AHS13: A caveman's guide to world hunger.

In August, I had the privilege of speaking at the third annual Ancestral Health Symposium, which focused on an evolutionary approach to nutrition and health. The title of my talk, “Give them grains? Analyzing approached to world hunger”, was intentionally provocative as this group has pretty negative views of the role of grains in human nutrition. I wanted to get people’s attention because, quite often, the response I get from this community is that they care about making healthy choices for themselves, whether or not those choices are sustainable or widely accessible. While I understand this view, opting out of the conversation about our global food future means that we are less likely to develop a food system that meets the demands of health-conscious people. As it happens, I also care about the accessibility of food, especially for the poor. What follows is the content of my presentation at AHS13.   

According to the UN’s Food & Agriculture Organization, there are more than 850 million starving people in the world. Moreover, there are a staggering 2 billion malnourished people. In fact, malnutrition kills 2.6 million children each year, and 1 in 4 children experience irreversible stunted growth. Vitamin A deficiency alone affects 250 million preschool-aged children; many become blind as a result, and half of the children who become blind die within a year.

Clearly, when we think about how to feed the world, we need to be considering the nutritional value of food as well as its caloric yield. Calories may keep a starving person alive for a day or a week, but to have someone survive for months, years, or decades, nutrition is key.

The most common proposed solution to world hunger is based on the premise that we can use grains to increase the total number of available calories, worldwide. We can do this by growing more grains, increasing grain productivity, and eating more of the grains we currently grow rather than using them for animal feed or fuel. This last point is especially relevant for industrial corn. Several studies have analyzed precisely how many more calories could be consumed if they were eaten “directly” rather than eating animals fed with corn.

To really determine whether eating more corn can help feed the world, we need to consider the type of food produced in this system and the trade-offs between corn and other crops.

In 2011, the US harvested 83 million acres of industrial corn, which does not include sweet corn that you would eat on the cob or out of a can. The same amount of land comprises the entire National Parks system. According to the USDA, 52% of the 2011 corn crop was used for fuel and exports, thereby contributing zero calories to the US food supply. Another 37% of the corn was used as animal feed, leaving only 11% of the crop for food. It seems pretty clear that using more corn for food would produce more calories, but how much more? 

The above chart shows my estimate of the caloric yield of the corn crop based on the current usage distribution. If 37% of the corn crop was eaten indirectly through corn-fed animals and 11% was eaten directly as “food”, I estimate a yield of 1.8 million calories from the 2011 corn harvest. If, however, we had eaten the animal feed ourselves (for a total of 48% in the food category), it could have delivered 2.5 million calories. And, if the entire crop were used for food, it would yield 5.3 million calories. That means we could just about triple the number of corn calories in the food system simply by devoting it all to food. Let’s take this one step further, though. What kind of food do we actually produce from industrial corn?

Before humans can consume industrial corn, it has to be heavily processed. Again, based on USDA statistics, the 2011 corn calories were delivered in the form of high fructose corn syrup, glucose and dextrose, corn starch, alcohol, and corn oil (which makes up the majority of the "Cereals, other" category). Despite the calories, no one can survive on a diet made of these foods. More importantly, consuming calories in these forms does little to reduce the total number of calories a person needs. For example, studies have shown that drinking a soda, which delivers a few hundred calories, will not cause someone to eat fewer calories throughout the day. That means, regardless of how many additional corn syrup calories we can deliver to the food system, we will still need to produce the same number of calories from other foods to meet everyone’s caloric needs. To borrow a term from economics, corn-based calories have diminishing marginal utility.

But let’s forget about calories for a moment. Given that billions of people in the world are malnourished, what are the relative amount of micronutrients that corn would deliver in each of these systems? I chose two micronutrients, vitamin A and folate, for this analysis because deficiencies are known to cause serious, life-threatening health problems.

It turns out that the best source of corn-based micronutrients (based on efficiency and content) actually comes from chicken liver. A back-of-the-envelope calculation reveals that, based on our current corn usage, an acre of industrial corn could provide 141 people with their recommended daily amount of vitamin A and 66 people their RDA of folate through the consumption of corn-fed chicken livers. On the other hand, if we stopped feeding corn to animals, and used it instead to make corn syrup, corn oil, and the like, we would produce zero RDAs of these micronutrients. Finally, if we used all of our corn in such a way as to maximize vitamin A and folate production, we would feed all of our corn to chickens, which would enable us to feed 385 people their RDA of vitamin A and 180 people their RDA of folate with one acre of corn.

Eating our corn directly would provide an increase in available calories, but it would also reduce the already minimal micronutrients delivered by corn. The standard American diet is already rich in the types of food that corn can produce. As a nation, we already generate 3770 calories per person per day, and 70% of the average American’s calories come from refined grain, added sugar, and refined vegetable oil. We also have a nation of very sick people. Over 35% of adults are obese, more than 23 million have Type 2 diabetes, and another 79 million have pre-diabetes. Is this really the diet we want to use to end world hunger?

Given that corn is such an abysmal source of vital micronutrients, it’s worth asking if there is anything better we could grow. Organic produce is more sustainable than conventional agriculture and typically more diverse. The USDA’s organic production survey compiled statistics for the 22 highest yielding fruits and vegetables, which were grow on a tiny 118,000 acres – that’s 0.14% of the land devoted to industrial corn.

Using nutrition data from self.nutritiondata.com, I calculated that the 22 highest yielding organic crops generated 3 million calories per acre. That’s more than corn delivers even if we stopped feeding corn to animals but less than if we devoted the entire crop to food. Nutritionally, however, the organic crops clearly dominate.

To simplify the calculations, I selected two organic crops and used the USDA data to determine the per acre yield of each one. I then calculated the RDAs of both vitamin A and folate. If we grew an acre of organic carrots, we could deliver ¾ of a million people their RDA of vitamin A and more than 1600 people their RDA of folate. From an acre of organic spinach, we would supply almost 61,000 people their RDA of vitamin A and 14,000 people their RDA of folate. 

To summarize, we could produce more calories by eating more corn products, but it would reduce the amount of available micronutrients and not do much to reduce the caloric needs of our population. Sustaining a healthy population is even more problematic as corn provides either micronutrients or calories, but not both. Corn agriculture also requires a great deal of inputs with many negative outputs. In contrast, organic agriculture can provide about 50% of the maximum caloric yield of corn, while also providing prodigious micronutrients. In marginal environments, which are more common in the developing world, organic agriculture can actually produce more calories than conventional, input-intensive agriculture. However, developing truly sustainable agricultural systems, worldwide, will require dedication, creativity, and investments in research and labor.

