Un-Occupy Big Banks: Move Your Money on Saturday, November 5

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Blog, Food Industry News & Trends, Food Policy & Politics, Take a Bite News & Events

Monday, November 7th, 2011, 1:18 PM

Cross posted at Civil Eats on November 4th, 2011

Last weekend, I joined more than 30 people who braved blizzard-like conditions to assemble in a square across from Occupy Wall Street’s encampment at Zucotti Park to speak up about connections between big food and the Occupy movement. There was a food activist from Iowa, a farmer from upstate New York, students and professors from NYU, a union electrician, a nutritionist (who said she was there because “if the food system isn’t working, I can’t do my job”) and more.

Many carried plastic-covered signs with slogans like “Beat the System” and, my favorite, a line from Tom Philpott’s excellent article: “Our Food System is a Big Fat Monopoly.” As the rally ended—cut short by 30-degree temperatures, blinding snow, and 30-mile-an-hour wind gusts—I shared my commitment to do one, easy thing this week in support of the 99 percent: To move my money out of the hands of Citibank.

This week, tens of thousands of people are pledging to move their money out of the pockets of the financial institutions that got us into this mess and into the hands of credit unions and banks we can believe in.

When I first heard about this campaign, spearheaded by grassroots activists along with national groups ranging from the Rainforest Action Network (where I’m on the board of directors) to MoveOn.org, I thought—and I admit this with a good dose of embarrassment—“Good idea, but what a pain. I mean, I’d have to change all my automatic bill payments and open new accounts.”

But, of course, it’s probably a bit more than a pain to spend cold, wet nights—like last Saturday—sleeping on the hard cement of outdoor parks. If hundreds of people can make that sacrifice—all day, all week, for weeks—I think I can handle doing some busywork to move my money. And so I am. On Saturday, November 5, the national day of action to move your money, I’m closing my Citibank account, the one I opened 15 years ago on the same block as my first Brooklyn sublet. And I’m joining tens thousands of others when I do.

And it’s going to feel good. See, I’ve had twinges of regret for years, every time I heard about some new act of egregious Big Bank behavior. I just got used to turning a blind eye. But then the financial meltdown, the Big Bank bailout, and now this collective call to action and my attitude started to change and my eyes started opening.

Consider, for instance, that Citibank just agreed to pay $285 million to settle a lawsuit, essentially admitting to misleading investors about toxic mortgage-backed securities, although the bank officially neither admitted nor denied that it had done anything wrong. How convenient. Meanwhile, ProPublica, which has been digging into the machinations of Citi and other Big Banks, argues that the bank is on the line for much more and much worse.

But also keep in mind what Citibank has been doing with my, and our, money all these years and what it has to do with the food movement that turned out at Occupy Wall Street this past weekend. Turns out, Citibank has been busy. Here’s a taste. The bank has been:

– Investing in major agricultural projects in developing countries, what many critics call a modern-day land grab;

– Financing the leading Chinese agribusiness company and development of China’s chemical industry;

– Underwriting $300 million to finance expansion of “land grabs” in Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Bolivia for agricultural commodities and livestock production.

Bank of America customer? Keep in mind the bank is one of the lead underwriters of the coal industry. Rainforest Action Network is encouraging people to close their accounts and let BofA know that the bank should be moving its investment dollars away from dirty coal and toward clean, green renewable energy. Says RAN:

The bank routinely underwrites hundreds of millions of dollars in loans to…two of the biggest coal mining companies in the Powder River Basin that are desperately trying to secure a… facility to ship coal overseas…

As if all this weren’t enough to push us over the edge, I got a letter from Citibank several weeks ago—maybe you got a similar one from your Big Bank?—in which the bank informed me that clients who keep less than a $6,000 account balance—that’s me—would start seeing a monthly $15 fee on their statements. In other words, if you’re not rich enough to keep a big balance, you have to pay Citibank to keep your money while they spend it in their bailout-resulting, environment-destroying financial decisions.

I haven’t even been giving $15 a month to my favorite social action organization, yet I was sitting quietly while Citibank informed me they were going to take it from me and my captive bank account? (If you think Citibank’s policy was egregious, Bank of America announced it would start charging $60 a year to use its ATMs, a policy, which, thanks to public outcry, the bank just reversed).

Enough. I am done. Done with Citibank, done with feeling guilty when I get my monthly statements in the mail; done with feeling bad when I see my ATM card in my wallet. So on November 5, I plan to join with others across the country as I walk into my local Citi branch and close my account. I’ll tell them why, add my voice to the pledges here, and cut up my card. Then, I’ll head home to check out my new bank accounts online at Amalgamated Bank, the bank of the labor union movement. (You can find community-oriented banks and credit unions near you here and tips about how to move your money and not mess up your finances here.)

Finally, I’ll commit to giving that $15 a month (which, mind you, Citibank was going to take from me) to one of my favorite groups working on behalf of the 99 percent. All this will take a little paperwork and a little time, but nothing I can’t handle. And then, I’ll be free—and it’ll feel great. I hope you’ll join me.

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What? Food and Farm Bill Over in 13 days?

Topics:

Blog, Food Industry News & Trends, Food Policy & Politics, Forests, Hunger & Food Crisis, Local Food, Meat Industry, Organic Food & Farming

Friday, October 21st, 2011, 11:12 AM

October 20th, 2011

National Sustainable Agriculture
Only once every 5 years do you have the opportunity to truly transform our food and farm system through the federal farm bill.

On Monday the Agriculture Committee leadership proposed to rewrite the food and farm bill in 2 weeks from today – yes you heard that right, 2 weeks – this is usually a year plus process and they want to do it in 2 weeks?! This would be the fastest food and farm bill decision-making process in history.

Please act today for a chance you have only once every 5 years to reform our food and farming system and protect our natural resources.

If you care about the health of America’s soil, water, and land; promoting organic practices and conservation; helping a new generation of struggling small and mid-sized farmers get their start; rebuilding local and regional food systems; or developing new markets and healthy food access – now is the time to speak up. If you want to see a healthier, more secure, environmentally sustainable, and prosperous America – now is the time to speak up.

This proposal would wipe out over 40 percent of the funding increases for conservation and environmental initiatives achieved in the 2002 and 2008 food and farm bills, setting the clock back and “un-greening” the farm bill. Moreover, it is unclear what the proposal would do to the fair and healthy farm and food system programs won in 2008 with your help, but in need of being renewed in the new farm bill. It could potentially wipe out all of those gains as well.

It just takes a minute to call:
• First check if your Senator and/or Representative sits on the Senate Agriculture or House Agriculture Committee
• If your Senator or Representative sits on either of these three committees: call the Capitol Switchboard and ask to be directly connected to your Senators’ and Member of Congress’s office: 202-224-3121. Or go to Congress.org and type in your zip code, then click on your Senators and Member of Congress’s name and the contact tab for their phone number.
• If the line is busy, please leave a brief message on the voicemail.

The Message: I am a constituent, calling Senator/Representative _____ to deliver this message (use one or more of these talking points):

• The proposed farm conservation cuts are too big and should be reduced. In particular, the Conservation Stewardship Program funding should be retained and Wetlands Reserve Program funding should be restored.
• Farm commodity program reform should include caps on the amount of subsidy any one farm can receive. Loopholes allowing multiple subsidy payments to single farms should be closed. Conservation requirements should be attached to all forms of revenue and crop insurance subsidies.
• The farm bill must reinvest at least $1 billion a year in innovative, job-creating programs for rural economic development, local and regional food systems, renewable energy, organic farming, and young and beginning farmers.

