Up First from NPR - Gaza Pier Delivers, Boeing Shareholders Meet, 'Regenerative Farming'

Episode Date: May 18, 2024

The first aid trucks crossed into Gaza on a floating pier built by the U.S. government. Boeing's annual meeting was tightly controlled as the aircraft company has come under intense scrutiny. Why even vegan restaurant chains are beginning to serve meat.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

I kind of botched the last line, but I don't think it changed the meaning. No, it has character. Don't worry. A floating pier built by the U.S. military off of Gaza is bringing humanitarian aid directly to Palestinians. But will it be enough to alleviate the widespread hunger there? I'm Tamara Keith. And I'm Scott Simon, and this is Up First from NPR News. Critics say that Israel has stymied efforts to bring in aid by land. As you know, over the last few months,

we have been engaged in a race against the clock to reverse the looming famine. We'll bring you the latest from Gaza. Also, shareholders of troubled aircraft maker Boeing hold their annual meeting. But they don't get to ask questions of management directly. And why some vegan and vegetarian restaurant chains are serving meat. Psst, it has something to do with regenerative farming. Please stay with us. We have the news you need to start your weekend. Now Our Change will honour 100 years of the Royal Canadian Air Force and their dedicated service to communities at home and abroad.

From the skies to Our Change, this $2 commemorative circulation coin marks their storied past and promising future. Find the limited edition Royal Canadian Air Force $2 coin today. The first aid trucks moved ashore from the floating pier into Gaza Friday. The U.N. says 1.1 million Palestinians there face starvation, and Pierce Hadil Al-Shalchi joins us. Hadil, thanks so much for being with us. Thank you. Construction by the U.S. military began in April. This is a huge enterprise, isn't it? It absolutely is. And just for some context, the pier is the size of five football fields,

and it cost $320 million to build. It's floating off a beach in Gaza. So the idea is that when the trucks cross the pier, a U.N. agency in Gaza helps to coordinate the distribution while Israel is in charge of screening all the shipments. U.S. Central Command said that no U.S. troops crossed into Gaza and they were just there for logistical support. And just to remind you, Biden announced this pier during his State of the Union address after Israel was accused of not letting enough aid in by land. And this is all happening as the World Food Program says there's a real threat of famine in Gaza. Will this floating pier help solve that problem? Well, it'll be something, but definitely not enough. The U.S. military says it wants to scale

up from moving 90 trucks of aid a day to 150 into Gaza via the pier. But Scott Anderson, an official with the UN Agency of Palestinian Refugees, also known as UNRWA, told NPR that Gaza needs essentially three times that amount, 350 to 400 trucks a day entering Gaza with the right cargo to meet the current needs. Philippe Lazzarini, the Commissioner General of the UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees, told NPR's Steve Inskeep that the situation is urgent. So it will certainly help, but it will not be at scale enough to respond to the extraordinary needs of the population.

And then actually distributing the aid in a war zone is very difficult. So that's an added level of complexity. And the Israeli military has been bombarding Rafah in Gaza, the southern city, and also dropped leaflets telling people in Rafah to evacuate because more troops will be sent in. How many people do we know are in Rafah still? So the UN says that more than 630,000 Palestinians have fled Rafah. That's about half of the number of the people who were sheltering there. They're heading to other cities that have already been devastated by the war.

They're overcrowded, they're squalid, they already have very little resources. And a lot of people just don't have anywhere to go. Even if they could, some say logistics and the cost would be too much. Keep in mind that some of these people have already moved once or multiple times before. Our producer in Gaza, Anas Baba, spoke to nurse Aya Kafarna, who said that she just couldn't afford to leave. She says that it could cost her up to $500 to evacuate, and she just doesn't have that kind of money. There was also news on Friday.

