Each week on The Newsfeed, host Paris Jackson and a team of veteran journalists dive deep into one topic and provide impactful reporting, interviews and community insights from sources you can trust. Each day this week, this post will be updated with a new story from the team.
Growing more than food: reviving a Japanese American legacy
By Lizz Giordano
Japanese imprisonment during World War Two destroyed the livelihood of many farmers. Census data shows only about one in three Japanese American farmers in Washington returned to farming after their forced removal.
Two young farmers are reviving food production on one of Vashon Island's last historic Japanese American farmsteads - one of the few that survived incarceration.
Strawberries first ripened in these fields in the early 1930s after the Matsuda family purchased the land and began growing the fruit commercially.
It was also the first plants Koji Pingry and his partner Lizzie Jansen put in the ground after taking over the land this year. They’ve also planted Japanese cucumbers, ginger and fushimi peppers.
“A big part of why we were interested in taking it on was because we were pretty sure that there were no farmers on island that even the ones that had historically Japanese names in their farm, growing Japanese vegetables, and so we thought it would be really cool and special to grow things that maybe the Matsuda family was growing, but also certainly like people, the Japanese American farmers and the Japanese immigrant farmers who were here,” Pingry said.
In 1942, before the Matsuda family was sent to an incarceration camp in California, ownership was temporarily transferred to a local deputy sheriff until the oldest Matsuda son reached adulthood.
“Yoneichi Matsuda... made probably a very pivotal decision for his family to get the ownership transferred into his name as a birthright citizen,” said Theron Shaw, Executive Director of the Vashon-Maury Land Trust. “I think that was one of the keys for what allowed them to come back, and you know the stories are that that local sheriff's deputy wasn't particularly reputable in his care of people's property, so. So when Heisuke and his wife Mitsuno returned, they found the farm in disrepair. It was a lot for them to bring it back up to production.”
State laws at the time barred non-white immigrants, including Japanese immigrants, from owning land. That, and new job opportunities, contributed to the decline in farmers after the war.
“Discriminatory practices and laws pretty much precluded employment in the mainstream economy, and that drove a lot of Japanese Americans into farming and other small business. After the war, a lot of those barriers start to fall away, especially for the American citizen Nisei. And so many of them were now able to get jobs in civil service to become teachers, and lawyers,” said Brian Niiya, the in-house Historian for Densho.
The Vashon-Murray Land Trust bought the land in 2014. Running a farm became too big of a job for the non-profit, so they leased the land to Pingry and Jansen.
While Pingry has no direct tie to the Matsuda family, the work is still personal.
“We also love eating Japanese vegetables, it's a big part of how I stay connected to that side of my family.”
They’ve specialized in Japanese vegetables and have also taken over the stall of a long-time Japanese immigrant farmer at the University District Farmers Market when he retired.
“We wanted to grow a lot of the same crops that he used to grow, so that his customers could seamlessly keep buying the same things, so some of those vegetables are this here is a tray of Mizuna. Mizuna is like a Japanese mustard green that is really popular at the market, and something that people really love. This is another thing that Taki-San and only Taki-San used to grow,” Pingry said.
Seafarers bringing food to the U.S. often lack protections
By Jaelynn Grisso, story published 06/11/2026
Most of the food we eat on a daily basis comes from all around the world. In 2025 alone, the Seattle and Tacoma ports saw nearly a million metric tons of food imported by boat, according to the USDA. That’s an average of nearly 80,000 tons a month.
“Everything we eat, everything we wear, is coming from them,” said Asif Altaf, the wellbeing coordinator for the International Transport Workers’ Federation. “But sometimes we don't see them because we see a truck driver, we see a taxi driver, we see even a captain or a pilot, but we don't see a seafarer. Who are they? So I think it's a very invisible job, but I think they move the world.”
The International Transport Workers’ Federation is an international union focused on seafarers. They provide resources and oversight for seafarer working conditions. Altaf described typical working conditions of seafarers.
“103 hours a week... every day, every week, 103 hours,” he said. “Think of that. No Christmas, no Thanksgiving, no Memorial Day, every day working. Same thing. And it is physically exhausting.”
That’s when the job functions as it should. But with limited oversight, ITF says workers’ rights are often ignored. They say one example right now is in the Strait of Hormuz where ITF estimates 20,000 seafarers are trapped and “in many cases running short of food, water and fuel.”
Viva Farms opens doors for underserved and aspiring farmers
By Taylor Mirfendereski, story published 06/10/2026
As Pamela Ronson prepped a flower bed on a recent morning, the farmer paused to take in the land.
“I love this space,” Ronson said. “It feels awesome to be here.”
Not long ago, Ronson doubted a day on a farm like this would come again.
In 2024, the city of Detroit seized Ronson’s farmland through eminent domain to make way for new development. Overnight, the flower grower behind Seedfolx Farm was left without a place to grow.
“Is this the end of Seedfolx Farm?” Ronson remembered thinking. “It’s a tricky process to be able to find land, afford land… There was a sadness that I had to grieve.”
Then Ronson found a lifeline in Washington state.
