revisiting local

"Incorporating these measurements into their assessments, scientists reached surprising conclusions. Most notably, they found that lamb raised on New Zealand’s clover-choked pastures and shipped 11,000 miles by boat to Britain produced 1,520 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions per ton while British lamb produced 6,280 pounds of carbon dioxide per ton, in part because poorer British pastures force farmers to use feed. In other words, it is four times more energy-efficient for Londoners to buy lamb imported from the other side of the world than to buy it from a producer in their backyard. Similar figures were found for dairy products and fruit." (thanks anna)

or how local eating does not hold all the solutions...to the global warming crisis, so, the author says, lets unearth the good old "comparative advantage" concept. Sure, I say, but remove farming subsidies from the north first.

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)

Coops in trouble

I'm blogging in full this article from the Daily Star on the difficulties facing cooperatives in Lebanon. these coops were started by development projects, then abandonned as the project ended (project lifetime...the usual initiative killer). So the best thing is to create...a new development project to deal with the marketing. I dont exactly see how they intend to market, but I can give them a few pointers:

1. Dont go to supermarkets, establish your alternative system. Go to souk el Tayyeb, it is a great venue to kickstart the chain.
2. Get yourself a quality label: ISO, HACCP, Organic, anthing that can give confidence to the customer.
3. sometimes you just have the wrong product, even if it sounds romantic and exotic, it is not consumed by the customers you are trying to address, and it is available to those who want it. Example: kishk, there is plenty of it accessible to the people who eat kishk, but there is none available to those who dont want it, so dont try filling that gap. There are tons of cheaper jams on the markets, locall or imported, and with a brand confidence level that is much higher.
4. seek to understand ALL the components of the economic supply chain (filiere) and indentify the most limiting factor, and work on it. it may not be marketing, although marketing may be A limiting factor. Sometimes it is the relationship between the people, sometimes the availability of raw materials, sometimes the access to resources.



"With imported food stuffs crowding the shelves of Lebanon's large supermarket chains, and Western fast-food franchises proliferating in the capital, it has become increasingly difficult for local agricultural cooperatives to access more lucrative city markets.

Market access has been even more difficult for the dozens of female-led rural cooperatives set up under the Agriculture Ministry's 1999 initiative. The collective farming units producing traditional staples ranging from kishik to pumpkin preserves got off to a running start initially, but few have managed to become self-sustaining, let alone profitable, since the sellers remain isolated from potential buyers.

The Women Economic Empowerment Project (WEEP) partnered with the Canadian International Development Agency and Oxfam Quebec in 2006 to launch a marketing branch in Beirut to sell the cooperative's products to consumers and supermarket buyers in the capital.
The WEEP's Marketing Unit identified rural women's cooperatives in 14 different villages in the Bekaa region for the first phase of its project, helping them find sustainable markets for their products and transport goods to Beirut to develop a viable customer base. The goal is for the businesses and the villages to prosper, explained WEEP projects coordinator, Natalie Chemally.
"They say they don't have contact points to sell products in Beirut and that if they do have a contact point, how can they reach it?" Chemally said last week at the opening of the Marketing Unit's headquarters on the first floor of the Mansourati building in Mathaf.

The WEEP exhibited products from rural women's cooperatives at local and regional trade shows in 2006, and moved on to the second phase of the marketing strategy with the opening of a permanent distribution point in the capital.

Retailers and consumers alike will now be able to purchase kishik balls stuffed with red peppers, organic fruit jam, pastries filled with yogurt and herbs, and a host of other traditional food stuffs whose recipes have been passed down through generations in rural Lebanon.
If the Marketing Unit succeeds in selling Bekaa products to an increasingly discerning urban customer-base, the WEEP will take on 22 new cooperatives from North and South Lebanon.

Unlike other agri-food ventures financed by international donors, the WEEP marketing unit is geared towards the local market first and foremost, with exports a distant possibility.
Chemally acknowledged that co-op goods have a long way to go before they can compete with established organic, local brands like Green Valley that dominate the shelves of Lebanese supermarkets. But they are not looking to capture a huge share of the local market just yet, she said.

"We know we are not going to be a Wadih-Al-Khader [Green Valley]" Chemally admitted. "We are just trying to mobilize the co-ops to compete in a decent fair-trade market."
Meanwhile WEEP will continue offering technical assistance to women in rural Lebanon so they can participate in the labor force.

