The next big thing in sustainable protein: Bugs!

I recently had a birthday, and Mr. HP surprised me with these:

chocolate bugs

CHOCOLATE-DIPPED INSECTS.

What a lucky girl I am!

Mr. HP set up a chocolate-dipped bug tasting for six at a Southwest Virginia winery. The accompanying pours were less for wine appreciation and more for steeling of nerves.

no bugs thanks

The buggy treats came from My Chocolate Shoppe in downtown Charlottesville, which has created quite a buzz (get it) locally with its chocolate-dipped worms, crickets, and scorpions. The bugs are farmed and baked in California, shipped to My Chocolate Shoppe, and hand-dipped on site.

bugs and wine

As insect farming is a rising trend in sustainable and ethical protein production, I felt compelled to write about my entomophagy experience here.

Sustainability of insect farming

We all know factory farming is bad for the atmosphere, waterways, local community, resident animals, facility workers, and potentially consumers of the end product. Production of traditional livestock (chicken, pigs, and beef cattle) contributes more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere than the transportation sector and consumes vast amounts of freshwater. Factory farms pollute waterways with fertilizer, pesticides, hormones, and antibiotics. CAFOs are blights on their surroundings and poison their neighbors with chemical runoff and manure lagoon leaks. Antibiotic use in livestock is causing the development of resistant strains of bacteria that are difficult to treat in humans. See my notes from a US Food Systems course I took last year for more horrifying details and appalling statistics.

As the global population continues to expand, there will be more and more pressure on the land to produce enough protein to feed everyone. Insects can fill this need with a much smaller footprint on the environment; they simply don’t require the land, water, and food resources that chickens, pigs, and cattle do. Insects produce fewer greenhouse emissions, their containers can be stacked on shelves, and insect farming doesn’t involve the hormones, antibiotics, fertilizers, and pesticides that CAFOs rely on.

It takes 2,900 gallons of water, 25 pounds of feed and extensive acreage to produce one pound of beef and just one gallon of water, two pounds of feed and a small cubicle to produce a pound of crickets. – “Edible insects a boon to Thailand’s farmers

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Thus, considering all factors, the actual food conversion efficiency of insects may be 20 times that of cattle. This means insect farming — along with other forms of “microlivestock”, could be one of the elements of a sustainable global agricultural future.- “Edible bugs and insects: Are these high protein critters the future of food?

Bug farming ethics

Are the bugs treated ethically while alive? Are they humanely slaughtered? I believe so. Farmed insects are raised in dark colonies, as they are found in nature; they are provided food, and protected. When harvesting time rolls around, they are chilled to a natural hibernation-like state, and from there the temperature is lowered until they die quietly.

Insects raised in farms live in teeming dark conditions (preferable environment), with ample and abundant food supply, no natural predators, no risk of outside diseases or parasites, and when they’re culled we lower the temperature so that there’s no violent death or change in state (because insects are exothermic their metabolism slows until they go into a coma-like sleep without any pain). I can’t think of a more humane way to raise our meat. – Robert Nathan Allen of Little Herds, via NPR

Bug nutrition

Bugs are a high protein, nutrient-rich, low fat and low cholesterol food. Insect protein is a complete protein, meaning all nine essential amino acids are present. Bugs are also are significant sources of zinc, iron, and vitamin A.

According to Chapul, makers of cricket-based protein bars, insects have:

  • 15% more iron than spinach
  • 2x more protein than beef
  • as much B12 as salmon

The table below (source) compares insect nutrition against that of chicken, beef, and salmon:

Warning to those with a shellfish allergy: bug exoskeletons are made of chitin, which also makes the shells of shrimp, crabs, and lobsters.

But how did they taste?

We decided to eat the worm first, as it was the least intimidating, and we’d eat in in a single bite so we wouldn’t have to see any innards. It was… not bad. The worm had no flavor, so it just added a rice krispie-like crunch to the chocolate.

Next was the scorpion, which was a similar no-flavor-big-crunch addition to the chocolate as the worm. No problem.

The cricket had the biggest gross-out factor, in my opinion. Its body is meatier than the other two. And sure enough, I didn’t like it. It had a bitter flavor along with its crunch.

plates of bugs

It was a fun experiment. But – surprise – we Americans have been eating bugs all along in processed food. The FDA allows certain amounts of insect parts, including pieces, larvae, eggs, and sacs, in foods like dried herbs, canned and frozen fruits and vegetables, coffee beans, flours, peanut butter, sauces, and more. This article estimates that “on average an individual probably ingests about one to two pounds of flies, maggots and other bugs each year without even knowing it.” Sorry to break it to you, but you’re already an entomophagist! Congrats!

I had no plans to eat more bugs in the immediate future, but while researching this post I enjoyed reading the Exo “Why Crickets” page so much I ordered a couple of their cricket-flour protein bars to try. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Coursera course “The Meat We Eat” meat cooking project

Over the past several weeks I’ve been participating in a basic overview meat sciences and technology course from the University of Florida, via Coursera, called The Meat We Eat. The course description, from Coursera, is:

The average American is now at least three generations removed from production agriculture.  This leads to the disconnection between how the public views agriculture and how scientists and producers view it, resulting in consumer distrust of science and commercial food production.  It is this lack of trust which leads to consumer confusion and the urge to grasp at multiple solutions.  However a growing number of consumers in developed countries are aspiring to “know where their food comes from”.  Animal agriculture needs to explain the technology which will be used to sustainably feed 9 billion people by 2050.

As a proponent of sourcing meat and meat products from local, sustainably run farms raising pastured, ethically treated animals rather than from massive industrial operations where output, rather than animal/environment/worker welfare and product quality, is prioritized, I thought it was important that I understand more of the details of large-scale commercial meat production. I’ll type up some lecture notes in another post; here I will discuss my final meat cookery project.

The Assignment

Document preparation of a meat recipe, discussing the details of the type and cut of meat, its packaging and appearance, storage, cookery method, sanitation, and food safety issues. I chose to cook a steak dinner, as beef is currently the only non-fish meat I am eating, and as an extra challenge, I wanted to grill the steaks. I’d never grilled steaks before, myself. (See here for another recent foray into cooking steak–I’ve only recently added steak into my pescatarian-for-over-ten-years diet.)

What I cooked

The Charlottesville, Virginia farmer’s market has several local meat vendors; I chose Wolf Creek Farm based on their wide variety of cuts of beef, and a prior positive experience. Wolf Creek breeds and raises their own cows on a pure (chemical fertilizer-free) grass diet, without antibiotics or hormones. They value environmental stewardship, healthy animals, and happy workers and community, while creating products customers will enjoy.

Wolf Creek Farm

Wolf Creek Farm’s website describes the stark contrasts between their small-scale beef production and typical industrial beef production:

“Our grass-fed, natural beef is a result of carefully selected herd genetics, that:

  • enjoys animal husbandry based upon intensive personal care and respect with no force-fed hormones and no antibiotics
  • is finished only on lush natural grass pastures with no grain or other supplements
  • is processed calmly with artisan skill in a small and clean rural abattoir with no need for irradiation and no antimicrobials
  • produces cuts that are dry-aged, safe, and nutritious

Contrast this with the beef produced by the industrial beef conglomerates who control 98% of the US beef production, where:

  • animal husbandry consists of force-fed hormones and constant antibiotics in a mechanized process
  • finishing is accomplished in confinement feed-lots by feeding grain that is produced under significant chemical fertilizer, pesticide and herbicide loads, combined with feed supplements containing antibiotics such as Rumensin to inhibit rumen gas build-up and bloat from the grain and Tylosin to reduce liver infections caused by bacteria from pH imbalanced rumens, ionophores, synthetic estrogens to promote growth such as Revlar which are banned in Europe, liquefied fat, and other protein supplements
  • processing is accomplished in an industrial slaughter-house with minimum wage labor on a disassembly-line where the emphasis is on speeds reaching over 400 animals per hour and requires irradiation and hot steam chamber antimicrobials at the end of the line to ensure the meat is “safe”
  • cutting these tens of thousands of wet-aged carcasses produces co-mingled meat containing high levels of saturated fats”

Beef prices by cut

Not being very steak-savvy, I asked the purveyor to recommend a steak for grilling. His immediate response was “rib steak.”