Viva Farms, a nonprofit based in King and Skagit counties, offered Ronson a small plot of farmland in Woodinville at a fraction of the going rate. The plot is one of 36 farms in the organization’s business incubator program, where 57 owner-operators currently manage their own farm businesses. Farmers lease subsidized land and share the cost of equipment as they build toward independence.
"Our goal is to really break down barriers into entering agriculture — specifically for limited resources and underserved farmers," said Bonnie Feldberg, Farm and Education Manager at Viva Farms’ King County location. “It just can be a really brutal industry… We’re losing farmland, and we’re losing farmers.”
According to the USDA Census of Agriculture, Washington state has lost over half of its farms since 1940. As the average American farmer approaches retirement age, Feldberg said there’s a greater need than ever to recruit a new generation of farmers into the industry.
“We want more people to have their own farms because we want more people to be part of the food system," Feldberg said.
Before entering the Viva Farms business incubator, many farmers complete the nonprofit's eight-month, hands-on training course. Over one full growing season, students learn everything from planting and harvesting to running a small business.
Viva Farms runs the course at two locations — Woodinville and Burlington, where classes are also offered in Spanish for Latino farmworkers looking to go from working someone else's land to becoming a farm owner. Since 2023, 80 students have graduated from the class, according to Viva Farms.
Not everyone who arrives at Viva Farms comes from an agricultural background. Aashay Savla spent 15 years in finance before enrolling in Viva's training course with no farming experience. Six years later, Savla runs Aash Farms full time on a half-acre plot at the organization's Woodinville property. The no-till regenerative operation grows vegetables, herbs and microgreens for restaurants, farmers markets and food banks across King County.
“I owe every part of my farming journey to Viva Farms. Period. There is no way this would have happened as fast and as effectively as it has,” Savla said.
For Ronson, the Viva Farms incubator is more than a place to grow flowers. It's a stepping stone to something bigger.
“I hope to continue here for the next few years — growing and scaling, building a customer base, knowing that my land is secured and being able to save enough to have a deposit for a farm of my own one day,” Ronson said.
WSU researchers analyze ultra-processed food purchasing habits
By Paris Jackson, story published 06/09/2026
Washington State University researchers are looking into what we eat, what we buy at the grocery store, and the changing food market across the country.
In a recent study, those researchers analyzed national data and focused on ultra-processed food, to understand why some scientific findings suggest that kind of food is addictive.
Since 2024, Washington State University researchers have been analyzing consumer habits through standard data from grocery stores across the country.
Lead WSU researcher, Jill McCluskey, says grocery stores use a four-category scale, called the Nova System.
Within the system, group 1 is unprocessed or minimally processed foods, which include fruits, veggies, and fish. Group 2 is processed culinary ingredients, such as olive oil and butter. Group 3 is comprised of processed foods, like cheese, bread, and wine. Group 4 is ultra-processed foods, which includes chips, hot dogs and soda.
McCluskey says they’re finding consumers who purchased ultra-processed foods don’t necessarily cut back in this category as much as in others when prices rise.
“And we found that [Group 4] has ... the lowest sensitivity to price of all the categories by by a lot,” said McCluskey who is a Regents Professor and WSU School of Economic Sciences Director.
McCluskey says their analysis has found people are willing to spend more on ultra-processed food, especially people with younger children. She says if a healthier food's price goes up, they may also substitute with an ultra-processed food: like replacing an apple with chips.
McCluskey says her study aims to also learn more about how and who food companies target with their marketing and pricing.
“Food companies might want to underprice to children, so that they're lifelong ... consumers almost like cigarettes or drugs. They might want to get people to start consuming them and then have them as lifetime customers,” McCluskey said.
McCluskey says the study is ongoing.
Tulalip Tribes foster collaboration to restore salmon passages
By Venice Buhain, story published 06/08/2026
The Tulalip Tribes have worked to restore salmon populations for decades. In recent years, they’ve taken a new approach: coordinating public agencies and private landowners to remove culverts and restore streams.
“Fish passage projects are so important to get those juvenile and adult fish back to their habitats that they historically had access to,” said Brett Shattuck, who manages the Tulalip Tribes’ Restoration, Acquisition and Stewardship program.
There are thousands of culverts and other barriers to fish passage throughout the state on both private and public land. The Tulalip Tribes have not only coordinated the collaboration between agencies, but they have secured tens of millions of dollars in recent years, receiving money from both government agencies and private grants.
“So now we're working to replace those crossings that not only convey water, but also convey fish both up and downstream so that we can both get our transportation that we need to the places we need to go and allow those fish to access their habitats upstream,” Shattuck said.
The Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission, an organization that co-manages salmon and other natural resources along with state agencies, recently featured the Tulalip Tribes’ work in a short film called “Passage Home: Tulalip Tribes remove barriers to salmon habitat.” The short documentary was produced by Northwest Treaty Tribes, which is one arm of the commission.
The film features Jason Gobin, Tulalip Tribes’ Director of Natural and Cultural Resources, whose family works in the seafood industry. He said the work helps preserve the salmon and other fish for future generations.
“Projects like this and the returning fish that they provide, provides that opportunity for, you know, myself, my family, our people to go out and harvest out there on the saltwater and in the river here,” Gobin said in the film.