Overall, growing nutritious crops will likely produce fewer calories. However, globally, we already grow more than 2700 calories per person per day. Even in the countries with the highest rates of hunger, only two actually have too few calories available, and even those are within 100 calories of their daily per capita needs. Chronic hunger and malnutrition are caused by poverty, political instability, and lack of infrastructure. Simply producing more calories, in any form, is unlikely to end world hunger if issues of access are not addressed. Hence, the lower caloric yield of organic crops seems worth the trade-off given their delivery of vital micronutrients, promising yields in places where the poor actually live, and the potential for sustainability.

I think I have made the case that eating more corn products, rather than eating corn-fed animals, is not a good solution to world hunger. In fact, eating corn-fed animal products is the only way to get micronutrients from corn. However, I do not, in any way, support feeding corn to ruminants or raising animals in confinement. Rather, I think we should stop growing industrial corn and go back to raising animals in traditional pasture-based systems. This would likely reduce the amount of meat available in the food system, although I have yet to see a detailed study of the potential yields of polyculture, pasture-based farming systems. Regardless, limiting our consumption of animal products to the level that can be produced sustainably seems like the right approach. 

Overall, this analysis has revealed the importance of considering nutrition, in addition to caloric yield, when making decisions about what we should grow and eat. This above slide lists several ways we can support real solutions to world hunger and organizations who appear, to me, to be taking the right approach. Whether you base your eating habits on what is healthy for you or healthy for the world, I encourage you to get involved and make the food system work for everyone.

I want to thank Eric Huff and Tess McEnulty for their assistance with this project and the Ancestral Health Society for creating a forum for this type of work. Additional citations and background for the calculation of the caloric yield of corn can be found in my previous post. Supporting materials for the hunger assessment by country and specific inputs and outputs of the conventional food system can be found in my 2012 AHS talk, which is described in detail here.

Scientists for sustainability.

As a planetary scientist, I spend most of my time thinking about the moons of Jupiter and the formation of the Solar System. It’s an exciting line of work, but it doesn’t give me much opportunity to help solve the problems currently facing humanity. That’s why I got involved with the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), a group of scientists and technical experts who help critically analyze proposed solutions to environmental problems. The UCS produces policy briefs and public outreach materials based on quantitative study in the areas of clean energy, climate change, and food systems (just to name a few).

One criticism of our current food system that I’ve highlighted before is that we devote a huge amount of land and resources to growing industrial grain. Because these grains are not directly edible by humans, the grains we grow are used mainly for ethanol fuel, animal feed, and heavily processed food and additives. While many researchers have investigated how we could use grains differently to produce more calories, I have found very little information on what we could grow instead of grains that might produce either more calories or more nutritious food. Recently, the UCS’ Food and Agriculture group produced a really interesting infographic that begins to address this important question.

Plant the plate.

The USDA and the CDC provide recommendations for the servings of fruits and vegetables that each of us needs to eat in order to stay healthy. Vegetables are particularly important because they provide so many micronutrients. According to the new MyPlate recommendations, fruits and vegetables should make up 50% of our daily food intake. The USDA’s food plan calculator offers more specific recommendations. It says I ought to eat 2.5 cups of vegetables a day, varying the kinds of vegetables I eat throughout the week, and 1.5 cups of fruit each day. My husband should get 3 cups of veggies and 2 cups of fruit per day. We actually aim for about 8 cups of veggies a day because that’s the best way to meet the recommended allotments of micronutrients, but 2.5 cups is a good minimum.

Interestingly, the Union of Concerned Scientists determined that we do not actually grow enough fruits and vegetables for every American to consume the recommended daily intakes. Currently, only 2% of the farm acreage in the US is used to grow produce. We would need to more than double that number in order to provide enough food for everyone to eat a healthy amount of produce. Even with these adjustments, the total acreage devoted to fruits and vegetables would only be 5.28% of our total farm acreage.

It’s unclear why we grow so little food that we know is essential for good health. Certainly, the government subsidies for grains play a role – driving down the price of grain, which then becomes an extremely profitable raw material for food companies. Demand also plays an important role, though. Have we become so accustomed to processed food and sugary beverages that we no longer demand produce, or is the price difference between fresh and processed foods turning people away?

Counting calories.

Pro-grain groups often cite world hunger as a justification for using any means necessary to produce more calories. However, in the United States, we have over 3700 available calories per person per day [1] – far more than any of us needs to consume. However, if we followed the UCS’ suggestion and switched 23 million acres of grain-producing cropland to the growing of fruits and vegetables, we probably would reduce the total number of calories we produce.

Grains go through so many changes before they are consumed that it’s hard to say how many calories would be produced on 23 million acres. Here’s my first attempt to estimate how much of an impact such a change would have on the caloric yield of our food. For simplicity, I’ll just focus on corn for this analysis.

According to the USDA’s crop statistics, the 2011 corn harvest was used for a variety of purposes: 40% went to ethanol fuel, 12% was exported, and 9% went to food sweeteners and additives, including high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), glucose, dextrose, food starch, and alcohol. Only 2% of the corn harvest was used to make corn-based foods (e.g. corn chips), while 37% went to animal feed, an indirect source of edible calories. That means 52% of the corn harvest did not contribute to the available calories in the US, and another 37% entered indirectly through consumption of meat, poultry, dairy, and eggs from corn-fed animals.

The whole point of switching from grains to fruits and vegetables is to enable people to eat the daily recommended values of these foods. So, presumably, 100% of the harvest from the additional 23 million acres would be consumed by humans. Because 52% of the corn crop does not contribute to edible calories, the new fruits and veggies could provide only 48% of the calories from the corn they replaced without changing the number of edible calories in the food system.

Of the corn that directly delivers calories, the largest portion becomes HFCS, which contains about 80 calories per ounce*. About 32 pounds – or 512 ounces - of HFCS can be produced per bushel of corn [2]. In 2011, about 25 bushels per acre were used for HFCS, yielding about a million calories over the year. The next largest portion went to glucose and dextrose. If these sugars have similar conversion rates (a big assumption), then the 6% of the corn crop used to make HFCS, glucose, and dextrose produced about 1.7 million calories. I was unable to find enough information to deduce the caloric yields per acre of food starch or alcohol, but these are likely negligible.