"Individual women or local women's associations decide they want to do something on their own, so WEEP helps them define and structure their own goals," Chemally said.
The organization provides start-up capital to women with viable business plans, and then gradually teaches them the skills to become independent, assisting with funding proposals for potential donors.

Recently WEEP organized a hairdressing-training session for 16 girls in Mashat Hammoud, a village in the Akkar region. Half of the participants are now operating their own hair salons now, Chemally offered of a typical WEEP project.

The goal is always to "build their capacities to become more economically autonomous and form and maintain their own grassroots organizations."

The Marketing Unit headquarters are located on the first floor of the Masourati Building, above the Misubishi/Kassab Auto Shop in the Mathaf area of Beirut. More information on WEEP, CRTDA and the Marketing Unit can be obtained via email at elawen@crtda.org or by phone at 01-391196."

The problem with farmers' markets

I'm blogging in full this excellent Guardian article by felicity lawrence. The Beirut market, Souk el Tayyeb, of which am a founder, vendor and user, has almost exactly the same type of issues.

"There are some things that really bug me about farmers' markets.

(And ok let's get it out of the way at the beginning. I am a dedicated fan on the whole. I joined the campaign to open one in my area so I could buy fresh British food more easily. I cycle over and shop at it each week. I even rang the bell to open it when it was set up.)
But I want them to survive and prosper. I want to use them to do my essential food shopping not just for entertainment. I want my market to serve the whole community, so, these are the questions I'd like answered:

Why are all the broad beans and bits of rhubarb sold in prettily-bundled random bunches that look lovely enough for a Country Living magazine photo shoot but are impossible to compare for weight and price per kilo between producers?
Why is the fantastic bread I buy there more expensive than exactly the same bread sold by the same people at their local shop? Do they think we are all suckers or are their overheads for turning up to market really larger than those for running a shop premises?
Why does the industrial farmer, who got so fed up with being squeezed into the ground by the major retailers that he decided to deal with his public direct again, need to charge the punters more rather than less now he has cut out the rapacious middlemen?
Why do all the stallholders dish out plastic bags?
Why are there so many people in boat shoes pushing their children in off-road 4x4 buggies?
Why can't I buy my bananas there?
In fact, why can't we be more like the French?
One answer of course is that the French have retained their local and wholesale distribution networks where ours have been destroyed by the supermarkets, forcing the new farmer's markets to artificially recreate them. At a French market, the majority of food would be local but I would be able to buy other things too. I live in a metropolis, after all. Whoever said we couldn't have trade?
Yes I know, imposing a defined "local" area from which the produce at farmers' markets may come is one way they try to restore integrity to our much corrupted food. Yes, I know sometimes good food costs more than factory pap. But if they are really going to contribute to changing the whole system rather than just being fashionable playgrounds, farmers' markets need to get real. "

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

The big picture

"Until recently it was assumed that organic farming was inherently sustainable. A recent report by the UK's Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs questions that, presenting evidence that there is little difference in energy use between "conventional" and organic agriculture.

Organic farming may use less energy in the form of factory-produced fertilisers and pesticides, but it still relies heavily on oil. Making organic agriculture less oil-dependent would require huge labour inputs and a return to 19th-century farming methods, which would not produce enough food for today's population.

Real change requires a complete reappraisal of the way food is produced and distributed. Supermarkets' centralised buying and distribution networks forestall any chance of a real move away from factory farming in the short term. Local initiatives like farmers' markets are making some impact, but they tend to be small-scale and intermittent.

One way to a more sustainable food economy would be to produce food on land that is closer to towns and cities. There has recently been a debate about using spaces in cities like Milton Keynes for growing food. This would drastically reduce the "food miles", yet without a local distribution and marketing system it would surely fail. Elsewhere roof gardens are used to produce fresh food very close to the point of consumption, such as the hydroponic food garden on Singapore's 800-bed Changi General Hospital."

This is Lebanon's asset: local food is really local. Most of the vegetables we consume everyday originate from a radius no larger than 5o km. However, in terms of monetary value, this is the smallest fraction. The bulk of our food bill goes on imported manufactured items, usually from the US, germany and france, but now increasingly from China. It is also known under the name "junk". The same applies to most countries. For local food systems to work, we must operate a major change in our food consumption habits.

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