The poor pay the price...again

"Global warming will likely hit food production in developing nations the hardest, increasing the risks of drought and famine in the countries that already struggle to feed their populations, a senior U.N. official said Tuesday.

However, a rise in global temperatures would increase food production in most industrialized countries, which mostly have colder climates, said Jacques Diouf the director general of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.

''Crop yield potential is likely to increase at higher latitudes for global average temperature increases of up to 1 to 3 degrees Celsius (2 to 6 Fahrenheit), depending on the crop, and then decrease beyond that,'' Diouf said, speaking at a conference in the southern Indian city of Chennai.

''At lower latitudes, especially in the seasonally dry tropics, crop yield potential is likely to decline for even small global temperature rises, which would increase the risk of hunger,'' he said.

He estimated that a country like India could lose 18 percent of its annual cereal production.

Developing genetically modified crops that produce higher yields could offset the impact of climate change, Diouf said, while noting that crops designed to be resistant to drought and flourish in extreme conditions are not yet a reality.

Scientists have warned that unchecked greenhouse gas emissions are causing global temperatures to rise, leading to drought, floods and searing heat."

(thanks Deborah. It's official: today's posts are all courtesy of my friend Deborah)

Safe travel

"This is a trade problem that is not just about China, but rather goes to a trade model that prioritizes increasing the volume of traded food over safety," Global Trade Watch director Lori Wallach said Wednesday in a news release.

The report said nearly $65 billion in food is imported annually -- almost double the value imported when NAFTA went into effect.

"In 2005, the United States, formerly known as the world's bread basket, became a net food importer for the first time, with a food deficit of nearly $370 million," the report said."

Learning to fish

"When talking about fish, one would hardly think about Israel. The country is known for oil, and more recently, on its war against Lebanon. However, it turned out that fish is a very important part of Israeli economy and agriculture. In the last half decade, Israel has become one of the top fish exporters to the European Union, a development that boosted its economy. Israel is now counted among countries like China, Japan, and Singapore with the distinction of producing the best quality fish. Among these fish exporters, it is notable that Israel is the only Middle Eastern nation, a clear delineation from the oil industry.

However, the fish exports from Israel cost more than the Far Eastern variety. According to market data, Israeli fish exporters price their bounty by at least 10% higher than Far Eastern fish. The Israel fish industry sees no problem in this price disparity. Apparently, the EU does not consider higher prices as problems. Simon claims that their clients in the EU are willing to pay the price in exchange for getting quality fish. Studies have shown that Israeli bounty lives longer than Far Eastern catch, making them fresher. "

The times they are a-changin'

"It's all part of the global pattern some scientists have been forecasting for decades, and which many in positions of influence have chosen to ignore, scorn, or lie about. The climate is indeed changing. We will never see "normal" times again - or at least not for many centuries - and agriculture, our food supply, is in the firing line. Sometimes the weather will be too dry, sometimes too wet, and although it will generally be warmer it is likely in some places to be colder than ever remembered. The "good" and "normal" years will be the aberrations.

But never mind - shortage is good for business. Wheat prices now are 40% higher than the average of the past decade, the price of US maize last year was up by 30%, and, I suspect, we ain't seen nothing yet. This does wonders for GDP and the economic growth by which governments measure their success.

The world could feed itself - well and forever. But if we are serious about this then we have to design agriculture specifically to feed people. The principles are simple: grow crops where they grow best and fit the livestock in where we can. This way we would provide lots of plants, not much meat, and maximum variety, which is just what nutritionists recommend and is the basis of all the world's great cuisines. Sound farming and great cooking go together.

Why don't we move towards self-reliance? Because in the short term it's more profitable to import food, feed grain to livestock and churn out the biofuel. SUVs first, then beef, then human beings."

Read the full article by Colin Tudge. (thanks Rania)

Why do we share food?

"He places his human subjects, too, in an ecological network of "food webs" that vary massively over time as they develop from broad-based hunter-gathering strategies, which took in everything from big game to wild seeds, to an eventual narrowing of our dietary choices to those that can be serviced by settled agriculture. An evolutionary parallel to this process is drawn in his tale of the emergence of the big brain.

We, as we know and celebrate, have very big brains. This capital evolutionary gain comes at a certain cost. First off, our gut reduced in size and complexity to compensate for the over-development at the top end of our bodies; and second, we, and our mothers, needed extra nutrition to give ourselves a head-start. This had a galvanic impact on our eating strategies, putting an emphasis on group cooperation on the one hand, while limiting to a degree the sort of foods we once knew and loved."