*According to published accounts, the leaders of the Agriculture Committees are proposing cuts of $6.5 billion to conservation programs, $5 billion to nutrition programs, and $15 billion to commodity subsidy programs. The conservation cuts would be on top of the $2 billion already made by Congress in the appropriations process.

——————–

From Hunger Action Network

Call you Congress member today (202 224-3121) and tell them:

No deficit reduction plan can work if it does not rebuild our economy by protecting Medicaid, food stamps, unemployment insurance and other basic safety net programs. And it must create jobs. Such a plan must have increased revenues from upper-income households and profitable corporations, and savings from cutting unneeded military spending.

The Senate is about to take up a Agriculture Appropriations bill, in which the Republicans will seek to make cuts to the food stamp / SNAP program. Senator Gillibrand, whom we talked to last week, is leading the fight nationally to protect SNAP, so all she needs is a call to thank her (202 224-4451). Sen. Schumer, whose staff we met with this week, says he is also opposed, but a call to him would help convince him to take more of a leadership role. He is not signing onto a letter that Gillibrand is circulating to protect SNAP(202 224-6542)

The tougher fight is expected in the House, where the House leadership supports steep cuts in food stamps and other low-income programs.

You could also include in your message support for a Farm Bill that invests in healthy food, strong conservation programs and family farms, not corporate agribusiness.

———————–

The Farm Bill Is a Food Bill

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rajiv-narayan/the-farm-bill-is-a-food-b_b_1020469.html

Where the farm bill allocates resources to funding food stamps on one hand, it also incentivizes the purchase of unhealthy foods. In the most recent farm bill updates, it appears as though the back-room appropriations are moving in the favor of subsidies. While both direct payment programs and nutrition programs are looking at cuts, a mechanism for replacing subsidy cuts with a new funding regime has already surfaced. Unfortunately for the food side of the farm bill, it’s become increasingly difficult to advocate for change. In the past, the farm bill has been traditionally held to industry interests. Now, the super committee process may shut out democratic input altogether if the bill is written in the coming weeks by a handful of legislators for the purpose of bypassing floor debate.

Because the farm bill is so rarely written, it becomes important to reclaim its status as a food bill. Even if parts of the package are at odds with the part of the bill that works to create a healthy food system, the latter still comprises 70 percent of the legislation. It remains to be seen whether the super committee process will allow some food for thought.

——————————————————–

Farm Bill Battle Heats Up

http://www.kfgo.com/agri-business-news.php?ID=9424

WASHINGTON (DTN) – Fights began breaking out Tuesday among agriculture interests over what the super committee might do with the farm bill, even though no one knows how the leaders of the House and Senate agriculture committees are planning to move ahead with the proposal that they sent to the super committee on Monday.

One of the fights over super committee ag cuts and farm bill plans is whether to cut spending on food programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Senate Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., Senate Agriculture ranking member Pat Roberts, R-Kans., House Agriculture Chairman Frank Lucas, R-Okla., and House Agriculture ranking member Collin Peterson, D-Minn., sent the super committee a letter Monday saying they would agree to up to $23 billion in farm program cuts over 10 years, and that they will send the super committee a more detailed proposal by Nov. 1 on what they are seeking.

———————–

Key farm groups back revenue plan

DANIEL LOOKER 10/19/2011 @ 4:58pm Business Editor

http://www.agriculture.com/news/policy/key-farm-groups-back-revenue-pl_4-ar20037

Three influential farm groups Wednesday urged the House and Senate agriculture committees to replace the main existing commodity programs with a revenue-based risk management plan that would pay for some losses not covered by crop insurance.

Today’s letter to the chairs and ranking minority members of the ag committees was signed by the American Soybean Association, National Corn Growers Association and National Farmers Union.

All three have their own farm bill proposals but they’ve united behind the idea of replacing existing farm programs, including the often criticized direct payments, with a program helps farmers only when they have losses in revenue.

The groups said that federal budget realities “make it imperative to find a viable risk management approach that can replace several existing programs, including Direct Payments, Countercyclical Payments, SURE, and the ACRE program.”

“…under a revenue-based program, compensation for losses that exceed a certain threshold would only be made as they are incurred, on all production, and only on a portion of the loss,” the groups point out. “This stands in contrast with the current Direct Payment program under which farmers receive payments regardless of whether they produce a crop or incur a loss. Also, many producers participate in the crop insurance program at levels that require losses of 30 percent or more before they are compensated. With the elimination of other elements of the farm safety net, a program is needed to offset part of these losses should they occur.”

They also voiced “strong support” for keeping the existing crop insurance program. Any revenue program “should be designed to complement rather than overlap or replace this key part of the farm program safety net,” they said.

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Don’t Let Industry Kill the Healthy Food Marketing Guidelines

Topics:

Blog, Food Industry News & Trends, Food Policy & Politics

Friday, October 7th, 2011, 2:19 PM

Please consider signing onto this petition!

In 2009, Congress directed several federal agencies to form the Interagency Working Group (IWG) on Food Marketed to Children to develop guidelines for companies that market food to kids. The IWG proposed a strong set of guidelines earlier this year.

Unfortunately, the food industry and media companies are lobbying the President, his Administration, and Congress to prevent the IWG from finalizing the marketing recommendations. Yet, with the help of advocates like you, over 28,000 parents, health organizations, and others submitted comments supporting the proposed guidelines.

While the First Lady and the Administration have made childhood obesity a priority, they are considering pulling the marketing guidelines given the significant political pressure from the food and entertainment industries.

Please write to President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama (and the IWG agencies) today to encourage the Administration to finalize and release food marketing guidelines as Congress requested.

Recipients

President Barack Obama
First Lady Michelle Obama
Secretary Thomas ‘Tom’ J. Vilsack
Director Thomas R. Frieden
Commissioner Margaret A. Hamburg
Chairman Jon Leibowitz

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The Harder They Spin: What USFRA Wants Us to Believe and Why It’s Still Not the Truth

Topics:

Blog, Food Industry News & Trends, Food Policy & Politics

Wednesday, October 5th, 2011, 12:48 PM

Cross-posted at Civil Eats

October 5th, 2011 By Anna Lappé

I recently wrote about attending the Food Dialogues, a national “conversation about food” hosted by the U.S. Farmers & Ranchers Alliance (USFRA), a new trade association funded by some of the biggest players in the food industry—including the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, Dupont, and Monsanto. There have been a number of comments on my post. I wanted to respond to one in particular from Hugh Whaley, USFRA’s General Manager.

Whaley takes issue with how I characterize the makeup and mission of the USFRA, writing:

Contrary to those who suggest, imply or state otherwise, USFRA is NOT a policy organization. USFRA is America’s farmers and ranchers who are committed to continuous improvement in how food is grown and raised to provide healthy choices for people everywhere. Our mission is to build consumer trust in today’s agriculture…all forms.

The farmer- and rancher-led organizations that are affiliates of USFRA have all sizes, shapes and production methods represented by their members. Small, medium, large; organic, natural, conventional.

To understand Whaley’s spin on who and what USFRA stands for, it might be helpful to share a little background on Whaley himself and how USFRA fits the mold of a common food-industry PR strategy.

For nearly 13 years, until March 2009, Whaley was an executive at the communications firm Osborn & Barr, founded in 1988 by former executives at Monsanto. While the company was its founding client, the firm has brought on other agricultural clients, including John Deere, United Soybean Board, the Cattlemen’s Beef Board/National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, and the National Pork Board—all of which are current USFRA affiliates.

