On World Food Day, Think of Those Who Don't Have Any

by Katherine Gustafson

Published October 16, 2009 @ 06:00AM PT

It’s World Food Day! This could be the national holiday of food.change.org. Not only that, but this day sits in the midst of World Food Week! Everybody get out your party hats.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), however, makes it clear this isn’t a balloons-and-streamers kind of event. Its purpose is to raise awareness of and motivate year-round action against hunger.

“The crisis is stalking the small-scale farms and rural areas of the world,” the FOA's World Food Day Website intones, “where 70 percent of the world's hungry live and work.”

Still, this is just up our alley. “Sustainable food” systems are by definition those that can produce food for all, forever. Hungry people are not sustainable. The riots brought on by high food prices last year should show you that.

The FAO estimates that with an increase of 105 million hungry people added in 2009 to the world’s 1.02 billion malnourished people, one sixth of all humanity suffers from hunger.

What we need is big public and private investments, particularly “targeted public investment to encourage and facilitate private investment, especially by farmers themselves,” the FAO says. Hopefully world leaders will make progress on that front at the World Summit on Food Security planned for November 2009.

It's not all doom and gloom, though. While you’re busy studiously considering the dark depths of the hunger in the world, you can also head to some of the related events around the globe to discuss the issue with others who want to work for change.

Photo courtesy of luigi morante on flickr

Meat: The Single Worst Thing Humans Can Do To The Environment

by Mike Smith

Published October 15, 2009 @ 09:30AM PT

In the spirit of Blog Action Day for Climate Change, let's talk about meat. In the New York Times, Jonathan Safran Foer, author of Everything Is Illuminated, and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, explained how he has gradually slipped in and out of vegetarianism, but now that he has kids, he's taking responsibility and kicking the habit entirely. He really got my attention with this:

Factory farming has made animal agriculture the No. 1 contributor to global warming ... Eating factory-farmed animals — which is to say virtually every piece of meat sold in supermarkets and prepared in restaurants — is almost certainly the single worst thing that humans do to the environment.

I have had a similar experience to Jonathan, having cut meat out entirely, but I slipped back into the habit. Yet, at the same time, I've cut back significantly. Meat, if it's eaten at all, shouldn't be an everyday thing. I'm cutting down more and more. But everytime I eat it, I'm doing the worst possible thing to the environment, and it's inexusable considering how easy it would be for me to quit it entirely. I'd like half of my "cut 10% of your personal emissions in 2010" to come from quitting meat. I'd like to take more personal responsibility and not contribute further to a terrible problem solely because I kind of like hamburgers. I can live without hamburgers.

Photo credit: Chichacha

Climate Change = Food Crisis

by Katherine Gustafson

Published October 15, 2009 @ 06:00AM PT

Today is Blog Action Day here at Change.org, and all across this series of tubes we call the World Wide Web. At least 8,000 blogs, representing 140 countries and 12,000,000 readers, have registered their commitment to write about climate change today. And all of us Change bloggers are looking at how climate change relates the causes we write about.

So, climate change and food. Big topic. Biiiig topic, one that those of us in the chattering class usually approach from the climate side of the equation. As in: “all that industrial farming is ruining our world! Cows fart as much greenhouse gas as highways full of cars! Quick, to the farmer’s market!”

But what about the other side? What about the 25 million children that the UK’s Guardian newspaper reports will be hungry by mid-century due to climate-change-induced food crises? Our changing environment, the article states, will lead to food shortages and skyrocketing costs for everyday necessities like rice, wheat and maize.

A recent report that the International Food Policy Research Institute prepared for the World Bank and Asian Development Bank reveals that if we don’t rapidly mitigate global warming, poor countries in south Asia and sub-Saharan Africa will see crop yields fail and increasing numbers of children starve. This would, according to the Guardian, effectively “wipe out decades of progress in reducing child malnutrition.”

We’ve already had a window into that scary future. When grain prices shot up last year, developing countries across the globe were rocked by riots. A potential food crisis has become such a notable concern that world leaders took up the mantle at the recent G20 summit in Pittsburgh, committing $20 billion to shoring up food security. In November, the United Nations will convene its second summit on the issue since 2008’s riots.

Clearly climate change is not just a matter of a few more storms, a couple feet of sea-level rise or the extinction of a handful of animals. We’re talking about major global crisis and billions of starving people, brought on by changes that we know are coming and may still have the power to largely stop. Yet one more reason we need to get serious about reforming our own greenhouse-gaseous food system.

Photo courtesy of inzaki on flickr

The McMap, A Picture Worth a Thousand Calories

by Katherine Gustafson

Published October 14, 2009 @ 06:00AM PT

Behold, a map of the distance to the nearest McDonald's all across this great country of ours, created by Stephen Von Worley at Weather Sealed.

Wow, I know there's a McDonald's on virtually every corner, but it takes the stunning visual to bring home that we really are awash in a tidal wave of cheap hamburgers.

This might as well be an illustration of our obesity epidemic or the greenhouse gases burped forth by our meat-manic, transport-crazy food chain (though come to think of it, that would light up the West much more; you might just envision a solid-orange United States).

