Diet | Center for a Livable Future

The Locavore Debate, Revisited

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How can local food systems support a resilient and sustainable future food economy in the United States? That was the question of the day at a recent conference entitled, “Reviving the American Economy-One Heirloom Tomato at a Time.” But for some, the question isn’t so much how, but even can local food systems support a sustainable food economy. It’s always important to be open to dissenting viewpoints, so it was with great interest that I listened to Pierre Desrochers of the University of Toronto critique the “eating local” paradigm.

According to Desrochers, who has garnered a respectable amount of publicity as an “anti-locavore,” choosing to eat local foods isn’t necessarily the sustainable choice many believe. Although he brings some very critical and noteworthy perspectives to the broader food system debate about energy efficiency and CO₂ emissions from ‘food miles,’ he also obfuscates and distorts the broader goals of developing resilient local food systems, and for this reason I’d like to address some of his main talking points here.

Food System Resilience

The main thrust of Desrochers’ argument against the resilience of local food systems is his belief they may lead to future food insecurity. He suggested that local food systems are inherently more unstable in the face of plant disease outbreaks, crop failures, and the limited growing seasons of different latitudes. His argument, in sum, was against a pre-20^th Century food system, where local crop failures might spell disaster for rural, isolated communities.

But is this really the vision of the local food movement? I don’t believe local food system advocates are calling for a return to eating only what is produced in isolation of wider regional or global food systems-an idea which is historically contentious to begin with. By creating a false dichotomy between choosing either an extreme local food system (where one would have to subsist only on foods grown directly in your locality) or a global one (where food would only come from where it was cheapest to grow-a “cheapness” dependent on agricultural subsidies and externalizing environmental health costs), it seems Desrochers has only constructed a straw man in order to knock it down.

The reality of nearly all food systems is that they are nested on varying scales, from the local to the global, and can interact between scales. As CLF Visiting Scholar Kate Clancy and co-author Kathryn Ruhf acknowledged in a well-articulated article 2010 in Choices on regional food systems, “An ideal regional food system describes a system in which as much food as possible to meet the population’s food needs is produced, processed, distributed, and purchased at multiple levels and scales within the region, resulting in maximum resilience, minimum importation, and significant economic and social return to all stakeholders in the region.”

In sum, Desrochers’ suggestion that widespread adoption of local food production might lead to the next great American famine is only even remotely tenable if we ignore the pragmatic and sensible reality that opportunities for creating truly sustainable food systems exist between the local and the global. Read More >

In Media, Big Ag Looms Large while Farmers Get Younger, Better Looking

In September 1965, CBS broadcast its first episode of Green Acres, a mini-series documenting a family’s transition from an urban life of prestige and luxury, to one of mud, manure, and chaos on a farm in the fictional town of Hooterville.

Green Acres took off, in part capitalizing on the popularity of its 1963 predecessor, Beverly Hillbillies, which was the number one TV show in America during its first two years. While Green Acres commented on the awkward integration of city elite into rural America, Beverly Hillbillies followed a clan of poor Ukrainian farmers through their upgrade to flashy Beverly Hills (but only after striking oil – mistakenly – on their land). The two TV hits were only a part of a mass of mini-series placing a farmer, or farm family, at the center stage. Other notable shows included The Real McCoys and Petticoat Junction. According to film critics, these series succeeded for their comedic portrayal of culture clash; for the agricultural community, however, the shows unfairly labeled farmers, and the farming occupation, as backward, poor, uncivilized, and low-class.

By the 80s and 90s, TV focusing on the rural farmer waned in popularity. Perhaps the last big effort to revive the genre came in 1993, as 20^th Century FOX released Beverly Hillbillies in a movie format. The critic reviews gave the movie an A for low-brow humor, but labeled the overall effort a pointless remake of a worn-out past. Worse still, the film’s directors received complaints from (mostly southern) viewers who found the movie insulting, irrelevant, or both. And so, by the end of the 20^th century, the relationship between TV, film, and the farmer was headed for reform.

Admittedly, media’s desertion of the country farmer role reflected the reality of a swiftly changing food environment. As the US food system was appropriated by massive industrialized farming operations, fewer Americans could survive as independent farmers, and the bucolic image of rural food production -overalls and mud – no longer resonated with the TV-watching, movie-loving public.

