I don’t like talking about poop. In fact, there was a whole decade of my life during which I staunchly insisted that I do not poop. Because it’s gross. And smelly. And, really, no one needs to know what I do in my bathroom. Unfortunately, my desire to avoid the poopy talk had a severe unintended consequence. Over the course of about five years, I became so sick that I didn’t want to leave the house. And almost no one knew.
Now, before I get started, I will warn you that I am holding nothing back. Should you continue reading, you are going to learn a LOT about me and poop and other gross things. Trust me when I say that I am a whole lot more embarrassed to write this than you will be to read it. Also, you should read it, because finally opening up about my problems is what gave me the courage and fortitude to fix them, and it just might help you too. Okay, warning issued. Here we go.
Too Much Information.
It started back in 2004. I had been out of college for a little over a year. In that time, I had traveled to Europe, got a great job, and was finally enjoying life after a very difficult time dealing with the loss of my mother and trying to get through school with a ton of very adult problems on my rather petite shoulders. I was putting my life together, and it felt really good. Until that night…
I woke up in a panic with just about the worst pain in my abdomen that I had ever felt. Just for reference, I had migraines throughout my life, and I’d been hospitalized and prescribed codeine for my insanely terrible menstrual cramps, so I know a thing or two about pain. But this…
It was so bad that I couldn’t help but cry. I crawled to the bathroom because it hurt so much that I really thought I was going to throw up. I laid on the cold floor, shaking and crying, trying to figure out how I could wake my roommate down the hall so I could go to the hospital. After what felt like hours, but was probably only 10 minutes or so, I suddenly knew that I wasn’t going to throw up. Rather, I had better get my tush onto that toilet or things were about to get very messy. I won’t go into detail here (did I mention I don’t like to talk about poop), but believe me, some very nasty stuff came out of me. Afterward, the pain began to subside, and eventually, I was even able to crawl back into bed and get some much-needed rest.
What the heck happened to me? Food poisoning was my best guess. An isolated incident that need not ever repeat itself. I mentioned my cramps to my roommate, but that was where things ended. Or, at least, I hoped that’s where they would end.
Later that year, my new boyfriend (now husband) brought me home for the holidays to meet his family. His dad and step-mom lived in a quaint little house that had only one bathroom, which was attached to their bedroom. The first night we stayed there, the Pain struck again. I was afraid to go into the bathroom because I didn’t want to wake my boyfriend’s parents with my whimpering, or worse, the mortifying sounds of my impeding gnarly bowel movement. So instead, I laid on the floor in the living room, shaking and crying, sweating and shivering. It took longer to pass this time, maybe because of the lack of bathroom, but it did eventually go away. Once again, I went back to bed with no one the wiser.
Although I didn’t have another bout of cramps for a long time after that, I noticed, through the ensuing years of graduate school, that I was having more and more GI problems. The changes were slow, though, so it was easy to discount them or ascribe them to some minor issue. Looking back now, it’s amazing to me how many warning signs and symptoms I was able to rationalize away.
For years, going all the way back to my college days, I had heart burn every morning. I thought it was just hunger. I also started having more and more gas. It seemed like I was bloated all the time. I told myself that I probably just had acid reflux disease and perhaps some of my troubles with dairy as an infant were returning. And, as migraines and lightheadedness became more frequent, I tried to drink more water and lighten my backpack. My husband began complaining that I had bad breath. I was mortified and would cry any time he mentioned it. I tried brushing my teeth more often, using more mouthwash, chewing gum incessantly, and even taking breath pills. Unfortunately, nothing worked because, as my husband told me, it wasn’t coming from my mouth but from somewhere inside of me. I felt ugly and repulsive and totally helpless.
By the time I was half way through grad school, I would go for about three days without a bowel movement, feeling cramped and bloated and sluggish. I would go sit on the toilet and literally pray for something to come out and give me some relief. On day four or so, all of a sudden, everything that had been building up inside of me would come out, all at once, in the most noisy and embarrassing way possible. I hated those days. I worked over an hour away from home, so all of this was happening at work, in the same bathroom used by my professors, colleagues, and even students. When these urges started, I was often in class or otherwise unable to run to the bathroom. Waiting induced the baby version of the cramps I had felt on the cold bathroom floor all those years before. Despite this obvious indication that something was very wrong with me, I actually tried to convince myself that this was normal. Don’t people always say you ought to be “regular”? Well, my three days off, one day on, BM schedule was pretty regular!
Eventually, I decided to ask my doctor about my digestive issues. It did not go well. I was so embarrassed by the things I was going to have to talk about, and overwhelmed by the anxiety my illness was causing me, that I was in tears before she even walked into the room. I tried to explain my “cycle” and the weird things that were coming out of me. You see, most people would describe their poo as a log or snake or tube, but mine (when I had any at all) looked like a pile of deer droppings. And, it was orange. The doctor took one look at me, emotionally distraught and freaking out, and gave me a referral to speak with a counselor. In her eyes, my distress over talking about poop was more concerning than my actual poopy problems. Eventually, she also offered to run some tests on a “sample” to make sure I didn’t have a parasite or infection.
I went home and, after several days of trying, was finally able to collect my sample. I remember being totally embarrassed about it because you could actually see the bits of tomato and little avocado strings from the guacamole I had eaten a couple of days beforehand. It turns out that I didn’t have a parasite or an infection. My test results came out totally normal. Forgetting, of course, the fact that you could SEE my FOOD in my poo! You know, the stuff your body is supposed to DIGEST. But since they didn’t comment on it, I again assumed that this was okay. Perhaps I was just blowing things out of proportion.
It was at about this time that a good friend of mine began having worsening symptoms from some mysterious illness that had plagued her for years. She started opening up to me about some of her more embarrassing symptoms, and that’s when things finally started to change. We compared notes and shared what information we’d been able to find online. Hearing her describe her GI problems, I realized just how crazy and wrong all of it sounded. I started to believe that I was also sick and deserved to get better.
Luckily for my friend, she was able to figure out that she has Celiac disease, an autoimmune disorder that causes your body to attack a protein called gluten that is found in wheat, barley, and rye. Unfortunately, the body attacks itself along with the gluten. This can lead to a myriad of problems, GI and otherwise. When my friend cut out gluten, she had an almost miraculous recovery. It took all of four days, and her life was totally changed. Decades of symptoms disappeared, and she was like a new person – vibrant, healthy, and happy. Watching her journey made me eager to find my cure as well.
I went to a second doctor, this time with more confidence. I described all my symptoms and even suggested taking a Celiac test. The doctor responded with the verbal equivalent of a pat on the head. He told me I had a condition called IBS – Irritable Bowel Syndrome. He said I should try eating more fiber but not to expect things to change. This was just a condition I had to learn to live with.
My friend had also been diagnosed with IBS before finding out she had Celiac, so I didn’t put much stock in that as a “diagnosis”. I went home, feeling alone and unsure how to proceed. But my body was quick to remind me that this was NOT all in my head. I went to the bathroom one day, and after doing my business, I looked down into a bowl full of blood. That was the last straw.
It's not IBS.
I decided it was time to leave the medical establishment behind and find my own path back to health. I started on a strict elimination diet. First, I tried getting rid of gluten. I quickly felt better, but I still had GI problems now and then. In fact, while attending a conference, I had a week-long bout of diarrhea, with painful cramps, and a whole lot of embarrassment. But clearing my body of gluten made it easier to pinpoint the other foods that were giving me problems. I quickly identified dairy as the main culprit. Once I eliminated any and all dairy, all my symptoms went away. All the GI distress, bad breath, cramps, bloating, gas, irregularity, and even that damn heartburn! When I found out there were dairy derivatives in my allergy medicine, I switched to a different brand, and my dizzy spells disappeared too. I found I could even tolerate some gluten in my diet as long as there was no dairy.
Eliminating dairy and most gluten meant changing my whole approach to food. I could no longer eat at restaurants with ease or buy processed packaged foods. In a way, though, this was a blessing in disguise. Changing my diet to include more fresh produce, whole unprocessed foods, and almost exclusively meals I cooked myself, flooded my body with the nutrient-dense foods we all need to be truly healthy. The migraines I’d suffered through since elementary school went away, probably because my new diet helped me get more vitamin D. Over the ensuing months and years, my condition continued to improve. And, as my body returned to normal, I finally remembered what normal actually felt like.
It saddens me to think about how long I suffered in silence. It frustrates me that, when I finally did speak up, I was told to seek counseling and that my body was simply defective – nothing could be done. That wasn’t true. There was something I could do, and it gave me my life back. The one thing I was not able to understand was how I ended up so sensitive to dairy. I had trouble with milk as a baby, but that seemed to pass with time. All the way through high school and college, I had enjoyed pizza and cheese and all other manner of dairy. What changed? And could it ever change back?
These were the questions taking up space in the back of my mind when I attended the Ancestral Health Symposium last August. There, I met so many people with similar stories – long illnesses caused by food intolerance, usually misdiagnosed by doctors. That is also where I met Tim, who finally had some answers for me about why I got sick, and what I could do to not only manage my symptoms by avoiding certain foods, but to actual heal my body.
(The rest of the story will appear in Part Two.)
Sunday, April 1, 2012
Sunday, March 4, 2012
Investing in our food future (Part Two)
The Slow Money Alliance is an organization that promotes investment in local economies and a longer-term outlook on investment and growth. Investment should not only generate financial profit for the individual but societal profit as well. The overarching principles of Slow Money are as follows.
In furtherance of their cause, the Slow Money Alliance has compiled a list of funds and organizations that it supports due to their impact and approach. There are a dozen such listings on their Invest page, which are available to individual (non-accredited) investors.
These investments are quite different from the ones I described in my last post in that they are not really appropriate for retirement savings and other savings plans with tax benefits. Some of the funds can be used in a self-directed IRA, which is a type of retirement account with tax benefits. In this type of IRA, there is a middle-man who runs your investment account and, generally, charges a fee. If you already have a self-directed IRA, then adding one of these funds might work for you.
My initial research suggests that, based on my level of investment and expected return, the fees for a self-directed IRA are likely to exceed my profits from investing. For me, then, the investments I’ll describe throughout the rest of this post are more like savings accounts or CDs, with the important distinction that they do carry risk of loss. The upside, of course, is that my money is empowering small farmers, supporting sustainable agriculture, and helping to develop and strengthen communities rather than contributing to the bank’s bottom line.
