Half of world's population could face climate-driven food crisis by 2100

"Ignoring climate projections at this stage will only result in the worst form of triage."

The headline is from the University of Washington news release on a study in Science, "Historical Warnings of Future Food Insecurity with Unprecedented Seasonal Heat" ($ub. req'd). The quote is the study's powerful final sentence. The release explains:

Rapidly warming climate is likely to seriously alter crop yields in the tropics and subtropics by the end of this century and, without adaptation, will leave half the world's population facing serious food shortages, new research shows ...

"The stresses on global food production from temperature alone are going to be huge, and that doesn't take into account water supplies stressed by the higher temperatures," said David Battisti, a University of Washington atmospheric sciences professor.

Worse, the study must also be considered a serious underestimate of likely impacts since, as is common in such analyses, they based their simulations on "the 'middle of the road' emission scenario, A1B." In 2100, A1B hits about 700 ppm with average global temperatures "only" about 3°C warmer than today. In fact, on our current emissions path, we are going to get much, much hotter.

Figure. "Histogram of summer (June, July, and August) averaged temperatures (blue) observed from 1900 to 2006 and (red) projected for 2090 for (A) France, (B) Ukraine, and (C) the Sahel. Temperature is plotted as the departure from the long-term (1900-2006) climatological mean (21). The data are normalized to represent 100 seasons in each histogram. In (A), for example, the hottest summer on record in France (2003) is 3.6°C above the long-term climatology. The average summer temperature in 2090 [assuming A1B] is projected to be 3.7°C greater than the long-term climatological average."

The results are still alarming:

Grist cooks lunch for America’s leading food writer

Today Grist had the somewhat surreal experience of hosting Michael Pollan, the nation’s premier food writer, for lunch. And just to make it more stressful, we decided to do a potluck — each of us brought in a dish. Cooking for Pollan! Yikes! Happily, he enjoyed the food, and we had a nice conversation. We’ll […]

Fishermen who play by the rules deserve some help

Taking up Tom Philpott's food stimulus challenge, I suggest bailing out the fisherman. Of course, fish stocks internationally are still in serious decline -- you need look no father than the Atlantic bluefin tuna to see that. But according to a report on NPR, we're having some serious fisheries-management success stories on the West Coast. Now it's the local fishing fleets rather than the fisheries that threaten to collapse. At first, the government thought they had engineered a "soft landing" for fishermen when:

... five years ago many fishermen who trolled for groundfish agreed to give up their boats for a lump sum of cash. That dramatically reduced the size of the fleet. There are only about 160 bottom trawlers left in California, Oregon and Washington.

As a result, nets are full and quotas are easily met. But now regulators are converting fishing quotas into a cap-and-trade system. There's no question that this is an important development. Since fishermen will be able to buy and sell portions of their quotas, they'll throw less of their catch overboard (dumping fish being the only legal way to dispose of excess catch). Under the new system, they'll just hop on the radio and buy some of the fishing rights from a fellow fisherman who has room to spare in his hold.

Everything looks peachy so far, but all industries need a certain scale. As the fleets continue to shrink and more fishermen sell their quotas and their boats, fishing ports, which include processing plants and other supporting services, will shut down entirely. These are businesses that, unlike the meat industry's now defunct network of local abattoirs and butchers, have so far resisted centralization.

So how about some incentives to keep these folks afloat? Fishermen should be encouraged to stay on the water, not to become fish stock brokers. If a little of the stimulus money can help us manage the fishermen along with the fisheries, it would be a boon to struggling coastal communities and would preserve fishing as an environmentally and economically sustainable tradition. Aside from the fact that any job lost is a crisis in this economy, it would be a shame that our success with the fish should lead to disaster for the people.

Think locally, act infrastructurally

President-elect Barack Obama and the new Congress can’t afford to turn their attention to reforming the food system. We’ve got two wars to fight, the Middle East conflict is raging again, the financial system is in chaos, and layoffs are mounting. And don’t forget the likelihood of trillion-dollar annual budget deficits for years to come. […]

'Minimalist' cooking master connects the dots between food, climate, and bad health

The great Mark Bittman -- whose new book I am eager to get my paws on -- delivers a powerful spiel connecting the industrial food system with climate change and the health-care crisis. Watch it.

Burger King launches film Whopper Virgins, simplifies U.S. to land of fast food

In the past year or so, I have had the opportunity to meet and experience a vast variety of inspiring food, environmental, and agricultural people and places. I met small-farmers in Ethiopia experimenting with pit composting instead of synthetic fertilizers. I shared meals with activists and writers in the sustainable food movement like Tom Philpott and Anna Lappé. Perhaps most exciting has been the increasing interest in sustainable food and agriculture throughout this country and among my family and friends. Helping my parents start composting, sharing books with friends, and watching the enthusiasm for a "Farmer in Chief" left me hopeful and excited at the end of 2008.

My vision came to a screeching halt when I saw a television ad during the holidays that left me laughing: Burger King trounces around the world feeding Whoppers to unsuspecting indigenous peoples in hopes of spreading the gospel of fast food. What a great parody, I thought! Who could have thought up such an ironic idea? And as the website for Whopper Virgins flashed on the screen, I had a sinking feeling that, like those high-fructose corn syrup ads, perhaps this Burger King film was no parody.