The Israeli military announced they had recovered the bodies of three Israeli hostages taken by Hamas. What do we know about that? Yeah. In a statement, the Israeli military identified the three Israeli hostages and military spokesperson Daniel Hagari said that the three were actually killed at the Nova Music Festival on October 7th and their bodies were taken into Gaza. So now this brings the number of hostages in Gaza to 129. 39 of them are confirmed dead, according to Haaretz, an Israeli news outlet. And tonight, the families of the hostages will be holding

what they're calling an international rally in Tel Aviv, and a number of Western ambassadors, including the U.S., the U.K., and Germany, will be attending. And Piers Hadil Al-Shulji in Tel Aviv, thanks so much. Thank you. Boeing held its annual meeting. Four months after the door in one of its aircraft blew off in midair. And just days after federal prosecutors revealed the company may face criminal charges. And pure transportation correspondent Joel Rose has been covering the issue. Joel, thanks for being with us. Hey, Scott.

What stood out in that shareholders meeting? This was a virtual meeting. It was not held in person. And Boeing kept a very tight grip on the message. We basically heard only from the new board chairman, Steve Malenkov, and the CEO, Dave Calhoun, who talked a lot about efforts to improve quality, how the company has slowed production on the 737 line, and how it's encouraged employees to speak up about their concerns. Here's a clip from Calhoun. Growing culture listens to its people. It listens to its critics. It listens to its customers and it acts on the feedback. This is the Boeing culture that we have been working hard

to build. But in practice, Boeing did not open the floor to the company's critics or even to its own people. Shareholders did not get to ask questions directly. The questions were asked by a moderator. The company allocated exactly 15 minutes for questions, not a second more. And even the answers seemed, you know, tightly scripted. Jill, what have the shareholders been asking for? One activist shareholder tried to force a vote on a proposal to move the company's headquarters back to Seattle, close to where it makes the 737 and other jets. A lot of people believe Boeing lost its focus on quality around the time that it moved its headquarters to Chicago and then on to Virginia. The idea of moving back to the Puget Sound has also been endorsed, by the

way, by the editorial board of the Seattle Times. But Boeing blocked that proposal from getting a vote, and the idea did not come up at yesterday's meeting. And what about the search for a new CEO? Because Boeing announced a big shakeup in March. They did. And shareholders did ask about that. The board did not say anything particularly new about the CEO search, only that it is a high priority. The current CEO, Dave Calhoun, spoke quite a lot. He said he'll step down at the end of the year in the wake of that door plug blowout. But some of the company's critics are wondering why the board can't get somebody else into this job sooner. I talked to Jeffrey Sonnenfeld. He is a dean at the Yale

School of Management. That's not very reassuring. Surely Surely David Calhoun should not have a large voice in the selection of a successor, and it should be much faster than it's happening right now. Sonnenfeld noted that Boeing recently promoted a number of women into high-profile jobs in manufacturing and operations, and he noted that this would have been a great time to hear from some of them about the changes that the company is making. But again, that did not happen. Trevor Burrus Joel, what do we know about the criminal charges that Boeing could face? Paul Matzko Yeah, this goes back to the crashes of

two 737 MAX jets in 2018 and 2019 that killed 346 people. Boeing struck a deal with the Department of Justice to avoid prosecution for misleading regulators about the safety of those planes. Basically, the company was put on probation for three years. Now, federal prosecutors say Boeing has not held up its end of the deal and could be subject to prosecution. Boeing disputes that charge. In a statement, the company said, we believe that we have honored the terms of that agreement and look forward to the opportunity to respond.

Family members of the crash victims, though, have long criticized what they consider a sweetheart deal for Boeing, and they are urging prosecutors to take the company to court. It's just not clear yet what the Justice Department will decide. And your transportation correspondent, Joel Rose, thanks so much. You're welcome. The salad chain Sweetgreen will begin serving beef. So will a vegan chain in L.A., formerly known as Sage Vegan. Has to change its name now.

