The State of Food and Agriculture

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations released a report on creating a more sustainable livestock sector.

From their press release:

The report stresses that livestock is essential to the livelihoods of around one billion poor people. Livestock provides income, high-quality food, fuel, draught power, building material and fertilizer, thus contributing to food security and nutrition. For many small-scale farmers, livestock also provides an important safety net in times of need.

But the agency stressed the need for substantial investments and stronger institutions at global, regional, national and local levels, to ensure that continued growth of the livestock sector contributes to livelihoods, meets growing consumer demand and mitigates environmental and health concerns.

"The rapid transition of the livestock sector has been taking place in an institutional void," said FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf in the foreword of the report. "The issue of governance is central. Identifying and defining the appropriate role of government, in its broadest sense, is the cornerstone on which future development of the livestock sector must build."

The report stresses the balance needed between livelihoods, food security (issues more predominant for developing nations) and human health and the environment (issues more focused on by post-industrialized nations). They also have some great graphics that help paint the picture.

Community Food Security Coalition conference recap

Iowa welcomed hundreds of Sustainable Food Aggies to the midwest this week for theCommunity Food Security Coalition's annual conference: From Commodity to Community: Food Politics and Projects in the Heartland. I arrived in Des Moines on Thursday night and was humbled by the friendliness and hospitality of the Iowan people. I'm sure others can join me and thanking them for volunteering, organizing, and hosting.

The conference kicked off Saturday with a gathering of local and state food policy councils:From People Power to Public Policy. Wayne Robert's of the Toronto Food Policy equated the issues facing communities to a rubric's cube: you don't solve the puzzle by looking at one side. This theme continued throughout the weekend. Further, food system development can be used as the driver in solving economic, safety, beautification, waste, health, community involvement, tax laws, etc and interdisciplinary design of these councils has the capacity to make it a reality. He finished with a powerful blessing by poet E. E. Cummings.

While folks attended the council meeting, others were out exploring the rich cultural and agricultural offerings that only Iowa can offer. A surprise snow storm did not deter bikers from taking their Urban Food Initiative tour. Other tours included visiting a grass-based dairy farm with on-farm processing, Marshalltown: the site of recent immigration raids on a local processing plant, a hog confinement facility, the Iowa Food Bank, Pioneer Seed Company- “world’s largest developer and supplier of advanced plant genetics,” a variety of agri-tourism sites, and even Iowan wineries. From the Farmers Tell it Like it is tour- Andrew Kang Bartlett provides a video of his experience on George Naylor's farm, as he discusses the three main reasons why family farming is being destroyed and how the system encourages GM corn and soybean production.

The next few days were spent in morning plenaries before breaking off into smaller workshops to share knowledge, stories, strategies and camaraderie. The breadth of topics touched on all aspects of the food system- production, distribution, farm to school, farmers markets, urban agriculture, value added products, reducing waste, hunger and feeding programs, food justice issues, farm workers rights, environmental impacts, health care discussion, utilizing media and marketing, changing policy, and building community. The sessions provided practical and applicable advice for community leaders, farmers, consumers, academics, dietitians and government agencies to bring home and put into practice. I spoke on a panel with Ken Meter of the Crossroads Resource Center and Sarah Hackney from Gorge Grown Food Network on the utilization of local foods as a means to economic recovery. I presented some of the research and opportunities that I compiled this summer for my internship for Farm Aid and shared their commitment to family farms as the means to revitalizing the food system.

The first day, Wayne had asked us to keep track of our "ah ha" moments: moments when a conversation, statistic, challenge, or question spurred connection or understanding that was not clear before. My "ah ha" moments:

1. During Kirsten Simmon of the Michigan Food Policy Council session, I was intrigued by the systemic impacts that the council are having on governmental agencies. For example: recommendations by the Michigan task force led to the Department of Corrections aiming to purchase 5% of their procurement from Michigan farmers over 3 to 5 years. Other agencies that are being mobilized by councils are waste, health, transportation and safety.