Show me the money.
I read through the websites of all of the funds and organizations on the Slow Money Alliance’s list of “Funds for everyone”. Most of these investments work the same way. An investor essentially loans money to the fund for an agreed upon period of time. The fund then uses the money, along with other means of funding such as grants and donations, to loan money to people or companies that align with the fund’s principles. These loans are made at a higher rate than the investor receives, but a lower rate (or with more favorable terms) than borrowers are able to receive through banks or other conventional means. The interest paid by borrowers supplies investors with interest and helps run the fund.
This is basically the same strategy employed by banks. However, banks are federally insured. If too many borrowers default on their loans, and the bank can no longer repay investors (i.e. people with bank accounts), the government supplies the money. That makes a bank account, CD, or any other FDIC-insured holding, essentially zero risk. The following funds are not insured and do carry risk of loss.
RSF Social Finance supports people and companies that align with their principles in the areas of food and agriculture, ecologic stewardship, and education and the arts. Their Social Investment fund requires a minimum investment of $1,000 and has an investment term of 90 days, the lowest of any of the funds I read about. The interest rate changes quarterly; the rate averaged 1% in 2010 but 2.45% over the past 5 years. Investments in RSF Social Financial can be used as part of a self-directed IRA.
The Reinvestment Fund (TRF) supports community-development loans, food access, and sustainable energy through their loan program. TRF requires a commitment of 3 years to 30 years but offers a high rate of return. Currently, the annual interest rate on the minimum investment of $1,000 for 3 years is 2.25%. The highest rate, for investments greater than $15,000 for at least 15 years, is 4.5%. From what I have found, these rates greatly exceed those offered by banks, even internet banks, for the same time and capital terms.
Equity Trust, Inc. makes loans to CSA and co-op farms, land trusts, and non-profit organizations that protect land access for communities and/or promote affordable housing. Equity Trust has a $1,000/1-year minimum. Investors specify the interest rate they would like to receive up to the maximum rate set by the fund. I couldn’t find the actual value, but they say the rate is similar to a money market account. One unique option with Equity Trust is that you can make requests as to the type of borrowers you would like your money to fund.
The Equal Exchange CD offers a 0.40% APY for a minimum 1-year investment of at least $500. The Equal Exchange program promotes fair global trade for products such as coffee and chocolate.
The Carrot Project and the New Spirit Farmland Partnership focus on food, but I wasn’t able to get detailed information on investment terms through their websites. If you are seriously considering investing in our food future, you may want to contact these organizations for more information. I emailed the folks at The Carrot Project and will update this post if/when I hear back. The New Spirit Farmland Partnership posts information about specific people and projects in need of support rather than a general loan fund, so again, you have to contact them to get involved.
The Cooperative Fund of New England and the Montana CDC offer community development loans for specific regions, without a particular emphasis on food or environmental sustainability. However, if you live in one of these regions, you may want to check them out. The other investments listed on the Slow Money site either did not contain any information on investing (only donating), do not allow individual investors, or did not offer a return on the investment. If you are interested in making a donation, definitely check out these well-deserving groups!
Risky business.
As I’ve mentioned already, there is risk involved with all of these investments. RSF Social Financial reported its loan loss rate as 1.4% over the past 27 years. I’m not an expert in these things, but I think that means 1.4% of the money the fund loans out never gets repaid. Because the fund amortizes loss over all investors and maintains a buffer of money from donations and other sources, this loss isn’t necessarily passed on to investors. I couldn’t find the loan loss rate for The Reinvestment Fund, but their prospectus states that they could cover losses up to 6.5%. Because TRF invests in a lot of real estate as part of its community development interests, they report that the fund has seen an increase in defaults and late payments through the economic downturn. It’s hard to say if this investment is higher risk than any of the others, but it’s definitely something to consider carefully before investing.
Will work for food.
Based on everything I read, I am really excited to invest in some of these groups. Although there is risk, I think it is easily balanced by diversification. I can keep some money in the bank, earning low interest with no risk, and some money in these investments, which earn as much or more in interest, carry some risk, and help develop the food future I would like to see.
Edit: The folks at The Carrot Project got back to me today. They have a minimum investment of $25,000 for a 5 year term, and they offer interest rates of up to 2%. However, The Carrot Project is not currently seeking investors. That's fine for me because this is definitely out of my range.
Disclaimer: These are my opinions based on my own research. I am not a trained financial planner; I cannot tell you what you should do with your money. I do hope you will find this information valuable, but you should carefully consider your own situation before deciding to invest.
In order to enhance food security, food safety and food access; improve nutrition and health; promote cultural, ecological and economic diversity; and accelerate the transition from an economy based on extraction and consumption to an economy based on preservation and restoration, we do hereby affirm the following Slow Money Principles:
I. We must bring money back down to earth.
II. There is such a thing as money that is too fast, companies that are too big, finance that is too complex. Therefore, we must slow our money down -- not all of it, of course, but enough to matter.
III. The 20th Century was the era of Buy Low/Sell High and Wealth Now/Philanthropy Later—what one venture capitalist called “the largest legal accumulation of wealth in history.” The 21st Century will be the era of nurture capital, built around principles of carrying capacity, care of the commons, sense of place and non-violence.
IV. We must learn to invest as if food, farms and fertility mattered. We must connect investors to the places where they live, creating vital relationships and new sources of capital for small food enterprises.
V. Let us celebrate the new generation of entrepreneurs, consumers and investors who are showing the way from Making A Killing to Making a Living.
VI. Paul Newman said, "I just happen to think that in life we need to be a little like the farmer who puts back into the soil what he takes out." Recognizing the wisdom of these words, let us begin rebuilding our economy from the ground up, asking:
* What would the world be like if we invested 50% of our assets within 50 miles of where we live?
* What if there were a new generation of companies that gave away 50% of their profits?
* What if there were 50% more organic matter in our soil 50 years from now?
In furtherance of their cause, the Slow Money Alliance has compiled a list of funds and organizations that it supports due to their impact and approach. There are a dozen such listings on their Invest page, which are available to individual (non-accredited) investors.
These investments are quite different from the ones I described in my last post in that they are not really appropriate for retirement savings and other savings plans with tax benefits. Some of the funds can be used in a self-directed IRA, which is a type of retirement account with tax benefits. In this type of IRA, there is a middle-man who runs your investment account and, generally, charges a fee. If you already have a self-directed IRA, then adding one of these funds might work for you.
My initial research suggests that, based on my level of investment and expected return, the fees for a self-directed IRA are likely to exceed my profits from investing. For me, then, the investments I’ll describe throughout the rest of this post are more like savings accounts or CDs, with the important distinction that they do carry risk of loss. The upside, of course, is that my money is empowering small farmers, supporting sustainable agriculture, and helping to develop and strengthen communities rather than contributing to the bank’s bottom line.
Show me the money.
I read through the websites of all of the funds and organizations on the Slow Money Alliance’s list of “Funds for everyone”. Most of these investments work the same way. An investor essentially loans money to the fund for an agreed upon period of time. The fund then uses the money, along with other means of funding such as grants and donations, to loan money to people or companies that align with the fund’s principles. These loans are made at a higher rate than the investor receives, but a lower rate (or with more favorable terms) than borrowers are able to receive through banks or other conventional means. The interest paid by borrowers supplies investors with interest and helps run the fund.
This is basically the same strategy employed by banks. However, banks are federally insured. If too many borrowers default on their loans, and the bank can no longer repay investors (i.e. people with bank accounts), the government supplies the money. That makes a bank account, CD, or any other FDIC-insured holding, essentially zero risk. The following funds are not insured and do carry risk of loss.
RSF Social Finance supports people and companies that align with their principles in the areas of food and agriculture, ecologic stewardship, and education and the arts. Their Social Investment fund requires a minimum investment of $1,000 and has an investment term of 90 days, the lowest of any of the funds I read about. The interest rate changes quarterly; the rate averaged 1% in 2010 but 2.45% over the past 5 years. Investments in RSF Social Financial can be used as part of a self-directed IRA.
The Reinvestment Fund (TRF) supports community-development loans, food access, and sustainable energy through their loan program. TRF requires a commitment of 3 years to 30 years but offers a high rate of return. Currently, the annual interest rate on the minimum investment of $1,000 for 3 years is 2.25%. The highest rate, for investments greater than $15,000 for at least 15 years, is 4.5%. From what I have found, these rates greatly exceed those offered by banks, even internet banks, for the same time and capital terms.
Equity Trust, Inc. makes loans to CSA and co-op farms, land trusts, and non-profit organizations that protect land access for communities and/or promote affordable housing. Equity Trust has a $1,000/1-year minimum. Investors specify the interest rate they would like to receive up to the maximum rate set by the fund. I couldn’t find the actual value, but they say the rate is similar to a money market account. One unique option with Equity Trust is that you can make requests as to the type of borrowers you would like your money to fund.
The Equal Exchange CD offers a 0.40% APY for a minimum 1-year investment of at least $500. The Equal Exchange program promotes fair global trade for products such as coffee and chocolate.
The Carrot Project and the New Spirit Farmland Partnership focus on food, but I wasn’t able to get detailed information on investment terms through their websites. If you are seriously considering investing in our food future, you may want to contact these organizations for more information. I emailed the folks at The Carrot Project and will update this post if/when I hear back. The New Spirit Farmland Partnership posts information about specific people and projects in need of support rather than a general loan fund, so again, you have to contact them to get involved.
The Cooperative Fund of New England and the Montana CDC offer community development loans for specific regions, without a particular emphasis on food or environmental sustainability. However, if you live in one of these regions, you may want to check them out. The other investments listed on the Slow Money site either did not contain any information on investing (only donating), do not allow individual investors, or did not offer a return on the investment. If you are interested in making a donation, definitely check out these well-deserving groups!
Risky business.
As I’ve mentioned already, there is risk involved with all of these investments. RSF Social Financial reported its loan loss rate as 1.4% over the past 27 years. I’m not an expert in these things, but I think that means 1.4% of the money the fund loans out never gets repaid. Because the fund amortizes loss over all investors and maintains a buffer of money from donations and other sources, this loss isn’t necessarily passed on to investors. I couldn’t find the loan loss rate for The Reinvestment Fund, but their prospectus states that they could cover losses up to 6.5%. Because TRF invests in a lot of real estate as part of its community development interests, they report that the fund has seen an increase in defaults and late payments through the economic downturn. It’s hard to say if this investment is higher risk than any of the others, but it’s definitely something to consider carefully before investing.