Beef retail cuts

How is a rib steak different from the better known ribeye steak? They’re basically the same, but the rib steak is bone-in while the ribeye is not. Rib cuts are harvested from the rib primal, which covers the upper rib cage. A rib steak is comprised of three major muscles, Longissimus Dorsi, Spinalis Dorsi & Multifidus Dorsi, and as this area of the cow is not used for locomotion or weight-bearing, the meat is naturally tender and marbled with fat.

Rib cuts

The meat is butchered at the farm’s abattoir, hung in cool storage for 21-28 days to dry age–wherein natural enzymes tenderize and flavor the meat–and then vacuum sealed and flash frozen. The steaks at the market were stored frozen in clean coolers. I chose two steaks: one was 0.98lb, for $16.57, and the other was 0.82 lb, for $13.87. Rib steaks are $16.50/lb plus tax.

Frozen steaks

In addition to the two steaks, I picked up some shiitake and oyster mushrooms (1/4 lb for $4), and an avocado ($2), and two tomatoes ($1.50) to go with some cucumbers from a friend’s yard.

How I cooked it

My initial plan, based on the meat purveyor’s suggestion, was to sear the steaks over high heat on the grill for 10-15 seconds a side, and then let them cook a couple minutes per side over 250-300 degree heat. But then a friend told Trusty Sous Chef Mr HP and I about reverse searing and we were intrigued.

‘A small but vocal population of steak lovers swears by the “reverse sear” technique. The theory behind this method is that cooking the steak in the oven first will dry the outside of the steak while slowly cooking the inside and keeping it tender. If the outside of the steak is dry, it will then sear faster and more efficiently in a hot pan.’ — from Mark’s Daily Apple

The new plan: start the steaks in a 275 degree oven until they reach 100-110 degrees, and then move them to a hot grill to sear the outsides.

Step 1: Thaw the steaks.

In the fridge, overnight. Our fridge is around 38 degrees.

Thawed steaks

Step 2: Unwrap the steaks and pat them dry. Then wash hands.

Pat the steaks dry

Step 3: Salt and pepper both sides of the meat.

Salt and pepper the steaks

Step 4: Preheat oven to 275 degrees. Preheat the grill to high. When the oven is ready, load in the steaks on a rack to facilitate air circulation around the meat.

Steaks go in the oven first

(Meanwhile, chop cukes, tomatoes, and avocado. Mix in a large bowl with a bit of olive oil and balsamic or wine vinegar.)

Chop the veggies

(Then chop up the mushrooms, keeping the shiitakes separate from the oysters, as cooking times differ. Heat a dry skillet to medium, add the shiitakes first, and then the more delicate oysters a couple minutes later. When the mushrooms are almost cooked, add some butter to the pan for a boost of flavor.)

Mixed mushrooms

Step 5: When the steaks reach 100-110 degrees (not the 87 pictured below), remove them from the oven onto a clean plate.

Checking temperature in oven

I found that when the steaks hit the target temperature, they took on a grayish color (see image below), which I will use next time as an indicator that it’s time to check temp, rather than the paranoid stabbing of the steaks every couple minutes that I employed here.

Steaks out of the oven

Step 6: Drop the steaks on the hot hot grill to sear for 2 minutes each side.

Grilling the steaks

Check the degree of doneness using a meat thermometer. As we learned in class, palatability is maximized at 145 degrees, which is right between rare (140 degrees) and medium rare (150 degrees). My steak, being smaller than Mr HP’s, would be a little more cooked, but that was ok with me as I’m just getting back into the eating steak swing of things.

Checking temperature of steak

Step 7: Move the steaks to a clean plate and cover loosely with foil for ten minutes, to let the juices reabsorb into the meat.

The picture of that wasn’t interesting so I am sparing you.

Step 8: Serve and enjoy!

Dinner is ready

Cooked rib steak

Storing Leftovers

The steak was fantastic, and the only “leftovers” were fatty bits and the bone from each steak; luckily we knew a certain dog who would be very interested in helping take care of those. The gristly pieces went into a sealed container in the fridge to be portioned out over the next few meals, but he got to enjoy a bone right away.

Steak leftovers

Leftover rib steak bone

Leftover rib steak bone

Summary

This experiment was a great success. The quality of the steak, the ease and results of the reverse-sear cooking method, and the simple but complementary sides (which were completely local except for the avocado, so that’s a potential place for improvement) all exceeded our expectations.

Estimated costs

Steak 1: $16.57

Steak 2: $13.87

Mushrooms: $4

Cucumbers: free

Tomatoes: $1.50

Avocado: $2

Total meal cost: $37.94

Total meat cost: $30.44

Meat’s percentage of total cost: 80%

An Introduction to the US Food System, Week 6: Diet, Food Environments, and Food Access

Here are my notes from Week 6, the final week of the free, online course I’m taking on US Food Systems from Johns Hopkins. This week wrapped things up by discussing the final stop on the food production highway: who is eating the food, and what food they are eating. How can we get good food to more people, and use food to improve people’s lives in ways other than nutritionally? Read previous weeks’ notes here: Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, Week 4, Week 5. This course was an excellent introduction to food systems and policy, and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in learning more about those topics.

‘Continue to ask yourself, “where did this food come from?”‘

Lecture: Advocacy for Better Health and a Smaller Footprint: The Meatless Monday Campaign

The Science

  • Heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes–most US deaths caused by those, by far. Sat fat and cholesterol are factors in all 4 of those
  • Meatless Monday: We eat 15% more fat and cholesterol that we should = 1 day a week. Hoover had a Meatless Monday originally, because of insufficient product.
  • Many different reasons to eat less meat:
    • Health, health care crises
      • Studies show shifting protein sources away from red meat reduces risk of cardiovascular disease
    • Environment concerns, climate change
      • Livestock production contributes 18% of all greenhouse gases globally
    • Health and ethical concerns around industrial animal production

The Marketing

  • Monday is natural because it’s the start of a new week, and people tend to live it up over the weekend, so Monday is a day of resolution. Fresh start, reset cycle. Most people in study said a healthy change on Monday would help them sustain healthy habits for the rest of the week
  • Keep it simple, doable, memorable (alliteration), grassroots (not a brand, anyone can use it as they wish)
  • Provide consumers recipes for meatless meals on the website. Make it easy for people to follow, understand
  • Some pushback from consumers, since it’s a campaign to deprive people of something
  • Working to expand reach and visibility, send positive message
  • Allies: veggie burger companies, low-fat companies. Media, promotional dollars create interest
  • Meat industry reaction: not happy! Putting pressure on institutions (school systems) to NOT do Meatless Monday, but their argument is not compelling, but the controversy generates awareness for the MM campaign
  • Celebrities talking about it, chefs including it in weekly menus=huge outreach
  • Next for Meatless Monday: shift focus from individuals to institutions. Provide tools to organizations, get more media coverage. School districts and colleges are important targets, to teach kids and fight childhood obesity. Corporate cafeterias. Sodexo, biggest institutional meal-provider, developing menus and promotional/educational materials. Stores, restaurants too.

Expanding to Healthy Monday

  • Healthy Monday–more than just meatless–fitness, healthy lifestyle program, quit smoking, etc. Get other medical center communities in on it
  • “The day all health breaks loose” slogan
  • Kids Cook Monday: get families to cook and eat together
  • Worksite Wellness pilot programs underway: eating, health screenings, activity. Promote health and wellness, help organizations design programs
  • Campus Wellness programs: at over 20 college campuses
  • Implement Community Wellness programs
  • National Cancer Institute: Smokefree Monday
  • Monday 2000: calorie consumption awareness

Lecture: Moving Toward a Better Food System

A Canadian perspective

Community food systems, business, and the green economy: The role of food policy councils and nonprofits

  • The food movement’s themes are bigger: policy, social enterprise, non-profit sector, public notions of good health
  • Toronto Food Policy: We live in a world of plenty, and our problems stem from not being able to manage abundance.
    • Food charter: based on “backcasting”: Where do we want to be in 5, 10, 20 years? Where do we start today to get there?
    • The city is in the food business, and citizens have the right to food
  • Food is the largest:
    • Source of pollution
    • Land user
    • Occupational group
    • Employer of child labor
    • Source of poverty
    • etc in the WORLD
  • Food impacts health, economics, environment–everything. It is a public policy issue, not just a consumer issue.
  • Paid staff is necessary, can’t just be volunteers. Keep staff small, encourage civic activism, work with universities, create work-study options.