By the 2000s, popular film took on industrialized food production, and began to depict agriculture as a mysterious and powerful force of greed and deception. One such portrayal came in the 2007 movie Michael Clayton, which followed an elite lawyer through his defense of an agrochemical company’s billion-dollar class action lawsuit brought for damages caused by toxic chemicals. Two years later, the movie The Informant publicized the true story of an employee of Archer Daniels Midland, one of the world’s largest agriculture processing companies. The plot depicted the details of this employees’ harrowing experience as a whistleblower against executives found to be fixing the price of lysine, an additive for livestock feed. Read More >

Organic Farming: What is Technology’s Role?

A recent post on Software Advice entitled “Organic Farmers : Can They Be Tech Savvy ?” by Mr. Hunter Richards serves as a reminder of why one interested in sustainable farming mustn’t instinctively cringe at the thought of new technology and agriculture.

As the blog states, organic food has taken off as an industry; the Organic Trade Association ‘s estimated that national sales of organic food and beverages total $24.8 billion annually in comparison to $1 billion just 20 years ago. Organic fruits and vegetables, for example, now represent 11.4% of all U.S. fruit and vegetable sales. Naturally, one would think that increased demand would push producers to seek efficiency – that is, doing more with less.

Combine food, not just organic food, with demand and, well, you have yourself a headline.

A special report by The Economist, “The 9 billion -people question “, introduces the question of if there will be enough food to go around come 2050. But the report focuses on industrial agriculture – since, “traditional and organic farming could feed Europeans and Americans well. It cannot feed the world.”

An entire chapter highlights efficiency. How does one increase yield by 1.5% a year over the next 40 years to feed mankind? The article details three ways: narrowing the gap between the worst and best producers, spreading the “lifestock revolution” (expanding the CAFO system because – “battery chickens” do a better job than traditional methods), and taking advantage of new plant technologies (marker-assisted breeding seems to be the key technology).

Additionally, The New York Times recently asked seven professionals “Is the World Producing Enough Food ?” Multiple authors were in agreement that meeting the greater per capita food consumption could be met by increasing yields through increasing technologies. Dr. Kenneth Cassman, a professor of agronomy at the University of Nebraska, mentioned the current weakness in yield comes partially from “a substantial decrease in funding of research to enhance yields by methods other than biotechnology.”

These three articles all mention new technology’s potential to meet increasing food demand. Although The Economist focused on industrial agriculture and technological improvements, Mr. Richard’s article is a unique reminder that those involved in “organic food,” who some may assume are defined by their aversion to technology, also can crave increasing their efficiency through technology. Read More >

Chicken, Ascendant

Between now and April 3, the USDA is inviting comment on a just-completed, major research effort to reassess how much of the food in the United States actually makes its way into our mouths. Its findings suggest that in the chicken-versus-beef rivalry, the popularity of boneless chicken is edging out beef consumption in the USA for the first time on record.

The report calculates “consumer-level” food losses. “Consumer-level,” in this case, doesn’t only mean us, and what we do with the food we bring into our homes. Here, “consumer” reflects the amount of food that is discarded after it reaches the home, the restaurant, or other institution that serves prepared meals (including schools, hospitals, company cafeterias). (Losses before this point – not covered by this report – are termed “primary” or “retail” losses. Owing to spoilage, expiration dates, trimming, or culling, primary and retail losses occur as food travels from the farmgate, through slaughter and processing, on to transport and distribution, to arrive in warehouses and grocery stores.)

Losses from hundreds of foods, after they reach their final destination, are evaluated in the report. Among its major findings are that losses of meat and poultry in particular may be much lower than was previously estimated. The past estimate was that 32% of beef, 39% of pork and 40% of chicken was discarded from restaurants and homes. The revision decreases these loss estimates to 20%, 29% and 15% for these three “leading meats:” beef losses drop by a third, pork by a quarter, and chicken by a whopping 167%.

The big tumble in estimated chicken losses leads to perhaps the first evidence of a much-anticipated triumph of chicken over beef. “Adoption of the proposed loss estimates,” reports USDA, “would mean that for the first time since the data series began in 1909, consumers would now eat more chicken than beef in terms of pounds per year” (p26).

At first glance, these results seem really encouraging: people and institutions must be becoming more frugal, allowing less to go to waste. Yet, reading closer, we learn that these decreases basically reflect the fact that meat now comes to us with less to dispose of. This is partly because meat is a bit leaner, with the fat trimmed closer, than it would have been when the estimates were last calculated.

The major factor, though, is the growth in popularity of boneless meat. Now, more meat is cut away from bones before it reaches the “consumer,” so what’s changed is just that bones and meat part ways earlier in the food chain.