Will work for food.
Based on everything I read, I am really excited to invest in some of these groups. Although there is risk, I think it is easily balanced by diversification. I can keep some money in the bank, earning low interest with no risk, and some money in these investments, which earn as much or more in interest, carry some risk, and help develop the food future I would like to see.
Edit: The folks at The Carrot Project got back to me today. They have a minimum investment of $25,000 for a 5 year term, and they offer interest rates of up to 2%. However, The Carrot Project is not currently seeking investors. That's fine for me because this is definitely out of my range.
Disclaimer: These are my opinions based on my own research. I am not a trained financial planner; I cannot tell you what you should do with your money. I do hope you will find this information valuable, but you should carefully consider your own situation before deciding to invest.
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Investing in our food future (Part One)
Now that I finally have a “real job”, and my husband and I are expecting our first child, I have begun to think more about long-term investing and retirement income. Money is a tricky thing though. I know I will need to grow my savings now if I ever want to retire or have a safety net for later in life. But how can I grow my savings in a way that aligns with my morals?
Retirement accounts, such as IRAs and 401Ks, allow you to invest money for the long-term with certain tax benefits. Contributions to these accounts can even been matched by your employer. As the owner of a retirement account, you can choose from a number of investment vehicles like stocks, bonds, and mutual funds. For those of us with limited time to research companies and track the stock market, mutual funds seem like an easy choice. An investment firm tracks, buys, and sells interests in many different companies while you simply invest in the single mutual fund. The downside of a mutual fund, from my perspective, is that it’s less transparent than purchasing individual stocks.
As a graduate student, the university opened a retirement account for me and invested my money in a mutual fund. I have no idea what companies that fund includes. I’m sure I could do some research and find out, but that somewhat diminishes the convenience of having a mutual fund to begin with. And what if there is one company, out of all of the companies they have invested in, that I would not want to support? Do I go through the holdings of every mutual fund available to find one without any offending holdings? What if the holdings change with time?
What I really want is a mutual fund that I know reflects my values so I don’t have to spend a lot of extra time checking up on the fund. Apparently, there are a lot of people seeking the same thing because socially responsible investments (SRI) are becoming more prevalent these days. These are funds that make investment choices based on a set of principles adopted by the fund. Some funds focus on fair business practices. Others will simply reject sectors they consider bad for society such as alcohol, tobacco, and gambling.
Unfortunately, I have yet to find a food sustainability mutual fund, which would exclude companies that genetically modify foods, develop chemical fertilizers and pesticides, or manufacture sugary drinks and snacks. However, there are some SRIs that come close and many more that consider other factors such as worker compensation and environmental sustainability. So there may be a convenient mutual fund that at least gets me closer to a clear conscience. There are also ways of investing in sustainable food systems directly (more on this in Part Two), but there are additional constraints on using these investment vehicles for retirement savings.
Mutually beneficial funds.
The website, Social Funds, maintains a database of socially responsible mutual funds, which you can search based on different social issues (go to the Mutual Funds tab, select Mutual Fund Center from the drop-down menu; then select Social Issues from the SRI Fund Charts drop-down menu). There isn’t an option for sustainable agriculture, but there are options for environment, animal rights, community investment, and human rights. There’s no way I could do an in-depth analysis of every fund on this list, so I picked out a handful to see what’s available.
I found Parnassus Funds, Portfolio 21, and Calvert a bit too vague about their qualifications for investment, but they do consider more than just financial gains. Sentinel Investments and Domini Social Investments did provide detailed information on how they assess companies, but neither made specific statements about agriculture. Looking through their holdings, I didn’t find any GM seed companies or pesticide manufacturers. However, the funds do invest in companies that produce unhealthy foods and beverages like Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and Kraft Foods. Coca-Cola, in particular, has also come under fire for their water usage practices.
Green Century Funds were the only ones I found that made specific statements about the food and farming sectors. According to their website, the fund looks for companies involved in organic and natural foods, water solutions, alternative energy, sustainable development, and the like. They avoid companies involved in factory farming, genetically-modified organisms, and agricultural pesticides. However, McDonald’s and PepsiCo are both in the top 10 holdings of Green Century’s Equity Fund. Technically, these companies do not engage in bad agricultural practices, but they do benefit from the low cost of factory-farmed beef and chicken, corn-based sweeteners, and other products of industrial agriculture. The Green Century Balanced Fund, on the other hand, does not have any food or beverage companies in its top 10.
Based solely on my concerns about ethical food, I would probably opt for a Green Century Fund because they make the most specific statements about food and farming. However, none of the funds I looked into were without faults. And none of them made me feel like my money would be building a more sustainable food future.
The plethora of socially-responsible mutual funds makes me hopeful that I will be able to invest with my morals in mind. It may take some more investigation to find exactly what I want, or I may simply have to become a vocal investor. Depending on your priorities, you may be able to find a fund that allows you to invest in the future you envision. And it just might help you make some money too.
In Part Two, I will discuss additional investment options in the sustainable farming sector that may not be right for retirement savings.
Retirement accounts, such as IRAs and 401Ks, allow you to invest money for the long-term with certain tax benefits. Contributions to these accounts can even been matched by your employer. As the owner of a retirement account, you can choose from a number of investment vehicles like stocks, bonds, and mutual funds. For those of us with limited time to research companies and track the stock market, mutual funds seem like an easy choice. An investment firm tracks, buys, and sells interests in many different companies while you simply invest in the single mutual fund. The downside of a mutual fund, from my perspective, is that it’s less transparent than purchasing individual stocks.
As a graduate student, the university opened a retirement account for me and invested my money in a mutual fund. I have no idea what companies that fund includes. I’m sure I could do some research and find out, but that somewhat diminishes the convenience of having a mutual fund to begin with. And what if there is one company, out of all of the companies they have invested in, that I would not want to support? Do I go through the holdings of every mutual fund available to find one without any offending holdings? What if the holdings change with time?
What I really want is a mutual fund that I know reflects my values so I don’t have to spend a lot of extra time checking up on the fund. Apparently, there are a lot of people seeking the same thing because socially responsible investments (SRI) are becoming more prevalent these days. These are funds that make investment choices based on a set of principles adopted by the fund. Some funds focus on fair business practices. Others will simply reject sectors they consider bad for society such as alcohol, tobacco, and gambling.
Unfortunately, I have yet to find a food sustainability mutual fund, which would exclude companies that genetically modify foods, develop chemical fertilizers and pesticides, or manufacture sugary drinks and snacks. However, there are some SRIs that come close and many more that consider other factors such as worker compensation and environmental sustainability. So there may be a convenient mutual fund that at least gets me closer to a clear conscience. There are also ways of investing in sustainable food systems directly (more on this in Part Two), but there are additional constraints on using these investment vehicles for retirement savings.
Mutually beneficial funds.
The website, Social Funds, maintains a database of socially responsible mutual funds, which you can search based on different social issues (go to the Mutual Funds tab, select Mutual Fund Center from the drop-down menu; then select Social Issues from the SRI Fund Charts drop-down menu). There isn’t an option for sustainable agriculture, but there are options for environment, animal rights, community investment, and human rights. There’s no way I could do an in-depth analysis of every fund on this list, so I picked out a handful to see what’s available.
I found Parnassus Funds, Portfolio 21, and Calvert a bit too vague about their qualifications for investment, but they do consider more than just financial gains. Sentinel Investments and Domini Social Investments did provide detailed information on how they assess companies, but neither made specific statements about agriculture. Looking through their holdings, I didn’t find any GM seed companies or pesticide manufacturers. However, the funds do invest in companies that produce unhealthy foods and beverages like Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and Kraft Foods. Coca-Cola, in particular, has also come under fire for their water usage practices.
Green Century Funds were the only ones I found that made specific statements about the food and farming sectors. According to their website, the fund looks for companies involved in organic and natural foods, water solutions, alternative energy, sustainable development, and the like. They avoid companies involved in factory farming, genetically-modified organisms, and agricultural pesticides. However, McDonald’s and PepsiCo are both in the top 10 holdings of Green Century’s Equity Fund. Technically, these companies do not engage in bad agricultural practices, but they do benefit from the low cost of factory-farmed beef and chicken, corn-based sweeteners, and other products of industrial agriculture. The Green Century Balanced Fund, on the other hand, does not have any food or beverage companies in its top 10.
Based solely on my concerns about ethical food, I would probably opt for a Green Century Fund because they make the most specific statements about food and farming. However, none of the funds I looked into were without faults. And none of them made me feel like my money would be building a more sustainable food future.
The plethora of socially-responsible mutual funds makes me hopeful that I will be able to invest with my morals in mind. It may take some more investigation to find exactly what I want, or I may simply have to become a vocal investor. Depending on your priorities, you may be able to find a fund that allows you to invest in the future you envision. And it just might help you make some money too.
In Part Two, I will discuss additional investment options in the sustainable farming sector that may not be right for retirement savings.
Friday, January 20, 2012
Food fixer-uppers.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve packed up my family and moved 2600 miles to Maryland. Although things have gone fairly smoothly, eating well is always an issue when I’m on the go. Between packing, moving, and unpacking, I’ve had to get creative in order to put together nutritious and at least marginally ethical meals. I hope these food fixes will come in handy anytime you lack access to a complete kitchen!
My first fixer-upper was canned soup I found at Trader Joe’s. To give it a nutritional boost, I added chopped kale and sardines. Sardines are very mild; we hardly noticed they were there! Sardines are a great source of protein and omega-3 fats and are not a mercury concern for pregnant ladies like me. The kale was conventionally grown, but that’s the only kind TJs carries. The soup took less than 10 minutes to cook and made a hearty lunch for two people.
Black bean soup with a boost
Cooking implements required:
- Can opener
- Medium pot, preferably non-stick
- Spoon
Ingredients:
- 2 cans of Trader Joe’s organic black bean soup (vegan)
- 1 can of Trader Joe’s skinless and boneless sardines in olive oil
- ½ bag of Trader Joe’s chopped kale
Directions:
1. Drip oil from the sardines into the pot and warm over medium-high heat.
2. Add the kale and saute for several minutes.
2. Add black bean soup and mix well.
3. Break up the sardines with a fork and stir into the soup.
4. Heat through and enjoy!
Frozen, fixed-up
When we actually got to Maryland, eating got even harder because all our stuff was with the movers! Our first night, it was off to Safeway to see what we could find. Lucky for us, a microwave was all we needed to have a fairly healthy dinner. We each picked out an Amy’s Organic frozen entrée, which come in many meat, dairy, and gluten free varieties. We also picked up a frozen steamer bag of (conventional) Brussels spouts. We didn’t even have to cut the bag; it cooked up perfectly in the microwave. Fresh, homemade food is better than processed frozen dinners, but this meal was a much better choice for us than picking up a pizza or other fast food.