2. During a session moderated by Molly Anderson of Food Systems Integrity, I learned a new perspective on the 'right to food' debate. Brewster Kneen or Ram's Horn and Marc Cohen ofOxfam identified the main arguments for a rights-based approach to food security in the US. I learned that holders of rights over the food insecure are ensured by their own rights to maintain personal food security. Further, the US Constitution has civil and political rights, but not human rights. This may be part of the difficulty in passing a healthcare bill based on the right to care.

3. Finally, I came out with a new perspective, strategy, and passion for connecting food and agriculture issues with public health and climate change. Rebecca Klien and Anne Palmer of Johns Hopkins Center for Livable Future and RD's Sue Roberts and Fern Gale Estrow shared their experiences using a lens of public health to transform food and agriculture policy. We talked a lot about work taking place in silos. A follow up session led by Steph Larson, of the Center of Rural Affairs; David Wallinga of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy; and Christa Essig of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention solidified the inherent connection between environmental changes on health and the importance of preventative care, which is currently not part of the national health care debate. As Wallinga said, "we can not afford any more cheap food." What about the way agriculture effects health- MRSA, asthma, pesticides, hormones? What about the effect that agriculture has on global warming (a third to a fifth of green house gases come from agriculture). Climate change will have intense impacts on health- increasing allergies and asthma, water contamination, infectious disease and make it increasingly difficult to produce food. We should demand our health care debate be about more than insurance and actually be about health.

For me, the whole conference was an "ah ha" moment. I am so grateful to have shared my time and experiences with such amazing people. The Good Food Movement is alive and is centered core human values and the ability of community to make change. I want to specifically thank my HEN consortium that have supported, guided, and continually inspired me in field of study that has the potential to change the world. Specifically I want to dedicate this post to Angie Tagtow and Mary Jo Forbord.

I will share a post on the Food Sovereignty Prize winner, a panel discussion with 1995 Nobel Prize Laureate Dr. Hans Herren, as well as the guest appearance of Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack in coming posts.

Fresh the movie at Harvard

FRESH celebrates the farmers, thinkers and business people across America who are re-inventing our food system. Among several main characters, FRESH features urban farmer and activist, Will Allen, the recipient of MacArthur's 2008 Genius Award; sustainable farmer and entrepreneur, Joel Salatin, made famous by Michael Pollan's book, The Omnivore's Dilemma; and supermarket owner, David Ball, challenging our Wal-Mart dominated economy.

You can watch the trailer

And find screening dates and ticket info here: http://www.freshthemovie.com/screenings/fresh-screenings/

Date: May 28th Time: 7:00 PM Location: Harvard Northwest Building, 52 Oxford Street, Room B-103, Cambridge, MA 0213

Panel to follow screening:
Theresa McCulla (Moderator), Manager, Harvard’s Food Literacy Project
Joel Salatin, Founder, Polyface Farms
Will Allen, Founder, Growing Power
Henrietta Davis, Cambridge City Council
Michael Leviton, Chef, Lumiere Restaurant
Ana Joanes, Director & Producer of FRESH

Flood Tolerant Rice Breakthrough

An article in the Sacramento Bee reveals that a geneticist at UC-Davis is receiving an award for her work developing a flood-tolerant rice. What is most exciting, is that the research, which was funded partly by USDA, did not use genetic engineering. Scientists identified a gene, called Sub1A, that is responsible for flooding tolerance in rice. "Identifying the gene allowed plant breeders to use "precision breeding" to create new rice varieties that could recover after severe flooding and "produce abundant yields of high-quality grain," the release says.

Pamela Ronald, a professor of plant pathology, Julia Bailey-Serres, a UC Riverside genetics professor and David Mackill, of the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines, will be given the 2008 U.S. Department of Agriculture National Research Initiative Discovery Award Friday at UC Riverside.

Implications

Other than their flood tolerance, the new plants are virtually identical to popular high-yielding varieties.