These bones are valuable resources that we could be making into nutritious, mineral-rich stocks and broths, as humanity has done with animal bones for millennia. Bones provide us additional sustenance from the same amount of meat. However, today’s food landscape tends to send bones off to renderers where they are turned into highly-processed industrial and agricultural products. That’s better than the landfill, but, still, deriving additional human nutriment from the animal would help justify the cost, energy, and, we hope, care that went into raising the cow, pig or chicken.

To learn more, see the report: Consumer-Level Food Loss Estimates and Their Use in the Economic Research Service Loss-Adjusted Food Availability Data.

Julia DeBruicker Valliant, MHS is completing a doctorate in public health. For her thesis she is conducting an in-depth and place-based study about the market for eco-labeled meat in Indiana, where she also raises cows and turkeys on her family’s farm. From 2007 to 2010 she served as a CLF Predoctoral Fellow.

Health experts worldwide agree, people who eat a lot of red and processed meat should cut back

As physicians we recognize that lean meats may be a healthy part of almost anyone’s diet. However, based on the preponderance of evidence compiled by scientists and health experts across the globe, there is little doubt that a diet high in red and processed meats is linked to serious health risks and that we would all be wise to keep our consumption down. New dietary guidelines, recently released by the United Kingdom’s Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition (SACN) bolsters this conclusion. The SACN’s Iron and Health 2010 report advises that Britons can reduce their risk of colorectal cancer while maintaining healthy levels of iron by keeping their red meat and processed meat consumption to 70 grams or about 2 ½ ounces a day.

Cutting back on red and processed meat could do more than just ward off colorectal cancer. Research has linked it to other diseases such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease and even Alzheimer’s. A landmark United State’s study, published in 2009 in the Archives of Internal Medicine, Meat Intake and Mortality, which included data from more than half a million members of the AARP, concluded red and processed meat intakes were associated with modest increases of “total” mortality in addition to cancer and cardiovascular disease mortality. An equally important Harvard study, published in Circulation in 2009, that followed more than 84,000 female nurses, found that red meat intake increases the risk of coronary heart disease. More importantly researchers concluded that shifting sources of protein from meat based to plant based could reduce the risk of coronary heart disease.

The Washington Post reports that cutting down on red meat could save an estimated 3,800 Britons from dying of bowel cancer every year. However, SACN researchers made it clear that their report did not address other potential health risks associated with meat consumption, which means many more lives could be saved from other preventable diseases. Read More >

Notes from New Zealand: China’s Investment in NZ Agriculture and a Bumper Crop for Grapes

CLF Director Robert S. Lawrence, MD, is on sabbatical in Auckland, New Zealand, where he is studying the country’s agriculture system.

As we waited in the Sydney airport for our connecting flight to Auckland, I picked up a copy of The Australian, one of the major newspapers in Australia, and noted an article titled, “China hungry for local food assets.” The article noted that China was preparing a multi-billion dollar investment campaign to acquire Australian agricultural lands to provide farm produce over the next five years. My thoughts went racing back to Lester Brown’s Who Will Feed China: Wake-up Call for a Small Planet, published in 1995 and arguably the single most important book in shaping the strategies of the early years of the Center for a Livable Future. Brown exposed the myth of Chinese grain self-sufficiency and predicted that China would soon become a major food importing country as water resources were depleted or diverted to the booming industrial sector; rising standards of living would shift dietary choices to a higher meat, western diet; and increasing amounts of grain would be diverted from direct human consumption to animal feed.

The Australian reported that in the last six months there has been a dramatic increase in the interest of Chinese buyers in purchase of segments of the agricultural sector “with the sweet spot being in ‘under the radar’ private farms, aggregation and processing businesses worth between $10 million and $200m.” Why this range of enterprise? Because under Australian law the Foreign Investment Review Board is limited to investigating sale of businesses to foreign enterprises that are worth more than $231 million. So a partial answer to Lester Brown’s question of who will feed China is a loose consortium of Australian agricultural resources, each valued at less than $231 million.

The Chinese buyers are showing particular interest in grain, meat, and wool opportunities. To date the majority of China’s investments in Australia’s agricultural sector have been less than $10 million with examples cited of dairy farms, orchards, vineyards, and Tasmanian spring water. But China’s appetite is growing with reports of one Chinese company looking for 5000 hectares (about 12,500 acres) of grain production land, worth about $75 million on the current Australian market.