Functions of a food policy council

  • Issue management for policy innovation. Take a raw concept and test it out, create a pilot program, see if it’s practical, make a policy change.
  • Find common ground.
    • Food is not a zero-tolerance issue (like drinking and driving, sexual harassment, etc). Can change it a little at a time.
    • Many styles. Don’t force a style suitable to another movement to this one.
  • Serve as a catalyst. Help other groups learn to create their own policies, bringing people together to solve their problems.
  • Advocacy. Get out and promote new ideas.
  • Coordinate. Education, getting groups together
  • Support things. Provide support to make things happen.
  • Innovate. Do something with unused capacity.
  • Take a multicultural approach.
  • Don’t take on implementation–create the policy and pass off the implementation part.

Why the food movement is spreading

  • People want to make a difference. “Yes, we can!”
  • We need a way to make sure important issues don’t fall between the cracks
    • Ex: food and water departments aren’t together in City Hall
  • Connections to everything
    • Public health has many side effects. Need to think bigger than the problem and look at the whole system
    • Food links everything together.
  • Food has multiple entry points
    • Form a community around food
    • Everyone eats, at every age and every income level
  • Solving food problems solves other urban problems
    • Ex: reducing miles driven by people getting to grocery store. Widen, repair roads vs using money to make those trips unnecessary by supporting corner stores, farmers markets.
    • Food is the anchor of main streets. Use food to build streetscapes, required for public transit–to engage people. Create living streets with shops and coffeeshops and street vendors and streetcars. Get people to walk and linger. So food is part of preparing a town for public transit
  • Food helps convert unused space to green space
    • Beautify city with edible landscaping. Plant in vacant space, make urban garden, teach young people, inspire community.
    • Unused urban space used for food: green roofs, urban gardens, goat grazing. Bring nature into city–good for people.
  • Help cities build resilience. Resources are becoming scarce–oil, water. Food issues will be a training ground to help build resilience.
  • Food waste as a tool
    • Food waste makes up much of overall waste. About 50% of food is wasted globally.
    • Food packages can be recycled/reused, food can be composted
    • Plastic bags: charge a little for a bag at a store to motivate people to bring reusable bag from home
    • Coffee cups: charge a little less if you bring your own cup
    • Need to look at waste as resource opportunity, not garbage problem. Get producers, ex soda companies, to figure out what to do with bottles, not cities.
    • Give food scraps to farm animals, or compost, don’t throw it away
  • Promote local and sustainable food
    • Local artisans on main streets; money goes to local economy
    • Local businesses create local jobs
      • Celebrity chefs are role models for jobs in new food economy
      • Job skills for youth
      • Jobs in food production
        • Grow rare, high-quality food
        • Get paid for taking waste food
    • Intercultural food
      • Communities have their own food markets
      • Cook globally, eat locally

Food as part of a new, broader concept of health

  • Ottawa Charter of Health Promotion, 1986
  • New ideas about good health
    • Pool fishing event, to intro people to fishing skills who can’t get out into nature
    • Community ovens, to intro people to real food, cooking skills
    • Taking people out of isolation, giving them a skill, making them feel good about selves and have some fun
  • Producers of health, not consumers of healthcare
  • Food connects us to each other, to nature
    • People need to feel connected to where they belong in the world. Community gardens help with connecting to place
    • Farmers markets help people connect to each other
    • Food is associated with most important life events
    • Food creates simple pleasures: you can be poor, but still have fun, eat well
    • Often involves spirituality: grace, mother nature

Reading: The Pleasures of Eating, by Wendell Berry

http://www.ecoliteracy.org/essays/pleasures-eating/

“The industrial eater is, in fact, one who does not know that eating is an agricultural act, who no longer knows or imagines the connections between eating and the land, and who therefore is necessarily passive and uncritical–in short, a victim.”

“The consumer… must be kept from discovering that, in the food industry–as in any other industry–the overriding concerns are not quality and health, but volume and price.”

Eat responsibly.

How can we eat responsibly?

  1. Grow your own food, as much as you can
  2. Prepare your own food
  3. Learn the origins of your food, and buy locally as much as you can
  4. Deal directly with the farmer/grower as much as possible
  5. Learn as much as you can about industrial food production
  6. Learn what is involved in the best farming and gardening
  7. Learn as much as you can about the life history of the food you’re eating

An Introduction to the US Food System, Week 5: Alternative Approaches to Food Production

Here are my notes from Week 5, the penultimate week of the free, online course I’m taking on US Food Systems from Johns Hopkins. This week we got to the topics of most interest to me, and to this blog: alternatives to industrial animal farming, and the importance of local food systems. If you’ve heard or read Joel Salatin, most of the points below will be familiar. Read previous weeks’ notes here: Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, Week 4.

Lecture: The Sustainable Agriculture Imperative

Michael Heller conducts a sustainable farming practice on Clagett Farm in Maryland, which is owned by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. Clagett Farm is 300 acres, and produces vegetables, grass-fed beef, and native nursery plants.

Avg distance the food on your plate travels: 1600-1800 mi = excessive use of fossil fuels. Buy local!

Ag is the #1 source of pollution hurting the Chesapeake Bay: >40% of the water is a dead zone

Clagett Farm
Vegetables
Need to plan for:

  • Weed control
  • Pest control
  • Fertility

Sustainable practices:

  • Crop rotation: 5 or 7 year cycles, changing crop each year to restore nutrients to the soil, optimizing for available nutrients, keeping pests under control
  • Cover crops: Helps prevent erosion, improve soil, build fertility, control pests. Just as important as food crops. Fields should never be left bare.
  • Mulching: Weed control, coverage when cover crops can’t be used–cover crops compete with food crops for moisture. Straw provides nutrients to soil, controls weeds by shading sun, controls pests that don’t like to walk across it.

Grass-fed beef

  • Soil rebuilding, naturally: Soils rebuilt by grass and cattle on steep land, or soil “mined” by corn and soy
  • Disease control without antibiotics: Keep cows happy and comfortable -> low stress -> low disease. Closed herd: all cows were raised on farm, except a bull who is quarantined before being introduced to herd. So no antibiotics needed, few health problems.
  • Grass management through rotational grazing: Put cows on a plot, let them eat grass all the way down, then move them to fresh grass. Short grass allows clover to grow. Cows manage grass, so little seeding required.
  • Compost for soil improvement: Winter hay includes manure. Bacteria break down manure, straw, woodchips. Keep pile aerated, warm, dry. Weed seeds in pile killed by heat of bacteria working. Used as fertilizer, rebuilds soil, provides nutrients

Decision-making criteria for sustainability

Adopting new technology, deciding what to offer CSA members, whether to cut hay or let cows eat the grass, etc. Criteria are:

  • Community
    • Interactions with community via marketing; includes farm workers, farm animals, wildlife
  • Economics
    • Don’t let it become the domineering criterion.
  • Control for farmer
    • Does it give the farmer more or less control over what he’s doing? Ex: raising poultry for a corporation, which dictates amount of food, water, light, etc.
  • Control for consumer
    • More or fewer choices for consumer?
  • Energy
    • Let the cows harvest their food and spread their manure
  • Ecology
    • Soil building, water quality. Are we working with or against environmental processes?

Local food systems

Cheap food good for consumer, hard for farmer, leads to consolidation into big corporate farms, less and less % of $ going back to farmer

To bring community to farm:

CSA
Buy a share of farm output. Each week shareholders weigh their veggies and bag them themselves.

