When you work as a reporter you're always on the hunt for a story, and occasionally you'd hear a good one, but there was just no way to use it. That's how I felt about what an acquaintance who worked for years in the food retail business called "the money guy" (I used the correct word in the title of the post!). My informant said the money guy had the most important job in the business, even though he had absolutely nothing to do with food.
Here's how it worked. A lot of what supermarkets sell is fresh and sold fairly quickly, but the food retailers have 30 days at least to actually pay for it, so there's a little window in there where the company has the consumers money, but it doesn't have to go out to the supplier. The acquaintance said he remembers in the 1970's that a call would often come from head office on a Friday that all the cash needed to be in the bank by 6 because the company was involved in weekend bridge financing for an oil company in the middle east. In the right circumstances the interest rates for this kind of short-term financing can be quite high, and when millions of dollars are involved, the returns definitely help the food retailers bottom line. I had always thought my food dollars went to a farmer. Apparently not.
This whole money lending/investment strategy is much more sophisticated these days. Those fancy cash registers are hooked up to bank accounts, and I suspect "the money guy" gets to use it a lot more quickly now. What I was never able to discover is whether the profits form this money-lending sideline went to the bottom line of the supermarket, or some separate company. I'm not implying there's anything wrong with this, it's just an interesting wrinkle in a business that's very sophisticated and competitive. I can say for sure that the farmers people deal with at the farmers markets don't have secret Swiss bank accounts.
The other eye opener for me was a study done by two Agriculture Canada economists in 2002 called Performance in the Food Retailing sector of the Agri-food Chain. It's a little out of date now, because of the consolidation in the food retailing (Loblaws and Sobeys bought up most of their competitors) and the emergence of Walmart as a player in the supermarket business. In their effort to keep customers happy, these retailers have seen their profit margins shrink.
In 2002, the economists discovered that food retailers were doing better than other retailers (hardware stores, clothing retailers, etc.), but the most interesting finding was that these "better returns" were coming at a time when food prices were stagnant..
Here's part of what they said:
________________________________________________________________
Grocery retailing constitutes a substantial component of food retailing and both have
exhibited rates of return (12.68% and 12.15% respectively) which are much larger than
the rates or return for non-food retailing (6.99%) or the general economy (7.33%). The
superior performance of grocery/food retailing is largely accounted for by the
performance of the large firms, which registered returns almost double those of small and
medium sized firms. In contrast to food, the large non-food retailers under-performed
relative to small and medium non-food retailers.
The superior profitability of large grocery/food retailers is a bit of a puzzle given that
food prices have been rising less rapidly than the price of consumer goods in general
implying that the real price of food has been declining. On the one hand, this declining
relative price of food suggests that grocers are not extracting monopoly profits from
consumers.
However, if prices are not the underlying reason for increasing profitability within food
retailing, then the driver by necessity will be decreasing costs. Costs can be decreased
through increasing efficiencies, better managerial skills, or through the leverage of
market power. Unfortunately this study does not explore deeper into the underlying
mechanics of the profitability in food retailing, but future research in this area would
prove interesting.
From: http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/21-601-m/21-601-m2002056-eng.pdf
_____________________________________________________________________
The economists didn't want to say it, but I will. "then the driver by necessity will be decreasing costs" means these retailers have enough economic power (and even more now with consolidation), to squeeze their suppliers ie. farmers. This has been the magic that Walmart has used so well to offer such good value in their stores. Don't forget that that the Walton family which controls 39% of the company collectively is worth $89.5 Billion dollars as of March 2010, so it's not as if the company is shortchanging its profits by offering low prices. I promise not to badmouth Walmart too often, but when you're talking about money, you can't ignore the best.
Thursday, 31 March 2011
Wednesday, 30 March 2011
More About What's Below
I had tried to mix HTML code with actual words, and didn't do too well. The CBC campaign comes from the Friends of CBC. Please go here for more information:
http://www.friends.ca/ILoveCBC/petition.html
http://www.friends.ca/ILoveCBC/petition.html
Tuesday, 29 March 2011
Look Who Wants to Buy a Farm
We all live with, and worry about debt. As you could gather from the last post, I am concerned that many farmers are dealing with debt levels that are well beyond the norm, probably unsustainable. I worry that this has a negative impact on their year to year decisions, and certainly worry about what it means for the rest of us in the future.
I've never gone to sleep at night owing a bank three or four million dollars, having to look at spring planting decisions like a trip to Las Vegas: spend a lot of money for the small, small chance that everything will go right here, and not so right elsewhere, leading to a big payoff at the end of the year. Twenty years ago potato farmers used to say that if they could get one good year in three or four, they'd move ahead, build their equity, and over thirty or forty years come out ahead with a business, and a farm asset, worth passing on or selling. Those days appear to be long gone, partly because farmers everywhere have become so good at what they do there's rarely a shortage, and even if there is, farmers just don't seem to have the economic clout to cash in.