During Whaley’s tenure, Osborn & Barr helped to launch American Farmers for the Advancement and Conservation of Technology (AFACT). Like USFRA, AFACT describes itself as a group “organized by farmers.” In the case of AFACT it was allegedly created “to defend members’ right to use recombinant bovine somatotropin,” or rbST, Monsanto’s artificial growth hormone sold to dairy farmers under the brand name, Posilac.

Though it was presented as a group speaking for farmers, AFACT was created in part by Osborn & Barr, which had been handling the Posilac account since 2007. AFACT’s formation came at a time when Monsanto was reeling from campaigns by real farmers and consumer advocates against the artificial growth hormone. Responding to concerns that ranged from the health of dairy cows pumped with the hormone to possible human health effects rbGH, Yoplait, Dannon, Cabot Cheese, and other companies had by 2009 stopped sourcing milk produced with Posilac. Grocery chains had started to eliminate it from their store-label milk, according to Food & Water Watch.

Similar to the spin about AFACT, Whaley describes the U.S. Farmers & Ranchers Alliance as “farmer- and rancher-led,” with affiliates of “all sizes, shapes and production methods.”

Yes, USFRA technically represents a range of farmers and ranchers, but only because much of its total budget—$11 million a year or $30 million depending on who you ask—comes from federal “check-off” commodity marketing programs. These programs, now covering 19 different commodities, compel all or most producers of these commodities, no matter the size, to pay into promotion programs. Beef ranchers for instance must pay $1 per head on domestic sales. The money adds up: In 2007, beef check-off programs spent more than $90 million.

You might not have heard of these programs, but you’ve probably seen their ads. Check-off dollars fund campaigns like “Beef: It’s What’s for Dinner?” “Pork: The Other White Meat” as well as dubious marketing efforts like the 2010 dairy industry partnership with Domino’s Pizza to amp up cheese use on its pies.

So because USFRA gets a good chunk of its budget from the biggest commodity check-off programs—like beef, cotton, eggs, and pork—Whaley is technically accurate: Farmers of all sizes do pay into this marketing campaign, but whether the Alliance represents diverse interests is a different story.

When I asked Laura Batcha, the Vice President of the Organic Trade Association whether the Alliance reflects their members’ interests she said: “We don’t believe the Alliance is communicating the benefits of organic agriculture.”

The bottom line is the USFRA is being funded, in part, with organic producers’ money without their consent or participation, since many organic producers are required by law to pay into these check-off programs. “While organic producers and handlers have been paying into these check-offs for years, we have yet to see the funds be used to promote organic food and agriculture,” said Batcha. “It’s essentially taxation without representation.” In fact, sustainable and small-scale farmers have been fighting in the courts against the legality of check-off programs, for precisely this reason.

Fred Stokes, founder of the Organization for Competitive Markets and a cattle rancher in Mississippi, concurred. The Alliance doesn’t “‘represent all farmers and ranchers,’” he said, “These are the people who put family farmers and ranchers out of business! This is an alliance only of groups that preach ‘get-big-or-get-out’ and ‘efficiency through vertical integration.’”

It’s also an alliance, Stokes noted, that gets a healthy portion of its budget from big business, too. As members of USFRA’s “Premier Partner Advisors Group” Monsanto, John Deere, and chemical giant Dupont each have pledged $500,000 a year.

So what is the platform USFRA is pushing? Whaley says I missed the mark here, too, writing:

None of the issues discussed during the Food Dialogues can be answered strictly in black and white terms. That’s why continued dialogue is so important. Making grandiose (positive or negative) statements about any form of agriculture won’t achieve solutions or help Americans make sound and informed food decisions.

I agree with Whaley in one sense: Food systems are complex and more dialogue is certainly needed to figure out the best approaches to creating a safer, more affordable and sustainable food supply. But, I would argue that some food issues are black-and-white and taking a clear stand on these issues is the only way we will achieve such solutions.

To give several examples directly relevant to USFRA membership:

I believe everyone should have a right to know if the food they’re eating contains genetically engineered organisms (GMOs). So do most Americans who overwhelmingly want the right to know what’s in their food. Yet, USFRA’s industry partner Monsanto has been leading the fight against GMO labeling in this country, despite the fact that most other countries with commercialized GMOs require it, even China.

I believe we should be doing everything possible to protect the effectiveness of antibiotics—one of the most important tools in our public health toolbox. So do most Americans. Yet, as much as 80 percent of antibiotics in the U.S. are used not for human health but in factory farms, often for growth-promotion. A broad coalition is calling for restrictions on these non-therapeutic uses of antibiotics, citing mounting concerns about antibiotic resistance, while many USFRA affiliates have been spearheading the fight against such restrictions.

I believe we should be actively working to phase out the most toxic pesticides in agriculture, those known to cause cancer, disrupt hormones, or impair brain functioning. So do most Americans. Yet, members of the Alliance, including the National Cotton Council and the National Corn Growers Association, have been actively fighting against regulations that would help us move in that direction.

I believe our tax dollars should be incentivizing healthy food production and healthy food access. So do most Americans. Yet, members of the USFRA are among the key forces lobbying for payments to commodity producers, including those, like corn growers, that are not even producing food for people. Forty-four percent of corn last year went to ethanol production; nearly half was diverted to animal feed; much of the rest went to high-fructose corn syrup. (Thanks in part to the success of this lobbying, from 1995 to 2010 the 15 members of the board of the National Corn Growers Association—a USFRA board member—received subsidies totaling $12,048,167, while 62 percent of American farmers, and nearly all organic producers and fruit and vegetable growers, received no federal subsidies at all).

Finally, I believe that protecting our nation’s water is one of the most important issues of our time. So do most Americans. Yet, many in USFRA leadership roles are among the key players fighting federal policy that would promote tighter regulation of water pollution, especially from “conventional” agriculture’s nitrogen fertilizer runoff and industrial livestock waste.

Many of USFRA’s board, including the American Farm Bureau Federation, National Pork Producers Council, Cattlemen’s Beef Board/Beef Checkoff, and the National Corn Growers Association, as well as USFRA partner, The Fertilizer Institute, work together under the auspices of the Waters Advisory Council. The Council may sound like an environmentally minded organization, but as The New York Times reports, it’s a “lobbying outfit” for some of the country’s “largest industrial and agricultural concerns.”

These are just some of food’s “black-and-white” issues. Without indication otherwise, we’re left to assume the USFRA’s position on these critical food issues reflects that of its membership—and is out of step with the real concerns of many, and in many cases most, Americans.

Whaley also suggests I misrepresented who was able to ask questions at the Food Dialogues at the four sites, noting:

Questions were taken for all four of our panels from in-person audience members, from people on Twitter and from questions posted on our two websites. It is really unfair to say questions for the event only came from industry. The questions represented many voices…

Questions may have come in from Twitter and Facebook, but, as I wrote in my original post, at the New York City event I attended, and where we in the media were asked to write down and hand in questions for the panel, only one person got to ask a question: He was a rep from the National Pork Council, a USFRA affiliate. Only one attendee got to ask a question from the D.C. event that was shown at our venue: It was Jay Vroom, head of the agrochemical trade group, CropLife America. Whaley may contend questions represented many voices; it didn’t seem that way to me. But see for yourself. The Food Dialogues are available online at http://www.fooddialogues.com.