Nuked nutrients
Later, we found a Whole Foods only a short drive from our new place. I’d never shopped at Whole Foods before although I’d heard many good things. In fact, Whole Foods is the only grocery store that has committed to working with the Campaign for Fair Food that I discussed in my post on farm worker treatment. As an ethical eater, I was most impressed by the amount of information that Whole Foods provides. In the produce section, each product is marked with its state of origin (or country if it’s imported) and whether it was grown organically or conventionally. Local produce even has the name of the farm and the miles the food traveled. Local and organic produce was scarce, which may simply be due to the cold temperatures. I would always prefer to purchase seasonal, organic produce from a local farm via a farmers market or CSA, but it’s nice to have a good back-up, available 7 days a week! The more I learn about nutrition, the more clear it becomes that eating lots vegetables is the key to good health. Sustainability is important, but I wouldn’t sacrifice the nutrition I get from veggies if seasonal, organic produce is unavailable.
We were able to get a good variety of organic fresh produce at Whole Foods. But again, with few cooking implements available to us, we had to get creative. Luckily, many fresh veggies can be steamed or baked in the microwave. Adding steamed veggies is a great way to add vitamins to any meal.
Microwaving broccoli requires a knife, unless you can find a bag of chopped broccoli (Whole Foods and TJs offer organic versions). You will also need a small casserole dish with a lid or, in a pinch, a small bowl and a plate large enough to cover it.
Instructions:
1. Chop broccoli into bite-sized pieces.
2. Place broccoli into microwave-safe casserole dish or bowl. Add about a teaspoon of water. Cover with lid or plate.
3. Microwave on high for 3 minutes for a regular-sized bowl.
Microwaving sweet potatoes is even easier. All you need is a fork!
Instructions:
1. Pierce two potatoes several times each with a fork.
2. Cover with a paper towel (not strictly necessary).
3. Microwave for 5-6 minutes for medium-sized potatoes (about 6 inches long). You may have to experiment a bit with your microwave to get it just right. They are done when you can easily slide the fork in and out of the potato.
Single-skillet tacos.
Over the weekend, some awesome friends lent us a few kitchen essentials so we were finally able to cook a real meal. They also gave us grass-fed ground beef from a nearby farm (seriously awesome friends!). We had only one skillet, one knife, and a mixing bowl, but we were able to put together skillet tacos from some more ingredients we bought at Whole Foods. We were able to find organic refried black beans without any added vegetable oil, and we opted for pre-cut (conventional) veggies. We also added organic curly (also called dino) kale for extra nutrients.
Cooking implements required:
- Can opener
- Skillet
- Spatula or spoon
- Knife (if using avocado)
Ingredients:
- 1.5 lbs grass-fed, pasture-raised, happy cow ground beef
- Organic black beans (refried or whole)
- 2-3 cups sliced veggies (such as bell pepper, onions, squash, or zucchini)
- ½ bunch of curly kale
- Organic corn taco shells or corn chips (optional)
- Amy’s organic salsa
- Taco seasoning mix
Instructions:
1. Rinse kale. I especially like using curly kale because you don’t even need a knife to work with it. Pull the leaves off the stems, and rip any large leaves into smaller pieces.
2. In large skillet over medium-high heat, break up ground beef and begin to sauté. When the meat has cooked to pinkish, add the taco seasoning mix and stir well.
3. Add kale and sliced veggies. If you have a smaller skillet, add the veggies slowly allowing them to cook down to preserve space before adding more.
4. When the meat is fully cooked (no pink) and the veggies are crisp-tender, remove from heat.
5. Microwave the beans, if you prefer them hot. The easiest way to do this is to spoon the beans into the bowls you will be eating from and nuke those.
6. Break up the taco shells or chips over the beans (if desired). Add the meat and veggie mixture. Top with salsa and avocado, to taste.
These tacos were a big hit. We had more meat and kale than we actually needed for 4 dinner servings, so we added the mixture to take-out veggie bowls from Chipotle. We also added the leftover kale to various meals throughout the week. It’s pretty tasty raw and goes well in scrambled eggs or with lentils. Just one cup of chopped kale has over 200% of your RDA of Vitamin A, 134% of your Vitamin C, 684% of you Vitamin K, and is high in folate, B-vitamins, manganese, copper, potassium, and calcium. It also has 2g of protein and 1g of fiber. (Read more about this awesome vegetable here.)
Moving, traveling, a busted pipe, or a broken stove… Many things can take you out of your normal cooking routine. Even so, there are easy ways of preparing healthy nutritious food. I hope this post helps you navigate these tricky situations in the future. Get creative, and get cooking!
My first fixer-upper was canned soup I found at Trader Joe’s. To give it a nutritional boost, I added chopped kale and sardines. Sardines are very mild; we hardly noticed they were there! Sardines are a great source of protein and omega-3 fats and are not a mercury concern for pregnant ladies like me. The kale was conventionally grown, but that’s the only kind TJs carries. The soup took less than 10 minutes to cook and made a hearty lunch for two people.
Black bean soup with a boost
Cooking implements required:
- Can opener
- Medium pot, preferably non-stick
- Spoon
Ingredients:
- 2 cans of Trader Joe’s organic black bean soup (vegan)
- 1 can of Trader Joe’s skinless and boneless sardines in olive oil
- ½ bag of Trader Joe’s chopped kale
Directions:
1. Drip oil from the sardines into the pot and warm over medium-high heat.
2. Add the kale and saute for several minutes.
2. Add black bean soup and mix well.
3. Break up the sardines with a fork and stir into the soup.
4. Heat through and enjoy!
Frozen, fixed-up
When we actually got to Maryland, eating got even harder because all our stuff was with the movers! Our first night, it was off to Safeway to see what we could find. Lucky for us, a microwave was all we needed to have a fairly healthy dinner. We each picked out an Amy’s Organic frozen entrée, which come in many meat, dairy, and gluten free varieties. We also picked up a frozen steamer bag of (conventional) Brussels spouts. We didn’t even have to cut the bag; it cooked up perfectly in the microwave. Fresh, homemade food is better than processed frozen dinners, but this meal was a much better choice for us than picking up a pizza or other fast food.
Nuked nutrients
Later, we found a Whole Foods only a short drive from our new place. I’d never shopped at Whole Foods before although I’d heard many good things. In fact, Whole Foods is the only grocery store that has committed to working with the Campaign for Fair Food that I discussed in my post on farm worker treatment. As an ethical eater, I was most impressed by the amount of information that Whole Foods provides. In the produce section, each product is marked with its state of origin (or country if it’s imported) and whether it was grown organically or conventionally. Local produce even has the name of the farm and the miles the food traveled. Local and organic produce was scarce, which may simply be due to the cold temperatures. I would always prefer to purchase seasonal, organic produce from a local farm via a farmers market or CSA, but it’s nice to have a good back-up, available 7 days a week! The more I learn about nutrition, the more clear it becomes that eating lots vegetables is the key to good health. Sustainability is important, but I wouldn’t sacrifice the nutrition I get from veggies if seasonal, organic produce is unavailable.
We were able to get a good variety of organic fresh produce at Whole Foods. But again, with few cooking implements available to us, we had to get creative. Luckily, many fresh veggies can be steamed or baked in the microwave. Adding steamed veggies is a great way to add vitamins to any meal.
Microwaving broccoli requires a knife, unless you can find a bag of chopped broccoli (Whole Foods and TJs offer organic versions). You will also need a small casserole dish with a lid or, in a pinch, a small bowl and a plate large enough to cover it.
Instructions:
1. Chop broccoli into bite-sized pieces.
2. Place broccoli into microwave-safe casserole dish or bowl. Add about a teaspoon of water. Cover with lid or plate.
3. Microwave on high for 3 minutes for a regular-sized bowl.
Microwaving sweet potatoes is even easier. All you need is a fork!
Instructions:
1. Pierce two potatoes several times each with a fork.
2. Cover with a paper towel (not strictly necessary).
3. Microwave for 5-6 minutes for medium-sized potatoes (about 6 inches long). You may have to experiment a bit with your microwave to get it just right. They are done when you can easily slide the fork in and out of the potato.
Single-skillet tacos.
Over the weekend, some awesome friends lent us a few kitchen essentials so we were finally able to cook a real meal. They also gave us grass-fed ground beef from a nearby farm (seriously awesome friends!). We had only one skillet, one knife, and a mixing bowl, but we were able to put together skillet tacos from some more ingredients we bought at Whole Foods. We were able to find organic refried black beans without any added vegetable oil, and we opted for pre-cut (conventional) veggies. We also added organic curly (also called dino) kale for extra nutrients.
Cooking implements required:
- Can opener
- Skillet
- Spatula or spoon
- Knife (if using avocado)
Ingredients:
- 1.5 lbs grass-fed, pasture-raised, happy cow ground beef
- Organic black beans (refried or whole)
- 2-3 cups sliced veggies (such as bell pepper, onions, squash, or zucchini)
- ½ bunch of curly kale
- Organic corn taco shells or corn chips (optional)
- Amy’s organic salsa
- Taco seasoning mix
Instructions:
1. Rinse kale. I especially like using curly kale because you don’t even need a knife to work with it. Pull the leaves off the stems, and rip any large leaves into smaller pieces.
2. In large skillet over medium-high heat, break up ground beef and begin to sauté. When the meat has cooked to pinkish, add the taco seasoning mix and stir well.
3. Add kale and sliced veggies. If you have a smaller skillet, add the veggies slowly allowing them to cook down to preserve space before adding more.
4. When the meat is fully cooked (no pink) and the veggies are crisp-tender, remove from heat.
5. Microwave the beans, if you prefer them hot. The easiest way to do this is to spoon the beans into the bowls you will be eating from and nuke those.
6. Break up the taco shells or chips over the beans (if desired). Add the meat and veggie mixture. Top with salsa and avocado, to taste.