Edit (09/05/13): In the above analysis, I incorrectly calculated the number of bushels per acre that were devoted to each type of food product. The numbers should be about 6 bushels per acre for HFCS, 3 for glucose and dextrose, 3 for starch, and 1.5 for alcohol. I have also found the information for the corn starch conversion; one bushel of corn can be used to make 32 pounds of corn starch, which contains 107 calories per ounce. Hence, the total caloric yield of these "food uses" was only 531,000. I am still neglecting calories from corn-based alcohol in this analysis.

Jonathon Foley, of the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota, stated that the caloric efficiency of converting corn to edible animal products ranges from 3% to 40%, depending on the product (e.g. steak vs. eggs). So the 37% of corn that is used for animal feed contributes far fewer calories than were initially grown. How many calories would the corn deliver if it wasn’t used for animal feed? Well, if it’s made into HFCS, as most of the corn is, the 50.5 bushels per acre devoted to feeding animals would produce approximately 62,000 to 825,000 calories depending on which conversion rate is assumed.

The 2% of the corn crop that is used for food goes into a wide variety of products, from corn chips to polenta. That makes it virtually impossible to determine the precise caloric yield per acre. However, according to the Corn Refiners Association, corn oil is the major food item produced with corn. One bushel of corn produces 0.7 pounds of corn oil [3], which contains about 240 calories per ounce. Making the simplifying assumption that all 11 bushels per acre that were used for food were delivered in the form of corn oil yields just under 30,000 calories.

Edit (09/05/13): As above, the bushels per acre is an over-estimate. The correct number is about 2,  which yields about 13,500 calories.

Based on these assumptions, I estimate that the 2011 corn crop supplied between 1.792 and 2.555 million edible calories per acre to the US food system, depending on the relative amounts of different animal products produced.

Edit (09/05/13): My revised estimate is 600,000 to 1.8 million calories. In the Foley article, he states that the US corn supply delivers about 3 million calories per acre per year, but there is no reference or data provided. I can only guess that my calculation includes some oversimplifications that account for the discrepancy. However, he also states that the corn crop is used to make polenta, which is actually made from sweet corn. The crop data from the USDA, upon which I have based my analysis, does not include sweet corn. So, perhaps we are using different data as well as different assumptions.

Also in 2011, the USDA reports that 1.76 million acres were devoted to the growing of vegetables and melons, which resulted in 43.2 billion pounds of food [4]. That’s ~24,500 pounds per acre. The top three crops were onions, head lettuce, and watermelon. Onions have about 12 calories per ounce, lettuce has 4, and watermelon has 9. Using the average of these three as representative of the caloric yield per pound of vegetables results in 3.14 million edible calories per acre.

It’s pretty surprising to think that vegetables and melons produce more calories per acre than corn. The reason is the way we use corn. If we instead used the 40% of the corn crop currently devoted to ethanol production to make corn oil or high fructose corn syrup, the corn crop would deliver significantly more calories than the vegetable crop. Of course, having more corn oil or corn sweetener may not have a significant benefit to human health.

We could also produce more edible calories if we did not use corn as animal feed. However, as long as we are growing corn, perhaps using it to create foods like eggs and pork is a nutritionally superior choice. Feeding corn to animals, especially cows, has many other drawbacks, though. Overall, the lack of an efficient pathway from the corn crop to nutritious food reinforces the idea that we ought to grow less corn, and use the land to cultivate nutritious foods instead.

The recommendation from the Union of Concerned Scientists is to convert 23 million acres of land from grain to fruits and vegetables in order to provide all Americans with their daily recommended intake of these foods. My analysis, which necessarily required a lot of simplifying assumptions, shows that this switch would actually deliver more edible calories to the food system, in addition to more micronutrients. It also shows how inefficient the corn-based system is at producing actual food. This makes me wonder just how much we could change the food system without a significant drop in calories. Could we switch to all organic production? Diversified farms? Farms that combine plants and animals? Given that we currently produce a surplus of calories, can more extreme changes in production practices (e.g. devoting more land to pasture for animals) still provide enough calories to feed our population? And would those calories provide superior nutrition to what we currently produce? Hopefully, with more research into sustainable farming practices, we can begin to answer these questions and design a food system that can sustainably produce nutritious, delicious food.

I think our food system should produce more fruits and vegetables instead of crops that are not used primarily for food. The Union of Concerned Scientists is doing a great job of showing how to make these changes and informing food policy decisions. You can learn more about their vision for the future of the food system in their recent policy brief, The Healthy Farm. You can also follow their blog, The Equation. If you like what you see, consider joining and taking action. Together, we can “plant the plate” and get on a better path to a sustainable food future.

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Caveat to my analysis: More of the wheat crop is devoted to food products than the corn crop. Hence, switching from wheat to fruits and vegetables could result in a net drop in edible calories in the food system. Most farms cycle between wheat, corn, and soy, so it’s not quite as simple as switching out inefficient corn for produce. Although, perhaps fruits and vegetables could be added to the rotation instead of corn. This type of analysis is necessarily complicated, especially by the diversity of end products from corn, wheat, and soy. If you have ideas as to how it could be improved, or if you know of similar analyses elsewhere, please leave a comment!

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References:
[1] Data from FAO statistics website
[2] Fooducate article (32 pounds) and 2008 Iowa State Extension Service publication (33 pounds)
[3] North Dakota State University Extension Service website
[4] Data from USDA Economic Research Service website

* All calories determined from Calorie King

Will vote for food.

With election day almost upon us, we have heard the candidates express their views on the economy, abortion, and foreign policy. They have described how skyrocketing health care costs, and our future health care needs, will impact our society and the national debt. And yet, at no point has either candidate discussed the cost of subsidizing grain production or the impact of cheap processed food on our worsening health. Clearly, these important food issues are still not part of the national political conversation. Although the food movement has made great strides in expanding access to sustainable, nutritious, ethical food, it is equally important to have a political voice.

According to Ballotpedia, there is only one food-related ballot measure being considered in this election: California’s Prop 37, which requires that foods containing genetically-modified ingredients be labeled as such. The biotech companies have poured millions of dollars into defeating this important piece of legislation. They have filled the airwaves of California with negative and misleading ads that paint label advocates as ignorant fear-mongers. A label, they say, will give the impression that there is something to fear about GMOs and may turn away consumers.

In my opinion, there is reason for concern when it comes to GMOs. They are somehow considered different enough from their unmodified counterparts to warrant patents, yet similar enough to not require any additional testing or regulation. GMOs are banned in over 60 countries throughout the world, and even some countries accepting US food aid have declined our donations when the food is genetically-modified.