Flooding in Bangladesh and India reduces rice yields by up to 4 million tons each year, enough to feed 30 million people.

Researchers anticipate the flood-tolerant rice plants will be available to farmers within the next two years.

The plants are not subject to the regulatory testing that can delay release of genetically modified crops because they are the product of precision breeding, not genetic modification, the release states.

Study Background

Ronald led the effort to isolate the gene, and her lab showed that the gene is switched on when rice plants are submerged in water. The project took 13 years to complete.

"To be part of this project as it has moved from my lab in California to rice fields in Asia has been inspiring, and the project underscores the power of science to improve people's lives," Ronald said in a written statement.

The research that led to the gene's isolation was funded by USDA grants to Ronald, Mackill and Bailey-Serres. The breeding work was funded by the USDA and the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development.

All told the USDA allotted nearly $1.45 million to the research project, a UC Riverside news release states.

A New Colonialism

In efforts to secure their own food supply, rich countries and corporations are causing panic in the developing world as millions of hectares of agriculture land is being purchased. The article by Julian Borger, Diplomatic Editor for the Guardian, maintains that these types of purchases are benefiting the big guys at the expense of the little guys. Some highlights from the article:

The head of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, Jacques Diouf, has warned that the controversial rise in land deals could create a form of "neo-colonialism", with poor states producing food for the rich at the expense of their own hungry people.

Rising food prices have already set off a second "scramble for Africa". This week, the South Korean firm Daewoo Logistics announced plans to buy a 99-year lease on a million hectares in Madagascar. Its aim is to grow 5m tonnes of corn a year by 2023, and produce palm oil from a further lease of 120,000 hectares (296,000 acres), relying on a largely South African workforce. Production would be mainly earmarked for South Korea, which wants to lessen dependence on imports.

"These deals can be purely commercial ventures on one level, but sitting behind it is often a food security imperative backed by a government," said Carl Atkin, a consultant at Bidwells Agribusiness, a Cambridge firm helping to arrange some of the big international land deals.

At a food security summit in Rome, in June, there was agreement to channel more investment and development aid to African farmers to help them respond to higher prices by producing more. But governments and corporations in some cash-rich but land-poor states, mostly in the Middle East, have opted not to wait for world markets to respond and are trying to guarantee their own long-term access to food by buying up land in poorer countries.

Even China, which has plenty of land but is now getting short of water as it pursues breakneck industrialisation, has begun to explore land deals in south-east Asia. Laos, meanwhile, has signed away between 2m-3m hectares, or 15% of its viable farmland. Libya has secured 250,000 hectares of Ukrainian farmland, and Egypt is believed to want similar access. Kuwait and Qatar have been chasing deals for prime tracts of Cambodia rice fields.

Eager buyers generally have been welcomed by sellers in developing world governments desperate for capital in a recession. Madagascar's land reform minister said revenue would go to infrastructure and development in flood-prone areas.

Sudan is trying to attract investors for almost 900,000 hectares of its land, and the Ethiopian prime minister, Meles Zenawi, has been courting would-be Saudi investors.

"If this was a negotiation between equals, it could be a good thing. It could bring investment, stable prices and predictability to the market," said Duncan Green, Oxfam's head of research. "But the problem is, [in] this scramble for soil I don't see any place for the small farmers."

Alex Evans, at the Centre on International Cooperation, at New York University, said: "The small farmers are losing out already. People without solid title are likely to be turfed off the land."

Details of land deals have been kept secret so it is unknown whether they have built-in safeguards for local populations.

Steve Wiggins, a rural development expert at the Overseas Development Institute, said: "There are very few economies of scale in most agriculture above the level of family farm because managing [the] labour is extremely difficult." Investors might also have to contend with hostility. "If I was a political-risk adviser to [investors] I'd say 'you are taking a very big risk'. Land is an extremely sensitive thing. This could go horribly wrong if you don't learn the lessons of history."

From Grain.org