On a recent Saturday, white vans shuttled small groups of migrant farmworkers from the southern Illinois orchard where they work to St. Joseph’s Catholic Church. The workers had arrived days earlier from Mexico for the start of the tilling season. 

Some states are saying they won’t use Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose vaccine to immunize vulnerable, harder-to-reach populations, including agriculture workers, over concerns about equity and perceptions of how well it protects against COVID-19. 

The sound of peeping, fuzzy, freshly-hatched chicks drifts through Cackle Hatchery in Lebanon, Missouri.

It’s a busy time for third-generation owner Jeff Smith. For hatchery season, which occurs from February to October, 300,000 eggs are delivered every seven days to the hatchery. For hatcheries, getting newborn chicks to their owner is a race against time. He has about a hundred employees working to get 200 varieties of chicks delivered safely to customers. 

“We work 24/7 here, everybody is tapped out on the time and energy that they can put into it,” Smith says. 

There’s been a lot of hype around how farmers can make money from selling the carbon their plants naturally remove from the air, but there are still questions about how much of a difference these markets can make in reducing greenhouse gases.  

It’s a cold February afternoon, and Alvin Lee’s cows are hungry. He says he has to put three or four bales of hay out every other day, and he only has about 10 left. 

New hay is expensive -- about $40 per bale. He managed to get some for $20 each, but they are three years old. If this keeps up, he’ll have to scrape together money for more hay, he says. 

Lee used to work in construction, but because of injuries from his time in the Marine Corps, he had to stop working. He moved to Wewoka, Oklahoma 25 years ago and bought 160 acres of land, which he hopes is his legacy.