August 23, 2025

Spotlight Stories

Spotlight 1 – AInvest details how Dole plc is implementing strategic resilience and sustainability within a shifting agricultural landscape. Check it out, here.

Spotlight 2 – Civil Eats asks if regenerative farmers should pin their hopes on RFK Jr.’s MAHA. Read the story, here.

Spotlight 3 – Yale Climate Connections offers up 12 books to read on how to grow food in a changing climate. Take a read, here.

Industry Updates

The city of Detroit is launching its first food composting pilot program, with officials hopeful it will lay the groundwork for a citywide system. The initiative is funded by a one-year, $100,000 grant from Carhartt. Residents can sign up online to participate. The first 200 Detroiters to enroll will receive a free five-gallon composting bucket in which they can deposit approved compostable materials, including fruit and vegetable scraps, small bones, eggshells, coffee grounds and paper products including used napkins and paper towels. Participants will take their filled buckets to the Detroit People's Food Co-op on Woodward Avenue. There, the material will be processed in a composter, then transported to various local farms, where it will be used to enrich soil and support sustainable agriculture in Detroit. [link]

Backed by the UK Government’s Industrial Strategy, a new pilot facility from Warwick Agri-Tech will accelerate sustainable farming innovation, using advanced robotics to boost productivity, cut emissions, and strengthen the UK’s food resilience. The facility will host collaborations between researchers, industry partners and government to de-risk innovation, reduce barriers to adoption, and accelerate the rollout of new technologies for farmers and growers. Among the technologies already being deployed are Crombot, a crop-monitoring robot for detecting pests and diseases; AATOM, an autonomous towing platform for streamlining horticultural logistics; the Smart Tree Production System, which sorts and grades saplings to support the UK’s tree-planting goals; and ASPA, a spot-precision system capable of cutting herbicide use by over 90%. [link]

Louis Dreyfus Company (LDC), one of the world’s largest agricultural processors, is purchasing five years’ worth of carbon removal credits from a regenerative agriculture project in Uttar Pradesh, India. In addition to boosting the region’s soil health, the project will draw down some 6,000 tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year and result in regeneratively grown wheat that the company can sell to customers looking to reduce their Scope 3 emissions. This is among the first major agricultural projects of its kind announced in the Global South. Varaha, a company working with smallholder farmers in Asia, is managing project implementation, soil sampling and ongoing monitoring as well as tracing the lower-carbon wheat from farm to warehouse. Louis Dreyfus’s upfront payment covers the transition costs of the regenerative practices, including machine rentals. [link]

The U.S. Department of Agriculture will no longer support solar and wind projects on productive farmland, said Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins. The move is the latest in a series of actions by the administration of President Donald Trump to stall development of wind and solar energy, which Trump says are unreliable, expensive, and dependent on Chinese supply chains. About 424,000 acres (1,715 square kilometers) of rural land were affected by wind turbines and solar farms in 2020, less than 0.05% of the nearly 900 million acres used for farmland, according to a 2024 USDA study. [link]

Minnesota schools, early childhood education (ECE) centers, and licensed in-home family childcare providers looking to serve locally sourced meals can apply for funding now through the Minnesota Department of Agriculture’s (MDA) Farm to School and Early Care Grant and Local Tots Cost-Share programs. The grant and cost-share program both offer reimbursement for local food purchases of Minnesota grown and raised foods. The MDA will prioritize projects that increase purchases of a wide range of agricultural products, including culturally relevant foods and specialty crops (e.g., fruits, vegetables, culinary herbs, and horticulture products like maple syrup and honey) and applicants that provide a clear plan to source a variety of agricultural products. [link]

Montana Farmers Union is pleased to announce five recipients of its new Regenerative Farming Implementation Grants. The grants are each for $1,000 and are offered with the support of General Mills as part of Montana Farmers Union’s first ever Regenerative Farming Cohort. The cohort, in its first year, includes roughly 40 individuals and farms who learn about regenerative farming practices and how to implement them through farm tours, interactive webinars, and access to professionals and resources. The new grants will be used to help recipients implement one of the six regenerative principles on which MFU’s Regenerative Farming Cohort program focuses: cover the ground, limit the disruption of the soil, increase biodiversity, keep the living roots in the ground as much as possible, incorporate animals into the rotation, and know your context to adapt. [link]

A groundbreaking global analysis spearheaded by researchers from the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute (NZCBI) and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) reveals a critical blind spot in current sustainable coffee and carbon-capture initiatives. These programs have largely prioritized incentivizing the planting of new shade trees on coffee farms as a climate mitigation strategy, yet fail to reward the protection and preservation of mature shade trees already flourishing in existing agroforestry systems. This oversight has profound implications for both carbon sequestration and biodiversity conservation in coffee-growing landscapes worldwide. [link]

In a move set to deepen and broaden the scope and impact of global research on forests and sustainability, the Center for International Forestry Research and World Agroforestry (CIFOR-ICRAF) has entered a new strategic partnership with Flinders University in Adelaide, South Australia. Flinders University is internationally recognized for its work and research excellence in climate adaptation, biodiversity, marine and freshwater systems and ecological restoration. Given CIFOR-ICRAF’s global leadership in forestry and agroforestry science and Flinders’ transdisciplinary research strengths in climate resilience, environmental sustainability and social inclusion, the new partnership holds huge potential to advance these causes in the Global South. [link]

Chicago-based meat giant Oscar Mayer, a subsidiary of Kraft Heinz, has launched the EveryBun Pack, combining its meat and vegan hot dogs in the same packaging without cross-contamination. While many companies are leaning into the demand for flexitarian options by blending meat with plants in the same product, Oscar Mayer is taking a novel packaging approach. The Kraft Heinz-owned legacy meat producer is rolling out the dual EveryBun Pack on a limited trial basis, combining its signature wieners with the plant-based Not Hot Dogs it released last year. [link]

In Case You Missed It…

In December last year, the USDA released a report that said some 68% of large crop farms in the U.S. use precision agriculture technology to generate information aiding decision making, such as yield monitors, yield maps, and soil maps. See more, here.