Grass-fed beef
Buy a quarter steer.

Annual festival
Entertainment, farm tour

To take food to people who can’t get to the farm:
Farmers’ Market, Food Bank, Farmers’ Market coupons for low-income consumers


Video: Out to Pasture: The Future of Farming?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrRqi8-Y8ak

  • Industrial ag degrades, erodes soil, pollutes environment -> can’t support future generations
  • Chickens
    • 8B animals raised and consumed in US each year. Over 7B are poultry, mostly chickens
    • Multinational corps control operations on individual farms
    • Manure biggest problem. Full of nitrogen, phosphorus, heavy metals, antibiotics. Put on soil, runs into waterways.
  • Cows
    • Preserve biodiversity rather than limit it
    • Use animal waste to restore fertility to soil
    • Animals recycle plant materials
    • Cows are not built to eat grain
    • Smaller farms need to move to pasture-based system to stay in business
  • Hogs
    • Produce 5x the waste of a human, with no treatment plants
    • Held in lagoons, sprayed on crop fields
    • Dust causes respiratory problems, liquid gets into watertable
    • Contract producers have to buy facilities, deal with waste, have no control, and are only guaranteed contract for a single flock/herd
    • Easier to keep hogs healthy outdoors: get minerals from ground, nutrients from trees, plants, they’re happier
    • Better meat when they’re kept outdoors
    • Humane treatment: no shockers, can’t kick or mistreat them, no antibiotics or hormones or steroids, have to give them forage, minimum space requirements
    • Hogs have personalities
  • Animals connect us to the earth
  • It’s not (or shouldn’t be) all about the money
  • Need to educate consumers
  • Need to vote with dollars
  • Transform the food system one consumer at a time

Video: The Future of Agriculture, Parts I and II

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TDjIOsWtcA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_LNWDPwY0g

The Future of Agriculture
Being organic does not necessarily mean you are sustainable.

Think of sustainability as a concept of resilience, rather than steady-state, in the face of the challenges we will be facing in the future:

  1. Energy. Era of easily-obtained carbon-based energy is coming to a close. Oil produces corn that produces ethanol–still petroleum based. Think about energy/profit ratio–there’s not going to be a technological rescuer; we have to redesign systems instead.
  2. Water. Current economy enormously water-consuming. Agriculture draining water reserves at terrifying rate. Most crop production globally relies on irrigation. We need 4L of water a day to live, but we consume 2000L a day through all the food we eat!
  3. Climate Change. Current ag systems highly monocultured and specialized–require consistent climate to maintain productivity.
  4. Ecological degradation. Ecological resources are foundation of any ag system, but ag systems are destroying ecological diversity, most importantly: soils. Can no longer absorb and hold water as well, no longer the has nutrient capacity as when it was biologically active.

An Introduction to the US Food System, Week 4: Food and Farm Policy

Here are my notes from Week 4 of the free, online course I’m taking on US Food Systems from Johns Hopkins. I cleaned them up a bit, but they’re still pretty raw: just for my reference and your education. Read previous weeks’ notes here: Week 1, Week 2, Week 3. This week, I particularly enjoyed the TEDxManhattan lecture, From Fables to Labels, which is only 13 minutes long. Check it out!

This week’s lectures and readings cover the past, present, and future of the Farm Bill and US food policy.

Farm Bill History

Overview
Many policies affect food at federal, state, local levels. State and local levels a “laboratory” for policies that might be able to be scaled up to a federal level

It’s a public health bill; it affects:

  1. What we eat
  2. Environmental health/sustainability
  3. Food security
  4. Equity
  5. Rural public health

We need government in agriculture. Why?

  • Farmers need security in order to go into business. Weather unpredictable; market unpredictable.
  • Protect environment: Farmers tend to overproduce and use unsustainable practices
  • Ensure food supply: Consumers need to be able to afford and access food

Farm policy over the years

  • 1800s western expansion of farming. Homestead act, railroads
  • 1914 extension system through university partnerships to increase use of technology, productivity
  • Tearing up prairies to put in crops, leave fields open w/out cover crops. Topsoil blew away. Droughts + wind -> erosion -> dustbowl
  • 30s: Farmers hungry and demonstrating, consumers hungry and demonstrating -> first Farm Bill
  • New Deal brought first Farm Bill in 1933 to stabilize prices
    • Ever-normal Granary: store crops to stabilize prices
    • Mandatory idling of land to limit overproduction and keep prices up
    • Land and water conservation
    • Subsidized school lunches
  • 1938, 49 bills are permanent legislation–if we can’t pass a farm bill we return here!
    • 1949 started donating surplus food overseas
  • 1970 some stuff in the bill became voluntary instead of mandatory
  • 1973 big changes
    • Wetlands drained, forests cut down to increase farmland (“Fencerow to fencerow”)
    • Maximize yield rather than manage supply
    • Trend towards big farms
    • Processes industrialized
    • Foodstamps introduced
  • 1985 and 1990 more environmental programs–maybe because of problems from 1973 changes?
    • Conservation
    • Wetlands preservation
    • Research into sustainability
  • 1996 “Freedom to Farm”
    • High commodity prices, high incomes
    • Aim to end govt intervention in commodities (land idling, reserves, prices support policies)
    • Ending govt intervention led to price drop, more govt payouts -> dropped plan to end subsidies
  • Subsidy levels currently high following bill having purpose of ending subsidies!

2008 Farm Bill Policy
Food, Conservation, and Energy Act

  • 800+ pages
  • about 2/3 of it is Nutrition section, then Commodities, then Conservation
  • Most money spent on SNAP program

What Farm Bill supports does not look like what govt recommends we eat!

Fruits and veg have become more expensive, junk less expensive over the years. Based on subsidies for commodities?

Commodities: where all individual items interchangeable: corn, wheat; and can be stored or processed

Commodity subsidies:

  • Direct payments
  • Countercyclical payments
  • Lots of other assistance
  • $5.2B/yr per 2008 bill
  • More than 80% of $ goes to corn, wheat, cotton, soybeans, rice
  • 20% of recipients get 90% of the money
  • Crops sold at lower-than-production prices, so subsidies are safety nets and keep farmers farming
  • Do subsidies drive overproduction, or does lack of price stability drive overproduction? Seems to be lack of price stability
  • Do subsidies drive obesity? Unclear:
    • Yes: processed food crops, marketing, concentrate power in food industry
    • No: see our same obesity trajectory in other countries, farm price has small impact on food price

Current food supply would not allow for everyone in US to follow govt’s nutritional guidelines

How can Farm Bill increase fruit/veg production?

  • Research to build yields
  • Provide growers insurance and loans (like other growers get)
  • Marketing funds

How can Farm Bill increase access to healthy food?

  • Bring free healthy snacks into schools
  • Support farmers’ markets
  • Support community initiatives
  • Allow schools to say they want their food to come from local/regional sources
  • Incentives for SNAP program to buy fresh fruit/veg

How can Farm Bill improve environmental health/sustainability?

  • Address problems from incentive to overproduce
    • Gulf of Mexico deadzone from areas where most subsidies are given (fertilizer)
    • CAFOs, pesticides, decreased biodiversity
  • Conservation compliance
    • If you’re farming on conservation land, you must meet minimum reqs. Possibly has improved erosion
  • Conservation reserve
    • Pays farmers rent to take land out of production to restore groundcover
    • Farmers taking land out of program as they realize they can make more $ farming it
  • Conservation stewardship
    • Rewards for conservations initiatives across entire farm
  • EQIP
    • Assistance for sustainable practices
      • Switching to organic
      • Energy conservation
      • Forest/water conservation
    • Might be misused by big livestock corps: 60% of $ goes to livestock producers
  • Organics support
  • Renewable energy
    • Shift away from ethanol

Other Farm Bill programs:

  • Hunger and food security: SNAP, food banks, incentives to buy fresh fruit/veg, research
  • US Food aid internationally: ocean shipping takes 4-6 months to arrive. Undermines local farmers. Profits to Big Ag and shippers. 2008 FB tries giving cash instead.
  • Equity provisions: Livestock growers given more power to promote competition
  • Rural healthcare: telemedicine
  • Research: healthy/sustainable production methods, climate change, peak oil, nutrition, food safety, obesity, food security

Farm Bill Today

Farm Bill Politics
Ag committees in house and senate: senators and reps from farming states, mostly commodity production areas.