They are both embracing the concept known as regenerative farming. To find out what that means, we'll turn to Julia Simon from NPR's Climate Desk. Hey there. Thanks for having me. Start at the beginning. What is regenerative farming? How does it work? So a step back, soil has the potential to draw down carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it. But many conventional farming practices end up releasing carbon. Regenerative agriculture is this umbrella term for a bunch of farming practices different from conventional farming that can, in theory, be better for the soil and the environment. So give us an example of how regenerative farming is different from conventional farming.

Yeah. So one example is cover crops, which basically means that there's always some kind of plant like grasses or legumes on your fields versus conventional farming, letting fields lie fallow. Emily Oldfield, a soil scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund, says that can help lead to more healthy soil. You're preventing against soil loss and erosion. You're maximizing the presence of living roots, so you're sort of feeding all those microbes that are down in there. Okay, I get it for plants, but explain, these restaurants say that their beef is coming from regenerative farms. How does it work with livestock? There's something called regenerative grazing, where you're managing the

livestock like cattle graze on grasses to improve soil health, among other things. Regenerative agriculture often gets discussed in the context of climate solutions. Does it reduce emissions? Yeah, there are ways it could, but some scientists worry about some climate benefits getting overstated. Give us an example there. Scientists say that keeping soils more intact can increase the amount of carbon stored in them, which is good, right? Carbon dioxide, it's a planet heating gas, great to have carbon in the soil versus the atmosphere. But there are lots of questions about how much carbon gets stored in the soil by changing these practices and, critically, how long the carbon stays in the soil by changing these practices, and critically,

how long the carbon stays in the soil. Here's Eric Slezarev, professor at Yale University. Organic matter in soil is live material. There are microorganisms living on it, and they're constantly breaking it down and releasing it as CO2. It goes back to the atmosphere. And so soil is not a sealed off compartment. It's dynamic. Also, things like drought, heat can affect the amount of carbon that soil stores. And while a farmer might be doing regenerative farming now, there's no guarantee they'll be doing them into the future. Slezareff says this is a big question mark over climate claims about regenerative agriculture. In my mind, that is the biggest uncertainty, is how long is that carbon going to stay out of the atmosphere if it ends up in the soil in the form of organic matter? So regenerative farming does not sound like an exact science at this point, and the long-term climate benefits may be in question.

But in terms of beef, the climate impacts are pretty clear, right? Right. The main reason cattle heat the planet so much is that cattle burp, and those burps have a lot of methane, this very potent greenhouse gas. Also, in much of the world, making room for cattle and food for cattle drives deforestation, which also heats the planet. I want to ask about these companies, Sweetgreen and Sage Vegan, which on its website now says it is rebranding as Sage Regenerative. What do they have to say about all of this? Both Sweetgreen and Sage Regenerative did not respond to NPR's request for comments. But again, we should say regenerative agriculture

does have lots of environmental benefits. These practices are really good for soils. They can reduce erosion, water runoff. The questions come with the claimed climate benefits. Ultimately, experts I spoke to say when it comes to climate emissions from food, there might be an impulse to tweak around the edges, but meaningful emissions reductions will have to focus on the big sources of emissions, like cattle. Research shows just swapping out beef in a meal can have a big impact on a person's daily climate emissions. And our doctors might suggest the same. That's NPR's Julia Simon. Thanks, Julia. Thank you, Tamara. And that's Up First for Saturday, May 18th, 2024. I'm Tamara Keith.

And I'm Scott Simon. Danny Hensel produced today's podcast with help from Martin Patience and Gabe O'Connor. Michael Radcliffe directed. It was edited by Miguel Macias, Shannon Rhodes, Catherine Fox, and Matthew Sherman. Our technical director is Hannah Glovno with engineering support from Nisha Hynes, Stu Rushfield, and Carly Strange. Evie Stone is our senior supervising editor. Sarah Lucy Oliver is our executive producer. Jim Kane, our deputy managing editor. Tomorrow on the Sunday Story podcast, we take a trip to the Philippines to see what has become of the country's violent war on drugs. Thousands of people have been killed.

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