It is often argued that genetically modifying foods like corn and soybeans is no different from selective breeding of animals to promote certain traits. But GMOs are fundamentally different from anything we have created in the past. They incorporate genetic material from completely different species and deliver this material by encasing it in the cells of viruses (because viruses are so good at bypassing the natural defenses of the original genetic material). Furthermore, GM seeds are not developed in order to create food with more desirable traits. Rather, it enables companies to patent seeds, requiring farmers to buy new seed each season, and to create a better market for their chemicals. For example, the most prolific GMOs are designed to survive application of Round-Up, which is conveniently sold by the same company that owns the rights to the GM seed: Monsanto.

Genetically modified foods are different, both in form and function, but are they dangerous? Frankly, we don’t know because testing is not required by the FDA and the fact that the seeds are patented raises legal issues when it comes to studying them. Adding more regulation or oversight has also proved challenging because the GM seed companies (like Monsanto) are able to exert so much power over the regulatory process. The Citizens United decision, which protects the rights of corporations to make campaign contributions, has only exacerbated the problem.

Another (and perhaps better) way to force biotech companies to prove the safety of their product, both for consumers and the environment, is for consumers to demand it by choosing not to buy GMOs without further study. And really, isn’t that how the free market system is supposed to work? If consumers are afraid of GMOs, it should be the responsibility of the company selling them to prove that GMOs are safe, effective, and better than the competition.

Consumers cannot exert market pressure if they have no way to assess the differences between products. Give people information about what is in their food, and let them decide whether or not to buy it. Empowering consumers in this way allows us more freedom of choice, requires fewer regulations, and gives us the ability to control our food future.

I hope that, come Tuesday, Californian’s will vote yes on Prop 37 and that this fight will inspire similar legislation in other states. Moreover, I hope it will spur those of us in the food movement to take more political action. We need to call our senators and representatives to show our support for food-related legislation. We need to vote in the primaries for our elected officials so we can get more candidates with an interest in food issues onto the ballot. We must take every opportunity to ask candidates and elected officials about their views on farming, nutrition, and the environment so they know they have both the obligation and the support to fight for a better food future. We have to speak up and speak out, and eventually, we will win.

Want more information? Check out these organizations and articles:

Right to Know
Just Label It

Michael Pollan in The New York Times
Frances Moore-Lappe in the Huffington Post
Farmers for truth in labeling
Civil Eats post on the fight for Prop 37

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.

Get Real! A chance for real progress.

According to the chart below (from the USDA), 64% of the calories in the average American's diet comes in the form of flour & cereal grains, added fats & oils, and caloric sweeteners. That means nearly two-thirds of the average person's calories provide no nutrition that isn't added through fortification. Eating fresh fruits and vegetables could easily provide the fiber and nutrients added to cereal and other grain products; the sweetened beverages and vegetable oils are basically useless. This statistic highlights just how far our population is from a diet composed of real foods: minimally processed, nutrient-dense foods such as vegetables, fruit, nuts, legumes, and quality meat and seafood.


Part of the problem is that processed foods are cheap compared to whole, fresh foods because the ingredients are heavily subsidized. Unfortunately, the process by which we grow corn, wheat, and soy (and thus produce things like high fructose corn syrup and soybean oil) is highly unsustainable. Rampant water usage, dependence on fossil fuels to keep the machinery going, pesticide runoff contaminating water supplies, soil erosion and nutrient depletion, and loss of biodiversity all damage the environment in which we live. The uniformity of our cropping systems leaves us vulnerable to disease or pests, which could lead to a serious food crisis.

A whole market has been created to capitalize on our surplus of these cheap raw materials. High fructose corn syrup is in almost every processed product in the grocery store because it's a cheap sweetener; humans are hard-wired to crave sweet foods, so you are more likely to buy more bread (for example) if it's sweeter. The beef industry can produce vast quantities of cheap meat because it can fatten the cows on grains. Of course, to do this requires that the animals be confined in huge feeding operations and dosed with antibiotics because grains actually make cows sick. The animal waste from these CAFOs contaminates ground water, contributes heavily to greenhouse gas emissions, and is absolutely disgusting to be around. The abundant use of antibiotics is leading to resistant strains of viruses as these “super bugs” adapt. Factory farms rely on cheap grains to make cheap meat, which means that neither of these foods are sustainable in the long-term.

The Paleo community advocates a real food diet with some specific restrictions: no grains, no vegetable oils, no added sugars. Instead, people are encouraged to eat vegetables, pastured meats and eggs, seafood, nuts and nut butters, and some fruit. Legumes are a grey area, as is pastured dairy – people are advised to experiment with these foods to determine whether or not they can be tolerated. This isn't a temporary diet with pre-made bars and shakes you can get from the grocery store. You can't be convenience store Paleo; this is a lifestyle change. Many of the people I talked with at the Ancestral Health Symposium prepare most of their own food including snacks like jerky and trail mix. Many of them garden, can, and preserve food. And everyone I spoke to emphasized the need for carefully-sourced animal products. After all, these are people who are convinced that eating ancestrally is the key to optimal health – and that's true for animals as well as people.

These folks sound a lot like me. I may eat less meat and more lentils, but we all consider the current food system unsustainable and unhealthy. We all eat real food.

One of the reasons I was so excited for the AHS was the opportunity to speak with other real foodies about the challenges we face in reforming the food system – making it more sustainable, accessible, healthful, and secure. Strangely, I heard more about troubles with vegetarians than with grain subsidies. Why vegetarians? The Paleo community advocates an evolutionary approach to diet and health in which animal products play a significant role. Vegetarians, on the other hand, do not eat meat and often exclude seafood as well; vegans avoid all animal products including eggs, dairy, and even honey. The question of whether or not eating meat is ethical, sustainable, or even healthy has apparently caused quite a bit of friction between the two groups.

I think this argument is a big waste of time and a major missed opportunity for positive change. A real food vegetarian - one who focuses on fresh fruits and vegetables, adds nuts and nut butters, eats pastured eggs, and avoids processed crap - is eating a diet much closer to Paleo than the majority of Americans. More importantly, the policy changes that would help make a produce-dominated diet cheaper and more accessible than a grain-based diet (including grain-fed animal products) would benefit a real food vegetarian as much as someone on a Paleo diet. We should be allies in this fight against unhealthy processed food and polluting CAFOs that cause a great deal of animal suffering.

Of course, not every vegetarian or vegan eats real food. Many of them survive on cereal and pasta and drink soda. Just like most Americans who also eat meat. Whether you make Rice-a-roni with conventional ground beef or crumbled veggie burger, you are not eating a nutritionally-dense, healthy meal. The healthfulness of a fast-food cheeseburger, fries, and soda does not hinge on the all-beef patty. To put it simply, meat is not the central issue in terms of health.

When it comes to the environment, conventional meat (especially red meat) really is the worst thing you can eat. Meat production doesn't have to be that way though. Pasture-raised meat from integrated farms can actually be good for the environment. And, as I've said already, grain agriculture does a lot of damage all on its own. Creating a food system that is sustainable over the long-term does not hinge solely on meat but rather on producing and eating real food.

If you agree that (1) eating real food is the key to good health and (2) promoting a real food lifestyle is an important step in achieving a just and sustainable food system, then you are part of the real food movement, and I am here to recruit you. Eco-vegetarian, sustaileo, or whatever – you can be on my team any day.

So what do we need to do? Back in January, I attempted to map out issues relevant to sustainable food systems. Many of them are particularly relevant to the real food movement. They are:

1. Reforming farm subsidies.

This one should come as no surprise given my above rant about industrial agriculture. Subsidies that encourage farmers to grow as much corn, wheat, and soy as they possibly can has left us with vast monocultures, environmental damage, really poor farmers (seriously), and a surplus of junk calories that make us sick. It is also the foundation for the grain-feeding, CAFO system that contributes even more to our environmental problems and is really just cruel. Our food system will have to change eventually as the resources on which they rely become more scarce, but minimizing the pain of transitioning away from this system is an important challenge.

What we likely need is a transition subsidy program, similar to the tobacco buy-out, in which farmers can still collect payments without actually growing corn, wheat, or soy. After a prescribed amount of time (the tobacco buy-out lasted 10 years), all subsidies would end. Some farmers would stick with grains, but many others would switch to other types of foods because they can actually make more money. We could even go a step further and attempt to incentivize switching to integrated farming systems or offer additional programs to help farmers go in that direction. I know my libertarian readers won't like that idea as much (yes, I'm recruiting real food libertarians too!), but it's going to take some work to get the land back into growing shape, and we need at least some of the farmers to choose to stick around.

2. Enabling small farmers.

The food industry – from growers through to retailers, in both conventional and organic markets – has become increasingly concentrated (read more here). A few large companies control the vast majority of market share. These companies have the ability to affect legislation, either to stop new regulations that would dip into profits or to direct regulations to stifle small businesses that would compete for market share.

A recent example was the Food Safety Modernization Act, a bill to overhaul food handling regulations to help prevent the spread of food-borne illnesses. In its original form, the bill would have applied the same regulations to all farms regardless of size. Small-scale farmers and their advocates were against the bill because it would effectively put them out of business. Also, many regulations that seemed totally reasonable for a large-scale operation just didn't make sense for a small family farm. The big companies were quite happy with the bill until an amendment was proposed – the Tester-Hagen amendment – which excepted small farms that sold their goods locally and directly to consumers. With Big Food now against the bill, it nearly died. However, enough people expressed their support for the bill, in the form of calls and letters, that it eventually passed.

Fighting for small-scale/family farms is important. They provide food, yes, but they also provide a choice. You can actually go to a small farm and witness their growing practices and how they treat their animals. And with enough small farms, you can actually choose based on your own values. All the rules of economics, of market pressure and voting with your dollar, can work in this system because you have access to the information that would enable you to make a decision and (ideally) a variety of options that allows you to choose exactly what you want. If you want a polyculture farm that grows seasonal varieties and incorporates animals such that they can express their natural behaviors, you can go find that farm – IF we protect them.

3. Improving school lunches.

School lunches in the Unites States are generally awful. French fries count as vegetables, and foods like pizza, burgers, and chicken fingers are common offerings. These foods are heavily processed, provide little nutritional value, and do nothing to educate children as to where food comes from or that nutrition is important. However, there are now programs across the country connecting schools with local farms that can provide fresh produce for school lunches. In many schools with Farm to School programs, involvement with the farms goes beyond a well-stocked salad bar. The farm relationship is used as a teaching tool – a way to expose kids to food systems, nutrition, and even biology and ecology. Some schools even create their own gardens and can literally see the fruits of their labors served up in the cafeteria. Children today (and really all people) are bombarded by messages that they should eat things that taste good, that healthy food does not taste good, and that all calories are the same. A slice of pizza, with some potato chips and a soda, includes all the food groups and is so constantly available that it must be okay to eat, right? Wrong. We need to fight against these messages by connecting kids with the land, their food, and their bodies.

4. Making real food more accessible to the poor.

Nearly 1 in 4 Americans are helped by the government's Nutrition Assistance Program, which includes food stamps and WIC. That's a LOT of people. Allowing these benefits to be used at Farmers Markets gives people access to fresh produce that will help them lead healthier lives – a benefit to both our citizens and our future tax dollars. Both the WIC program and the benefit program for seniors now offer vouchers in addition to the regular benefit that can only be redeemed for fresh fruit, vegetables, or herbs at participating farmers markets. However, the federal benefit is capped at $30 per person per year. My husband and I spend that much at our local farm stand each week! State programs can build on the federal benefit, and many states now have programs that double federal benefits for produce and programs to get EBT card readers installed at more farmers markets. Strengthening these programs will help people get the nutrition they need, develop better health habits that they can use even after they have stopped relying on food stamps, and contributes to local economies.


There are already many organizations working on all of these issues. Until I can create a Real Food Political Action Committee for you all to join, the following organizations are good places to get involved. You can also go back to my Food Sustain-o-sphere post for more links in other areas.

National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition
NCAT Sustainable Agriculture Project
Understanding the Farm Bill: A Citizen's Guide to a Better Food System
Community Alliance for Family Farmers
USDA Farm to School Program
National Farm to School Network
The Edible Schoolyard Project

Of course, there are still going to be disagreements between those in the vegetarian camp and those who call themselves Paleo. The question of what constitutes a healthy diet is an important one that we should continue to research. In the meantime, though, we should not let our differences keep us from real progress. There are many ways in which we could improve our food system and deliver more real food to the public for the benefit of us all; the above are only a few of the issues ripe for collaboration. We may not all agree that Meatless Monday is a good idea, but we can probably all endorse Sodaless Saturday! So I say to you, Real Foodies, Unite!

Tobacco subsidies, up in smoke.

My investigations into the food system generally result in depression and/or anger. When I decided to take on tobacco subsidies, I had a feeling it would at least ruin my weekend. Just goes to show, you never know the answer until you ask the question.

After the great depression, programs like farm subsidies and crop insurance were instituted to protect people (both growers and consumers) from volatile crop prices. The program for tobacco restricted the size and location of tobacco farms as well as the amount of tobacco that could be grown on any one farm. The idea was to regulate the supply of tobacco to keep the price steady over many years. If the price of tobacco fell despite the quotas, farmers could use their crops as collateral on a loan from the government. The loans were generally repaid over the next few growing seasons as the price rebounded.

In 1982, as people were learning that tobacco products are extremely addictive and lead directly to many forms of cancer, there was a public outcry. People did not want the government supporting tobacco farming with their tax dollars. The No-Net-Cost Tobacco Program was the result: growers and buyers shared the cost of a small fee added to all marketed tobacco. The fee was used to defray the costs of loans that were not repaid. Thus, although the loan program continued to help regulate the market and thereby supported tobacco farming in the US, it wasn’t costing the taxpayers money. At least, it wasn’t supposed to…

Administrative costs for the program remained the responsibility of the government. The government also paid tobacco farmers additional money in response to agricultural and natural disasters. In years when the prices of tobacco and other commodities were especially low, the government again authorized payments to farmers that came from taxpayer dollars. Administrative costs, and these extra payments, ran in the hundreds of millions. It’s a tiny fraction of the federal budget but still a lot of government money for a “no-cost” program.

Over time, domestic demand for tobacco continued to fall, causing the price to also fall. In response, the government reduced the quotas on tobacco production, thereby decreasing supply, in order to bolster tobacco prices. At the same time, however, tobacco farming from outside the US became increasingly competitive, and the US tobacco market suffered even more. It became clear that the old quota and loan system was no longer effective.

In 2005, President George W. Bush enacted the Tobacco Transition Payment Program (the “tobacco buyout”). The act eliminated regulations on the size and location of tobacco farms, crop quotas, and the loan program. Instead, starting in 2005 and continuing for the next 10 years, tobacco farmers receive a direct payment subsidy based on the amount of tobacco they grew in the years before the buyout. After this ten-year period, tobacco farmers will receive no financial assistance from the government.

With the money from the tobacco buyout, farmers can choose to transition to another crop, consolidate or expand their tobacco operations to become more efficient, or give up the farming business altogether. The buyout seems like a good way of transitioning farmers away from tobacco, but how much is it costing us?

Nothing. That’s right. The $10 billion that will be spent on direct payments to tobacco farmers is being paid by the manufacturers and importers of tobacco products. In exchange, these companies do not have to pay part of a health-based court settlement.

I wasn’t able to find any information on the environmental impact of more consolidated tobacco farms, and I don’t know if the buyout has increased cigarette prices or influenced demand for tobacco products. I do know that the government is getting out of the tobacco business and using the settlement against tobacco companies to do so. Overall, I can’t think of anything wrong with this, and that leaves me feeling surprisingly cheerful. If, years from now, it is shown that added sugar makes processed foods addictive and is unequivocally linked to severe health problems (as we already suspect), perhaps there will be a corn buyout. That would make me cheerful too.

(I did find this interesting article on the global environmental and ethical issues pertaining to tobacco farming. Lots of good reasons to no longer support tobacco farming, which I guess we don't!)

Sources:
The USDA Farm Service page on the buyout
CRS Report for Congress on (pre-buyout) tobacco price supports by J. Womack
The NC State buyout site (assistance for farmers)
The EWG Farm Subsidy Database

Stimulating dinner conversation: Three discussions about food. (Part Three)

For the past couple of months, I have been co-teaching a course on how to use social media (mainly blogs and Facebook) to report on issues of food, sustainability, and health. The culmination of the course was for each student to research some aspect of these issues and compose a journalistic blog post. You can read their articles at the Naked Bear Blog (they are students from Cal – the Golden Bears – hence, the name).

Although the course was proposed, organized, and taught by Cal students as part of the DeCal program, we were required to have a faculty sponsor. In our case, we had Michael Pollan.

Along with the other student teachers, I met with Michael early in the semester to discuss the details of the course. Since his books were the motivating factor for me adopting an ethical food lifestyle as well as for starting this blog, having a sit-down with the man himself was quite a thrill. He was warm and friendly and lent me two books: The End of Food by Paul Roberts and Stuffed and Starved by Raj Patel (one of the speakers at the Food Movements Unite event I covered in Part 1).

Michael also assured us that he would visit the class sometime during the semester to meet the students and answer their questions. And, as promised, he attended the last lecture of the semester. To prepare for this special visit, we had the students submit questions and then vote; the top questions led our discussion with Michael.

"What role do you see the US health care system playing in the transformation of national food policy? Do you expect a turn towards preventative care and healthy eating as a way to lower overall health care costs?" ~Keli

As Pollan explained to our class (and in The New York Times), the food system and the health care system are inextricably linked. Treating Type 2 diabetes, that’s the kind of diabetes caused by diet, can cost health insurers $400,000 over the lifetime of each diabetic they insure. And with additional government policies making it harder for insurers to deny coverage, there will be an increasing financial incentive for big health care companies to fight for food reform.

Once a rich, powerful corporate interest wants people eating more fresh vegetables and consuming less soda, food reform becomes more politically tenable. As Pollan said to our class “if all the powerful interests are on the same side, nothing happens.

Similar to the way health insurers became invested in getting people to quit smoking or companies that pay for their workers’ coverage started subsidizing gym memberships, the vilified health insurance company may be our best chance at serious change.

"We are told to vote with our dollar but many people do not have access to good food or cannot afford it. How do we solve this discrepancy and what do you suggest for families that cannot afford to eat healthily and sustainably?" ~Emily

Pollan’s first point in response to this question was that the perception that healthy food is expensive or inaccessible may no longer be an accurate one for many people. The astounding increase in the number of farmers markets and CSAs cropping up all over the country has done a lot to bring farmers and consumers closer together, generally resulting in lower prices and easier access. For some, it is just a matter of looking up the nearest farmers market or CSA farm and being willing to put time into planning and cooking healthy meals.

In my personal experience, I found that the produce stand near my house had a much wider variety of organic (not to mention hyper-local) fruits and vegetables for less money than at the grocery store. As I reported in a previous post, my food costs put me in the lowest tier of food spending even though I purchase pasture-raised meat and eggs and organic, local produce.

His second point was that there certainly are places in this country in which access and cost are very real problems. West Oakland, he pointed out, has 53 liquor stores and zero full-service grocery stores. Zero. Recently, there has been work to bring a grocery store to West Oakland, but community organizers are concerned that they will get stuck with a low-quality, budget retailer that won’t improve the type of food available to residents.

Nikki Henderson from People’s Grocery in West Oakland described the type of market system she envisions for the area: one that provides local organic produce and helps the local economy. There are a few new markets cropping up in West Oakland that are owned by local residents and committed to bringing local food to Oakland residents, but the City of Oakland is also pushing hard for a large retail chain to set up shop. The debate as to which option is better for the residents of West Oakland is nicely laid out in an article by Eric Holt Gimenez, the director of Food First: The Institute for Food and Development Policy, which created and runs the Oakland Food Policy Council. Also, one of the students in our class researched food deserts, including Oakland, for her article.

In general, Pollan pointed out, there are measures we could adopt that would enable more poor people to buy healthy food. Accepting food stamps and WIC at farmers markets would be one option, and working to bring farmers markets to urban areas would provide better access to healthy foods.

"You wrote that letter to the next president in the New York Times giving some good ideas about what he can do to really help our food issues. What sorts of little things do you think we can all do to make our food system better from day to day?" ~Keith

The easiest thing we can all do is to be conscious eaters. As Michael Pollan put it, we ought to make choices that we’ve considered. He doesn’t advocate scrutinizing every decision or driving yourself crazy trying to find a certain local vegetable to complete tonight’s dinner recipe. Rather, think about what choices you are making. Already, you are likely to make better ones.

Next up, be aware of the debates and legislation going on in your country, state, or even city council. Pollan recommended the site Food Democracy Now for keeping up with current food-related events; I’ve been following the National Coalition for Sustainable Agriculture’s blog for my policy news. And just as important as knowing what is going on, you need to be willing to weigh in. “Vote with your fork”, says Pollan, but also, vote with your vote!

Michael described working with Senators to help along the Food Safety bill and to promote the Tester-Hagan amendment in an article he wrote with Eric Schlosser (author of Fast Food Nation and Food Inc. producer), which appeared in The New York Times. I took a moment to explain to the class my recent experience of calling Senator Boxer’s office to comment on the Food Safety Bill and the Tester-Hagan amendment. Pollan assured me that these actions really do matter. If you care about an issue, you have to call. And it seems like not very many people take these opportunities to vote on policy even though the big changes come from these votes – more so, one could argue, than votes cast at the ballot box.

“Vote with your fork!” ~Michael Pollan

We had a terrific time with Michael Pollan and were so appreciative that he could attend our class. I even snuck out with him at the end, and yes, he agreed to sign my copy of The Omnivore’s Dilemma. What a guy!

Stimulating dinner conversation: Three discussions about food. (Part One)

Recently, I had the opportunity to attend three food-related events: two panel discussions and a Q&A with Michael Pollan.

The first event was the Food Movements Unite panel discussion with Raj Patel, Nikki Henderson, and Nora KcKeon. The panel was organized by Food First: The Institute for Food and Development Policy, so it wasn’t surprising that the panel focused on food access for the poor both in urban areas of the US and in developing countries around the world.

“What the corporate food system is producing in Global North and Global South… is, above all, a politics that prevents us from addressing the real causes of the problem.” ~Raj Patel

Raj Patel is a Food First Policy Fellow and has written several books including Stuffed and Starved and The Value of Nothing. Raj pointed out that, to understand the current state of the global food system, we need to understand the history of colonialism and development of the 19th century. Often referencing the book Late Victorian Holocaust by Mike Davis, Raj explained that what we now view as the Global North (of plenty) and Global South (of poverty) was not a natural evolution of these regions. Instead, the Global South and the Third World were created by violence and imperialism on the part of the Global North through, in large part, the development of the global food system.

We are now left with a food system that wreaks havoc on the environment, contributes to poverty, hunger, and malnutrition, and provides food in such novel forms that it makes people sick. Despite having reduced the number of food insecure people in the world by nearly a million since 2009, there are still an estimated 925 million people who suffer from chronic hunger [1]. Hunger and malnutrition persist even as economies improve, and food prices are fairly low, because of inequities in the structure of the food system [1]. The novel foods introduced in places like India are now thought to be responsible for the profound increase in the prevalence of diabetes. An estimated one million people in India die each year from diabetes, and health care costs for treating the disease now comprise 2% of the GDP.

“The minute we step into supermarkets, the minute that we allow ourselves to be seduced by this idea that individual consumerism will transform the planet, we have fallen into one of the traps that… corporate globalization and the corporate food system has already set for us.” ~Raj Patel

When addressing solutions to global food problems, Raj was critical of personal food choices as an avenue for change. He seemed most concerned with people making different food choices but still working within the same corporate system. Simply purchasing well-marketed products (“pro-bunny-rabbit”, to use his words) cannot solve the underlying problems stemming from inequity in the global food system or the lack of access to food for impoverished people throughout the world. Rather, we have to change the food system itself and, as Raj stated in his conclusion, we may need to change a great deal else as well.

“All hail the turnip!” ~ Raj Patel

During the question and answer session, Raj had some cautionary words for local food movements in the US. Politics and the position of a local effort in the larger global food movement need to be considered. Becoming hyper-focused on eating locally, for example, may stall the effectiveness of a food movement. Understanding the role of businesses like Walmart and McDonald’s – that they provide a social safety net in the form of cheap food – is necessary before a local movement ought to, say, work against a new Walmart in their community. It’s easy, as people with means or even as a country with means, to forget about the people who can’t afford to make choices.

“Who are you? What do you want to do? Where does your humility sit when you do this work?” ~Nikki Henderson

The second panelist was Nikki Henderson from People’s Grocery, an organization that works to bring fresh, healthy food and health education to West Oakland. Their larger concerns are food justice - the idea that people have an inherent right to healthy food - and changing the food system to prioritize access for the poor in urban areas.

Nikki told a personal story of her journey into food justice activism and described how poised we are as a movement to truly make changes. She mentioned the White House garden and the push, championed by First Lady Michelle Obama, to promote fresh, healthy food. And she emphasized how important it is that we learn the history of the movements and communities in which we work, and that we collaborate across different sectors within the food movement in order to yoke the power of the people and support the leaders who could actually make the changes we are fighting for.

Unexpectedly, Nikki highlighted the Tea Party as a successful model for mobilizing people within a movement. In only two years, the Tea Party has gone from non-existent to having lawmakers in office. If all of the people working on the many important issues within food systems could come together, we too could make significant progress.

Nikki’s talk was engaging and motivating. She made me want to jump out of my seat and fix the food system all on my own. All of the panelists’ remarks are available on Vimeo, but I am sharing this one specifically because I thought it was so good.

