Farmworker Unions on the Rise in New York, Joined by the United Farm Workers

As the novel coronavirus disrupts how farmers get their products to consumers, many of them are looking for mental health resources to manage their stress. While the stigma of mental health issues prevents some farmers from seeking help, there are more outreach efforts across the United States to discuss the topic in the agriculture community. The Minnesota Department of Agriculture has seen this year more website visitors to their page dedicated to farmers’ stress, so they are creating a helpline that farmers can reach through text and email.

Aquaponics, a soilless method of farming that combines aquaculture and hydroponic techniques, has provided an affordable and adaptable method for growing traditional cultural Mvskoke foods, such as tobacco, pumpkins, corn, pinto beans, honeysuckle, and minara. Grant funding has enabled tribal members to use aquaponic systems to produce crops and fortify food systems against climate change.

Finland’s approach to national security focuses on creating a comprehensive culture, emphasizing the idea that defending the country is a shared responsibility. Regular citizens can take volunteer courses in everything from using firearms and recognizing disinformation to surviving in the wild and interpreting maps, and the country’s men are conscripted at 18 for military or community service.

Community-led urban farms in Jakarta empower residents to transform underused city spaces like alleyways and campus grounds into productive local food sources. These initiatives often blend traditional gardening with community organizing, educational outreach, and sometimes smart technology or agricultural research to improve food access, enhance green space, and foster local resilience.

Each year, farmworkers in Washington state gather for a people’s tribunal where they share their stories about the injustices they face on the job and advocate for policies to improve working conditions. In addition to supporters, the tribunal is attended by legislative staffers and sometimes elected representatives, and the tribunal’s findings have helped usher in new protections for workers, including guaranteed overtime pay and mandated cooling breaks in extreme heat.

Farmers living near the coast in India are turning to rooftop farming as cyclones lead to flooding that makes agricultural fields unusable. The Association for Social and Humanitarian Action taught local women how to grow food in tubs or sacks with compost, and those farmers trained others.

Farmers in Ndiob, Senegal, have returned to an ancient technique called zaï to combat drought, use less fertilizer, and increase their yields. Zaï involves drilling holes in the soil so rainwater can fill them and soak into the land instead of running off.

Babban Gona is an agriculture company that helps smallholder farmers in Nigeria produce bigger yields and increase their incomes. The company offers training, fertilizer, herbicides, and seeds in exchange for some of the farmer’s harvest. When the produce sells, the farmers get some of the profit and a bonus if it sells for more than expected.

Farmers in West Bengal, India, are swapping rice for bananas to save on expenses and labor and adapt to increasingly erratic monsoons and rainfall impacting yields. The farmers use solar panels and drip irrigation setups funded by the state government to reduce emissions and minimize water loss, as bananas require a lot of water.

An organic seed farm provides free education to Lebanese farmers on transitioning away from chemical pesticides and fertilizers into agroecology. The farm, called Buzuruna Juzuruna, is creating a network across the country and runs an heirloom seed cooperative with over 300 varieties of seeds to share for free.