In other McDonald's news, according to the UK's Telegraph, they're putting one in the shopping area below the Louvre, to the horror of all French people and art lovers everywhere. To celebrate its 30th anniversary in France, McDonald's is opening its 1,142nd French restaurant in the underground Carrousel du Louvre, mere footsteps from the arts of the ages.

It is all summed up by this photo of a McDonald's in Sarawak, Malaysia:

The phone number is 1300-13-1300. I knew it! McDonald's is just our bad luck.

Photos courtesy of Stephen Von Worley and tsechuen on flickr.

Ag Sec Vilsack Won't Take Sides, But Admits GM Regulations Needed

by Mike Smith

Published October 13, 2009 @ 02:53PM PT

Does U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack need to choose to support either big agriculture or small farmers? Can he not do both? Some people are unhappy about his hybrid approach; he was booed for including mention of genetically modified crops at a conference. He emphasized that GM crops would be essential to feed the world, promising a safe and transparent system in the market for the crops, but stressing that smaller farmers also need to get a "fair break."

When asked directly about industrial agriculture and how he plans to curb it in favor of small farmers, Vilsack explained: "I have two sons and I love them both. And your question sort of, kind of asks, 'Which son do you love the most?'" So he has admitted that he could never possibly favor either side more, a position of uncompromising steadiness and a refusal to heed any evidence that sounds completely unreasonable.

This comes days after Vilsack admitted that regulation on GM crops and seeds were 20 years out of date, saying "I think [GM regulations are] an evolving process, which is why we're doing this and probably should have done it more than 20 years ago." Farmers are unhappy that GM crops have become accepted as the norm, complaining that they must have the right to grow non-GM crops without fear of contamination from GM — contamination could close the market with Japan and Europe who enjoy strict standards that ensure imported products are GM-free.

Photo credit: Steve Cadman

Will Our Beef Addiction Destroy the Amazon?

by Katherine Gustafson

Published October 13, 2009 @ 06:00AM PT

The Amazonian cattle industry is the main driver of deforestation on Earth, according to Greenpeace. Brazil raises the most cattle and exports the most beef of any country, and is also fourth on the list of greenhouse gas emitters. A beef industry based on denuding the world of virgin rainforest is as far from sustainable as we can get.

Notable news then, pointed out by fellow blogger Mike Gaworecki, writing from a Greenpeace ship in the middle of the Pacific Ocean: the New York Times reports that four major meat producers have agreed to refrain from purchasing cattle from parts of Brazil’s Amazon rainforest where trees have been newly cleared for grazing.

At a conference this week organized by Greenpeace, the four companies — Bertin, JBS-Friboi, Marfrig and Minerva — signed on to help Greenpeace’s efforts to end deforestation. The four companies party to the agreement will institute a registration system for the ranchers that supply their cattle and will find ways to avoid procuring cattle raised on indigenous and protected lands or produced using slave labor.

The move came in response to a report released by Greenpeace in June called “Slaughtering the Amazon,” which draws a clear connection between deforestation and the growth of the Amazonian cattle ranching industry. The report is having wide-ranging impact; massive multinationals such as McDonald’s and Wal-Mart are also demanding that producers ensure that their supply chains are not damaging the Amazon.

Of course if beef producers are going to change their practices, red meat might well become more expensive. I would argue that’s a good thing. Ever since I’ve started blogging here, the idea that we need to learn to go lighter on the meat keeps coming up again and again. Perhaps the only thing that will propel us in that direction is a pinch in our pocketbooks.

Photo courtesy of Ivan Mlinaric on flickr

Making Cities Sustainable as Billions Migrate

by Mike Smith

Published October 12, 2009 @ 09:59AM PT

Manhattan is an eco-commune, a utopian environmental community, and the most ecologically sustainable place in America explains Will Boisvert reviewing Green Metropolis: What the City Can Teach the Country About True Sustainability. He tries to see through the gray, and through the exhaust fumes to outline various arguments regarding dense urbanity that offer "a compelling blueprint for addressing our ecological crises." He notes that a New Yorker's environmental impact is a third less than the average American's, and if everyone lives like they do in Manhattan, emissions would drop 70%.

Contra Pollan, the author of Green Metropolis, isn't a locavore and has a distaste for anti-urban bias that's common to environmentalism — and sustainability. He'd prefer food be shipped thousands of miles by rail than have hundreds of people drive miles to an upstate farmers' market.

Carolyn Steel might disagree. As she explained at TED conference earlier this year, feeding a city is a miracle, with food routes shaping the modern world. She sees urban populations just as dependent on the natural world as our ancient ancestors were. It's just that the urban jungle obscures it from our view. Increasing urbanization (it'll double for 2050) means more people in cities to feed, necessitating mega-farms to produce all the food (there will be twice as much meat and dairy consumed). Now, it's the jungle and rainforest that's suffering from the rising demand for arable land.

Steel demands food become more central to daily life, with networks of locally grown food that are part of the community, and urban greenhouses to teach kids about food — reconnecting us with nature and understanding where our food comes from. Both Steel and Boisvert have a lot to teach us about how cities, being where more and more people are living, can become both models of sustainability and can be modeled to become more sustainable.

Photo credit: Ed Yourdon "Broadway Farms"