These tacos were a big hit. We had more meat and kale than we actually needed for 4 dinner servings, so we added the mixture to take-out veggie bowls from Chipotle. We also added the leftover kale to various meals throughout the week. It’s pretty tasty raw and goes well in scrambled eggs or with lentils. Just one cup of chopped kale has over 200% of your RDA of Vitamin A, 134% of your Vitamin C, 684% of you Vitamin K, and is high in folate, B-vitamins, manganese, copper, potassium, and calcium. It also has 2g of protein and 1g of fiber. (Read more about this awesome vegetable here.)
Moving, traveling, a busted pipe, or a broken stove… Many things can take you out of your normal cooking routine. Even so, there are easy ways of preparing healthy nutritious food. I hope this post helps you navigate these tricky situations in the future. Get creative, and get cooking!
Saturday, December 31, 2011
People for the Ethical Treatment of People.
The semester has come to a close, which means (1) I am now Dr. Ethical Eats and (2) my Tuesdays no longer include amazing lectures from prominent scientists, authors, and activists. Edible Education 101 provided a great overview of food system issues, and I’m glad I got to be a part of it (you can view some of the lectures here). Although I’d seen much of the material before, there were some issues that were new to me.
In comparison to the environmental, ethical, and health effects of our food system, the welfare of farm workers had seemed, to me, a background issue. Partly, it was because there is so much overlap in the problems of environmental impact, sustainability, and animal welfare – the food system becomes a vast and compelling problem almost regardless of which issue you care about. In addition, there are straightforward ways of being part of the solution – change where you eat and what you buy. Alternative farming systems can solve all of these problems at once, and they are gaining momentum. I also naively thought that, while conditions for farm workers might not be as good as they could be, they were perhaps good enough for now while we work to improve other aspects of the food system. As demand for more ethical food increases and becomes more economically viable, advancing farm worker rights would be a natural next step.
Perhaps that is true. However, when Eric Schlosser (author of Fast Food Nation) and several members of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) came to speak at Edible Education 101, I learned that farm workers are far worse off than I ever imagined and that there is no such thing as ethical food if it comes out of a system that exploits people at every turn.
Tortured tomatoes.
The town of Immokalee, Florida basically exists for one reason: to grow tomatoes. It’s not an ideal spot for growing tomatoes, and yet, almost every big chain grocery store or fast food restaurant gets their tomatoes from Immokalee. As I learned from Eric and the CIW representatives, farm workers in America are not protected by the same labor laws that apply to other employed people. Many farm workers, such as the tomato pickers in Immokalee, are not paid the minimum hourly wage as set by the federal government. Instead, they are paid corresponding to how much they pick. Technically, the price paid is supposed to be high enough that a farm worker could make at least minimum wage.
According to the CIW website, Immokalee tomato pickers make only 50 cents for every 32 pounds of tomatoes they pick. Thus, to make the minimum wage, an Immokalee worker would have to pick 2.25 tons of tomatoes in a typical 10-hour workday. That’s 4500 pounds of tomatoes in 10 hours of back-breaking outdoor labor, just to make minimum wage. It’s safe to assume, therefore, that Immokalee’s workers are not making minimum wage. In fact, the average annual salary of a tomato-picker in Immokalee is less than $9000 (Bittman, 2011).
Farm workers rarely receive benefits such as sick days or health insurance. Children as young as 12 years old can hold agricultural jobs with many fewer protections than in other industries. Also, the tomato pickers in Immokalee are not regular employees with contracts; they show up each day with no idea as to whether there will be work for them to do or the hours they are likely to be needed.
Even the protections our government does provide are often ignored, and farm owners have found many ways to exploit their workers even after they’ve left the field. In Immokalee, the workers aren’t simply impoverished. They are also routinely beaten, locked in shipping containers, forced to live in squalor, and punished or even killed if they attempt to leave. Sexual harassment and assault of female workers is also routine. Over the past 10 years, dozens of people have been convicted of slavery charges for their unlawful confinement and treatment of thousands of workers in Immokalee. You can read about specific cases here and in detail in the articles linked to at the end of this post. The CIW doesn’t use the word slavery simply to be provocative. There are slaves in Florida, and they picked pretty much every tomato you have ever purchased.
Silent screams.
Now, it’s obvious why the planet or the farm animals do not speak out against the abuses of the modern food system. But why would these people allow themselves to be exploited? Obviously, if you are being watched by armed guards while on the farm and locked in a crate the rest of the time, you aren’t going to have much opportunity to speak up. But many of the workers in Immokalee and elsewhere are simply powerless to advocate for themselves. Farm workers do not have collective bargaining rights, and most farm workers (70% of those in Immokalee) are immigrants with few resources. They often lack the skills, connections, or documentation to obtain better work. It is estimated that half of all our agricultural workers are undocumented immigrants, so speaking out against their abusers is especially risky.
Now, some of you may be wondering if we should care about illegal immigrants. Wouldn’t the problem just go away if the people who aren’t supposed to be here just went home? The answer is no. Legal immigrants and people participating in guest worker programs are just as exploited and mistreated as farm workers of questionable immigration status. As one of the CIW speakers commented, the agriculture industry is very fair – they exploit everyone equally. More importantly, breaking the law doesn’t strip you of your right not to be tortured, robbed, raped, or killed. The crime of entering our country illegally carries the penalty of potentially being forced to leave it. While I recognize that remaining hidden may expose a person to harm, it doesn’t make harm that befalls them any more legal. The situation in Immokalee and elsewhere is not a violation of immigrant rights but a violation of human rights.
But what if we did suddenly expel all undocumented workers from our borders? Would that improve conditions? Not likely. Instead, I would guess that another group of vulnerable citizens would start taking those jobs. Maybe, with a larger proportion of citizens, they could fight for slightly better conditions, but it would still be extremely difficult without collective bargaining and with the extreme pressure to produce the cheapest possible goods.
And that brings us to the heart of the matter. Farm workers are exploited not because they are immigrants but because they can be exploited. If one farmer can produce a cheaper product by exploiting his workers, the other farmers must follow suit or lose their competitive advantage. Or at least, that is the excuse given by the farmers when the Coalition of Immokalee Workers was finally able to voice their grievances. This sounds like a lame excuse, but there is at least an element of truth here. Most people choose what and where they eat based on price. Unless it is obvious why we should pay more, we don’t. This creates a race to the bottom, in which every producer and every retailer through the entire food chain must reduce costs in order to beat out the competition. Unless we enforce and enhance the laws governing farm workers, the people who produce our food will continue to be exploited in order to provide us with the cheapest possible product.
Upon hearing these excuses, the CIW did something very smart. Rather than dealing with the folks at the bottom – farmers, for example, they went to the top of the food chain. The CIW appealed to fast food restaurants and grocery chains to commit to paying more for their tomatoes and to work with the group to make sure the extra money went to workers in Immokalee. How much more did they have to pay? One penny per pound of tomatoes. That’s it. A penny. And yet, this meager increase in price translates to thousands of dollars more each year for the tomato pickers out in the fields.
Through communication, negotiation, and even some boycotting, the Coalition has now received commitments from Taco Bell, Burger King, and Whole Foods. In addition to paying slightly more for tomatoes, these companies agree to buy only those tomatoes from farms that have committed to better treatment for their workers such as providing a shaded area for breaks. It’s sort of shocking to think that is took years of hard work just to have a place to stand out of the sun for 15 minutes during a 10-hour day. It’s a victory for the workers in Immokalee, but still only a tiny step towards truly fair food.
Ethical eating in America.
Now is the point at which I’d normally tell you all the ways you can help improve the conditions of farm workers and eat truly ethical food. Sadly, despite the successes of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, exploitation is still commonplace in our agricultural system. A student in Edible Education 101 asked where she could buy produce that has been grown without such atrocities, if there was a label or certification to look for. Unfortunately, as our speakers explained, there is no such store and no such label. Even the tomatoes sold at Whole Foods, one of the companies that buys better tomatoes through the Campaign for Fair Food, are not truly ethical. The standards for human treatment are so low that it would be irresponsible to call even the CIW approved tomatoes ethical.
Small farms don’t necessarily treat their workers any better than large farms. Organic farmers have long resisted including treatment standards in the government’s organic certification. Because organic farming is more expensive, they say, it would be crippling to also pay higher wages, offer benefits, or improve working conditions. I suppose that’s why it is so much harder to motivate people to fight for higher standards of human welfare in the food system. You can’t simply buy different food or shop at a different store. So what can you do?
First, you can care. Rather than dismissing farm worker rights as I used to, you can educate yourself about the issues involved and be ready to take action when you can. Being aware of and supporting legislation concerning the rights of agricultural workers is an important way to get involved. Immigration reform is also a large factor.
You can support CIW’s Campaign for Fair Food directly by patronizing businesses that have signed their agreement. You can also take part in their letter-writing campaigns and protests of companies that stubbornly refuse to take part – companies like my old favorite, Trader Joe’s. You can find more ways to help on the CIW’s Take Action page.
Another way you can help farm workers is by buying direct from farmers. As I mentioned already, local, organic, or small doesn’t necessarily translate to better working conditions. However, if you can develop relationships with farmers, you can probably get a better idea of their perspective and treatment of their workers. Communicating with your farmer may also allow you to ask some probing questions, such as how much it would cost to improve conditions for the workers in the field. What if all it took was a dollar more for your CSA box? Would you pay it?
Lastly, we need to get the word out about the way we treat our farm workers in this country. When I found out how poorly we treat animals on factory farms, I knew I had to make a change. And now we are talking about people. People who work hard every day so we can eat. People who are, even now, being exploited and enslaved. The more aware people are, the better. You can be a part of the solution by being witness to the moral failings of our food system and speaking out against them. To get you started, here is a list of resources that I hope you will use to push our country to change, to make sure everyone who puts in a hard day’s work gets their fair share.
Organizations:
Articles on Immokalee:
In comparison to the environmental, ethical, and health effects of our food system, the welfare of farm workers had seemed, to me, a background issue. Partly, it was because there is so much overlap in the problems of environmental impact, sustainability, and animal welfare – the food system becomes a vast and compelling problem almost regardless of which issue you care about. In addition, there are straightforward ways of being part of the solution – change where you eat and what you buy. Alternative farming systems can solve all of these problems at once, and they are gaining momentum. I also naively thought that, while conditions for farm workers might not be as good as they could be, they were perhaps good enough for now while we work to improve other aspects of the food system. As demand for more ethical food increases and becomes more economically viable, advancing farm worker rights would be a natural next step.