Stakeholders: Agriculture, agribusiness. Anti-hunger community becoming stronger player. Sustainable ag, environment community, int’l development, community food security, public health, cities

Public health’s involvement:

  • Success with priorities in 2008 bill
  • 2012 how to be most effective?
    • Ally with agriculture, nutrition, other groups

2012 Farm Bill
Marker bills hoping to get into bill:

  • Local Farms, Food, and Jobs Act
  • Healthy Food Financing Initiative

Money devoted to 37 programs due to expire–many public health and conservation

Republicans wanted to change SNAP; farmers wanted to end direct payments program to be replaced by crop insurance. Taking away direct payments removes requirement to adhere to conservation policies.

Budget problems: focus on low-cost programs.

Election year: extra political shenanigans in 2012

  • Sequestration could cut $7B from FB
  • Senate wrote and passed a FB cutting $23B
  • House Ag committee passed a FB cutting $35B; didn’t make it to the floor. Why?
    • Repubs cut SNAP benefits; Dems didn’t like
    • Debates could harm candidates
    • Spending so much $ could harm candidates
    • Removing benefits could harm candidates

Drought: worst in 25 years impacts farmers, increases need for farmer help in bill

Farm Bill expired Oct 1, 2012. Revert to 1938, 1949 Farm Bills–expensive, unrealistic to apply to modern times. Extension to end of Sept 2013 agreed upon by House and Senate Ag Committees, but full Congress didn’t like it–would threaten fiscal cliff legislation. McConnell and Biden came up with their own extension and put it into fiscal cliff legislation, and it passed. Committee leadership furious. What was it?

  • Prevents dairy price increase–BUT–
  • No input from committee leadership
  • No reforms
    • No changes to SNAP
    • Direct payments kept
  • No deficit reduction
  • The 37 programs due to expire expired
  • Probably no new enrollment in conservation stewardship
  • No disaster protection for most farmers
  • Many mandatory conservation programs became discretionary

Challenges upcoming: sequestration, debt ceiling, new committee members. Need to pass a better FB soon.

Important things missing from discussion:

  • Climate change
  • Industrial farm animal production
  • Commodity program reform
  • Competition
  • Worker health

Need expansion:

  • Support for farmers who are new, sustainable, diversified, transitioning to better practices, fruit/veg producers, small/mid-sized, or socially disadvantaged
  • Increase local/regional, healthy food demand
  • Local/regional food infrastructure improvements
  • Research for healthier food system

TEDxManhattan lecture: From Fables to Labels

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mZ2KQ9iB_8&feature=player_embedded

  1. Consumers will pay more for labels that they think add value
  2. Consumers are misled to believe that some labels are meaningful
  3. That dilutes consumer demand, and dilutes moving the marketplace forward

Labels need to be truthful:

  • Natural: manufacturers can use it to mean whatever they want. Polls show consumers confuse this with organic, which has 600p of standards, is a regulated program
  • Fresh: can use it on frozen chicken!?
  • Free range: means animals have option to go outdoors for undefined period of time. Doesn’t mean they actually went out.

… transparent:

  • GMOs: not enough science behind it, most people want labelling
  • Mad cow tested: govt left some loopholes in animal feed in place, so Japan said they didn’t want our beef. A farm wanted to test themselves and give themselves this label, but gov’t said no, the test isn’t good enough–even though it’s the same test the gov’t uses to test for mad cow.
  • Carbon monoxide added: to improve red color in meat. Considered a food additive by FDA, so no labelling required
  • Country of origin labelling: animals often born, raised, slaughtered in different countries. Int’l complaining that it’s not good for trade so this label is in peril.

… trustworthy:

  • Redefinition of HFCS. Calling it corn sugar. Shouldn’t be allowed to change name to confuse consumers.
  • Cold-pasturized: meat producers don’t want to call it irradiation. Irradiation isn’t held to same health standards as pasturization
  • No nitrates: natural nitrates same as synthetics, but gov’t allows labels to say no nitrates if natural nitrates are used.

Good labels: organic, grass fed, Animal Welfare Approved


Reading: Principles for Framing a Healthy Food System

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19320240903321219

Principles for moving toward a healthy food system:

Principle 1: It would insure community food security for all residents
Principle 2: It would be community-based
Principle 3: It would be locally integrated
–Not reasonable to expect all food to be grown locally
Principle 4: It would be reasonably seasonal in nature
Principle 5: Present primarily opportunities rather than problems
Principle 6: Connect “healthy” across the layers of the system
–Soil to plants (to animals) to people to communities
Principle 7: Be diverse


Reading: A 50-Year Farm Bill

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/05/opinion/05berry.html?emc=eta1&_r=2&

Soil is abused and non-renewable. More valuable than oil but no lobby.

  • Erosion
  • Polluted by fertilizers, pesticides

Industrial agriculture relies on fossil fuels

We’re headed for disaster. Need to:

  • Rotate crops for year-round soil coverage
  • Develop grain-bearing perennials

“We need a 50-year farm bill that addresses forthrightly the problems of soil loss and degradation, toxic pollution, fossil-fuel dependency and the destruction of rural communities.”


Reading: Do Farm Subsidies Cause Obesity

http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/tools-and-resources/do-farm-subsidies-cause-obesity/

Deregulation of commodities, not subsidies, has impacted commodity crop prices, incentives to businesses leading to more processed food consumption

Recommendations:

  • Reform commodity policies by developing responsible federal supply management
  • Increase consumption of fruits, veg, whole grains, especially in underserved communities
  • Help farmers diversify crops and supply local/regional markets
  • Improve infrastructure of healthy food delivery

Findings:

  • Removing subsidies would not curb overproduction of commodity crops
    • Because farmers collectively tend to overproduce without some sort of government intervention, the academic literature finds that subsidies themselves do not cause overproduction
    • If subsidies were removed, farmers’ income would drop, causing smaller farms to be sold to larger farms. Overproduction would not decrease.
  • Low commodity prices offer savings to the food industry, but not to consumers at the grocery
    • Low feed prices for animals, low corn prices for HFCS
    • Over the last 3 decades, grocery prices have gone steadily up, but corn prices have fluctuated wildly
    • Commodity prices make up tiny percent of retail cost of food. Most $ goes to makers, retail, marketers
  • The food industry has been the main driver of commodity policy, not farmers
    • Livestock industry wants high production and low prices for feed
  • Removing subsidies before commodity supply and prices have been managed will not stop overproduction, but could harm small/mid-sized farms
    • 82% of small/mid-sized farms receive subsidies
    • Need to support small/mid-sized farms as they are able to diversify and supply local/regional markets

An Introduction to the US Food System, Week 3: Public Health and Environmental Implications of Industrial Models of Food Production

Below are my notes from week 3 of the excellent free online course I’m taking through Johns HopkinsRead week 1 notes here, and week 2 notes here. If you’re enjoying these notes, consider signing up for the course. It’s not too late, and I’d be interested to hear what you think!

This set of lectures covers: an introduction to industrial food animal production (IFAP); what are we feeding the animals; the use of antibiotics and arsenical drugs; and the international expansion of these practices.

An Introduction to Industrial Food Animal Production

Industrial food animal production

  • Animal feeding operation (AFO) = animals confined for 45 days per year; no other crops
  • Concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO) = >1k animal units = > 1mil lbs of live weight
  • Industrial food animal production:
    • High-throughput production methods
    • One site
    • Controlled conditions
    • Uniform consumer product
    • Small profit margins

Substantial increases in meat production in last 50 years; largest jump in chicken production. Number of farms drops off dramatically as number of animals per farm shoots up.