A review of Feast: Why Humans Share Food by Martin Jones

Response

"Correctly done, personal consumer action can add to, rather than subtract from, what is needed at a wider political level. Just as the concept of a social contract underpinned the welfare state, an environmental contract on climate change could use public action as a mandate for political action. Politics and consumer action could then move hand in hand."

The response to the Monbiot article below.

Revolutionary shopping

"Green consumerism is becoming a pox on the planet. If it merely swapped the damaging goods we buy for less damaging ones, I would champion it. But two parallel markets are developing - one for unethical products and one for ethical products, and the expansion of the second does little to hinder the growth of the first. I am now drowning in a tide of ecojunk. Over the past six months, our coat pegs have become clogged with organic cotton bags, which - filled with packets of ginseng tea and jojoba oil bath salts - are now the obligatory gift at every environmental event. I have several lifetimes' supply of ballpoint pens made with recycled paper and about half a dozen miniature solar chargers for gadgets that I do not possess.

Ethical shopping is in danger of becoming another signifier of social status. I have met people who have bought solar panels and wind turbines before they have insulated their lofts, partly because they love gadgets but partly, I suspect, because everyone can then see how conscientious and how rich they are. We are often told that buying such products encourages us to think more widely about environmental challenges, but it is just as likely to be depoliticising. Green consumerism is another form of atomisation - a substitute for collective action. No political challenge can be met by shopping."

Monbiot again...Great article. Please follow the link, it is really worth reading.

Not good

"An anticipated slowdown in growth of cereal production in low-income food-deficit countries, coupled with prospects for continued high international prices, could result in a tighter food supply situation for these countries in the coming year, according to FAO's latest Crop Prospects and Food Situation report.

In North Africa, Morocco's cereal crop this year has been devastated by drought and is estimated at just one-quarter of last year's level. In Southern Africa, the outcome of the recent main cereal harvest is mixed -- with sharply drought-reduced crops in Zimbabwe, Namibia, Lesotho and Swaziland, but record or above average harvests in Malawi, Angola, Mozambique, Madagascar and Zambia."

COUNTRIES IN CRISIS REQUIRING EXTERNAL ASSISTANCE (total: 28 countries)

AFRICA (20 countries)
Exceptional shortfall in aggregate food production/supplies
Lesotho	Multiple year droughts, HIV/AIDS impact
Somalia	Conflict and drought
Swaziland	Multiple year droughts, HIV/AIDS impact
Zimbabwe	Deepening economic crisis, drought
Widespread lack of access
Eritrea	IDPs, returnees, high food prices
Ethiopia	Low incomes, high food prices
Liberia	Post-conflict recovery period, IDPs
Mauritania	Multiple year droughts
Sierra Leone	Post-conflict recovery period, refugees
Severe localized food insecurity
Burundi	Civil strife, IDPs, returnees and recent dry spells
Central African Republic	Civil strife, IDPs
Chad	Refugees, insecurity
Congo, Democratic Republic of	Civil strife, IDPs and refugees
Congo, Republic of	IDPs, refugees
Côte d'Ivoire	Civil strife, IDPs
Guinea	IDPs, refugees, high food prices
Guinea-Bissau	After effects of floods, localized insecurity
Kenya	Drought in parts
Sudan	Civil strife, returnees
Uganda	Civil strife, IDPs
ASIA (7 countries)
Exceptional shortfall in aggregate food production/supplies
Iraq	Conflict and insecurity, IDPs
Widespread lack of access
Afghanistan	Conflict, IDPs and returnees, floods
Korea, Dem. People's Rep. of	Economic constraints
Nepal	Market access and effects of conflict and drought/floods
Severe localized food insecurity
Pakistan	After effects of the Kashmir earthquake, floods
Sri Lanka	After effects of the Tsunami, deepening conflicts and floods
Timor-Leste	IDPs and drought
LATIN AMERICA (1 country)
Severe localized food insecurity
Bolivia	After effects of adverse weather conditions (floods in lowlands; drought, hail and frost in highlands)

COUNTRIES WITH UNFAVOURABLE PROSPECTS FOR CURRENT CROPS ²

AFRICA
Morocco	Lack of rainfall
Somalia	Conflict, drought in parts

The fat picture

"WE KNOW the world is warming and we know humans are causing it, but the headaches really start when we try to predict how hot it will get. This is partly because of the many subtle environmental and lifestyle factors driving climate change.

One of these is the feedback that could amplify warming. Once the powerful greenhouse gas methane starts to be released from warming oceans or permafrost, it could rapidly ratchet up the global thermostat. The same goes for decreasing snow and ice cover. Because of this, researchers are keeping a close eye on the oceans, ice caps, forests and tundra for signs of such changes.