The government of Australia has responded by launching a parliamentary inquiry into foreign ownership of Australian agriculture, all reminiscent of Russia’s decision last summer to ban export of wheat after their record-setting drought, India’s restrictions of rice exports in 2008, and other signs of countries protecting their domestic supplies while remaining a player in the global food market. Read More >

A Blow to Industrial Dairy Farming in the U.K.

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Just over a week ago, I received a phone call from Katharine Mansell, the Media Relations Manager for the U.K. World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA). What she told me was without doubt excellent news for both sustainable agriculture and public health in Western Europe. The proposal to build the Nocton Dairy, which was to be the first U.S.-style industrialized dairy in Western Europe, is officially no longer under consideration. On February 16, 2011, the farmers withdrew their application, ostensibly after continued objections from the Environmental Agency of England and Wales. However, it is clear that the advocacy campaigns undertaken by groups such as the WSPA also played a critical role in the ultimate withdrawal of the application.

As part of the Not in My Cuppa campaign, volunteers dressed up as cows in orange prison jumpsuits

While the Nocton Dairy debate received relatively little attention here in the U.S., it was a consistent topic of media coverage inthe U.K. since its initial proposal to the North Kesteven District Council in December 2009. The initial plan for the facility, formally known as the Nocton Dairy Ltd., included over 8,000 cattle almost entirely confined to large barns and featured two 24-hour milking parlors. In a statement that ended up giving ample fodder to groups opposing the dairy, one of the farmers behind the dairy noted that “cows do not belong in fields.” Soon after the proposal was made, both neighbors of the proposed facility and environmental and animal welfare groups began to express serious misgivings about the project. By April 2010, 150 MPs had signed an Early Day Motion (the equivalent of a resolution in the U.S. Congress) declaring their opposition to the construction of the dairy and stating that the House “…believes that the proposed unit is taking U.K. dairy farming in the wrong direction…” While the proposed number of cattle was eventually reduced to 3,770, serious concerns about the dairy remained.

Realizing the importance not only of preventing the construction of this particular industrial dairy, but also of preventing the further encroachment of U.S.-style industrial farm animal production in Western Europe, a number of advocacy groups came together in an unprecedented alliance of environmental, animal welfare, and rural protection groups. Read More >

Increasing global food security: The next gold rush?

What do Archer Daniels Midland, Cargill, Coca-Cola, DuPont, Monsanto, Kraft Foods, and Wal-Mart have in common?

Some of the most financially successful companies in the world? Absolutely. Exploiters of workers and the environment? Some say so. The newest solution to global food insecurity and natural resource conservation? Apparently so.

These seven global companies, along with ten others spanning the agricultural value chain (including BASF, Bunge Limited, General Mills, Metro AG, Nestlé, PepsiCo, SABMiller, Syngenta, Unilever, and Yara International) are at the center of a new strategy presented at the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland on January 28^th. Announced by Rajiv Shah, Director of U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the strategy is called “Realizing a New Vision for Agriculture: A roadmap for stakeholders” and aims to increase food production in an environmentally sustainable way while spurring economic growth. Each decade, the initiative aims to: (1) increase agricultural production by 20% to eliminate hunger and undernourishment; (2) reduce greenhouse gas emissions per tonne of production by 20%; and (3) decrease rural poverty by 20%.

Why is a “new vision for agriculture” needed? First and foremost, even in our world of plenty, nearly a billion people remain undernourished, 98% of who live in developing countries. The world’s population continues to grow at a rate of about 200,000 people per day, putting greater pressure on food production systems. At the same time, the intensity of food consumption is growing in emerging markets such as China; as people’s incomes rise, so does their demand for meat and dairy products, foods which are much more land and energy-intensive to produce. Another challenge arises as urban populations grow. We passed the point at which just as many people live in urban areas as do rural areas in 2007. This trend of urbanization will likely continue, requiring additional resources for packaging, shipping, storing, and distributing food to urban populations.

More food is needed, but it must be produced in environmentally sustainable ways if we expect the earth to continue to support us. The 2005 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment revealed the horrifying extent to which humans have degraded the natural environment through our efforts to secure food, water and fuel (most of this damage has occurred over the past 50 years). One of the most alarming repercussions of human activity on the environment is global climate change, which will have dire consequences for health – including food security – in the coming years. Agriculture both contributes to and is threatened by environmental degradation and climate change. Additionally, the current agricultural system is heavily reliant on oil, and considering that oil is believed to have reached global peak production, the food system must undergo a massive transition if it is to function in a world of energy scarcity. Read More >

The Cristo Rey/Amazing Grace Community Garden: An interview with Dominic Smith

Where there was once a block of run-down row homes in McElderry Park in East Baltimore, Maryland, there is now a burgeoning vegetable garden. The Amazing Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church started the garden to provide green space for the community and produce for the church’s food pantry.