Majority of poultry and swine facilities (>90%) operate under “vertical integration” model: a large “integrator” corporation owns animals, controls inputs, owns processing plants. Growers under contract and own/manage animal waste.

We’re producing over 9 billion animals per year for human consumption.

What are we feeding food animals?

  • Antibiotics and hormones
  • slaughtered animal byproducts
  • animal waste
  • industrial waste (containing minerals deemed nutritious, but also chemicals and heavy metals)

What do we do with their waste?

Animal waste mostly not treated before being applied to land. Can be stored for a while in hopes of reducing pathogen load. Contains:

  • bacteria
  • protozoa
  • viruses
  • animal dander
  • pharmaceuticals
  • heavy metals
  • hormones
  • nutrients

Pelletized poultry waste: sold in bags as fertilizer

Waste gets into water, air, soil: land application, failed storage systems, waste incineration, animal-house ventilation, direct (illegal) releases into surface waters. Groundwater makes 40% public water supplies and 97% rural water supplies. Other contaminant transport mechanisms: transport trucks, workers, flies, in the meat itself.

Occupational hazards: 5mil workers in direct contact with animals or with waste products; no federal oversight=no OSHA protection; often not given protective equipment; sometimes not given access to decontamination facilities like showers; can take contaminants home to families.

Air contamination from production facilities: gases (ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, volatile organic compounds w/ unknown risks), particulates, microorganisms, endotoxins, animal dander

Community risks: increased exposure -> asthma, allergies, mental health issues; odors; property damage, housing values drop

Antibiotics in animal agriculture 
Antibiotics used in people, food animals, even crop/ethanol production. All uses contribute to resistance development, but some more than others.

FDA est usage in 2010: 4x more used to treat animals than humans. Using the same antibiotics in animals as in people leads to resistant bacteria which are spread from farms and infect people.

4 purposes (per FDA) for antimicrobials in food production:

  • Teatment: sick animal
  • Control: one animal is sick, treat others
  • Prevention: expecting disease to occur
  • Production: growth promotion (grow faster), feed conversion (maximize amount of growth per unit of feed fed)

Prevention and growth promotion: lower dose for longer, most OTC, most administered via feed, to entire herd. Quantities hard to track because feed mixes are considered proprietary and companies not required to report on it.

Resistance–

  • via natural selection
  • via genetic sharing (horizontal gene transfer). Viruses, sharing via contact
  • via mutagenesis and resistance. New genes created
  • Reservoir of resistance, bacterial altruism: sharing resistance across communities of bacteria

Feed/water administration leads to uneven dosing–mixing feed, animals absorb differently. Over-administration leaves residues in products; under-administration leads to resistance; variable administration leads to mutations, treatment failures

Spread of resistant bacteria via transport trucks, workers, meat, manure lagoons, air, birds, manure as fertilizer on croplands

Consequences: antibiotics no longer work on resistant infections. Hospital stays longer and more expensive.

Denmark eliminated growth-promoting antibiotics in pigs in 1998. Results:

  • increases in weight gain and mortality in pigs
  • total antibiotic consumption down by 50%
  • reduced resistance

US programs: Animal Drug User Fee Act–FDA tracks data; Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act–limit use of medically important antibiotics (not yet politically viable); Strategies to Address Antimicrobial Resistance Act–data tracking (not yet politically viable)

Arsenical drugs
Most common: Roxarsone. In poultry and swine feed since 1940s, for pinker meat, parasite control.

  • FDA set levels in 1951 that are still in use despite known health risks
  • Arsenic stays behind in chicken and in manure, in both toxic inorganic form and organic form
    • Chicken manure sometimes fed to cows
    • Chicken manure sometimes burned for energy
    • Runoff into waterways, taken up by seafood
    • Arsenic stays behind in treated soil
    • Crops can take up arsenic
  • Unknown type (inorganic/organic) in chicken meat
  • Approx 11 tons of arsenic released per year, but we don’t know where it goes

Inorganic arsenic = Carcinogen, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, skin, neuro, immunologic, bad, bad bad

2011 Pfizer suspended sale of Roxarsone in US pending further study, but still sells internationally–due to FDA study prompted by public concern, showing inorganic arsenic in chicken livers.

Lack of regulation. Legislation: 2009 Poison-free Poultry Act–no progress. 2010-12 MD bills–finally progress in 2012. Why 2012? FDA study showed inorganic arsenic may be present in chicken meat; report showing arsenic may stay in soils and groundwater and may be environmentally unsustainable; advocates/organizing -> not wise to feed an animal we intend to eat an arsenic-based drug!

Histostat (nitarsone) is another arsenic-based drug, used to fight a turkey disease. May be a loophole for continuing use of arsenical drugs in chickens in MD.

Food animal production abroad
Chicken production way higher in China. US #2
Swine production same
Cattle production: US#3

–so it’s not just us

US integrator companies expanding internationally. Could be fewer regulatory protections in other countries. Workforce, environment, drugs. Ethical considerations: food could be for export, not for consumption in that country–the citizens just have to deal w/ waste.

Reading: Putting Meat on the Table: Industrial Farm Animal Production in America

https://spark-public.s3.amazonaws.com/foodsys/Pew.PuttingMeatontheTable.2007.v2.pdf
A report of the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production

Notable quotes:

    • At the end of his second term, President Dwight Eisenhower warned the nation about the dangers of the military-industrial complex—an unhealthy alliance between the defense industry, the Pentagon, and their friends on Capitol Hill. Now, the agro-industrial complex—an alliance of agriculture commodity groups, scientists at academic institutions who are paid by the industry, and their friends on Capitol Hill—is a concern in animal food production in the 21st century
    • …The ratio of fossil fuel energy inputs per unit of food energy produced averages 3:1 for all US agricultural products combined. For industrially  produced meat products, the ratio can be as high as 35:1 (beef produced in feedlots generally has a particularly unfavorable energy balance)
    • Recently, animal scientists in Europe published a set of standards to define basic animal welfare measures. These include five major categories, which must be taken in their entirety: feeding regimens that ensure that animals do not experience prolonged hunger or thirst; housing that ensures resting comfort, a good thermal environment, andfreedom of movement; health management that prevents physical injury, disease, and pain; and appropriate meansto allow animals to express non-harmful social behaviors, and other, species-specific natural behaviors
    • The Commission’s technical report on economics in swine production showed that the current method of intensive swine production is only economically efficient due to the externalization of costs associated with waste management. In fact, industrialization leading to corporate ownership actually draws investment and wealth from the communities in which specific ifap facilities are located
    • The Commission’s six primary recommendations:
      • Phase out and then ban the nontherapeutic use of antimicrobials
      • Improve disease monitoring and tracking
      • Improve IFAP [waste handling/treatment] regulation
      • Phase out intensive confinement
        • The Commission recommends the phase-out, within ten years, of all intensive confinement systems that restrict natural movement and normal behaviors, including swine gestation crates, restrictive swine farrowing crates, cages used to house multiple egg-laying chickens, commonly referred to as battery cages, and the tethering or individual housing of calves for the production of white veal.  In addition, the Commission recommends the end to force-feeding of fowl to produce foie gras, tail docking of dairy cattle, and forced molting of laying hens by feed removal.
        • Not all of the systems that employ such practices are classified as “cafo”s, as intensive confinement can occur in facilities that are not big enough to be classified in that manner
        • Unbeknownst to most Americans, no federal regulations protect animals while on the farm. The Humane Methods of Slaughter Act was enacted to ensure that animals are rendered “insensible to pain” before slaughter, but poultry are not included under its protection despite the fact that more than 95 percent of the land animals killed for food in this country are birds
      • Increase competition in the livestock market [via anti-trust laws]
      • Improve [independently-funded] research in animal agriculture

An Introduction to the US Food System, Week 2: Food Systems, Food Security and Public Health

“The food system is run by people who know nothing about health, and the health system is run by people who know nothing about food.” — Wendell Berry

Below are my notes from week 2 of the excellent free online course I’m taking through Johns Hopkins. Read week 1 notes here. Again, these notes are just what I type up while listening to the lectures, and aren’t fancified for posting here.

