contemplate “water exchange, water lease, water transfer” or a change in the “type or place of use” of its water allotment.

The CVIDD board president, Michael Mullion, a farmer in Cibola who had been leasing land from GSC Farm in addition to tending his own land, vouched for the Greenstone’s water transfer at a 2019 hearing with the state’s department of water resources. In his testimony, Mullion talked about how his grandfather had come to the Cibola valley in 1949. “He brushed, cleared, leveled and built the canals for this particular ground,” he said. “But his dream was to actually sell this water.”

The district’s governing philosophy already aligned with Greenstone’s, but the company’s 500-acre purchase here allowed it to more directly influence the district’s policies. Irrigation district boards make key decisions about water in the district—and buying more land can buy more influence on the board. Landowners in the district are entitled to two votes for every acre they hold in board elections.

The district’s board of directors now includes the heads of prominent farming families in the area, including Mullion and his father, Bob, as well as Greenstone’s vice-president, Malano.

Over the years, CVIDD helped landowners, including Greenstone, gain more agency and direct control over their water rights. In most irrigation districts, the district contracts with the Bureau of Reclamation for the right to a lump sum of water, which it distributes to landowners and farmers.

However, a review of CVIDD’s contracts with the bureau revealed that between 2006 and 2014, the district began removing itself as the middleman—giving a few large landowners even more agency over how they use their water. Whereas in other irrigation districts, members would have to vote to approve a water transfer like the Greenstone deal, in the Cibola valley, some landowners can propose transfers as they please, subject to federal approval.

Amid growing public scrutiny of the Cibola-Queen Creek transfer, the CVIDD board in 2019 unanimously approved a resolution disputing the idea that water rights are reserved for local use, and supporting landowners’ right to change “the place of use and purpose of use” of their water.

“I believe they’ve been setting the stage for the Queen Creek transfer,” said Jamie Kelley, an attorney based in Bullhead City. “This was their long-term plan.”

Mullion and lawyers representing CVIDD did not respond to the Guardian’s questions about its founding principles. They also did not address critiques that their policies were set up to benefit landowners seeking to sell water rights.

Even now, after years of public debate and litigation, local residents remain baffled by the idea that water could be sold and syphoned away from them, for ever.

Down a dusty, two-lane road, just past the unassuming cream-colored building where the Cibola valley irrigation district is headquartered, a group gathered for an informal meeting with Holly Irwin last summer to discuss their grievances.

“Why is somebody coming from so far away to take water from here?” said Carol Stewart, who runs B&B convenience store—the only shop in town.

She hosted a handful of friends and neighbors, mostly retirees and recreators who had settled here decades ago. Everyone huddled into Stewart’s wood-paneled RV trailer, a respite from the searing heat, and shouted their questions over the buzz of the AC. What did the transfer mean? Would they have enough water to supply homes here?

“It’s all about the mighty dollar,” Irwin said. “It’s all about money, and how much they can come in and take advantage.”

This deal wouldn’t affect the town’s residential water supplies, Irwin explained. But it meant that more and more farmers might choose to sell out—the water that once irrigated Cibola’s fields could be diverted away. And as the Colorado River shrank, corporations were growing increasingly thirsty for rural supplies.

“Don’t we have water rights?” asked John Rosenfeld, who has lived in Cibola for 24 years. “I have a right to that water, because I’m paying for it.”

It wasn’t quite that simple, Irwin responded. Most of Cibola’s residents get their water from a municipal supply or from private wells. But some properties here come with water rights attached, sometimes dating back to before Arizona was a US state. In the 1800s and the decades following, miners and farmers could snatch water rights up and down the Colorado River simply by laying claim to the water and putting it to use for livestock or irrigating land. It didn’t matter to these settlers that some of that water and land was taken from Indigenous tribes that were here before them.

