Farming, Monarch Butterflies, and the New EPA Workplan: What Does this Mean for Farmers?

Dr. Chip Taylor is the Founding Director at Monarch Watch, an outreach program focused on education, research and conservation relative to monarch butterflies. Monarch Watch has enlisted the help of volunteers to tag monarchs during the fall migration. In recognition that habitats for monarchs are declining at a rate of 6000 acres a day in the U.S., Monarch Watch created the Monarch Waystation program with the goal of inspiring the public, schools and others to create habitats for monarch butterflies and to assist Monarch Watch in educating the public about the decline in resources for monarchs, pollinators and all wildlife that share the same habitats.

Brigit Rollins B.A., J.D. is a staff attorney at The National Agricultural Law Center. Her work focuses on environmental law as it intersects with ag, covering issues such as the Endangered Species Act (ESA), pesticide law and waters of the United States (WOTUS). At the Center, her primary area of research and scholarship is environmental law as it intersects with agriculture. She maintains an interest in promoting sustainability and environmental health through agriculture and resource use.

In 2000, Steve Brazeel founded SunTerra Produce, which has grown from a one-person produce brokerage firm into an industry-leading, full-service platform handling sales, marketing, farming, food safety, harvesting, storage, and distribution activities for specialty crop producers on over 10,000 acres throughout the US and Mexico. Born out of SunTerra‘s participation in the USDA’s ground-breaking Farmers to Families Food Box program, Project FoodBox was launched in 2020. Since the program’s inception, the SunTerra/Project FoodBox teams have delivered over 85 Million pounds of fresh fruits and vegetables to communities in need through its network of food banks, community organizations, and health care plans.

Elevated Foods, founded by Mr. Brazeel in 2020, was recently awarded a $20M grant as part of USDA’s Partnerships for Climate Smart Commodities program. Elevated was formed to bring more profit to farmers by incentivizing the adoption of new technologies & practices and providing technical support to help make them more efficient and resilient.