Now consider what may seem a more unlikely driver of climate change: the global obesity epidemic. We tend to think of obesity only as a public-health problem, but many of its causes overlap with those of global warming. Car dependence and labour-saving devices have cut the energy people expend as they go about their lives, at the same time increasing the amount of fossil fuel they burn. It's no coincidence that obesity is most prevalent in the US, where per capita carbon emissions exceed those of any other major nation, and it is becoming clear that obese people are having a direct impact on the climate. This is happening through their lifestyles and the amount and type of food they eat, and the worse the obesity epidemic gets the greater its impact on global warming.

"Obesity is most prevalent in the US, where per capita carbon emissions are the highest of any major nation"

One reason is the extra food that obese people eat - about 40 per cent more in terms of calories than their lean counterparts. Since food production accounts for over 20 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions - more than transport or industry - an obese population leaves a significantly heavier carbon footprint than a thin one. Fats and refined sugars, which tend to dominate the diets of obese people, are particularly carbon intensive. Greater food consumption means more organic waste, which produces methane as it decomposes.

The wide availability of food is a relatively modern phenomenon, born partly of the revolution in agriculture that kicked off in the 1940s. Before then, the amount of food that could be harvested from a piece of land was limited by the nutrients and water available naturally in the soil. Seemingly limitless supplies of oil changed everything. Over the second half of the 20th century, fertilisers, pesticides, irrigation and mechanisation - all dependent on fossil fuels - dramatically increased food yields. As the physicist Albert Bartlett observed: "Modern agriculture is the use of land to turn petroleum into food." Coupled with sedentary lifestyles, the increased availability of food has helped the number of obese adults worldwide to quadruple over the past 25 years.

Demand for food is not the only way in which obesity has dire consequences for the climate. Consider what happens to someone on the path to obesity. It might start when he (or she, of course) decides to drive rather than walk the half mile to the office, just to get there a few minutes earlier. A year on he might have gained a kilogram of fat, and as the weight continues to pile on he eventually finds it harder to move around and is loath to walk or cycle anywhere. Then the medical problems start: back pain, arthritis and shortness of breath, or worse. Obesity increases the risk of heart disease, stroke, diabetes, osteoarthritis, infertility, gallstones and several types of cancer.

By now he'll be suffering low self-esteem, which leads to comfort eating and perhaps heavier drinking too. He'll even notice a load on his household energy bills: his greater bulk and higher metabolic rate will cause him to feel the heat more in the globally warmed summers, and he will be the first to turn on the energy-intensive air conditioning.

The result is more food intake, more vehicle use and greater reliance on medical services, all of which use prodigious amounts of energy. And as the number of obese people increases, a kind of positive feedback kicks in. Obese people in the US are already throwing their political weight around. The American Obesity Association is dedicated to "changing public policy and perceptions about obesity". How long before there are calls for energy-guzzling escalators, moving sidewalks and motorised mobility aids? The social stigma attached to obesity is one of the few forces slowing the epidemic - even though obesity is not a personal failing but a problem of society. We live in an environment that serves primarily the financial interests of the corporations that sell food, cars and petroleum.

The Stern review on the economics of climate change, published by the British government in October 2006, warned of the dire ecological consequences of continuing a "business as usual" approach to greenhouse gas emissions. That applies equally to the obesity epidemic, which is spiralling out of control. Pandemic obesity is an energy vortex. It is time to treat it as the potential global environmental catastrophe that it is."

Ian Roberts is professor of public health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

From issue 2610 of New Scientist magazine, 27 June 2007, page 21

Pass the organic fair trade ciabatta, please

"So what do the rich do with their surplus money? They eat it, converting the process into a semi-mystical experience. A loaf of bread is no longer a loaf but, at double the price, a sourdough, ciabatta, sperlonga, chollah, wheat-free or chickpea. Food has contrived to cross a conceptual barrier from banality to intellectualism. When I asked at Whole Foods for my beloved fishfinger, I came close to being asked to leave.

The walls glared down at me with more moral maxims than in a Welsh chapel. "No transfats from hydrogenated oils," they cried. "Eggs from cage-free birds." The store even had a changing room, as if this were a total immersion Baptist church.

Foodism is no longer a sustenance but a subject, located somewhere between chemistry and theology. At its heart lies the new superfood, rich in phytonutrients and anti-oxidants (and mind-boggling in air miles). The ancient pomegranate upstages the humble cranberry. The lettuce vanishes before sprouting purple broccoli, its pristine petals dusted with powdered linseed. It competes with drizzled watercress ("Death to all free radicals"). Potatoes are sold with added earth."