Those water rights were then passed down from generation to generation. They were formalized in agreements and interstate contracts that left some farming regions and tribes with the highest-priority water rights, while other rural and metropolitan areas received lower-priority rights. Such contracts assign water rights a “priority level” of one through six—priorities one through four represent rights for permanent water service, whereas priorities five and six represent the temporary rights to surplus supplies. The water rights Greenstone purchased in Cibola and sold to Queen Creek are fourth priority—permanently secured and prized.

Notably missing from the group at B&B were farmers. The Guardian tried to contact a number of farmers in the region, but other than Mullion, none were available for an interview. Not all agriculturalists are interested in selling their water—but the option may be increasingly appealing as the climate crisis and water shortages disrupt their ability to effectively farm. “It’s hard to know, but demands create pressure,” said Wade Noble, an attorney representing farmers with the Wellton-Mohawk irrigation and drainage district, north of Cibola. “The drought on the river has created very high pressure.”

Greenstone isn’t the only company coveting such water rights. Across the US west, private investors have been scouring rural communities in search of high-priority water rights. In Arizona, Greenstone and firms like it have acquired thousands of acres of irrigable land and their corresponding water rights.

In the Cibola valley, for example, Western Water LLC, another company that specializes in “the sale and transfer of water rights,” owns about 100 acres of land, along with its entitlement to a modest 620 acre-feet of water, public records from the Bureau of Reclamation and La Paz county showed.

Before the Bureau of Reclamation approved Greenstone’s water transfer to Queen Creek, an investigation by the Arizona Republic found that Greenstone and its competitors had acquired thousands of acres of irrigable land across Arizona, including in La Paz, Pinal, Maricopa, Mohave and Yuma counties. The newspaper’s reports were cited by local officials who argued that Greenstone’s water transfer to Queen Creek would be a harbinger of many more such deals, as water becomes increasingly scarce across the west.

A Guardian review of deeds and other public records found that in Yuma county, companies associated with Greenstone hold about 5,300 acres of farmland, much of it within the Wellton-Mohawk irrigation and drainage district. Taxes on those lands were paid by Sunstone Farms LLC, a Greenstone subsidiary that leases agricultural properties.

There, unlike in CVIDD, individual landowners cannot initiate water transfer agreements on their own. But because votes within Wellton-Mohawk are also weighted based on how much land someone owns, larger landowners could seek more influence on its board. County records indicate that a Greenstone-affiliated LLC is one of the largest landowners in the district.

Meanwhile to the north, in Mohave county, Greenstone’s competitor Water Asset Management holds more than 2,400 acres, and access to nearly 16,000 acre-feet of water, per public records from the county.

In 2022, La Paz along with Mohave and Yuma counties filed a lawsuit against the Bureau of Reclamation, challenging its claim that the deal would cause “no significant” environmental impact.

“We are arguing in our lawsuit that Reclamation did not analyze the precedent that this transfer set,” said John Lemaster, an attorney representing Mohave county. “The entire purpose of Greenstone is to develop and sell water resources. We know future transfers are likely.”

This year, a federal judge in Arizona sided with them, ruling that the Bureau of Reclamation’s environmental evaluation was “arbitrary and capricious” and ordering the agency to prepare a more thorough assessment. While it’s unclear how the agency will proceed, given that water is already flowing to Queen Creek, the outcome could define how future deals are made and who can lay claim to the Colorado River’s water.

Greenstone, meanwhile, has tried to play down the significance of the transfer. At a March 2022 committee hearing to discuss a bill introduced by Cobb, the former state representative who tried to limit water transfers, Malano balked at descriptions of his company as a hedge fund, describing Greenstone as “one of the largest farming operations in the state of Arizona,”

Indeed, Greenstone and its competitors, such as Water Asset Management, often lease their land to farmers. But Greenstone’s ultimate goal, per its website, “is to advance water transactions,” And it has been busy doing so.

In 2017, it helped secure the right to Rio Grande water for a Facebook data center in Los Lunas, New Mexico. While the Queen Creek deal was the company’s first sale off the Colorado River, it has also brokered a number of deals to supply groundwater to developing communities across Arizona.