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Who’s Behind the U.S. Farmers & Ranchers Alliance and Why It Matters

Topics:

Blog, Food Industry News & Trends, Food Policy & Politics

Monday, September 26th, 2011, 2:24 PM

Cross-posted on Civil Eats, September 23rd, 2011 By Anna Lappé

On Thursday, September 22, the U.S. Farmers & Ranchers Alliance (USFRA), a new trade association made up of some of the biggest players in the food industry—including the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, Dupont, and Monsanto—hosted what they called “Food Dialogues” in Washington D.C., New York City, U.C. Davis, and Fair Oaks, Indiana.

The USFRA describes the Food Dialogues, and their broader multi-million dollar media campaign, as an effort to amplify the voice of farmers and ranchers and help consumers know more about “how their food is grown and raised.”

Sounds good, on first blush.

Most of us are in the dark when it comes to the story of our food. And, farmers and ranchers—the people working hard every day to bring us our food—are nearly invisible in mainstream media. But dig into the Alliance’s membership, and its impetus for forming, and you start to wonder whether it truly represents the voices of grassroots food producers or whether this well-funded media campaign is agribusinesses latest attempt to push back against well-documented and well-publicized concerns about the environmental and health consequences of industrial agriculture.

When I asked a rep from Ketchum—the public relations firm hired by the Alliance—what motivated these groups to come together, without skipping a beat, he answered: Food, Inc. and movies like it. “People see Food, Inc.,” he said, “And think everything in that movie is accurate.” But, he continued, the film only presents one side of the issue and USFRA members feel they didn’t “have a voice in it.” Now, as the Ketchum rep put it, USFRA wants to “clear the air” and “get a national dialogue, a conversation, going.”

There are two big holes in this argument: Robert Kenner, the director of Food, Inc. did try to get industry voices into the film. And, while USFRA members may not like it, Food, Inc. is an accurate, if unpleasant, account of our industrial, toxic food system.

When I mentioned that Kenner approached many food companies to get their perspective, and they refused to go on camera, the PR rep said: “I’ll be honest with you: this is a change with how they’ve done things in the past. They’re trying to open their doors up.”

While these industry players may be saying they want to “open their doors up,” it seems only on their terms. Certainly the Food Dialogues yesterday gave a semblance of impartiality: Highly-credentialed journalist Claire Shipman of Good Morning America moderated from a satellite location in D.C. and celebrity chef John Besh hosted the panel in New York City.

But the reality was an orchestrated framing of the message about “modern agricultural production” from the perspective of big business. In the staged kitchen set at the New York City, the questions from the “audience” included only one: a pre-arranged question from the head of the National Pork Board. In D.C., Jay Vroom, from the agrochemical trade association CropLife America, was handpicked to join in the “conversation” and lob a softball question to John Besh about chefs and portion control.

Earlier this year, a trade publication explained that this image campaign, and others like it, not only aims to counter Food, Inc.’s “misconceptions” about food, but also to convert all those “Pollan-ated” minds. (Reading Michael Pollan is apparently unnerving to the food industry and it should be to the rest of the public, too.)

This media campaign, the industry publication continued, is also intended as a “preemptive strike” against “a long list of new regulations and restrictions coming out of the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the Food & Drug Administration, ranging from tighter rules on pesticide applications to a potential ban of routine, preventative use of animal antibiotics.”

Take a look at the policy priorities of USFRA members and you’ll see exactly that: Most of its affiliates are hard at work, lobbying on Capitol Hill to weaken the very regulations that the consumers the USFRA itself surveyed say they care most about: Pesticides and antibiotics, for instance, as well as artificial hormones in animal production, and air and water pollution.

As one of its current policy priorities, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA), a USFRA board member and the marketing organization and trade association for the beef industry, is fighting for the Defending America’s Affordable Energy and Jobs Act. If passed, the Act would limit the EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

Yet, as many in the environmental community have pointed out, the EPA’s regulation of carbon dioxide pollution is key to addressing global warming in the absence of strong climate policy. This USFRA member attack on climate legislation shouldn’t be surprising considering the Alliance is working with Frank Luntz, the political strategist who has helped foster climate change skepticism. In a strategy memo leaked to the media in the early 2000s, for instance, Luntz advised Congressional Republicans that the best tactic to undermine public support for climate legislation is to cast doubt on the “scientific certainty” surrounding the issue.

To give you another sense of where USFRA membership stands, consider that the NCBA, along with other Alliance members, is actively fighting a policy that would reign in antibiotic abuse in livestock production. Called the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act, and sponsored by Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.), the Act, according to the Cattlemen’s Association, is unnecessary: The industry already uses antibiotics “judiciously” to prevent disease.

Rep. Slaughter and other backers of this policy stress that research shows most antibiotics in livestock production are not given for disease prevention, but delivered at “sub-therapeutic levels” to speed growth—and therefore increase profit. And, as experts at the Government Accountability Office reported earlier this month, the inaction of the USDA and FDA to regulate antibiotic use, especially in animal production, is a serious threat to public health. It was chillingly ironic that the study came out on the heels of another major recall of Cargill ground turkey linked to antibiotic-resistant Salmonella.

Lest you think the Cattlemen’s Association is out on its own on this fight, other USFRA affiliates that are vocal opponents of regulating antibiotics in livestock production include the Dairy Farmers of America, National Pork Producers Council, American Egg Board, U.S. Poultry & Egg Association.

Another USFRA affiliate and board member, the National Corn Growers Association, is also battling policies that would help us protect public health. In a May 2011 statement delivered to the House Committee on Agriculture and on Natural Resources, Rod Snyder, the Corn Grower’s Policy Director and chair of the Pesticide Policy Coalition, dismissed the use of the Endangered Species Act’s to control toxic pesticides, describing the policy as “dysfunctional.”

He called for the Administration to “immediately suspend implementation” and continue with business-as-usual, regulating pesticides under the Federal Insecticide Fungicide Rodenticide Act (FIFRA). But stress the importance of using the Endangered Species Act, explaining that FIFRA is “notoriously weak” and “industry-friendly.” According to advocates, the pesticide lobby, including USFRA members like the Corn Growers, wants to keep regulation under FIFRA because they know how to “sidestep and subvert it.”

While I believe the majority of our nation’s ranchers and farmers are respectful stewards of the land with the public’s best interest at heart—they’re working hard to reduce their environmental impact and address pesticide, artificial hormone, and antibiotics overuse—the USFRA clearly is not representing them. Instead, a look at the Alliance affiliates reveals that it is made up of, and funded by, the biggest players in the food industry, including those who profit most from toxic agricultural chemicals, polluting farming and food processing practices, and concerning animal welfare policies. No wonder, then, that that limiting protections from toxic pesticides and pushing back against antibiotic regulation are just two of the current policy priorities of USFRA affiliates.

The USFRA is working hard to present itself as a voice of farmers and ranchers interested in a conversation with consumers. I’m all for open, honest conversation, but let’s not be duped by polished PR into thinking that’s what the Alliance and its inaugural Food Dialogues is intended to be.

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The Factory Farm Map from Food & Water Watch

Topics:

Food Industry News & Trends, Meat Industry

Thursday, December 2nd, 2010, 10:42 AM

Food & Water Watch released this interactive map of factory farms in the United States.

I posted a link on Twitter and a farmer who saw my post responded with these Tweets:

Do you really think your “factory farm map” is accurate? Really?

As a farmer is it [sic] insulting!

I was sorry that a farmer anywhere would find the map insulting. It’s not designed to disparage all farmers.