Perhaps that is true. However, when Eric Schlosser (author of Fast Food Nation) and several members of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) came to speak at Edible Education 101, I learned that farm workers are far worse off than I ever imagined and that there is no such thing as ethical food if it comes out of a system that exploits people at every turn.
Tortured tomatoes.
The town of Immokalee, Florida basically exists for one reason: to grow tomatoes. It’s not an ideal spot for growing tomatoes, and yet, almost every big chain grocery store or fast food restaurant gets their tomatoes from Immokalee. As I learned from Eric and the CIW representatives, farm workers in America are not protected by the same labor laws that apply to other employed people. Many farm workers, such as the tomato pickers in Immokalee, are not paid the minimum hourly wage as set by the federal government. Instead, they are paid corresponding to how much they pick. Technically, the price paid is supposed to be high enough that a farm worker could make at least minimum wage.
According to the CIW website, Immokalee tomato pickers make only 50 cents for every 32 pounds of tomatoes they pick. Thus, to make the minimum wage, an Immokalee worker would have to pick 2.25 tons of tomatoes in a typical 10-hour workday. That’s 4500 pounds of tomatoes in 10 hours of back-breaking outdoor labor, just to make minimum wage. It’s safe to assume, therefore, that Immokalee’s workers are not making minimum wage. In fact, the average annual salary of a tomato-picker in Immokalee is less than $9000 (Bittman, 2011).
Farm workers rarely receive benefits such as sick days or health insurance. Children as young as 12 years old can hold agricultural jobs with many fewer protections than in other industries. Also, the tomato pickers in Immokalee are not regular employees with contracts; they show up each day with no idea as to whether there will be work for them to do or the hours they are likely to be needed.
Even the protections our government does provide are often ignored, and farm owners have found many ways to exploit their workers even after they’ve left the field. In Immokalee, the workers aren’t simply impoverished. They are also routinely beaten, locked in shipping containers, forced to live in squalor, and punished or even killed if they attempt to leave. Sexual harassment and assault of female workers is also routine. Over the past 10 years, dozens of people have been convicted of slavery charges for their unlawful confinement and treatment of thousands of workers in Immokalee. You can read about specific cases here and in detail in the articles linked to at the end of this post. The CIW doesn’t use the word slavery simply to be provocative. There are slaves in Florida, and they picked pretty much every tomato you have ever purchased.
Silent screams.
Now, it’s obvious why the planet or the farm animals do not speak out against the abuses of the modern food system. But why would these people allow themselves to be exploited? Obviously, if you are being watched by armed guards while on the farm and locked in a crate the rest of the time, you aren’t going to have much opportunity to speak up. But many of the workers in Immokalee and elsewhere are simply powerless to advocate for themselves. Farm workers do not have collective bargaining rights, and most farm workers (70% of those in Immokalee) are immigrants with few resources. They often lack the skills, connections, or documentation to obtain better work. It is estimated that half of all our agricultural workers are undocumented immigrants, so speaking out against their abusers is especially risky.
Now, some of you may be wondering if we should care about illegal immigrants. Wouldn’t the problem just go away if the people who aren’t supposed to be here just went home? The answer is no. Legal immigrants and people participating in guest worker programs are just as exploited and mistreated as farm workers of questionable immigration status. As one of the CIW speakers commented, the agriculture industry is very fair – they exploit everyone equally. More importantly, breaking the law doesn’t strip you of your right not to be tortured, robbed, raped, or killed. The crime of entering our country illegally carries the penalty of potentially being forced to leave it. While I recognize that remaining hidden may expose a person to harm, it doesn’t make harm that befalls them any more legal. The situation in Immokalee and elsewhere is not a violation of immigrant rights but a violation of human rights.
But what if we did suddenly expel all undocumented workers from our borders? Would that improve conditions? Not likely. Instead, I would guess that another group of vulnerable citizens would start taking those jobs. Maybe, with a larger proportion of citizens, they could fight for slightly better conditions, but it would still be extremely difficult without collective bargaining and with the extreme pressure to produce the cheapest possible goods.
And that brings us to the heart of the matter. Farm workers are exploited not because they are immigrants but because they can be exploited. If one farmer can produce a cheaper product by exploiting his workers, the other farmers must follow suit or lose their competitive advantage. Or at least, that is the excuse given by the farmers when the Coalition of Immokalee Workers was finally able to voice their grievances. This sounds like a lame excuse, but there is at least an element of truth here. Most people choose what and where they eat based on price. Unless it is obvious why we should pay more, we don’t. This creates a race to the bottom, in which every producer and every retailer through the entire food chain must reduce costs in order to beat out the competition. Unless we enforce and enhance the laws governing farm workers, the people who produce our food will continue to be exploited in order to provide us with the cheapest possible product.
Upon hearing these excuses, the CIW did something very smart. Rather than dealing with the folks at the bottom – farmers, for example, they went to the top of the food chain. The CIW appealed to fast food restaurants and grocery chains to commit to paying more for their tomatoes and to work with the group to make sure the extra money went to workers in Immokalee. How much more did they have to pay? One penny per pound of tomatoes. That’s it. A penny. And yet, this meager increase in price translates to thousands of dollars more each year for the tomato pickers out in the fields.
Through communication, negotiation, and even some boycotting, the Coalition has now received commitments from Taco Bell, Burger King, and Whole Foods. In addition to paying slightly more for tomatoes, these companies agree to buy only those tomatoes from farms that have committed to better treatment for their workers such as providing a shaded area for breaks. It’s sort of shocking to think that is took years of hard work just to have a place to stand out of the sun for 15 minutes during a 10-hour day. It’s a victory for the workers in Immokalee, but still only a tiny step towards truly fair food.
Ethical eating in America.
Now is the point at which I’d normally tell you all the ways you can help improve the conditions of farm workers and eat truly ethical food. Sadly, despite the successes of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, exploitation is still commonplace in our agricultural system. A student in Edible Education 101 asked where she could buy produce that has been grown without such atrocities, if there was a label or certification to look for. Unfortunately, as our speakers explained, there is no such store and no such label. Even the tomatoes sold at Whole Foods, one of the companies that buys better tomatoes through the Campaign for Fair Food, are not truly ethical. The standards for human treatment are so low that it would be irresponsible to call even the CIW approved tomatoes ethical.
Small farms don’t necessarily treat their workers any better than large farms. Organic farmers have long resisted including treatment standards in the government’s organic certification. Because organic farming is more expensive, they say, it would be crippling to also pay higher wages, offer benefits, or improve working conditions. I suppose that’s why it is so much harder to motivate people to fight for higher standards of human welfare in the food system. You can’t simply buy different food or shop at a different store. So what can you do?
First, you can care. Rather than dismissing farm worker rights as I used to, you can educate yourself about the issues involved and be ready to take action when you can. Being aware of and supporting legislation concerning the rights of agricultural workers is an important way to get involved. Immigration reform is also a large factor.
You can support CIW’s Campaign for Fair Food directly by patronizing businesses that have signed their agreement. You can also take part in their letter-writing campaigns and protests of companies that stubbornly refuse to take part – companies like my old favorite, Trader Joe’s. You can find more ways to help on the CIW’s Take Action page.
Another way you can help farm workers is by buying direct from farmers. As I mentioned already, local, organic, or small doesn’t necessarily translate to better working conditions. However, if you can develop relationships with farmers, you can probably get a better idea of their perspective and treatment of their workers. Communicating with your farmer may also allow you to ask some probing questions, such as how much it would cost to improve conditions for the workers in the field. What if all it took was a dollar more for your CSA box? Would you pay it?
Lastly, we need to get the word out about the way we treat our farm workers in this country. When I found out how poorly we treat animals on factory farms, I knew I had to make a change. And now we are talking about people. People who work hard every day so we can eat. People who are, even now, being exploited and enslaved. The more aware people are, the better. You can be a part of the solution by being witness to the moral failings of our food system and speaking out against them. To get you started, here is a list of resources that I hope you will use to push our country to change, to make sure everyone who puts in a hard day’s work gets their fair share.
Organizations:
Articles on Immokalee:
- The True Cost of Tomatoes by Mark Bittman (2011)
- Politics of the Plate: The Price of Tomatoes by Barry Estabrook (2009)
- Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal by Eric Schlosser
- Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit by Barry Estabrook
Friday, November 25, 2011
Life, unsweetened.
A month ago, I issued a Food Day challenge – to go without added sweeteners of any kind for a whole month. Frankly, I didn’t think it would be very hard for me because I already cook most of my food and don’t add sweeteners very often. I was wrong. Three things made it difficult for me to live up to this challenge: not checking labels as avidly as I should have, an increase in stress and deadlines in my life, and the surprises and necessities of my first pregnancy. I also “cheated” a couple of times so I could take part in traditions and festivities although I tried to make the best choices I could in those situations.
Why would there be sugar in that?
I ran into my first problem on Day One of the unsweetened challenge. My husband had just bought a huge package of smoked salmon to put on salads and mix in with scrambled eggs. It’s an easy source of fat and protein, and luckily, we have access to wild Pacific varieties, which are recommended by Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch. Unfortunately, the particular smoked salmon we purchased had an extra ingredient: brown sugar. We weren’t going to let the fish go to waste, so I grudgingly ate the sweetened salmon throughout the week.
After the fish incident, I started looking more closely at the foods I was buying and using. I’ve been reducing my intake of sweetened products over the past year - getting rid of sweetened nut butter, fruit and nut bars, and other processed foods that were high in added sugars - so I was surprised by how many sweetened products were still lingering in my pantry. Lea and Perrin’s Worcestershire sauce, the green variety of Tabasco sauce, gluten-free granola, and my one real vice, Trader Joe’s Lentil Chips, all had added sweeteners. Now, of course, the amount of sugar from a few drops of Tabasco isn’t really a health hazard, but it is a reminder of how easy it is to consume more sugar than you realize.
When life gets in the way.
I advocate a cooking-centric, whole-foods-dominated food lifestyle. This lifestyle requires time and effort, but I’ve always claimed that planning ahead and prioritizing your nutritional needs can make this lifestyle feasible for most people. Over the past month, I have not been one of those people. I’m wrapping up my PhD, with a hard deadline for dissertation submission on Dec. 16th, we’re selling our home, and we’re planning a move across the country. The combination has put me in a major time crunch and has also cut off regular access to my kitchen. Potential buyers can come by at any time to view our home, and they expect to be greeted by a clean kitchen.