In September, the state’s Democratic attorney general filed an amicus brief in support of the counties challenging the transfer. “Future transfers will be likely, if not inevitable,” Kris Mayes wrote, “given the need for water across Arizona.”

Queen Creek is growing fast.

Wide, tree-lined boulevards vine off into neat, master-planned communities named Harvest and Encanterra, featuring resort pools, lush golf courses and ornamental lakes. Beyond the sand-hued estates, which blend into the Sonoran landscapes, there is construction. Cranes clear ground, crews build wood frames through suburban cul-de-sacs in various states of completion.

Queen Creek was the seventh-fastest growing city in the US, according to a Census Bureau report released last year. It, like many Arizona suburbs, has struggled to balance a development boom with a shrinking water supply.

Last year, the state moved to limit new housing construction in the suburbs of Phoenix—one of the fastest-growing metro areas in the country—to avoid emptying region’s underground aquifers. Projecting a 4.86 million acre-foot shortfall in groundwater supplies over the next century, the state announced that all future housing developments in the desert would have to find some other source of water, by purchasing or importing their supply.

Ambitious cities and developers have been left scrambling. The suburb of Buckeye, west of Phoenix, has considered building a desalination plant in the Mexican town of Puerto Peñasco and piping the treated water several hundred miles north to Arizona.

Queen Creek’s water manager Paul Gardner said the town had been working for years to secure water for its future. In addition to piping water from the Colorado River, the city has also sought to import groundwater from the Harquahala valley, to the east of Cibola. It recently signed a $30 million deal with Harquahala Valley Landowners LLC, a company that represents farmers and investors with water rights, to syphon off 5,000 acre-feet of groundwater a year to feed its maze of gated communities and sprawling subdivisions.

Meanwhile, in Cibola, Holly Irwin dreams of development too—though of a different sort.

On the east bank of the Colorado, she recently oversaw the cleanup and restoration of a stretch of open space for residents and visitors. “Now we have trash cans, we have picnic tables,” Irwin said. “My goal is we’ll have campsites that stretch all the way down. And more electrical hookups for RVs.”

In the summertime, she hopes, the river will be filled with boats and its shore with picnickers and campers. “We could attract more people, from all over.”

Stewart, the shop owner, first came here as a “weekender” from San Diego, California. She was drawn to the region’s rugged beauty and rural familiarity. “This was a place to roam, to be with family.”

In the decade since she and her family moved here, she has also seen the Colorado shrink, and its lush banks fade. “There’s been years when you could basically walk across the river,” she said. “That is what has scared a lot of people. We need the water here.”

While testifying before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Power, administrator of USAID and former US Ambassador to the UN, said that officials have “credible” information that famine is occurring in northern Gaza. Up until now, the UN has said famine in Gaza is “imminent.” (USAID did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Power’s comments.)

Power’s statement came after Rep. Julián Castro (D-Texas) asked her about news reports that some USAID officials had sent a cable to the National Security Council warning that famine was likely already occurring in parts of Gaza and that deaths due to hunger would likely “accelerate in the weeks ahead,” as first reported by HuffPost last week. 

Power told Castro that those cables were based on a report compiled by a UN-backed agency and released last month that found that famine in northern Gaza was projected to occur between mid-March and May 2024.

“That is their assessment,” she told Castro of the agency’s findings, “and we believe that assessment is credible.” 

“So there’s—famine is already occurring there?” Castro asked. 

“That is—yes,” Power replied. 

One in three kids in northern Gaza are malnourished, Power said at yesterday’s hearing, adding that officials expect rates of “severe, acute malnutrition” for kids under five to continue rising. The World Health Organization said last month that 27 children in Gaza had reportedly died of malnutrition since the start of the war last October. Experts say that those who survive could be left with life-long health complications, including stunted development.