To all foodies: PLEASE read this great article by Simon Jenkins, one of my favorite writers. And laugh at yourself as i did.

Think globally, eat locally

"It is time we faced up to the fact that developing our super-efficient food distribution system has resulted in the complete destruction of our local food infrastructure. Worse than that, the supertanker of centralised commodity distributed food supply is still going in the wrong direction, using the language - category management, food chains and supply chain rationalisation - of an industry which treats food no differently than paint, cars or computers.

So if, for whatever reason the current centralised oil-based food production and distribution systems were threatened by an external crisis, how could we strengthen our ability to feed ourselves and our families? Clearly there is no one simple answer but here are my suggestions:"

Read the rest in this good article on local food systems

Globalization in a bowl

"But today, after ten millennia of food globalisation, we are living at the end of food history—a time when everything is available everywhere. Spices that once commanded exorbitant prices—and prompted merchants to invent tall tales to obscure their origins—can now be found in the supermarket. Tomatoes and maize from the New World were unknown to the Romans but are now central to Italian cuisine. India is now the biggest producer of peanuts, a South American crop. China is the largest producer of wheat, a Middle Eastern crop, and of potatoes, originally from South America. Brazil dominates the production of coffee, originally from Ethiopia, and of sugar, originally from New Guinea. It is globalisation in a bowl."

Review of: A Movable Feast: Ten Millennia of Food Globalization By Kenneth F. Kiple
Cambridge University Press; 384 pages; $27 and £15.99

I need this book

Now you know what you eat

Kudos to Al Safir for an excellent food and nutrition page today, researched by Zaynab Ghosn and Milia AbuJawdeh. The articles include:

"Fatty poisons enter our food camouflaged in the absence of legislations" on the prevalence of trans-fatty acids in the junk the Lebanese love to eat.

"Levels of trans-fatty acids in Lebanon higher than what is internationally considered acceptable" a brief summary of AUB student Carole Saadeh entitled "Fatty acid composition, including trans fatty acids, of some local and regional bakery and snack products in the Lebanese market"

and

"Food industries raise sugar content of their products regardless of health impact"

In arabic

If interested, look up my previous post on food quality and safety of imported products and products locally sold

Sterilizing culture

"The EU wants to stop the sale of dairy products made without modern sterilisation, cooling and transportation equipment - an impossibility for poor men who eke out a living in a wild and beautiful place where running water means a mountain stream and electricity only flows in the lightning that crackles over their pastures.

'I've been doing this 43 years and it hasn't changed,' said Aurel Cotinghi in the pungent little cabin where he makes cheese, as his two sons continue milking outside. 'Now I suppose things will change, but no one has explained it properly to us. Sometime, someone will have to tell us what to do or they will just close us down.'

'If we lose the sheep from the mountains, we have lost the mountains: the whole ecosystem will be destroyed and the wild animals will come to villages looking for food,' said Gontea. For Cotinghi's 19-year-old son Bogdan there is little to recommend this tough existence. 'Perhaps I'll be a carpenter,' he said as his father prepared a lunch of bread, cheese and spring onions. 'There's no way I'm doing this for the rest of my life.'" (thanks Rania)

Everywhere around the world, urban people who have lost most of their natural immunity from living in an over-sterilized world are passing laws that control the sanitary quality of foods. There is outcry in all of Europe, where not only farmers, but also food culture appreciators are fighting these laws. While there should be basic food health regulations, these should be edicted and implemented after having developed a good understanding of traditional processes which have been at work for so long without causing any major catastrophy. The new regulations favor most large scale industrial operators at the expense of the small producers, and cause the dissolution of the geographic specificity of products which is replaced by brand homogeneity.

Without small producers, rural culture disappears.

Deserting China

"The shifting sands have swallowed thousands of Chinese villages along the fabled Silk Road and sparked a sharp increase in sandstorms; dust from China clouds the skies of South Korea and has been linked to respiratory problems in California.

Since 2001, China has spent nearly $9 billion planting billions of trees, converting marginal farmland to forest and grasslands and enforcing logging and grazing bans.

The policy is driven in part by concerns over food, as farmland yields not only to the deserts but also to pollution and economic development. China has less than 7 percent of the world's arable land with which to feed 1.3 billion people -- more than 20 percent of the world's population. By comparison, the United States has 20 percent of the world's arable land to feed 5 percent of the population."

China's biofuel: Pig Problem

"Disturbingly, this is the second time in seven months that the Chinese leadership has had to resort to the country's strategic reserves to stave off politically dangerous increases in food prices. In December, Beijing ordered the auctioning of some of the state wheat reserves to halt the rise in crops prices and prevent panic among the public.