In fact, the map (and I think it actually could make this point more clearly) is not a map of all farms and farmers in the U.S. It is only plotting those factory farms in each county with very high livestock densities (you can see the detail here in their methodology page). (Personally, I think it would be a simple/helpful change for viewers to be able to click on the Key “Severe” etc. and instantly see what those levels mean).

The Factory Farm Map helps to make publicly available USDA data more usable and transparent. And the map helps to show, for instance, the concentrations of giant livestock operations that are polluting the environment in certain regions. The map also will hopefully help spark conversation about U.S. farm policy that forces farmers to get big to make a living.

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Coca-Cola and Portion Control

Topics:

Blog, Food Industry News & Trends

Thursday, September 30th, 2010, 4:16 PM

I’ve been meaning to write up an article about the Agriculture 2.0 conference last week in New York City, but between trips to Louisville, planning for Milwaukee tomorrow, shindigs with the Food and Society Fellows, not to mention hanging out with my fourteen-month-old–I’ve been a bit busy. But while I’m working on that piece… chew on this. This pic was taken at the cafeteria of Spalding University where I was a keynote for the 11th annual Healthy Foods Local Farms conference.

Note the sheer size of the cup. It was so large, you almost needed two hands to pick it up and you felt compelled to fill it up to the top or else you’d have to tilt the whole darn thing back. Fill it with Coke and you’re easily saying hello to more than 300 calories.

The head of sustainability for Coca-Cola was a keynote speaker at the conference last week. Wondering what part of sustainable is these size cups for college students.

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Bad news for fast food restaurants, good news for kids

Topics:

Blog, Food Industry News & Trends

Wednesday, April 28th, 2010, 5:01 PM

As the New York Times put it, “It was not a happy day for the Happy Meal.”

In a bold move, the board of supervisors in Santa Clara County voted to ban promotional toys in kids’ meals if they don’t meet nutritional standards.

This is good news since fast food meals, like McDonald’s Happy Meals, are typically high-fat, highly processed and packaged, and meat-centered – all of which take a toll on the climate, and our kids’ health.

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The Oakland Institute Launches “Voices From Africa”

Topics:

Blog, Food Industry News & Trends, Food Policy & Politics, Hunger & Food Crisis, Organic Food & Farming

Friday, April 10th, 2009, 4:21 PM

The Oakland Institute has created an new online community called Voices From Africa, a supplement to the report on alternatives to the New Green Revolution in Africa. The Oakland Institute Reporter describes Voices from Africa as “a new online clearinghouse to share information on and promote alternatives to the New Green Revolution in Africa. Featuring articles, press releases, commentary, and reports from African NGOs and partner organizations and individuals around the world, Voices from Africa is set up as an interactive web community and will also serve as a resource for media and policy makers to hear the perspective of the African civil society groups on plans for a New Green Revolution in Africa.”

Join the Voices From Africa community today.

Members will be able to create their own account, access articles and documents on these issues, participate in forums, and strategize with policy-makers, activists and other stakeholders from all over the globe. Make your voice heard in this critical debate.

–Deepa

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RAN in the NYT

Topics:

Blog, Food Industry News & Trends

Wednesday, March 4th, 2009, 11:11 AM

The New York Times published this article about eBay’s belated efforts to promote themselves as a “green” company, claiming that because their business model is founded on buying and selling used products, the company is environmentally friendly by default. (They’ve also added a “Green Team” to their staff, whose job it is to hype the company’s environmental efforts.)

Rainforest Action Network’s Executive Director, Michael Brune, was quoted in the article, stating, “Over the last couple of years, protecting the environment has become as American as apple pie and Derek Jeter. Every company wants to at least be seen as being friendly to the environment. A lot of the things sold on eBay are new merchandise, and last time I checked the Postal Service still used fossil fuels for all of their planes and their trucks, so it’s not sustainable.
It’s fair to say that buying used goods on eBay is better for the environment, but let’s not get carried away and say this is the greenest thing since recycled paper.”

– Deepa

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The World in 2101?

Topics:

Biotechnology, Blog, Food Industry News & Trends, Food Policy & Politics, Hunger & Food Crisis, Organic Food & Farming

Thursday, February 26th, 2009, 2:13 PM

The WorldWatch Institute has published a new report which investigates an “imagined future:” State of the World 2009: Into a Warming World highlights the potential fate of the planet if scientists, consumers, producers, and politicians act quickly and effectively now, in 2009, to combat the energy and climate change crises.

According WorldWatch, “The questions addressed in the State of the World 2009 are many: how do we adapt- not just as communities and nations, but as a species-to the warming that is headed our way, no matter what we do now? How will the world deal with the fact that the climate burden will fall heaviest on countries whose contributions to climate change have been the most modest? And even as we struggle to adapt, how does society maintain focus on slashing emissions to a pale shadow of their current levels?”

The report selects specific challenges (land use, energy, emissions, etc.) and proposes innovative alternatives. Some of the Innovations highlighted in the Land Use section are:
>> In Parana, Brazil, farmers have developed organic management systems combined with no-till. No-till plots yielded a third more wheat and soybean than conventional plowed plots and reduced soil erosion by up to 90 percent. (p. 36)
>> In 2005, a Pennsylvania dairy farm invested $1.14 million in a project to process the manure from 800 cows, using a digester and a combined heat and power unit. Now the farm makes a profit using biogas to generate 120 kilowatt-hours of electricity to sell back to the local utility. (p. 41)
>> Both India and China have large national programs to revegetate millions of hectares of forest and grasslands-seen as investments to reduce poverty and protect watersheds. (p. 44)
>> In Morocco, 34 pastoral cooperatives with more than 8,000 members rehabilitated and manage some 450,000 hectares of grazing reserves. (p. 44)
>> In Rajasthan, India, community-led watershed restoration programs have reinstated more than 5,000 traditional johads (rainwater storage tanks) in over 1,000 villages. (p. 44)
>> Some countries are redirecting subsidy payments to agri-environmental payments for ecosystem services, some of which explicitly include carbon storage and emissions reduction. (p. 46)

If you’re interested in reading more, download chapters or purchase a copy of this critical report here.

– Deepa

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Just Food’s 2009 Summit on Food and Climate Change

Topics:

Blog, Food Industry News & Trends, Food Policy & Politics

Thursday, February 26th, 2009, 2:10 PM

SPECIAL EVENT!

Support Just Food’s 2009 Summit on Food and Climate Change! The Summit “will help build a more educated, informed and politically involved network of urban and rural communities in the New York City region to influence food, farm and environmental policy. It will be structured to inform and educate participants, generate ideas and strategies, and build coalitions to create and mobilize around a concrete platform for action on Food and Climate Change in 2010.” Just Food’s conference coincides with the United Nations Climate Change conference in Copenhagen, Denmark.

For more information about this critical event, contact Nadia Johnson, the Food Justice Coordinator at Just Food. She can be reached at nadia@justfood.org or at 212.645.9880, ext. 237.

– Deepa

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YES! Magazine: Food For Everyone

Topics:

Blog, Food Industry News & Trends

Thursday, February 26th, 2009, 4:00 AM

Check out the upcoming “Food For Everyone” Spring 2009 issue of YES! Magazine.

Check it out!

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UK Hospitals to Go Veg?

Topics:

Blog, Food Industry News & Trends, Meat Industry

Monday, February 2nd, 2009, 10:00 PM

We gotta say, the pronouncement perked our ears up: British hospitals to promote cutting back on meat to help the climate?

Juliette Jowit, from the British rag The Guardian, reported on a plan to eliminate meat from hospital menus across the UK. The action would be part of a larger strategy by the National Health Service (UK) to lower carbon emissions and save money, which could then be redirected into patient care.

Check it out here.

The National Health Service was inspired by a study they conducted last year through which they discovered that their emissions alone account for approximately 3% of the country’s s total emissions. If the NHS was a country, this emissions toll would rank them the planet’s 81st worst emitter in 2004.

The NHS has proposed both long- and short-term changes, from “urging people to drink less bottled water to more phone-in surgeries by GPs to the food: The NHS is planning to limit meat and dairy on hospital menus. David Pencheon, director of NHS’s sustainable development unit, said, “We’d like higher levels of fresh food, and probably higher levels of fresh fruit and veg, and more investment in a local economy.”

Sounds good to us.

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“Food Matters”

Topics:

Blog, Food Industry News & Trends

Wednesday, January 14th, 2009, 5:05 PM

Salon calls Mark Bittman’s new book, Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating with More Than 75 Recipes, “An unusual blend of manifesto, self-help manual and cookbook designed to convince people that they can drastically improve their diets with relatively little discomfort.”

Bittman, who writes the Minimalist column for the New York Times, takes a simple, holistic approach to food and cooking.

Read Salon’s s review here.

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Chomping on CivilEats

Topics:

Blog, Food Industry News & Trends, Hunger & Food Crisis, Urban Agriculture & Community Gardening

Friday, January 9th, 2009, 5:45 PM

CivilEats.com, an offshoot of the popular Slow Food Nation blog, has launched a new website with a host of foodie allies. The site will focus on the current challenges facing the food system, with contributions from chef/activists, to farmers and urban gardeners. The website promises to “promote critical thought about sustainable agriculture and food systems,” something we are in critical need of given the current economic, climate and food crises. Visit the site here, we are!

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The Tap is Trendy Says Time Magazine

Topics:

Blog, Food Industry News & Trends

Monday, December 29th, 2008, 2:51 PM

Time Mag ran its annual “top ten of everything,” including dipping their judging toes into the top ten of food. Coming in at number four was the almighty tap. With Nestle and the other Big Water companies quivering about the fate of their high-profit product lines (aka bottled water), the tap trend is certainly taking off.

White-tableclothed restaurants are starting to get in on the tap-is-best mantra and I couldn’t help but notice at both the Museum of Natural History in NYC and the new Academy of Sciences Museum in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park their water fountains were draped with info-posters about the benefits of bottled water.

So drink up–from the tap and save your hard earned bucks for something more vital than water you can get for free.

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The Best Article Yet on Food and Climate Change

Topics:

Blog, Food Industry News & Trends

Thursday, December 4th, 2008, 1:32 PM

The New York Times published a really stellar article about food and climate change today. Check out Elizabeth Rosenthal’s “As More Eat Meat, a Bid to Cut Emissions” in today’s Times.

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Taking Back the Tap (in the Face of a Drowning Economy)

Topics:

Food Industry News & Trends

Monday, September 29th, 2008, 7:14 PM

Maybe it’s because in the wake of the biggest financial crisis in our lifetimes it seems even more weird to pay for anything you can get for free (especially water) or maybe it’s because environmentalists and public health advocates have helped to spread the word, but for whatever the reason, sales are slipping for the bottled water industry.

Jenny Wiggins reports for the Financial Times:
“In the UK, bottled water sales volumes have slid 4.7 per cent and sales revenues have fallen 5.1 per cent in the 12 months to mid-August, according to research group Nielsen. This includes a 2.5 per cent drop in sales volumes of Evian and a 7.4 per cent drop in sales volumes of Volvic, both owned by French company Danone. In the US, where bottled water consumption is higher than in any other country, supermarket sales are at their slowest rate since bottled water became popular a decade ago.”

Check out the Take Back Your Tap campaign at Food & Water Watch to learn more and get involved.

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One Big Company Gets Bigger

Topics:

Food Industry News & Trends

Friday, September 12th, 2008, 12:07 PM

Earlier this month, the grain giant Bunge got a gobble-up green light: Back in June, Bunge and the Westchester, Illinois-based maker of corn sweeteners and starches, Corn Products International Inc., had agreed to an all-stock purchase.

Now after sitting through a requisite antitrust law “waiting period,” the companies can close on the multi-billion dollar transaction, provided both agree on the terms. (And that’s getting trickier as the tables have turned: Bunge made the bid earlier this summer when commodity prices–and Corn Products stock–were high). If passed, the deal will create a combined company with 32,000 employees and operations in 40 countries.

Bunge is one of those companies that has a heckuva lot to do with a lot we eat, but whose name you don’t know – yet. The St. Louis-based Bunge North America is just one of the operating arms of the global giant. “The world is our market – six billion people and counting,” says Bunge. They’re not kidding.

Founded in 1818, Bunge is a leading agribusiness and food company with operations, “stretching from the farm field to the retail shelf,” as they say.

Among its chief business operations, the company:
• manufactures fertilizer and animal feed for farmers;
• originates oilseeds and grains from the world’s primary growing regions and transports them to customers worldwide;
• crushes oilseeds to make meal for the livestock industry and oil for the food processing, food service and biofuel industries;
• produces bottled oils, mayonnaise, margarines and other food products for consumers;
• mills wheat and corn for food processors, bakeries, brewers and other commercial customers.

Why does this matter to you and me?

With this purchase of Corn Products International their reach will get that much larger, and with it their economic clout and influence over food and farm policy.

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We Are Wowed by Cooperation

Topics:

Blog, Food Industry News & Trends

Saturday, August 23rd, 2008, 10:17 PM

At an iCoop bakery

My mother likes to tell the story of neuroscientists who studied the state of our brains when we cooperate and when we compete. In one experiment, volunteers engaged in various activities, some that got them cooperating, others competing.

The results were at once surprising and clear: Our minds, they discovered, downright like to cooperate. In fact, the same regions of the brain that light up when we eat chocolate, light up when we cooperate.

If that’s true (and peer-reviewed papers say it is), then this biological fact goes a long way to explain why the group of four leaders in one of South Korea’s powerful consumer cooperatives here smiled so big and laughed so easily with each other during our conversation today.

Founded just over ten years ago, iCoop (Korean Solidarity of Consumers’ Cooperatives) already has 50,000 member households, with 68 regional offices across the country. The cooperative works with 4,500 farmer households who supply more than 1,000 locally and sustainable produced products to members through online sales and at stores across the country. The coop has 34 stores (with 10 more planned this year), including the bustling bakery in a residential neighborhood in Southwest Seoul where we meet (and eat) with them.

The cooperative’s vision is to connect consumers and producers – and in doing so, radically change people’s ideas of what it means to be a “consumer” and a “producer.”

Part of this re-education happens in their annual farm visits, they explained to us through our indefatigable interpreter.

“Consumers are always trying to buy as cheap as possible. Producers are always trying to sell for as much as possible,” said Oh Hang Sik, iCoop General Secretary.

Through their farm visits and education programs (last year, they brought 8,500 of their members to visit their farmers), the cooperative helps people to rethink these relationships: “Both consumer and producer realize that they share a common vision of sustainable agriculture that can provide safe food and a secure future,” explains Oh Hang Sik.

Added Lee Jeong Joo, a member activist and the president of their 68 regional offices: “We like to say: Ethical production through ethical consumption.” Each makes the other possible.

“We help our members have a shift in consciousness that sustainable agriculture is linked to our food sovereignty. This shift in consciousness is an important role of iCoop.” They see how consumers and producers can cooperate with each other to work toward this vision. In other words, they eat the chocolate.

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A Brief Romp through a History of Rural Development

Topics:

Blog, Food Industry News & Trends, Organic Food & Farming

Saturday, August 23rd, 2008, 10:09 PM

Jieun, our interpreter, me, and Professor Jin-do Park

For our first meeting, we visit Jin-do Park in his offices near Chungnam National University.

Jin-do Park has worked for more than three decades as an economist on rural development in South Korea. Under the last President, Jin-do Park was an advisor to the national government on agricultural policy, before being so frustrated he started his own institute and regional development foundation, the Korea Regional Development Foundation.

“When I came out of university in the 1970s,” Jin-do Park explained, “Korea was still a rural society.” Nearly 60 percent of the population lived in rural areas. 40 percent of the country’s GDP was from agriculture. In just one generation, the massive push for industrialization has transformed the country.

Today, less than 7 percent of Koreans are farmers and just under 15 percent live in rural areas. One-quarter of South Koreans live in the city of Seoul. Not surprisingly, nearly 100 percent of ingredients for the processed foods most Koreans eat come from outside the country’s borders.

So, I think, if South Korea can renew its countryside, can reknit the farmer and consumer connection, than any of us can.

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Important New Paper on China’s Rising Consumption and Production of Meat and Dairy

Topics:

Food Industry News & Trends, Food Policy & Politics, Meat Industry

Friday, August 22nd, 2008, 7:47 PM

Our friend and colleague, Mia MacDonald, has written a powerful new report on factory farming in China.

Check out the full report in English (China translation coming soon): www.brightergreen.org/files/brightergreen_china_print.pdf

Here’s Mia’s press release:

New York–based policy action tank Brighter Green’s new report, Skillful Means: The Challenges of China’s Encounter with Factory Farming, explores the emerging superpower’s “livestock revolution,” which is having serious impacts on public health, food security, and equity in China—and the world. The Beijing Summer Olympics are showcasing a resurgent nation, which only two generations after a devastating national famine is eating increasingly high on the food chain. In the past ten years, consumption of China’s most popular meat, pork, has doubled. In 2007, China raised well over half a billion pigs for meat.

Given that every fifth person in the world is Chinese, even small increases in individual meat or dairy consumption will have broad, collective environmental as well as climate impacts. Increasingly, what the Chinese eat, and how China produces its food, affects not only China, but the world, too.
“When I was a child, every person was allotted one pound of pork a month,” says Peter Li, a professor of political science at the University of Houston in Texas who grew up in Jiangxi province in southeast China says in Eating Skillfully. “We could not eat more than that. You could not get it. Now, though, more people have access to more meat and want to eat a lot of it.”

In yuan terms, meat is the second largest segment of China’s retail food market. China has also opened its doors to investments by major multinational meat and dairy producers, as well as animal feed corporations, including Tyson Foods, Smithfield, and Novus International. Western-style meat culture has gone mainstream. Fast food is a U.S. $28-billion-a-year business in China. McDonald’s, a major sponsor of the Olympics, had more than 800 restaurants in China, with at least a hundred more set to open by the time the games began. Four McDonald’s are operating in Olympic venues, including the press center and the athletes’ village.

“China is not yet a bone fida “factory farm nation” like the U.S.,” says Mia MacDonald, Brighter Green’s executive director and co-author of Skillful Means. “But the strains of its fast-growing livestock sector are becoming harder to ignore. In the U.S., a re-examination of the multiple human, environmental, economic, and ethical costs of factory farming is taking place. Such a process needs to get underway in China—before it’s too late.”

Although these realities won’t be fully obvious to the millions of people cheering on the Olympic athletes in China and across the globe, they demand attention:
• China’s livestock produce 2.7 billion tons of manure every year, nearly three and a half times the industrial solid waste level. Run-off from livestock operations have created a large “dead zone” in the South China Sea that is virtually devoid of marine life.
• In northern China, overgrazing and overfarming lead to the loss of nearly a million acres of grassland each year to desert.
• Diet-related chronic diseases now kill more Chinese than any other cause, and nearly one in four Chinese is overweight.
• More than 90 percent of some bacteria in Asia can no longer be treated effectively with “first-line” antibiotics like penicillin—due to their overuse in farmed animals.
• China can still feed itself. But this is likely to change as its meat and dairy sectors expand and intensify. The Chinese government is looking abroad, not only to international food markets but also to Africa, Latin America, and other parts of Asia for land on which to produce food for people and feed for livestock.
• In 2008, China surpassed the U.S. to become the world’s leading emitter of carbon dioxide (CO2). Per capita emissions of CO2 in China have more than doubled, from 2.1 tons of CO2 equivalent in 1990 to 5.1 tons today. Meat and dairy production have a direct relationship with global climate change: fully 18 percent of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions stem from the livestock industry.

Even though the Chinese government seems set on emulating industrialized nations’ meat and dairy culture, a small but growing number of Chinese non-governmental organizations and individuals are questioning this path. To them food quality, not quantity, is important, along with issues of sustainability and animal welfare.

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Michael Pollan at P.F.1 Tonight!

Topics:

Blog, Food Industry News & Trends, Food Policy & Politics, Organic Food & Farming

Friday, August 8th, 2008, 1:14 PM

Want to check out one of New York City’s coolest art museums, the city’s latest urban farm, and see Michael Pollan talk all in one night? Well, tonight is your night: In collaboration with The Horticultural Society of New York, Michael Pollan, will be speaking tonight at P.F.1 (Public Farm One) in Long Island City’s P.S.1, Queens.

The urban farm installation will serve as a mouth-watering backdrop for Pollan, author of most recently In Defense of Food, who will talk about the importance of seeing the world from a “plant’s point of view.”

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Defining Sustainability in a Jargon-Saturated World

Topics:

Blog, Food Industry News & Trends

Wednesday, July 30th, 2008, 10:46 AM

I’ve never loved the way the word “sustainability” or “sustainable” rolls off the tongue, or the images that it conjures in the mind’s eye. But I find myself using it for lack of a better word to describe the kinds of change that we need. For this reason, I am always looking for new ways to describe what the word really means.

I like this one from Solitaire Townsend of Futerra Communications: “For me sustainable development doesn’t mean maintaining the status quo – it means positive disruption, improving the environment and quality of life.”

I’m interviewing her today for the book and look forward to getting more insight from her!

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The Food Chain

Topics:

Blog, Food Industry News & Trends

Thursday, June 5th, 2008, 12:50 PM

The New York Times has a whole section on the food chain — and its viability. Check it out here.

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Agribusiness Profit (Updated)

Topics:

Food Industry News & Trends, Meat Industry

Tuesday, May 27th, 2008, 11:49 AM

A few weeks ago, I posted a blog about the record profits of some of the biggest agribusiness companies while newspaper headlines blared about the global food crisis. Well, this just in: Surprise…profits continue to spike.

Bunge, one of the world’s largest grain processors, recently announced its quarterly profits were up 70 percent. At the end of last month, Archer Daniels Midland, agribusiness big gun and the country’s second-largest ethanol producer, announced its third-quarter profits had increased by 42 percent.

This food industry windfall, while the poor struggle to afford the most basic food items, feels eerily similar to the record profits of the oil industry, while people scrape the bottom of their piggy banks to fill their tanks.

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Palm Oil, Orangutans, and the Climate

Topics:

Food Industry News & Trends

Thursday, April 24th, 2008, 12:18 PM

The climate is not the only loser when it comes to deforestation in Indonesia; orangutans aren’t fairing so well either. Because of agribusiness encroachment to expand palm oil plantations into the country’s lush forests, Indonesia has become one of the world’s top four largest greenhouse gas emitters. Now, it seems, the pressures on the forests of Borneo and Sumatra, home to the world’s last wild orangutan populations, could lead to our primate cousins’ extinction within as little as ten years.

In a report released on Monday, Greenpeace connects the dots between expansion of palm oil plantations for food and biofuel, the loss of orangutan habitat, and Unilever, one of the biggest palm oil producers in the region.

In response to the report and a Greenpeace protest against the company, Unilever delivered this press release in which they threw up their hands. They’re just responding to the demand for palm oil, they say: “The problem is simply that demand of palm oil has exploded. This is due partly to growing demand from India and China and also due to the use of palm oil as a feedstock for biofuels in the energy sector.”

But Greenpeace claims that the company has breached its own accord for sustainability as a member of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO).

“By failing to apply and enforce RSPO principles and criteria to both traders and producers at group level, Unilever has failed to bring the rapidly expanding palm oil sector under control,” says Greenpeace. The international environmental organization recommends an immediate moratorium on oil palm expansion into rainforest and peatland areas. What say you, Unilever?

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Untouched by Man, Manhandled by PR: FIJI Water Goes Carbon Negative?

Topics:

Food Industry News & Trends

Saturday, April 19th, 2008, 5:31 AM

I’ve always found myself eerily drawn to the pink flowers on those cubic FIJI water bottles, but I never could quite stomach the eco-reality of buying water in Brooklyn that had been flown in from a tiny island in the Pacific Ocean.

Concerned that their actual customers might start feeling twangs of similar eco-consciousness, FIJI just announced – to considerable fanfare – that it’s going carbon negative… eventually. (Seems like “carbon negative” is the term of preference for the we’ll-one-up-you corporate branders).

FIJI has promised to reduce its product emissions by 25 percent and source half its energy from renewable sources by 2010. They also say they will partner with Conservation International on a reforestation project in the Yaqara Valley in Fiji to offset their remaining emissions by 120% over 30 years. If they keep their promise, they’ll be reducing their carbon footprint not just to zero, but to less than zero.

Reading Elle Magazine give the “gold star” for FIJI’s plans, it does make me wonder whether the company is really going to make any of these changes. Considering we’ve seen plenty of corporate PR splashes, without the follow through, we’ll have to keep our eyes on what the company actually does, not just what it promises to do.

And, anyway, wouldn’t it better for the planet, and the climate, if we didn’t buy bottled water in the first place? Tap water suits us just fine. Check out Take Back the Tap campaign from Food and Water Watch.

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Who’s Hurting and Who Is Cashing in on the Spikes in Food Prices?

Topics:

Food Industry News & Trends, Hunger & Food Crisis, Meat Industry

Thursday, April 17th, 2008, 6:31 AM

A recent Financial Times had a staggering map of the globe: Black dots marked each of the countries were there have been food riots because of the rising prices of food. Thirty dots in all. And a recent CNN report noted that “Riots, instability spread as food prices skyrocket.” These surging costs, warns World Bank President Robert Zoellick, “could mean ‘seven lost years’ in the fight against worldwide poverty.”

Meanwhile, I couldn’t help but notice which agribusiness company has just reported an 86 percent jump in its quarterly earnings. Cargill, one of the world’s largest private companies said that these strong earnings have been driven mainly by its commodities division and primarily because of the booming demand for biofuels and increasing demand in new markets, especially Asia.

Last year this global company posted a net profit of $2.34 billion. (They’re total sales last year were $88.3 billion). Just to put that in some context: $2.3 billion is the GDP of Belize.

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Sodexo Announces One-Year Anniversary of Its Recycling Program

Topics:

Food Industry News & Trends

Monday, April 14th, 2008, 12:14 PM

Sodexo, a multinational food and facilities management giant, recently marked the one year anniversary of a recycled paper napkin program introduced in 1,300 of its food service operations.

The rewards they document from their year of recycling are encouraging: According to the company, the program saved the equivalent of 23,000 trees; 10 million gallons of water; enough power to light 600 American homes for a year; 500,000 gallons of oil; 41 tons of pollutants were kept out of the environment; and 4,131 cubic yards of paper were diverted from landfills. And their Xpressnap program, rolled out to a smaller number of sites, cut the number of napkins used by 25 to 50 percent simply by dispensing only one napkin at a time. (What a concept!)

These results are a reminder that small changes add up. They’re also a reminder of just how much waste is unnecessary, but built right into the way we do business. And these numbers make us wonder whether Sodexo will roll out these programs to the rest of its facilities. Sodexo’s press release makes no mention of such plans.

I head to their corporate headquarters for an event next week. I’ll be sure to ask ‘em: Sodexo, how about it?

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Big Organic Gets Bigger, Honestly

Topics:

Food Industry News & Trends

Sunday, April 13th, 2008, 1:06 PM

The organics sector is big business: it’s the fastest growing sector in the food industry. And the profitability of organic products is not lost on the big guys. Some of the world’s largest companies are snatching up organic businesses faster than you can say “Organic Twinkie.” Check out our colleague Phil Howard’s awesomely detailed charts here. And, Phil, add Honest Tea to the Coca-Cola product line.

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“Climate Changes Your Business” Says KPMG

Topics:

Food Industry News & Trends, Meat Industry

Thursday, April 10th, 2008, 11:56 AM

KPMG’s latest report from its sustainability offices may have just won the “no-duh title of the year,” but it does take an interesting approach to the climate change question: What does climate change look like from the business side of the equation?

I’ve been asking this question a lot lately, attending food industry conferences to listen to how they frame the risk (and opportunity) that climate change provides. At that meat conference in Nashville, for instance, it was notable that global warming was on no one’s lips. At the Grocery Manufacturers Association Environmental Sustainability Summit, it was in almost everyone’s talking points.

In the KPMG report, the authors place the “food sector” in the “safe haven” section of their “perceived risks versus preparedness” matrix. (Nice job on this fancy-looking graphic. Like the color coding, guys). The top six sectors at particular risk from climate change? Aviation, healthcare, tourism, transport, oil and gas and the financial services sectors.

But the authors also make the point that even those ’safe haven’ categories like food, may not be so safe after all. Food and beverages, for instance, says one author, are “supposedly a low risk sector yet recent events have shown that this industry is highly vulnerable to climate related risks such as increases in agricultural input costs. The idea therefore that this sector is relatively safe from climate change effects is likely to reflect a significant under-estimation of risk.”

In other words, “safe” doesn’t mean much in an era of climate change.

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What Good News about the Price of Food?

Topics:

Food Industry News & Trends, Hunger & Food Crisis

Wednesday, April 9th, 2008, 12:04 PM

I was on the WNYC this morning talking again about the price of food, what it means for the planet and for those of us who eat!

Listen here.

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Good News on the Price of Food?

Topics:

Food Industry News & Trends, Hunger & Food Crisis

Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008, 12:01 PM

Had an interesting conversation with Kim Severson from The New York Times the other day that ended up with this quote in the Grey Lady. I’m glad I was able to jump into the debate with these thoughts. As I said to Kim, I certainly don’t think it’s a direct line between risings costs of food and a more sustainable food system. We’re just seeing those who were already most vulnerable be the hardest hit by these prices spikes and those who were already making a windfall from the food system recording record profits.

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