“Food must flow, and food has not flowed in sufficient quantities to avoid this imminent famine in the south and these conditions that are giving rise already to child deaths in the north,” Power said. 

It is illegal under the Foreign Assistance Act for the United States to provide military aid to countries that are obstructing US humanitarian assistance without the president notifying Congress that doing so is in America’s national security interest. Dylan Williams, the vice president for government affairs at the Center for International Policy, told Mother Jones last month that Biden “is not complying with the law at this point” given the extensive evidence that Israel is obstructing the delivery of food, medicine, and other aid.

The sad reality of all this is that Power is the author of an excellent book on the United States’ historic failure to prevent genocide and other atrocities. She understands the playbook the US government uses to deflect responsibility and render itself impotent better than almost anyone. As she wrote in A Problem from Hell in 2002:

America’s nonresponse to the Turkish horrors [during the Armenian genocide] established patterns that would be repeated. Time and again the U.S. government would be reluctant to cast aside its neutrality and formally denounce a fellow state for its atrocities. Time and again though U.S. officials would learn that huge numbers of civilians were being slaughtered, the impact of this knowledge would be blunted by their uncertainty about the facts and their rationalization that a firmer U.S. stand would make little difference. Time and again American assumptions and policies would be contested by Americans in the field closest to the slaughter, who would try to stir the imaginations of their political superiors. And time and again these advocates would fail to sway Washington. The United States would offer humanitarian aid to the survivors of ‘race murder’ but would leave those committing it alone.

What makes the current famine and slaughter in Gaza different from some of the examples detailed in the book is that the United States has played a key role in enabling them while Power has been a high-ranking official in its government.

Power’s best and most thorough reporting is on the Bosnian genocide. She makes clear she believes the United States should have used its military might far earlier to stop Serbian President Slobodan Milošević, even though his war crimes were not being committed with US weapons.

The same cannot be said today.

What is also clear from the book is that Power believes that publicly resigning is one of the most effective things that civil servants and political appointees can do to try to stop ongoing atrocities. A section of her book titled “Exit” begins bluntly:

The State Department is difficult to leave. As with most hierarchical institutions, rituals entrench the solidarity of ‘members.’ Stiff ‘initiation costs’ include fiercely competitive foreign service exams, tedious years of stamping visas in consular offices around the world, and dull desk jobs in the home office. Because of the association of service with ‘honor’ and ‘country,’ exit is often seen as betrayal. Those few who depart on principle are excommunicated or labeled whistle-blowers. US foreign policy lore is not laden with tales of the heroic resignee.

This reality, Power stresses, is to be lamented, not celebrated. She portrays the State Department officials who resigned over President Bill Clinton’s inaction over Bosnia as heroes. She describes how one resignation can inspire another—creating a cascade of public dissent. At the same time, Power is clear-eyed about how hard it is to move large institutions like the State Department. Still, she believes it is worth trying.

But many end up staying as a result of a noble but ultimately twisted calculus. “[T]he very people who care enough about a policy to contemplate resigning in protest often believe their departure will make it less likely that the policy will improve,” Power writes. “Bureaucrats can easily fall into the ‘efficacy trap,’ overestimating the chances they will succeed in making change. Dropping out can feel like copping out. The perverse result is that officials may exhibit a greater tendency to stay in an institution the worse they deem its actions.”

“We called bullshit,” Dostie remembers. PFAS contamination had recently been found at two other Maine dairy farms. But those farms had used sewage sludge to fertilize their pastures—something Dostie had never done.

But, as Dostie later learned, his farm’s previous owners, like many of their peers back in the 1980s and ’90s, had spread the fields with sludge provided by a state program that promoted it as a safe, environmentally friendly fertilizer—and delivered it to farmers for free. At the time, few people realized that chemicals in the sludge would eventually taint water, soils, milk, vegetables, and even farmers’ bodies.

PFAS, which reliably repel water, grease, and heat, are used in everything from paper plates to rain jackets. The compounds, which don’t break down in the environment, have ended up almost everywhere, including in living creatures. Decades of studies suggest links between some PFAS and increased risks of cancer, high cholesterol, immune system and reproductive problems, as well as fetal complications. While the EPA has proposed a ban in food packaging and this week announced limits in drinking water, the federal government has been silent on allowable levels in sewage sludge spread on farms or in the food they produce—much less a strategy to phase out the entire class of some 12,000 compounds.

Maine could finally force Washington to take broader action. The state has developed the country’s first meaningful thresholds for the chemicals in some foods and soil, has banned the use of sludge as fertilizer, and will, by 2030, ban the sale of all products with intentionally added PFAS.

The first inkling that Maine’s state-sponsored sludge program may have contaminated farmland and drinking water came in 2016, when Fred Stone, a third-generation dairy farmer in southern Maine, alerted regulators that a voluntary EPA screening program for unregulated toxic substances had turned up high PFAS levels in a well located on his farm. Stone told his milk buyer, who suspended their contract. Without that income, he was forced to cull his herd. Making matters worse, he complains state officials, who turned up PFAS contamination at other sites, treated him like a “unicorn.” According to an investigation by the Maine Beacon, regulators working under Gov. Paul LePage, an industry-friendly Republican, minimized the problem and delayed notifying the public even as they quietly documented further evidence of contamination and enacted a limit in milk.

In 2019, when Democratic Gov. Janet Mills created a PFAS task force just three months into her first term to address growing concerns, Stone spoke out about his ordeal. “Toxic chemicals I never used and had never even known about contaminated my cows,” he said at a press conference on his farm. ­“Believe­ me, I would not wish this on my worst enemies.” As awareness of the sludge issue spread, organic vegetable operations also uncovered PFAS contamination, prompting several to pull products from shelves.

By 2021, in an attempt to suss out the true scale of contamination, the state began testing more than 700 sites where it knew sludge had been spread; so far, more than 50 farms have discovered soil or water tainted by PFAS. Some have folded, while other farmers have tried to adapt by importing clean water or PFAS-free feed, culling herds, switching to crops that absorb fewer PFAS, or limiting production to greenhouses and clean portions of land. Amid growing public concern, last year the state instituted limits for PFAS in soil where dairy livestock feed is grown, and set up a $60 million fund to help affected farmers. But the quest to curb how much PFAS reaches dinner tables proved far more complicated than anyone anticipated.

On a sunny day in late August, I pulled up at Dostie’s farm to meet Andrew Smith, who, as Maine’s state toxicologist, helped establish state limits for perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS), the compound that contaminated Dostie’s milk. Smith’s team has been visiting farms and testing soil, plants, and milk to understand how PFAS move from the ground into forage crops, including grasses and corn. This is “real-world science,” Smith says, watching a colleague snip plants and collect soil samples.

One challenge Smith’s agency has encountered while setting limits for PFAS in food is that the threshold at which scientists suspect the chemicals pose a risk to human health keeps moving. In 2016, the EPA issued voluntary guidance advising against more than 70 parts per trillion of two types of PFAS in drinking water. Then, in 2022, the agency adopted a much stricter advisory of just 0.02 parts per trillion for pfos—and only 0.004 per trillion for another PFAS compound. Those levels are so low that if they were applied to certain foods, any detectable amount would essentially be too much, Smith says. For now, Maine’s limits on PFAS in milk and beef rely on less-stringent toxicity values.

As we bumped down a dirt lane between fields of rustling corn, Smith said the research underway at Dostie Farm has helped make one reassuring finding: Forever chemicals don’t necessarily last forever in livestock. More than a year after Dostie switched his cows to clean water and organic hay from uncontaminated parts of the farm, their milk’s PFAS levels fell below detection.

But more than 80 percent of Dostie’s pasture was contaminated, and the 35 acres that were clean weren’t enough to sustain his herd. So that fall, Dostie loaded his 350 animals onto trucks and sold them. He’s raising some new steers for meat and trying to lease some acreage to a solar farm. If neither works out, he might seek a buyout from the state fund.

But as long as he still has his farm, Dostie wants scientists like Smith to use it to learn more about PFAS. “It may be too late for us,” he says, “but it might help someone else down the road.” There are a lot of farmers outside of Maine who might need that help. In 2022, EPA data shows more than a million dry metric tons of sewage sludge was spread on agricultural land.

State Sen. Stacy Brenner, an organic farmer who chairs the legislature’s Committee on Environment and Natural Resources, says she is proud of the way Maine has taken on PFAS contamination. But she warns its work is no substitute for more sweeping federal remedies. “Ultimately, little Maine, with 1.3 million people, is not going to be able to fix this,” Brenner says.

But Mainers are trying. Last spring, the state’s congressional delegation introduced a bipartisan bill that would direct the USDA to create a farmers compensation fund, increase testing, and fund remediation research. (The legislation was referred to committee, and backers hope it will make it into the long-delayed farm bill.) Adam Nordell, an organizer for the environmental group Defend Our Health and organic farmer who discovered his soil and water were highly contaminated, says the bill would guarantee “that farmers aren’t left to go bankrupt or to quietly toil away on poisoned soil.”

Meanwhile, Brenner says, other states are watching Maine’s response. Once the state started trying to answer the question of how widespread PFAS contamination is on farms, it was forced to confront dozens of others: Is food produced on contaminated soil safe to eat? Should farmworkers be worried about their health? Whose responsibility is it to help farmers whose land was contaminated? And how can contamination be stopped?

She has a theory as to why Washington is dragging its heels: “They recognize that they’re about to open Pandora’s box.”

This article was produced in collaboration with the Food & Environment Reporting Network, an independent, nonprofit news organization.

Pot was illegal in every US state then, but plenty of Americans smoked imported weed, and the fear that people were inhaling a nasty chemical along with their THC caused quite the stir.   

Bill Allayaud, who is of a certain age, knew immediately what I was talking about. He’s vice president of California government affairs for the nonprofit Environmental Working Group (EWG), a consumer advocacy organization that’s rallying behind a new state bill to ban the spraying of paraquat in California—where I was surprised to learn it is still applied in large quantities by growers of almonds, pistachios, and cotton. The feds’ paraquat ploy “blew up in their face,” Allayaud recalls. “Everyone’s like, ‘What, you’re spraying weed that’s being imported into the United States? Are people getting sick smoking it?”

That would have been hard to track, given that nobody wanted to go to jail. (The feds, in any case, continued with their spraying programs elsewhere.) But even the government acknowledges that paraquat, now banned in more than 60 countries, is highly toxic. A restricted chemical, it has been linked to increased risk of Parkinson’s disease, and to various cancers and neurological problems. The US EPA forbids its use on golf courses, but still lets it be sprayed on crops.

Allayaud points out that in 2017, a firm controlled by the Chinese government acquired Syngenta, the Swiss agri-giant that invented and manufactured paraquat, “and then China banned its use in China!” he says. “Brazil, a giant agricultural economy, has banned its use. The European Union… Because we don’t want to spray it on thousands of acres. Let’s get rid of this stuff.”    

An EWG-affiliated nonprofit publication, The New Lede, collaborated with the Guardian in 2022 on an investigation showing—via a trove of documents it dubbed “the Paraquat Papers”—how Syngenta has labored to protect its market position: “Insiders feared they could face legal liability for long-term, chronic effects of paraquat as long ago as 1975,” the report notes. “One company scientist called the situation “a quite terrible problem,” for which “some plan could be made.” 