It turns out that the ad was actually an excerpt of a longer seven-minute film. The very concept of this idea -- flying around the world, feeding hamburgers to people who have never eaten hamburgers -- is in itself strange. For the first half of the film, the crew travels to Romania where they feed utterly confused people Whoppers and Big Macs from nearby restaurant locations. Strangely enough, it seems like the same number of people has no preference or prefers the Big Mac as compared to the Whopper.

What's the point of the industrial food system if it no longer provides affordable food?

Vermont's expansion of the food stamp program is an important story, one that demonstrates an increasing shift in our society's relationship to its food. Vermont's policy change on food stamps is likely to be mirrored by other states, and this represents both a fundamental shift in the reality of American need and also, I think, the final stake in the heart of the industrial food system.

From the Times Argus:

NY Daily News: Obama considering moving USDA pick Vilsack to commerce

Obama's nomination of former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack as USDA chief is turning into a strange saga.

First a crew of Big Organic execs join forces with a few activists to launch an enigmatic website to "support Vilsack" -- even though he's a shoo-in for confirmation.

Now comes this, from the Daily News "Mouth of the Potomac" blog:

A well-placed source says one option under consideration in filling the now vacant commerce secretary's slot is to tap ex-Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack for the job. Vilsack already has been named to serve as Barack Obama's agriculture secretary, and easily could move into the commerce position. The source tells The Mouth that Vilsack would be "a perfect choice" for Obama.

Huh? I don't understand how it would be "easy" to move a nominee from one agency to another; seems like it would be politically messy. "He's the ideal USDA pick ... no, I mean, he's the ideal commerce pick!" But the transition team has already vetted Vilsack; maybe that's what the reporter meant by "easy."

If the switch did happen, we'd be back to square one viz., the USDA: with the Obama team circulating a rather dismal short list, while activists push a more progressive choice.

Update [2009-1-7 13:25:46 by Tom Philpott]:According to "sources close to" Vilsack, the ex-governor of Iowa won't be moved from USDA to commerce, Des Moines television station KCCI reported Wednesday. Vilsack is in Washington, D.C., "interviewing candidates for future [USDA] staff positions."

Big Organic execs and some activists rally behind Obama's USDA pick

A group of NGO chiefs, activists, and Big Organic executives have launched a website and petition to support Tom Vilsack, president-elect Barack Obama's choice to lead USDA.

Participants in the site, known as supportvilsack.com, include Bob Scowcroft, executive director of the Organic Farming Research Foundation; Iowa sustainable-food activist Denise O'Brien (who recently guest-posted on Gristmill); Wayne Pacelle, CEO of the U.S. Humane Society; Gary Hirshberg, CEO of organic-yogurt giant Stonyfield Farm; Steve Demos, founder of soy-food giant White Wave (now owned by industrial-dairy behemoth Dean Foods); and several others.

Institutionally, the Organic Trade Association -- whose members range from tiny producers of hemp products to global agribiz giant Bunge -- signed on.

The effort strikes me as bizarre. Why band together to support someone who's a shoo-in to be confirmed? Vilsack is no firebrand reformer; his nomination will generate little controversy in the Senate.

Moreover, I understand the argument -- made on Gristmill by O'Brien and by John Crabtree of the Center for Rural Affairs -- that Vilsack is a relatively innocuous pick. After all, Obama's short list of USDA candidates included some real doozies, like agribusiness lobbyist Charles Stenholm.

But Vilsack isn't likely to lead U.S. food/agriculture policy in new, more sustainable and socially just directions -- at least not without a real push from below. As I've written before (and many others have pointed out), he has been a fervent booster of the genetically modified seed and biofuel industries -- both of which proffer what I think are dead-end "solutions" to environmental problems and offer little to any but the largest-scale and most commodity-oriented farmers.

I agree with the thesis that the sustainable-food movement should "work with" Vilsack, in the sense of pushing him to chart new directions in food/ag policy. But the "support Vilsack" movement (if it can be called that) seems less like a push than an uncritical embrace. Why, again?

Two gray eminences of the food movement lay down the law on farm policy

There's an idea out there that reforming U.S. food policy simply can not be a priority for the Obama administration. We're enmeshed in two wars (three, if you count what our dear Israeli friends are up to in the Gaza Strip), the economy is crumbling, and climate change is accelerating.

Under these conditions, how can Obama possibly busy himself with something as trivial as food? The president-elect himself seems to buy into this line of reasoning. By nominating a corn-belt pol with a history of playing footsie with agribiz as his USDA chief, Obama signaled that status quo, not reform, will mark his food agenda, at least early in his presidency.

I think the food-reform-can-wait logic is wrong on several counts. As I'll argue later this week in Victual Reality, investing in a new food system could make for an excellent piece of a stimulus package. And on practical grounds, food-system reform is urgent. Anyone who doubts that should read the powerful, concise op-ed in today's New York Times by Wendell Berry and Wes Jackson.

The sustainable food movement's most revered elders make the case with characteristic bluntness: