Food Articles
The Trouble with Carbon
The local food movement isn't nearly as green as you might wish
But carbon warming as a component of food production is complicated. According to a study by Christopher Weber and H. Scott Matthews of Carnegie Mellon University in the United States, transportation from the farm to the supermarket accounts for just 4 percent of emissions related to food, and a minuscule amount of the total carbon footprint. Although the desire to buy local may be laudable, it may have little effect on carbon output.
That organic farmer that the carbon-conscious urban customer would like to buy from is likely to haul his produce from his farm to the city in at least a pickup truck or something bigger. The average SUV emits roughly 1.5 pounds of carbon per mile travelled. The production of local food in cold climates, which may require fertilizer, fuel and heated greenhouses, is likely to create far more emissions than growing it in the tropics, where water and sunlight are plentiful.
One study by Cranfield University in England, for instance, shows that the carbon cost of growing flowers in Kenya and flying them to the UK is perhaps a fifth of those grown in the Netherlands.
Flowers are not food, of course. But one study cited by the Guardian in 2008 involved Kenyan green beans. Kenyan farmers do not use tractors. They use cattle manure as fertilizer, their irrigation systems are simply ditches flooding fields instead of fossil fuel-driven sprinklers, and water and sunlight are plentiful.
Home-grown British beans are grown in fields sown with fossil-based fertilizers. They are ploughed by diesel-burning tractors. And, as the Guardian points out, produce grown in the developing world provides employment to legions of the poor.
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THE COPENHAGEN CONFERENCE ON FOOD SECURITY
For the 193 national delegations gathering in Copenhagen for the U.N. Climate Change Conference in December, the reasons for concern about climate change vary widely. For delegations from low-lying island countries, the principal concern is rising sea level. For countries in southern Europe, climate change means less rainfall and more drought. For countries of East Asia and the Caribbean, more powerful storms and storm surges are a growing worry. This climate change conference is about all these things, and many more, but in a very fundamental sense, it is a conference about food security.
We need not go beyond ice melting to see that the world is in trouble on the food front. The melting of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets is raising sea level. If the Greenland ice sheet were to melt entirely, sea level would rise by 23 feet. Recent projections show that it could rise by up to 6 feet during this century.
The world rice harvest is particularly vulnerable to rising sea level. A World Bank map of Bangladesh shows that even a 3-foot rise in sea level would cover half of the riceland in this country of 160 million people. It would also inundate one third or more of the Mekong delta, which produces half of the rice in Viet Nam, the world's number two rice exporter. And it would submerge parts of the 20 or so other rice-growing river deltas in Asia.
The worldwide melting of mountain glaciers is of even greater concern. The World Glacier Monitoring Service in Switzerland has recently reported the eighteenth consecutive year of shrinking mountain glaciers. Glaciers are melting in the Andes, the Rocky Mountains, the Alps, and throughout the mountain ranges of Asia.
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USDA: Number of Americans going hungry increases
WASHINGTON - More than one in seven American households struggled to put enough food on the table in 2008, the highest number since the U.S. Department of Agriculture began tracking food security levels in 1995.
That's 14.6 percent of U.S. households, or about 49 million people. The numbers are a significant increase from 2007, when 11.1 percent of U.S. households suffered from what USDA classifies as "food insecurity" — not having enough food for an active, healthy lifestyle.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said the numbers could be higher in 2009 because of the global economic slowdown.
"This report suggests its time for America to get very serious about food security and hunger," Vilsack told reporters during a conference call.
The USDA said Monday that 5.7 percent of those who struggled for food experienced "very low food security," meaning household members WASHINGTON - More than one in seven American households struggled to put enough food on the table in 2008, the highest number since the U.S. Department of Agriculture began tracking food security levels in 1995.
That's 14.6 percent of U.S. households, or about 49 million people. The numbers are a significant increase from 2007, when 11.1 percent of U.S. households suffered from what USDA classifies as "food insecurity" — not having enough food for an active, healthy lifestyle.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said the numbers could be higher in 2009 because of the global economic slowdown.
"This report suggests its time for America to get very serious about food security and hunger," Vilsack told reporters during a conference call.
The USDA said Monday that 5.7 percent of those who struggled for food experienced "very low food security," meaning household members
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Nourishing the Planet: Evaluating Environmentally Sustainable Solutions to Reduce Global Hunger and Rural Poverty
Agricultural development has come to a crossroads. Nearly a half-century after the Green Revolution-the first systematic, large-scale attempt to reduce poverty and hunger throughout the world-a large share of the human family is still chronically hungry. At the same time, investments in agricultural development by governments, international lenders, and foundations are at historic lows.
The timing couldn't be worse, as a complexity of demographic, economic, and natural forces all conspire to make the challenge of reducing hunger that much more difficult.
These include soaring petroleum and food prices as well as climate change and persistent unfair trade agreements. Still, the current crisis offers a window of opportunity for refocusing the world's attention on food, agriculture, and rural areas and for reestablishing food security as a global priority. As more decision makers and funders shift resources back toward agricultural development in coming years, they have a gaping need for guidance.
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