Paraquat does not appear to show up in food, Allayaud clarifies, as it breaks down quickly. The concern is that it binds to the clays in farm soil, where it can persist for months, and get stirred up by tractors and inhaled by farmworkers and others who spend significant time close to fields and orchards. “This is a highly restricted pesticide,” Allauayd says. “You can only spray when there’s low wind—they wear hazmat suits and respirators and gloves when they spray it. But the farm workers who come into the field right after don’t.”

Those farmworkers, not surprisingly, are overwhelmingly Latino. An analysis EWG published in late March showed that California growers sprayed 5.3 million pounds of paraquat from 2017 to 2021. Two-thirds of the spraying took place in just five agricultural counties, all majority Latino. “Study after study has shown that people living right next to these areas tend to have higher rates of various” health problems, Allayaud told me. “Do we really need a 60-year-old pesticide that looks like it could be causing Parkinson’s disease?”   

AB 1963, the bill introduced on Wednesday by Assemblymember Laura Friedman (D-Burbank), would phase out the sale and use of paraquat in California by the end of 2025.  “Parkinson’s is a thief in the night. It steals peoples’ lives,” the press release states. “While we don’t have a cure for Parkinson’s, we can lessen the incidence rate for agricultural workers.” 

There are safer chemicals available, according to team Friedman. There are also nonchemical methods—Allayaud points out that agricultural officials, scientists, and many growers have been emphasizing “integrated pest management,” an approach that aims to reduce the spraying of toxic chemicals via techniques like tilling, crop rotation, and use of natural predators to control insect pests.

Allayaud nevertheless expects that his coalition will face plenty of resistance from Big Ag and its trade associations—as always. They like to claim “the dose is the poison,” he says. “I heard a guy testify to that effect recently in Sacramento. That’s old, old thinking—and unsound science today.”

The rolling hills south of Salisbury Plain are a bleak scene of vast arable fields and tightly grazed pasture dotted with scores of sheep.

In recent decades, Lower Pertwood farm has embraced organic growing, producing oats, barley and other crops, while boosting numbers of rare corn buntings and other wildlife with wildflower banks and newly planted trees.

But as wildlife continues to decline in Wiltshire and the farm’s profits plummet amid an increasingly unpredictable climate, the owners are turning to farming nature instead.

The 2,800-acre arable farm begins its transformation this spring into the biggest grassland rewilding project in southern England, in an attempt to restore declining plants, insects and endangered species including cuckoos, grasshopper warblers, and turtle doves.

The “Pertwood Plain” project, masterminded by Restore, a land management company specializing in large-scale restoration led by the naturalist Benedict Macdonald, will ultimately see low densities of pigs and cattle roaming free to recreate flower-rich chalk grassland. This naturalistic grazing, alongside interventions such as adding green hay and brash piles where birds perch and excrete seeds into the soil, will give rise to a mosaic of grass and scrubland teeming with invertebrate life.

In the future, visitors could enjoy the return of extinct species including the great bustard, which has been reintroduced on to nearby Salisbury Plain, and the charismatic red-backed shrike, which became effectively extinct as a breeding bird in Britain in the 1990s.

“It’s enormously exciting,” said Macdonald. “Salisbury Plain on the horizon is like a giant, free seed bank of species, some of which—such as the reintroduced great bustard—might naturally explore Pertwood as it begins to recover.”

Tamara Webster, the director of the family-owned farm, said: “We have been looking, almost subconsciously, for a long time for an all-embracing blueprint for the future. One that can deliver environmental restoration, truly sustainable food production and achieve financial stability and profitability. This is why we commissioned the holistic research by Restore and we are extremely excited about what we hope to achieve together.”

In 2022, this large arable farm on grade 3 farmland (a measure of good to moderate growing soils) made £179,000 profit (about $226,000). The following year, it posted a £180,000 loss ($227,300), spending £135,000 on fertilizer, £65,000 on muck and slurry, £43,000 on red diesel and losing £113,000 on farm machinery depreciation.

The rewilded farm will cut fertilizer and these other costs to virtually zero and sell off its expensive machinery. Staff numbers are expected to remain the same with some retained for new roles such as grazier. Typically, rewilded estates employ more people than conventional agriculture.