Chinese economic minders, however, are not amused. Worried about social instability fueled by inflation, they have been mulling over whether to steady prices by using the state strategic reserveof hundreds of thousands of live pigs kept at special farms for contingencies.

Current hikes in both grain and pork prices are blamed on the same culprit - the ethanol industry, whose explosive growth has been gobbling up a growing share of China's corn (maize) harvest traditionally preserved for food and animal feed." (Thanks Rania)

More to Brazil than the carnival

"Agribusiness exports to the Arab countries generated US$ 1.75 billion between January and May this year, an increase of 37.3% when compared to the same period in 2006. Total sector sales, which reached US$ 21.7 billion, grew 26.8% in the period. The figures were supplied by the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Supply.

The main products shipped between January and May were chicken meat and cattle beef, with growth of 53% in the value of exports, sugar, with expansion of 20%, the soy complex, especially grain, up 5.7%, forestry products, mainly plywood and sawed wood, which grew 44.5%, and coffee, which rose 88.2%."

Promoting a healthy diet among the poor

"California no longer issues paper food stamps. Eligible recipients of food assistance in California are now issued a debit card called a "Golden State Advantage" card (known also as an "EBT card" or a "food stamp card"), and access their food benefits electronically by swiping their card when they buy food at the grocery store. California Farmers' Markets, and other outdoor food markets and produce stands, do not usually have the electricity and phone lines needed for all eligible food vendors to deal with electronic benefit transfers. Therefore, many such markets allow all eligible food vendors to sell eligible food products to EBT cardholders by setting up a Central Point of Sale (POS) Device to sell market scrip to customers, who can then shop in the market with the scrip. This system requires the market management to become authorized to accept EBT food benefits and to organize and promote the use of EBT cards at the market."

My friend Annie who sent me this link adds:

"Food stamps for low-income persons and families were issued as paper coupons in the past. In 2004, Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) replaced the traditional paper issues. It functions like a debit card/account for people to use. The Ecology Center, Berkeley coordinated efforts with several state, county, public, and community organizations to enabled certified organic farmers' markets to accept the EBT cards ( the California Farmers' Market Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) Implementation and Promotion Project) Basically, allowing recipients of food stamp benefits to have access to local organic markets. Which is a great way of promoting healthy diets among the poor, as well as sustainable living."

Facilitating access of the poor to healthy, nutritious food is often neglected. During the Israeli war on lebanon of July-August 2006, relief agencies were distributing tons of dry food to the refugees from the South and the Southern suburbs. The aim was to cover the need in calories without addressing nutrition needs. Healthy Basket, a company working in the marketing of organic produce started distributing fresh fruits and vegetables. The success was immediate, as people were starved for fresh produce.

In the current Nahr el Bared crisis, the Nahr el Bared relief Campaign started by purchasing and distributing dry food (powdered milk, tinned food). As other, more established relief outfits started moving in, the NBRC started distributing vouchers for the value of LBP5,000 ($3.3), which can be exchanged for fresh fruits and vegetables in some of the shops of the refugee camps. This is proving to be very popular and very successful, as people do not have access to cash and cannot spend on essential fresh produce.

Biofuel or Food? A difficult choice

"Jean Ziegler, UN special rapporteur on the right to food, accused the European Union (EU), Japan and the United States of "total hypocrisy" for promoting biofuels to cut their own dependency on imported oil.

Fears over climate change have boosted the demand for alternative fuels in wealthy countries, but the rise of biofuel has been criticised by some who say it will put a squeeze on land needed for food."

"US food consumer prices, as measured by the government's Consumer Price Index, have risen from a year-over-year rate of 2.5 percent in September 2006 to 3.7 percent this past April.

The RFA-funded study found a US$1.00 increase in the price of gasoline will result in a 0.6 percent to 0.9 percent increase in consumer food prices compared a 0.3 percent jump resulting from a US$1.00 per bushel rise in the price of corn.

"One of the reasons why energy prices have a much larger impact on retail food prices than does the price of corn...is they affect the entire food system" ranging from production and transportation, said John Urbanchuk, author of the study and director of LECG, a financial consulting firm."

(Thanks Rania)

Two articles on the risks of engaging into biofuel production and the potential impact on food, poverty and migration. To really read this in context, look for previous posts about the decrease in food reserves and the increase in world food prices (Got Milk?, Cherchez le biofuel)

Sizzling summer

"He goes to an interesting part of the world, meets interesting people and eats interesting food.
The trouble was, he turned up in Lebanon in July 2006, and things got a little too interesting."