This set of lectures covers: Food security introduction, food system definition, history of food production and its effect on society.

Food Security

Exists when all people at all times have access to sufficient safe, nutritious food for health/activity needs, with implementation via sustainable methods.

The right to adequate food is a human right.

History of concept: in 70s, hunger was seen as a food problem, so focus was on ensuring adequate food supply and stabilizing food supply. 83 addition: securing access to food for anyone who needs it; 86 addition: adequate food to fuel active and healthy life; 96 addition: Rome Declaration signed by 176 countries declares reaffirmation to everyone’s right to food.

UN Millennium Development Goals: first goal is to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger. Cut each in half by 2015. Progress on each as of 2004, but poverty slow to improve in W Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, former SSRs, and hunger slow to improve in S Asia, sub-Saharan Africa.

Methods of Food Production for Food Security

Soil (topsoil quantity), water quality, natural resource sustainability

  • Erosion of topsoil–depth from 21″ 200 yrs ago to 6″, on farmland
  • 60% freshwater used goes to crop irrigation
  • fisheries fully exploited or in decline/collapsing; overfished by 25%
  • industrial production methods affect small farmers and retail, and rural communities

World food production is adequate to feed everyone, if distributed equitably. More than enough food calories per person is currently available. 1 billion (1/5 of total) undernourished/underweight. But 1 billion suffer from diseases of overnutrition (diabetes, heart disease, obesity)!

More people could be fed if people relied on grain-based diet rather than animal protein-based (American-style) diet, that is more equitably distributed.

Food security exists when people have physical and economic access to sufficient safe, nutritious, sustainably produced, and socially just (to producers) food to meet their dietary/cultural needs and activity levels

New threats: biofuels, climate change, increasing meat production

Ingredients of the US Food System

“How we eat determines, to a considerable extent, how the world is used.” –Wendell Berry

Overview

  • Scope and magnitude of US food system: 1 billion acres agricultural land + >2 billion food animals
  • Influences + Inputs -> Activities [production, processing, distribution, retail, consumption] -> Outcomes

Early History

  • Humans 150,000 years ago. Hunter-gatherers.
  • Agriculture 11,000 BCE (fertile crescent and other areas)
    • motivated by glacial conditions?
    • motivated by larger/denser populations?
    • more work for more stable/abundant food supply (10-100 more calories per acre)
    • 4mil global pop before agriculture grew to 50mil in 1000 BCE, and 200mil in 1 CE
  • Settlements around agriculture grew to towns and cities. Uruk=world’s first city, 3000 BCE, 50k people
    • Now that they don’t have to hunt/gather, people can focus more on art, literature, technology, politics, social classes
  • Periodic famine in Europe as population grows exponentially
    • Famine drivers
      • pop growth, resource degradation, climate, drought, conflict
      • early farmers often depleted soil fertility
        • plow -> erosion
        • Dust Bowl in 1930s from erosion
    • Population growth sustained by
      • Imported crops from the Americas–improved nutrition
      • Refrigeration improves lifespan of food
      • Transportation network improvements
      • Nitrogen fertilizer in the 1900s increased output big time

Industrialization

Industrialized agriculture is less labor-intensive, makes food/farming cheaper, encourages consumerism by leaving more money in people’s pockets to buy stuff

Union Stockyards in Chicago for slaughter, process, packing, distribution. Largest in country in 1900. Inspired Henry Ford’s auto assembly line.

Characteristics of a factory:

  • Specialization
    • More efficient to focus on one thing. Skills, tools, facilities
    • Monocultures of corn or soybean (over half cropland is devoted to those two)
  • Mechanization
    • Simpler, more routine work can be replaced by machines
  • Standardization
    • Different facilities can better work together if specs are standardized
      • Grow chickens to same size so machines can handle
      • Sell meat of a certain size to restaurants
  • Technology + inputs
    • Special feed, breeding techniques to grow animals faster, bigger, cheaper
    • Chemicals, drugs, fossil fuels use increased
  • Economies of scale
    • Operations grew to gain efficiency in mass production
  • Consolidation
    • Trend toward larger and fewer facilities. Machines mean fewer workers needed. Smaller farms can’t afford same technology, economies of scale.
  • Concentration of control
    • Extent to which a small # of corps control most of the sales. Merging, buyouts.
      • Top 4 beef processing firms control over 80% of market
      • Pork: top 4 control over 2/3 of market
      • Corn: top 2 control over 1/2 of market
    • Those firms have power to influence how food is produced and who produces it

1950-2000 production on US farms doubled. US Agriculture is the most efficient in the world.

Some examples of external costs

  • Animal welfare
  • Environmental degradation from chemicals (pesticides, fertilizers)
      • Dead zones
      • Algal blooms

    Fertilizer can reduce soil fertility in long run

  • Pesticide exposure to animals and humans
  • Loss of biodiversity
    • Irish potato famine: only one type of potato, wiped out by a pathogen
  • Climate change from greenhouse gas emissions

Alternatives to Industrial Agriculture

What is sustainable ag? Meet current needs while not hindering future needs.

  • Economically viable
  • Ecologically sound
    • Native plants, recycling organic waste to enhance soil fertility
    • Resilient to droughts, pests (diversify, build healthy soil)
  • Socially just
  • Willing to use technology where appropriate

An Introduction to the US Food System, Week 1: Introduction to Food Systems, Equity and the Environment

“If you eat, you’re involved in agriculture.” – Wendell Berry

Here are my notes from week 1 of the free course I’m taking from Johns Hopkins on the US food system. So far I’m really enjoying it! These notes aren’t proofed or reorganized, just dumped here from Evernote for your educational pleasure. I hope you learn something; I know I did, and will be expanding upon some of these points in later posts.

The Vicious Spiral

Poverty – Population growth – Environmental degradation (PPE spiral)
  • Extreme poverty in the world is decreasing
  • Projected population growth mostly in developing nations
    • high: sub-saharan africa, bolivia, afghanistan, pakistan
    • Low: canada, brazil, most of europe, russia
  • Hunger declining but still too high
    • Most in Asia/Pacific,then sub-Saharan Africa
    • 1 billion of 7 billion total people are undernourished
    • Food prices spikes due to fuel prices going up, more crops used for ethanol

Equity and Global Ecological Footprints

Global pop: 7bil as of 10/11
  • 2bil overweight or obese
  • 1bil undernourished

Resource extraction increasing in emerging economies; 75% of pop live in countries where resource extraction > resource capital

Water quality/quantity:

  • Extreme scarcity in sub-Saharan, India, Nepal, SE Asia, Lat Am highlands
  • Chemical pollution bad in US, China
  • Dead zones from excess fertilizer: poultry production belt (NC, deep south), Europe’s concentrated livestock farming
Degradation of soil:
  • US farm belt (MS valley) very degraded
  • Iowa, for ex, loses soil at unsustainable rate–some areas >100T of soil per acre. Rich, fertile topsoil being lost to industrial farming techniques/overcultivation
    • Soil carried down MS river and lost at sea

Biodiversity:

  • Same area of soil degradation in N Amer shows high loss of biodiversity
    • Focus on corn, soybeans
  • Sub saharan, latin america bad
  • Industrialized countries w/ 15% pop used 50% fossil fuel, mineral resources; developing countries increased fossil fuel use by 40% in last 10 years
Biocapacity: capacity of ecosystems to produce useful biological materials and absorb human-generated CO2

Biologically productive land: cropland, grazing land, forest, fishing ground. Declining

Most of world at margins of using more biocapacity than is being replenished. In 2007: 151% Earth’s biocapacity used. Some countries ok: Lat Am, Canada, Russia

Diet, Food Production, and Global Health

Double burden of disease: healthcare systems of low/middle income countries overwhelmed by same old communicable diseases plus new chronic diseases from diet/less activity. Obesity has doubled globally since 1980. Diabetes type 2, cancers, heart disease, stroke. 80% of type 2 diabetes is in developing countries.