An increasing number of traditional farms are turning to nature regeneration as investors bank on speculative future revenues from carbon and biodiversity credits and payments for biodiversity net gain (BNG). This is where developers are legally obliged to “buy” or create natural areas to ensure every new housing estate leads to an uplift in nature.

Pertwood is setting aside a modest 50 acres for BNG and will continue to produce food—organic beef and pork—but its transition has been made financially straightforward by a “wood pasture” funding option in the government’s countryside stewardship scheme. This guarantees the farm annual payments of £300,0000 ($379,000) for 10 years.

The wood pasture funding is proving popular with farmers who have been reluctant to completely stop farming and turn land over to forestry to sequester carbon. To create wood pasture, farmers can continue low-density livestock farming but allow scrub and woods to naturally regenerate and expand over fields to create a mosaic, which benefits a wide range of species and sequesters carbon.

Matt Collis, the lead ecologist at Restore who is measuring soil health and biodiversity at Pertwood, said: “Calcareous grassland is always the most diverse and botanically rich soil type, with 50 or 60 plant species in a few square meters. To get that into its ecological peak is very exciting. The opportunity for surprises is very high here. The soil wants to be abundant, it wants to be rich with wildlife.”

Around the world this holiday weekend, people will consume hundreds of millions of Easter eggs and bunnies, as part of an annual chocolate intake that can exceed 18 pounds for every person in the UK, or 11 pounds in the US and Europe. But a global shortage of cacao—the seed from which chocolate is made—has brought warnings of a “chocolate meltdown” that could see prices increase and bars shrink further.

This week, cocoa prices rose to all-time highs on commodity exchanges in London and New York, reaching more than $10,000 a ton for the first time, after the third consecutive poor harvest in West Africa. Ghana and Ivory Coast, which together produce more than half of the global cacao crop, have been hit by extreme weather supercharged by the climate crisis and the El Niño weather phenomenon. This has been exacerbated by disease and underinvestment in aging plantations.

The poor harvest has left chocolate producers scrambling to secure their supply, with many warning of more price rises and potential reductions in the size of bars and sweets. A spokesperson for Nestlé, which owns chocolate brands such as KitKat, Smarties and Quality Street, said prices for consumers may need to increase after cocoa prices tripled in a year.

Hedge funds have made major bets on the price of the commodity this year, with speculators gambling more than $8 billion that prices would continue to rise, according to the Financial Times. But none of the money will make it to smallholder producers in West Africa, with Ghana and Ivory Coast having already sold this year’s crop through a cartel, leaving many farmers disgruntled.

Along with coffee, tea and bananas, cacao is one of the household staples threatened by global heating, with researchers scrambling to find wild varieties that are more heat and drought-resistant and able to withstand future conditions. However, unlike many of the world’s crops, much of the cacao supply is produced by smallholder farmers, many of whom are struggling to afford to replace ageing trees and buy fertilizers.

“Cocoa prices have reached record levels on the international market. Paradoxically, this does not mean higher incomes for producers,” said Amourlaye Touré, a senior adviser at the NGO Mighty Earth. “The record cocoa prices will benefit the cocoa-producing countries themselves little, as the raw material is transformed into a finished product after being exported.”

Martijn Bron, a former head of cocoa trading for the commodity giant Cargill, told the Guardian that the world was not running out of chocolate, but said prices could remain high for some time.

“There is a large shortage of fresh cacao beans. Normally there is a global crop of about 5 million tons. Now it’s about 0.5 million tons less,” he said. Unlike other commodities such as soya beans or wheat, “you cannot just plant more cacao trees and expect production to increase the following years—because they are trees,” he said.

“The market is now nervous about whether this is a one-off perfect storm or it’s structural. If it’s structural, that’s a problem because it means that you cannot do something about it on the supply side. It could take five-plus years for supply to recover,” he said.