Nikki Henderson from Food First on Vimeo.

“…the road to ending hunger in Africa leads in the same direction as the road to ending obesity, food deserts, [and] salmonella in the US, and now is the time to take it.” ~Nora McKeon

The final speaker was Nora McKeon of the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the leading international organization working to assess and defeat world hunger, and author of The United Nations and Civil Society. The FAO now has a Committee on Food Security that works with governments to secure access to healthy food for all the people of the world.

Hers was a message of hope. After more than three decades of work toward food system change, she expressed optimism saying, “This is easily the most exciting moment of political opportunity that I’ve encountered in all these many years.”

Structural adjustment policies, previously required by international assistance programs, are now widely accepted as destructive. In addition to peasant farmer movements in the Global South, initially spawned as a reaction to such adjustment policies, we now have alternative food systems cropping up even in the developed world. According to Nora, the intersection of food and health as well as the influence of industrial agriculture on climate change, have also contributed to food movements becoming mainstream concerns. People are interested. At present, our best chance to substantially change food systems is by linking local and global food movements – by getting all of the people who are passionate about food systems to work together.

Who am I?

I’ve often shied away from global food issues because, frankly, they’re intimidating. It all sounds too big for me. With so many competing interests, ideas, and voices, how could I ever hope to figure out not only what is going on but also the best solutions? And how can I fight for what is right if I can’t figure out what that is?

Even through some amount of avoidance on my part, I have begun learning about the global food system, the history of exploitation and unintended consequences that led to its formation, and how our policies and practices here in the US contribute to a food system that leaves nearly a billion people starving or malnourished.

Avoiding participation in the conventional food system whenever I can, educating those around me, and speaking up when food legislation is being considered are all ways that I can contribute. And these local and national-scale efforts support even more widespread changes because, as I learned from these panelists, local and global food movements go hand-in-hand. I’m still no expert, but I’m beginning to learn that even I can contribute to the betterment of the global food system if I am willing to try; attending this panel discussion was merely a first step.

Stay tuned for commentary on The Conscientious Carnivore panel discussion and the Q&A with Michael Pollan in upcoming posts.

Vote early; vote often.

How often do you vote? Every four years? Every two? How confident do you feel, when you walk up to your polling place, that you are making the best choices - the ones that most accurately reflect your values?

If you’re like me, the answer is “not very”. When it comes to candidate races, in which the choice generally comes down to only two people, it’s a lot easier to decide who gets my vote. Ballot propositions often leave me in a quandary though. I use my best judgment, but really, the only thing that makes me comfortable voting yes or no is the knowledge that my vote is only a tiny contribution to the decision.

I have spent the past year learning about food: where our food comes from, how our system affects our health and environment, and even the ramifications of our global trade policies and subsidized food system on the developing world. I have blogged about food, taught a class about food, and attended panel discussions. I completely changed the way I eat. These are ways in which I vote every day. Perhaps they are useful, but they are still only tiny contributions.

Could I do more?

Despite the seemingly endless commercials for and against ballot measures, most policy changes are made between elections – in the Senate and the House of Representatives. More important than which particular congressperson happens to be in office, is how that person votes on any given piece of legislation, when they choose to compromise, and which issues they concede. It is at these points that my voice could be more than noise – that my passion and concern could have an impact.

Am I ready to do more?

Fighting for what I think is right takes confidence and courage – two things I’m not sure I have! Before dialing up my congressperson to assert my views and call for action, I need to know what I’m asking for.

Recently, I read about a new bill to enhance food safety by, among other things, allowing the FDA to recall tainted food. Currently, recalls are voluntary and determined by the producers or manufacturers of the food in question. I read about the food safety bill in an article in The Washington Post, in which Michael Pollan explains the bill and why he is strongly in favor of its passage, and in several posts on Civil Eats.

The most comprehensive look at this piece of legislation came from the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC), a group that “advocates for federal policy reform to advance the sustainability of agriculture, food systems, natural resources, and rural communities”. They currently have an action alert about the food safety bill, which includes an explanation of key points in the bill, a link to a full report by NSAC, and helpful instructions on how to contact your Senator and advice on what to say. This piece of legislation and its amendments are currently being debated in the Senate. And I could be a part of that conversation, if only I would pick up the phone and call.

I’m still nervous about taking this next step. But come Monday morning, I am going to call Senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein and explain to them why I think this bill is important. Both these senators are likely to vote yes on the bill along with the two amendments that make it feasible for small or family farms. Even so, picking up the phone shows these senators that their constituency cares about food policy. Perhaps hearing from me will make them more willing to fight for my interests in the future and less likely to concede to other interests. Despite my self-doubt, I think this is something I have to do. If there is a topic you are passionate about, I encourage you to educate yourself about current legislation and vote with your telephone. Vote early; vote often.

And for those of you less passionate about food…

Obviously, food policy is what motivates me to participate in the legislative process. However, there are easy ways of learning about legislation on any topic. Reading or subscribing to blogs and news articles is a good way to learn about upcoming bills. Another way is to keep up with the legislation being written, debated, and voted for in the Senate and the House. Thomas records current and past legislation (since 1989), Congressional activities day-by-day, voting records, and more. The Library of Congress runs Thomas with the purpose of making the legislative process accessible to the public. I used the “bill text search” to find legislation related to food that is being debated, amended, or voted on – in other words, bills with floor action – in the 2009/2010 Congressional year.

Thomas found over 400 entries. The first three are versions of the House’s Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009 (H.R. 2749). I can see that this bill has passed. The fourth entry is the Senate version of the bill: the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (S. 510), which was the topic of this post. From here, I can access a PDF of the actual text of the bill – a 266-page document containing language that will be removed from the current law followed by the new regulations. Following the link to S. 510’s page, I can also navigate to a summary of the bill and it’s history and current status. This is a great way to learn about legislation you are passionate about.

GovTrack is non-governmental site that covers current and past legislation. Informed by Thomas, this site also provides commentary and allows users to ask and answer questions. The interface is a little more user-friendly than Thomas as you can see in their S. 510 page. Finally, Congress.org lists the contact information for elected officials by zip code. The only commentary appears to be user-generated; they also allow users to post content such as their letters to Congress or calls-to-action by different advocacy groups.

I hope this information will help you identify the legislation you most care about and give you the tools to participate in the process. Good luck!


[Special thanks go to Eric M. Huff for providing the link to the Washington Post article, helping me identify sources of information on S. 510, and encouraging me to participate!]