The main result of these complications was that I stopped making my own lunch. Instead, I ate out. There are incredibly few restaurant options for a person who doesn’t eat conventional meat or dairy of any kind, and tries to avoid grains, especially those containing gluten. I’ve gotten used to asking servers, cooks, and managers about the ingredients in their food. It’s a bit unnerving to realize how few people involved with getting you your food actually have any clue as to what is in it. Even basic food knowledge is often lacking; I actually argued with a waitress over whether or not butter is dairy (yes, it really is). Places like Chipotle and most casual dining restaurants make their allergy information available online or on special menus, which helps me know for sure what I’m eating. However, sugar isn’t an allergen. And, as I mentioned already, added sweeteners can be in all kinds of foods that one wouldn’t even realize.
Oh, baby.
That’s right – I’m pregnant! I’m just about four months along and feeling what is apparently very normal maternal guilt over just about everything I do. Getting proper nutrition is important for everyone, but it can be truly essential for pregnant women. With all the other stresses in my life, making sacrifices when it came to eating was a difficult choice because I knew it would affect my baby. However, as important as getting the right calories, I needed to be getting enough calories.
Back when I was eating for one, I could skimp on lunch or skip an afternoon snack if I didn’t have the best food options available. Now, however, I know the baby needs calories as much as I do. Plus, I’ve found that hunger is no longer a nagging sensation but a compulsion that must be addressed whether it is convenient or not. Given my cooking limitations, that meant eating out even when there wasn’t a great option for me. Another side effect of pregnancy is that I have to limit my intake of many types of seafood. Gone are the days of sushi and tuna salad. Seafood has often been my go-to restaurant food, but now I can only have a few servings a week.
What to eat.
The first time I walked into a restaurant after taking the unsweetened challenge, I realized that, especially with my other restrictions, asking about added sugars was just not going to work. So, I had to make some choices. First, I tried to pick foods that seemed less likely to have added sugars: salad with oil and vinegar dressing, grilled fish or shrimp (within limits), Mediterranean foods, Thai curries, Indian food, and Chipotle burrito bowls. My nutrition intake definitely suffered from eating out because I ate far fewer fresh vegetables or sautéed greens. And I’m sure there were added sugars in my food; I just can’t say how much.
It was a difficult choice: quality calories or enough calories. I compromised by eating some more marginal foods like rice, potatoes, and black beans that kept me feeling full and assured that I was getting enough calories. If I were cooking as much as I used to, I could instead eat a little more avocado, add nuts to my salad, or simply eat larger portions. Another way in which I cut corners was to eat a little more marginal meat, such as beef from cows that were grass-fed but not necessarily pastured. However, I still refused to eat any animal products that included hormones or antibiotics or were from companies that are known to use unethical practices. Again, if I were cooking all my meals, this wouldn’t be a problem.
Overall, I think this was a good experiment. I was able to eliminate added sweeteners from nearly all my breakfasts and dinners throughout the month. For dessert, I ate unsweetened applesauce with cinnamon. I snacked on fruit, nuts, or tahini sauce. I drank water, unsweetened tea, and black coffee (half –caff, no worries!). I never felt like I was making much of a sacrifice. The only hard part was making sure I had unsweetened options, which was a problem any time I ate out.
Now, I’ll admit, I wasn’t perfect. A couple of times, I ate a little dark chocolate when I really wanted it. I had sorbet at a fancy dinner with friends in celebration of my impeding graduation. And I kept with my 6-year tradition of meeting a good friend for bubble (boba) tea once a week. Last night, I finished out my month-long challenge with (gluten-free) pumpkin pie and a bit of pecan tart.
I don’t think I’ll ever go totally unsweetened. Completely eliminating a food or substance, as I have had to do with dairy, is stressful and frustrating. Plus, eliminating every drop of added sugars is not really necessary. However, I am even more aware now of where sugars may be hiding in my diet, and I notice the sweetness in my food much more because I eat so few sweet things. Over the next month, the stress in my life should start to decrease, and I’ll be able to get back to cooking. I look forward to being more in control of what I am eating, and what I am feeding that little person growing inside of me. Life will be sweet, with no sugar added.
Why would there be sugar in that?
I ran into my first problem on Day One of the unsweetened challenge. My husband had just bought a huge package of smoked salmon to put on salads and mix in with scrambled eggs. It’s an easy source of fat and protein, and luckily, we have access to wild Pacific varieties, which are recommended by Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch. Unfortunately, the particular smoked salmon we purchased had an extra ingredient: brown sugar. We weren’t going to let the fish go to waste, so I grudgingly ate the sweetened salmon throughout the week.
After the fish incident, I started looking more closely at the foods I was buying and using. I’ve been reducing my intake of sweetened products over the past year - getting rid of sweetened nut butter, fruit and nut bars, and other processed foods that were high in added sugars - so I was surprised by how many sweetened products were still lingering in my pantry. Lea and Perrin’s Worcestershire sauce, the green variety of Tabasco sauce, gluten-free granola, and my one real vice, Trader Joe’s Lentil Chips, all had added sweeteners. Now, of course, the amount of sugar from a few drops of Tabasco isn’t really a health hazard, but it is a reminder of how easy it is to consume more sugar than you realize.
When life gets in the way.
I advocate a cooking-centric, whole-foods-dominated food lifestyle. This lifestyle requires time and effort, but I’ve always claimed that planning ahead and prioritizing your nutritional needs can make this lifestyle feasible for most people. Over the past month, I have not been one of those people. I’m wrapping up my PhD, with a hard deadline for dissertation submission on Dec. 16th, we’re selling our home, and we’re planning a move across the country. The combination has put me in a major time crunch and has also cut off regular access to my kitchen. Potential buyers can come by at any time to view our home, and they expect to be greeted by a clean kitchen.
The main result of these complications was that I stopped making my own lunch. Instead, I ate out. There are incredibly few restaurant options for a person who doesn’t eat conventional meat or dairy of any kind, and tries to avoid grains, especially those containing gluten. I’ve gotten used to asking servers, cooks, and managers about the ingredients in their food. It’s a bit unnerving to realize how few people involved with getting you your food actually have any clue as to what is in it. Even basic food knowledge is often lacking; I actually argued with a waitress over whether or not butter is dairy (yes, it really is). Places like Chipotle and most casual dining restaurants make their allergy information available online or on special menus, which helps me know for sure what I’m eating. However, sugar isn’t an allergen. And, as I mentioned already, added sweeteners can be in all kinds of foods that one wouldn’t even realize.
Oh, baby.
That’s right – I’m pregnant! I’m just about four months along and feeling what is apparently very normal maternal guilt over just about everything I do. Getting proper nutrition is important for everyone, but it can be truly essential for pregnant women. With all the other stresses in my life, making sacrifices when it came to eating was a difficult choice because I knew it would affect my baby. However, as important as getting the right calories, I needed to be getting enough calories.
Back when I was eating for one, I could skimp on lunch or skip an afternoon snack if I didn’t have the best food options available. Now, however, I know the baby needs calories as much as I do. Plus, I’ve found that hunger is no longer a nagging sensation but a compulsion that must be addressed whether it is convenient or not. Given my cooking limitations, that meant eating out even when there wasn’t a great option for me. Another side effect of pregnancy is that I have to limit my intake of many types of seafood. Gone are the days of sushi and tuna salad. Seafood has often been my go-to restaurant food, but now I can only have a few servings a week.
What to eat.
The first time I walked into a restaurant after taking the unsweetened challenge, I realized that, especially with my other restrictions, asking about added sugars was just not going to work. So, I had to make some choices. First, I tried to pick foods that seemed less likely to have added sugars: salad with oil and vinegar dressing, grilled fish or shrimp (within limits), Mediterranean foods, Thai curries, Indian food, and Chipotle burrito bowls. My nutrition intake definitely suffered from eating out because I ate far fewer fresh vegetables or sautéed greens. And I’m sure there were added sugars in my food; I just can’t say how much.
It was a difficult choice: quality calories or enough calories. I compromised by eating some more marginal foods like rice, potatoes, and black beans that kept me feeling full and assured that I was getting enough calories. If I were cooking as much as I used to, I could instead eat a little more avocado, add nuts to my salad, or simply eat larger portions. Another way in which I cut corners was to eat a little more marginal meat, such as beef from cows that were grass-fed but not necessarily pastured. However, I still refused to eat any animal products that included hormones or antibiotics or were from companies that are known to use unethical practices. Again, if I were cooking all my meals, this wouldn’t be a problem.
Overall, I think this was a good experiment. I was able to eliminate added sweeteners from nearly all my breakfasts and dinners throughout the month. For dessert, I ate unsweetened applesauce with cinnamon. I snacked on fruit, nuts, or tahini sauce. I drank water, unsweetened tea, and black coffee (half –caff, no worries!). I never felt like I was making much of a sacrifice. The only hard part was making sure I had unsweetened options, which was a problem any time I ate out.
Now, I’ll admit, I wasn’t perfect. A couple of times, I ate a little dark chocolate when I really wanted it. I had sorbet at a fancy dinner with friends in celebration of my impeding graduation. And I kept with my 6-year tradition of meeting a good friend for bubble (boba) tea once a week. Last night, I finished out my month-long challenge with (gluten-free) pumpkin pie and a bit of pecan tart.
I don’t think I’ll ever go totally unsweetened. Completely eliminating a food or substance, as I have had to do with dairy, is stressful and frustrating. Plus, eliminating every drop of added sugars is not really necessary. However, I am even more aware now of where sugars may be hiding in my diet, and I notice the sweetness in my food much more because I eat so few sweet things. Over the next month, the stress in my life should start to decrease, and I’ll be able to get back to cooking. I look forward to being more in control of what I am eating, and what I am feeding that little person growing inside of me. Life will be sweet, with no sugar added.
Monday, October 31, 2011
Feeding the world, a scary proposition.
This semester, I am taking a course at UC Berkeley called Edible Education: The Rise and Future of the Food Movement – organized by Alice Waters, Michael Pollan, and Nikki Henderson (who I gushed over in a previous post). Each week, at least one speaker addresses the class of nearly 400 students and members of the general public on a topic related to food, including sustainability, world poverty and hunger, the rights of farm and food workers, and health. Although I have spent a lot of time learning about our food system, this class has helped me put things into a global context.
Hunger and poverty throughout the world are seemingly insurmountable problems that are likely to worsen as the world population grows. In fact, as of today, the population is estimated to exceed 7 billion. In 2010, there were 925 million starving people in world, so how can we possibly hope to feed everyone in the future?
I have often heard proponents of agribusiness, and especially the biotech industry, argue that feeding the world will only happen if we make agricultural technologies – such as chemical fertilizers and pesticides – more accessible and continue to develop and introduce genetically modified seeds. The idea they present is essentially this: to reduce hunger, we need to increase crop yields.
The opposing viewpoint, as presented by Raj Patel during a recent lecture, is that we already produce enough calories to feed the world. People are hungry because food is too expensive or simply inaccessible. To reduce hunger, we need to empower the poor.
So which is it? Do we have a production problem, or a distribution problem? Most importantly, how can we reduce the number of hungry people in the world?
A numbers game.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) calculates and tracks hunger statistics throughout the world. Chronic hunger and undernurishment are words the FAO uses to describe people who are consistently unable to consume their minimum caloric needs – 1800 kCal for the average person. People who live under these conditions are classified as food insecure.
Determining the number of people who are food insecure takes several steps. First, the FAO calculates the number of calories available for consumption in every country in which they can obtain data. The number of available calories includes sources, like domestic production and imports, and sinks, such as exports and the amount of calories wasted or put to uses other than human consumption. The FAO compiles statistics over a period of 1-2 years, and then converts that into the number of calories available per day. Lastly, they divide the total number of available calories by the population of the country to get the “food supply” in kilocalories per person per day.
The FAO then tries to estimate the number of calories that the population needs, which is based on the proportion of men versus women and the age breakdown of the population. According to the USDA, men aged 19-30 need at least 2400 calories per day. Women of the same age require at least 1800. Children under 3 require only about 1000 calories per day. Based on the population statistics, the FAO calculates a number of calories needed for everyone in the country to get the food they need.
The last step is to estimate the amount of food that actually makes it into the mouths of the people. First, the FAO assumes that caloric intake within a country follows a log-normal distribution. A log-normal distribution looks a bit like the profile of a baseball cap. It implies that most of the population consumes a range of calories corresponding to the width of the cap, but there are still some people in the bill who consume a lot more than average. There can also be a small tail at the low end, which would indicate that a small portion of the population get many fewer calories than average. A log-normal distribution can come in different proportions. To tailor the distribution to a given country, the FAO uses information provided in household surveys to determine the width and location of the distribution’s peak and the extent of the tails.
By comparing the available calories with the calories required to feed the population and the way in which food is distributed in a country, the FAO finally arrives at an estimate of the number of people who are food insecure. The FAO hunger map is shown below; there is also a nifty interactive version on their hunger website.
The map is interesting (and depressing), but what does it really tell us about the reasons for hunger? The FAO makes informed assumptions about distribution, but how can we know for sure the effect of distribution? To get around these issues, I decided to look up the statistics for only the first two steps of the FAO’s process: the available calories in a country and the calorie requirements based on the population statistics.
Food for thought.
Below is a table I created using FAO data that is available from a searchable database called FAOSTAT. I have listed statistics for the 10 countries with the highest percentages of undernourished people as a percent of the population. I then show the same statistics for the Unites States and some groups of countries: the FAO’s group of least developed countries, South-east Asia, Europe, and the world.
I included some extra information because I thought it was interesting, but the most relevant columns are the average caloric requirement, which has been weighted by the age and sex distribution of the given population, and the food supply. A country that literally does not have enough calories for all of its citizens to consume their minimum requirement would be one in which the food supply is smaller than the average caloric requirement. Of the 10 countries with the highest percentage of hunger, only two actually have too few calories: Eritrea and Burundi, each by less than 100 calories. In Mozambique, in which 39% of the population suffers from a chronic lack of calories, there are over 2000 calories available each day, compared to a requirement of only 1800.
The bottom line is this: there is enough food in all of these countries for just about everyone to get the calories they need. However, even if the FAO’s assumptions about distribution are not completely accurate, there certainly are starving people in these countries.
How can there be more calories than the population needs and still be starving people? In more economic terms, how can there be too much supply and unmet demand? What is happening to the extra calories?
We are the 99%.
The FAO suggests that inequality and food insecurity rise together. That would suggest that richer people either eat more calories than they really need (because they can afford to) or are able to control the calories in some other way. Perhaps poor people also have a harder time getting food because of transportation issues. Certainly, the political stability within a country has some bearing on food access as well. As the FAO points out, violent conflict can reduce or cut off the food supply to some people. Even economic interventions aimed at helping developing countries have been criticized, by Raj Patel and others, when it comes to food markets (read more here or here). I’m not well-versed enough in economics and global trade to really assess these arguments. However, one thing is clear to me. We cannot solve world hunger by simply increasing crop yields.
It’s one thing to say that the world produces enough calories to feed everyone. But even in the countries with the highest rates of undernurishment, there are enough calories to feed nearly everyone. As the population grows, perhaps we really will need to increase production to make sure everyone can eat, but I doubt it will matter much unless people can access those calories. Otherwise, the only number that changes is the number of available calories, not the number of hungry people. And that’s a scary thought.
Hunger and poverty throughout the world are seemingly insurmountable problems that are likely to worsen as the world population grows. In fact, as of today, the population is estimated to exceed 7 billion. In 2010, there were 925 million starving people in world, so how can we possibly hope to feed everyone in the future?
I have often heard proponents of agribusiness, and especially the biotech industry, argue that feeding the world will only happen if we make agricultural technologies – such as chemical fertilizers and pesticides – more accessible and continue to develop and introduce genetically modified seeds. The idea they present is essentially this: to reduce hunger, we need to increase crop yields.
The opposing viewpoint, as presented by Raj Patel during a recent lecture, is that we already produce enough calories to feed the world. People are hungry because food is too expensive or simply inaccessible. To reduce hunger, we need to empower the poor.
So which is it? Do we have a production problem, or a distribution problem? Most importantly, how can we reduce the number of hungry people in the world?
A numbers game.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) calculates and tracks hunger statistics throughout the world. Chronic hunger and undernurishment are words the FAO uses to describe people who are consistently unable to consume their minimum caloric needs – 1800 kCal for the average person. People who live under these conditions are classified as food insecure.
Determining the number of people who are food insecure takes several steps. First, the FAO calculates the number of calories available for consumption in every country in which they can obtain data. The number of available calories includes sources, like domestic production and imports, and sinks, such as exports and the amount of calories wasted or put to uses other than human consumption. The FAO compiles statistics over a period of 1-2 years, and then converts that into the number of calories available per day. Lastly, they divide the total number of available calories by the population of the country to get the “food supply” in kilocalories per person per day.
The FAO then tries to estimate the number of calories that the population needs, which is based on the proportion of men versus women and the age breakdown of the population. According to the USDA, men aged 19-30 need at least 2400 calories per day. Women of the same age require at least 1800. Children under 3 require only about 1000 calories per day. Based on the population statistics, the FAO calculates a number of calories needed for everyone in the country to get the food they need.
The last step is to estimate the amount of food that actually makes it into the mouths of the people. First, the FAO assumes that caloric intake within a country follows a log-normal distribution. A log-normal distribution looks a bit like the profile of a baseball cap. It implies that most of the population consumes a range of calories corresponding to the width of the cap, but there are still some people in the bill who consume a lot more than average. There can also be a small tail at the low end, which would indicate that a small portion of the population get many fewer calories than average. A log-normal distribution can come in different proportions. To tailor the distribution to a given country, the FAO uses information provided in household surveys to determine the width and location of the distribution’s peak and the extent of the tails.
By comparing the available calories with the calories required to feed the population and the way in which food is distributed in a country, the FAO finally arrives at an estimate of the number of people who are food insecure. The FAO hunger map is shown below; there is also a nifty interactive version on their hunger website.
The map is interesting (and depressing), but what does it really tell us about the reasons for hunger? The FAO makes informed assumptions about distribution, but how can we know for sure the effect of distribution? To get around these issues, I decided to look up the statistics for only the first two steps of the FAO’s process: the available calories in a country and the calorie requirements based on the population statistics.
Food for thought.
Below is a table I created using FAO data that is available from a searchable database called FAOSTAT. I have listed statistics for the 10 countries with the highest percentages of undernourished people as a percent of the population. I then show the same statistics for the Unites States and some groups of countries: the FAO’s group of least developed countries, South-east Asia, Europe, and the world.
I included some extra information because I thought it was interesting, but the most relevant columns are the average caloric requirement, which has been weighted by the age and sex distribution of the given population, and the food supply. A country that literally does not have enough calories for all of its citizens to consume their minimum requirement would be one in which the food supply is smaller than the average caloric requirement. Of the 10 countries with the highest percentage of hunger, only two actually have too few calories: Eritrea and Burundi, each by less than 100 calories. In Mozambique, in which 39% of the population suffers from a chronic lack of calories, there are over 2000 calories available each day, compared to a requirement of only 1800.
The bottom line is this: there is enough food in all of these countries for just about everyone to get the calories they need. However, even if the FAO’s assumptions about distribution are not completely accurate, there certainly are starving people in these countries.
How can there be more calories than the population needs and still be starving people? In more economic terms, how can there be too much supply and unmet demand? What is happening to the extra calories?
We are the 99%.
The FAO suggests that inequality and food insecurity rise together. That would suggest that richer people either eat more calories than they really need (because they can afford to) or are able to control the calories in some other way. Perhaps poor people also have a harder time getting food because of transportation issues. Certainly, the political stability within a country has some bearing on food access as well. As the FAO points out, violent conflict can reduce or cut off the food supply to some people. Even economic interventions aimed at helping developing countries have been criticized, by Raj Patel and others, when it comes to food markets (read more here or here). I’m not well-versed enough in economics and global trade to really assess these arguments. However, one thing is clear to me. We cannot solve world hunger by simply increasing crop yields.
It’s one thing to say that the world produces enough calories to feed everyone. But even in the countries with the highest rates of undernurishment, there are enough calories to feed nearly everyone. As the population grows, perhaps we really will need to increase production to make sure everyone can eat, but I doubt it will matter much unless people can access those calories. Otherwise, the only number that changes is the number of available calories, not the number of hungry people. And that’s a scary thought.
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