Undernourished mostly in sub-Saharan Africa, India, Mongolia, even China.

Food distribution:

  • US produces and uses vast majority of corn
  • Europe most wheat
  • US/Europe most meat, dairy, way more than India/China
  • US consumes 800kg grain per capita per year. Compare to 400 Italy, 200 China. Most of our grain goes to feeding livestock.
    • 700kg grain = 100kg beef
    • 650kg grain = 100kg pork
    • 260kg grain = 100kg poultry
    • 1000kg water = 1kg grain! So 700,000 kg water = 100kg beef; 7000kg water = 1kg beef

Federal subsidies: meat and dairy 73.8% of all subsidies. Fruit and veg .37% 

US meat consumption since 1961 increased 70%. 223lbs per person per year. Global demand for meat should double from 1990-2020. Global consumption since 1961: 82% increase. FDA says we don’t need all that protein and meat. US men consuming 170% of recommended protein; women 127%. Lot of room to reduce consumption.

Intergenerational equity and Food production impacts

  • Rapid land and soil degradation
  • Water table lowering
  • Antibiotic overuse – drug resistant bacteria
  • Fish stock depletion and more factory farmed fish
  • Loss of biodiversity
  • Climate disruption
Industrialized agriculture: started in 19th C for efficiency, speed. Monocropping, pesticides, fertilizer, water.
  • Fertilizer overuse = nitrogen/phosphorus pollution
  • High use of non-renewable resources and reliance on fossil fuels
  • Agricultural subsidies
  • Artificially inexpensive fuel and water
  • Hidden costs of food = externalities
Production needs quality soil and good rainfall but that’s unevenly distributed.
  • 2/3 water use worldwide is for irrigation
  • Irrigated land produces most crops, and amount of irrigated land growing

Chemicals

  • 220million metric tons of fertilizer used per year globally in 2020
    • Most chemicals not tested
    • Crops only absorb 1/3 to 1/2 of applied nitrogen
  • 6mil metric tons of pesticides used per year globally
    • chemicals enter food, air, water stream and could give us cancer
    • 1 billion lbs pesticide per year in US
      • that’s 20% global production for 4% global population
    • Roundup resistance (glycophosphate). At least 10 species of weeds now.
      • Monsanto controls 96% soybean market w/ Roundup resistant soybean seeds

Energy use

  • 1kcal output requires 3kcal input on avg farm
  • Feedlot cattle: 1kcal output requires 35kcal input!
  • Over 80% US energy consumption for food production (2002)
  • Most greenhouse gases from meat (30%); processed foods/snacks (25%); dairy (18%); cereals & fruit/veg 11%; chicken/eggs/fish 10%

Industrial agriculture and biodiversity

  • Current rate of loss 1000 species a year!
  • vs Paleolithic rate of 1-2 per year
  • Amazon, 2000-2005, deforestation: 60% for cattle farming, 33% small-scale agriculture, 1% large-scale agriculture
    • 1% has ballooned in recent years due to soy production
    • Also sugar cane, maize production
    • Soybeans here predominantly shipped to China to feed hogs, essentially shipping water to china in the form of soybeans
  • Threat to food supply: monocropping = more susceptible to disease, drought, pests
    • Industrial animal farming = loss of genetic biodiversity in livestock
    • Species go extinct
    • Spread of pathogens (west nile, dengue)
    • New pathogens emerge
    • Balance of species controls pests (why crop rotation is used)

The role of food animal production

1/32 of the Earth’s surface suitable for raising food. Must raise food for 7bil people.

Meat production inefficient use of grain, water, land, but accounts for 70% farmland, 30% Earth’s surface, 40% grain grown globally

  • 7% global water for grain for livestock
  • 70% herbicide and 37% pesticide in agriculture used for livestock feed
  • half corn grown in US used for animal feed (1% for human feed as actual corn)
  • Grain use ahead of production; global stocks decline (China became a grain importer) (450mil hogs grown and consumed each year in china)
  • Africa and Middle East require more grain
  • Ethanol production the major threat to availability of grains for human consumption since late 2005 (largely driven by subsidies)

Industrial food animal production:

  • one corp controls everything from hatching to slaughter.
  • animals raised in CAFOs
  • feed controlled by corp, not contract grower
  • grower is left with waste and carcasses, paid at end of cycle by weight of animals
  • livestock outnumber humans 5:1 in US
    • 2002 10bil animals slaughtered for food in US
    • 93% chickens worldwide
    • 20% of worlds animals consumed in US
    • 5 tons waste per capita
  • CAFO vs public health
    • antibiotics = resistant bacteria
    • emergence of new foodborne pathogens
    • chemicals enter foodchain through diets of animals
    • CAFO ruins communities
    • health threats apparent in CAFO neighbors, workers (asthma, injuries)
    • climate change
      • 18% greenhouse gas production worldwide, more than anything incl transportation
      • 37% methane emissions (20x worse than CO2)
      • 65% NO2 emissions (286x worse than CO2, and lasts 114yrs in atm). FERTILIZERS.
  • Precautionary principle: if something is suspected of endangering humans, the proponent of the activity, not the public, should bear burden of proof
  • How to feed everyone sustainably?
    • small farms currently support 2bil people globally; improve biodiversity and soil quality; decrease poverty
    • need to advance technologies and make them free
    • govt investment
    • invest in women farmers
    • infrastructure improvements: roads, storage facilities, refrigeration, surplus mgmt
    • diet: can’t sustain meat consumption increase, but need access to iron- and protein-rich meat sources
    • resilient food system: elasticity, recoverability, buoyancy

 Reading: Food: The growing problem

http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100728/full/466546a.html

  • At least 30% of global food is wasted; people are too poor to buy it. Highest rates of hunger in Sub-Saharan Africa; most undernourished in Asia
  • Percent hungry dropped for decades, but 2008 food price crisis reversed trend
  • Available calories per person has increased (family size decreasing, pop growth should plateau in 2050), so we will be able to support higher pop, but water is limiting resource
  • Some studies say we’ll have enough land by converting land farmland in Lat Am and Afr without hurting forests, protected areas, urbanization. But others say we should intensify existing farms
  • Sustainable intensification: doing more with less, improving techniques, less water, less chemicals. Need more public investment in farming practices.

Rainy day movie: Food, Inc.

Food, Inc. is a chilling documentary full of disturbing facts about the huge corporations that run the American food system.

Hooray for local hero Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms, a featured “good guy” farmer.

Quotes from the movie:

When we run an item past the supermarket scanner, we’re voting: for local not organic or not.

You can vote to change this system. Three times a day.

Buy from companies that treat workers, animals, and the environment with respect.

When you go to the supermarket, choose foods that are in season. Buy foods that are organic. Know what’s in your food. Read labels. Know what you buy.

The average meal travels 1500 miles from the farm to the supermarket. Buy foods that are grown locally. Shop at farmers’ markets. Plant a garden (even a small one).

Everyone has a right to healthy food. Make sure your farmers’ market takes food stamps. Ask your school board to provide healthy school lunches. The FDA and USDA are supposed to protect you and your family. Tell Congress to enforce food safety standards and re-introduce Kevin’s Law.

To learn more, go to http://www.takepart.com/foodinc

 

The Omnivore’s Dilemma QotD

(From Big Organic chapter, p. 183)

The food industry burns nearly a fifth of all the petroleum consumed in the United States (about as much as automobiles do). Today it takes between seven and ten calories of fossil fuel energy to deliver one calorie of food energy to an American plate. And while it is true that organic farmers don’t spread fertilizers made from natural gas or spray pesticides made from petroleum, industrial organic farmers often wind up burning more diesel fuel than their conventional counterparts: in trucking bulky loads of compost across the countryside and weeding their fields, a particularly energy-intensive process involving extra irrigation (to germinate the weeds before planting) and extra cultivation. All told, growing food organically uses about a third less fossil fuel than growing it conventionally, according to David Pimentel, though that savings disappears if the compost is not produced on site or nearby.

Moral of the story: eat local foods! Another bonus–food that travels less distance will be fresher and tastier!