Looking for a service opportunity for his students which would allow them to interact with their community and be active, Dominic Smith, a Spanish teacher at Cristo Rey High School in Fells Point, partnered with the church to help develop the plot. Dominic was kind enough to discuss with me his experience spearheading this innovative project.

Students Gardening

LPL: Let’s start with the basics. What sort of work do the students do in the garden?
DS: The volunteers work on all sorts of different tasks, like picking up litter, preparing the soil, weeding, pruning, planting herbs and produce, harvesting, planting cover crop, and so on. I estimate that, with about 10 student and teacher volunteers per service day, we’ve collectively committed several thousand hours to the garden over the course of the planting and growing season.

LPL: How do you see the project fitting in with the mission of Cristo Rey High School?
DS: This project really reflects the school’s commitment to improving our students’ health. We were recently awarded a grant to increase physical activity and promote better nutrition in the school. The garden fits right in with that since it gets the kids outside and gives them a chance to be active together while learning more about how fresh produce is grown. That’s especially important for our kids. A lot of them either don’t eat, or eat out of Styrofoam. By growing and learning more about fresh fruits and vegetables, the kids are being exposed to alternatives to processed junk.

LPL: How have you made junk food alternatives seem more attractive to the kids?
DS: We’ve made a real effort to connect the vegetables we planted to the foods they like to eat. Rather than tell them to eat something else, we’re trying to show them where their family dishes come from and how healthy they can be compared to the Burger King next to the school.

Weeding the Garden

LPL: What sorts of challenges have you faced?
DS: The primary challenges we faced up front were that the soil had fallen into bad shape and there was no water. We’ve been working hard to reinvigorate the land by planting nitrogen-rich cover crops and integrating native species. Our big success was getting water out to the plot. First, we made some rain barrels and then the church board and I worked through some connections we had with the city to set up a water line.

Despite all of that, we’ve still had a poor yield. Although we have had some moderate harvests, it would be great to walk into school with big bags of produce so that we’d be able to say, “Look at how much we’ve grown.” It’s really important to remember there are other ways of showing we’re successful – like physical activity and volunteer hours or the kids’ learning.

LPL: What are your plans for the future?
DS: I’m working on setting up propagating boxes to grow seedlings for planting next spring and I’m looking into plans to set up a drip irrigation system so that we use the water more effectively. In the future it will be necessary to find partners who can supply us with compost, soil amendments, landscaping materials, and the occasional use of a truck. Ultimately we’d like to have some low hoop houses to help us move to a growing calendar which better matches the school year.

The partnership between Cristo Rey Jesuit High School and the Amazing Grace Food Ministry is evidence of the community-building potential of urban gardens. With dedicated leadership from Dominic Smith, this collaboration adds to Baltimore’s growing green landscape.

-By Lisa Lagasse

Oprah Enthusiastically Throws Her Support Behind Meatless Monday

Oprah celebrates Meatless Monday

Talk show host Oprah Winfrey may have just encouraged a large segment of her 30 million viewers to join the Meatless Monday movement following her latest show which gave us a rare glimpse into where some of our meat comes from.

The Meatless Monday campaign’s national awareness has more than doubled in the last 2 years. An FGI Research survey found that 30 percent of Americans are aware of the public health campaign. My guess is that following Oprah’s very public backing and the announcement last month that the food service company Sodexo implemented Meatless Monday national and global awareness is going to sky rocket!

The episode, entitled “Oprah and 378 Staffers Go Vegan: The One Week Challenge” featured celebrated “veganist” Kathy Freston and journalist Michael Pollan, best known for his book “The Omnivore’s Dilemma.” A large chunk of the show followed Freston encouraging sometimes belligerent but mostly willing Oprah Show staff members to eat a vegan diet for one week and their testimonials on how they did. A few employees said the experience helped them lose weight and become healthier. Following her experience, Oprah decided, quite enthusiastically, that her studio’s café would do Meatless Monday every week.

The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Center for a Livable Future helped launch the national Meatless Monday campaign back in 2003. The campaign’s primary focus is to reduce America’s saturated fat consumption by 15%, following the recommendations of the Healthy People 2010 report issued by then U.S. Surgeon General David Satcher in 2000. Key recommendations from the recently released Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2010 reiterate the message that we need to reduce our consumption of solid and saturated fats.

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