Climate Food and Agriculture

Now that I’ve actually read the book …

When I caught up with 100-mile dieters Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon a few weeks ago, they were just kicking off their book tour with a stop in Toronto, and I hadn’t even had a chance to read Plenty, in which they recount a year of local eating. Sure, I had the basic info — […]

Feeding the world sustainably

(Part of the No Sweat Solutions series.)

If heaven was a pie it would be cherry
Cool and sweet and heavy on your tongue
And just one bite would satisfy your hunger
And there'd always be enough for everyone
-- Gretchen Peters, "If Heaven"

Agriculture for food and fiber represents another significant category of environmental impact. Before we worry about how to farm, we should consider how much agriculture we need. If you read the technical news, when this subject comes up it always centers on how to increase food production for a hungry world.

This is completely misleading. There is enough food produced (including meat and fish) worldwide not just to feed everyone on the planet, not just to make everyone fat, but to make everybody morbidly obese. Counting grain, beans, roots, fruits, vegetables, nuts, and other plants and fungi (not including animal feed), plus livestock, dairy, fish, eggs, and other animal products raised for human consumption, we produced nearly 2,800 calories per person per year in 2001[1] -- including 75 grams of protein. 2,200 calories per day is generally accepted as the average needed to keep a person healthy -- neither losing nor gaining weight[2]. 56 grams of protein is the U.S. RDA for adult men[3].

Many people have higher requirements than this -- most grown men, pregnant and lactating women, athletic women. (As one instance, Lucy Lawless used to perform gymnastics and horseback riding in fairly heavy armor ten or more hours per day while starring in "Xena - Warrior Princess," and probably burned 6,000+ calories daily at the peak of her schedule.) Children, and median-height adult women, generally need less. Below 2,200 calories, and 56 grams on average, is considered an absolute shortage; if we allow a comfort and safety margin, that would mean we want at least 2,300 calories on average per person available worldwide.

How big an increase do we need to keep up with population growth? According to the U.S. Census[4], if you assume the same production with projected increases in population we will still average ~2,500 calories per person per day in 2010, ~2,300 per day in 2020. Without no cultivation of more acreage or increase in production per acre, we then approach absolute scarcity, falling to 1,900 in 2050. We need no increase in total food production before 2020, and only a 21 percent increase by 2050.

Moreover, in one sense the problem of getting that increase is already solved.

Earth Dinners keep cuisine and conversation flowing

This is the third installment in a series about connecting with friends and family over specific meals; the first was an introduction to dining co-ops, the second a celebration of Passover. At a recent dinner party, I pulled out my deck of Earth Dinner cards. The first one asked, “Who in your life really understands […]

What About Excess Waist?

To cut down waste, some Hong Kong restaurants charge for leftovers Do you miss the good ol’ days of childhood? The park, the play dates, the eat-everything-on-your-plate-or-else lectures? Well, we can’t fit you on the child-size slide or bring back your pre-K paramour, but if you want to be chided for leaving leftovers, get ye […]

Following U.S. consumerism through the fields of China and Brazil

In what surely counts as one of the greatest feats in the history of global trade, the United States has essentially outsourced its manufacturing base to China in little more than a decade. It all starts with shuttered factories. Photo: iStockphoto But in doing so, the U.S. has helped unleash new trends in global agriculture […]

Implications of the last organic latte

Fair Trade producers in Mexico depend heavily on organic certification to reap price premiums for both labels, and will be hurt on more than one front by the recently released USDA rule requiring them to change certification practices, researchers say. In a recent article in Salon, later followed by a post on Gristmill, Samuel Fromartz detailed the consequences of a USDA ruling that would force a radical change in the way grower groups in the global South certify their products. The USDA ruling, Fromartz writes:

[T]ightens organic certification requirements to such a degree that it could sharply curtail the ability of small grower co-ops to produce organic coffee -- not to mention organic bananas, cocoa, sugar and even spices.

In his blog on the subject, Fromartz says he only hit the tip of the iceberg. So I hunted around a bit, seeking to find out more about how the ruling would impact producers in developing nations. I contacted Aimee Shreck and Christy Getz, two researchers who have published on organic and Fair Trade in developing nations. And notably, I got in touch with Tad Mutersbaugh, a professor of geography at the University of Kansas. Mutersbaugh's research focuses on international certification standards, and he's worked with organic and Fair Trade certified grower groups in Oaxaca, Mexico. He was familiar with the recent USDA ruling, and expressed his concern about the implications the ruling would have for small farmers in organic and Fair Trade grower groups.

The sorcerer’s apprentice running amok in ag?

Gene tampering (called "genetic modification" by the same people who call gambling "gaming" and sewer sludge "biosolids") is a terrible idea, said the "extreme environmentalists" who warned that, nature being what it is, it wouldn't be long before we would see invasive weed species adopting whatever characteristics we created.

A good time was had by … me

Just got back in town today. Not quite ready to jump back in the grind, so I’ll procrastinate a bit by talking about my vacation. We woke up Saturday morning(ish) to discover that quite literally across the street from the friend’s place where we were staying (on the east side of Fort Green Park) there […]

Grinding to a Halt

Changes in USDA policy could hit organic coffee hard Hold onto your latte: News is seeping out about a change at the U.S. Department of Agriculture that could affect the cost and availability of organic products from developing countries, including bananas, spices, sugar, and coffee. Normally, a farm must undergo an annual inspection to get […]

Organic coffee deep-sixed

Due a recent decision over at the USDA's National Organic Program, organic coffee, in the U.S. at least, may be a thing of the past. I wrote about this decision on Salon and did not shout it out to Gristies right away (mea culpa), but I am now.

The USDA decision, which affects the way small farmer cooperatives in the Third World are certified, will also dry up supplies of organic cocoa and curtail bananas. So eat your organic Dagoba bars now while they're still available.

It doesn't look like there's a solution right away, though a friend over at PCC -- in Grist's backyard of Seattle -- tells me the solution might be to build certification organizations in local markets. In the meantime, however, certifiers, coffee farmers and NGOs that work in the Third World are perplexed and upset.

I'll be updating over at Chews Wise blog and post any big moves here.