Right now PEI potato farmers should be making good money: there was a drought in Russia, and tons of PEI potatoes were exported to make up the shortfall. Holland (PEI's big international competitor) had flooding and had to give up all of the Caribbean market to PEI. PEI itself planted the smallest crop in a decade, so it's not as if there's a huge supply. Even with all of these positive factors, farmers are still getting just over $1.80 for a ten pound bag, that's just above the cost of production, and it took weeks to get there.
The long term consequences of big debt are troubling too. Farmers will resist any kind of land zoning to protect farmland, because land with development potential could be a way out of the poor house. It also makes farmers vulnerable to offers from people who wear three-piece suits and drive around in fancy cars. There are several stories this week from economists who say farmland will be the next big asset bubble: rising food prices, growing populations, limited supply of farmland, just what a hedge fund manager is looking for, and a welcome sight for a heavily indebted farmer .
PEI does have the Land's Protection Act which limits corporate ownership to three thousand acres, so is somewhat protected, but in the second item below, a report put together by the National Farmers Union, there's good evidence this kind of speculative investment in farmland is well underway in Western Canada.
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/03/20113238137242847.html#
I've never gone to sleep at night owing a bank three or four million dollars, having to look at spring planting decisions like a trip to Las Vegas: spend a lot of money for the small, small chance that everything will go right here, and not so right elsewhere, leading to a big payoff at the end of the year. Twenty years ago potato farmers used to say that if they could get one good year in three or four, they'd move ahead, build their equity, and over thirty or forty years come out ahead with a business, and a farm asset, worth passing on or selling. Those days appear to be long gone, partly because farmers everywhere have become so good at what they do there's rarely a shortage, and even if there is, farmers just don't seem to have the economic clout to cash in.
Right now PEI potato farmers should be making good money: there was a drought in Russia, and tons of PEI potatoes were exported to make up the shortfall. Holland (PEI's big international competitor) had flooding and had to give up all of the Caribbean market to PEI. PEI itself planted the smallest crop in a decade, so it's not as if there's a huge supply. Even with all of these positive factors, farmers are still getting just over $1.80 for a ten pound bag, that's just above the cost of production, and it took weeks to get there.
The long term consequences of big debt are troubling too. Farmers will resist any kind of land zoning to protect farmland, because land with development potential could be a way out of the poor house. It also makes farmers vulnerable to offers from people who wear three-piece suits and drive around in fancy cars. There are several stories this week from economists who say farmland will be the next big asset bubble: rising food prices, growing populations, limited supply of farmland, just what a hedge fund manager is looking for, and a welcome sight for a heavily indebted farmer .
PEI does have the Land's Protection Act which limits corporate ownership to three thousand acres, so is somewhat protected, but in the second item below, a report put together by the National Farmers Union, there's good evidence this kind of speculative investment in farmland is well underway in Western Canada.
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/03/20113238137242847.html#
The next market bubbles
People frequently ask me, as someone who has written on market speculation, where the next big speculative bubble is likely to be. Will it be in housing again? Will it be in the stock market?I do not know, though I have some hunches. It is impossible for anyone to predict bubbles accurately. In my view, bubbles are social epidemics, fostered by a sort of interpersonal contagion.
A bubble forms when the contagion rate goes up for ideas that support a bubble. But contagion rates depend on patterns of thinking, which are difficult to judge.
Big speculative bubbles are rare events. Little bubbles, in the price of, say, individual stocks, happen all the time, and do not qualify as an answer to the question.
And, because big bubbles last for many years, predicting them means predicting many years in the future, which is a bit like predicting who will be running the government two elections from now.
But some places appear a little more likely than others to give rise to bubbles. The stock market is the first logical place to look, as it is a highly leveraged investment – and has a history of bubbles.
Food prices
There have been three colossal stock-market bubbles in the last century: the 1920s, the 1960s, and the 1990s. In contrast, there has been only one such bubble in the United States' housing market in the last hundred years, that of the 2000s.
We have had a huge rebound from the bottom of the world’s stock markets in 2009. The S&P 500 is up 87 per cent in real terms since March 9 of that year.
But, while the history of stock-market prediction is littered with too much failure to try to decide whether the bounceback will continue much longer, it does not look like a bubble, but more like the end of a depression scare.
The rise in equity prices has not come with a contagious "new era" story, but rather a "sigh of relief" story.
Likewise, home prices have been booming over the past year or two in several places, notably China, Brazil, and Canada, and prices could still be driven up in many other places.
But another housing bubble is not imminent in countries where one just burst. Conservative government policies will probably reduce subsidies to housing, and the current mood in these markets does not seem conducive to a bubble.
A continuation of today's commodity-price boom seems more likely, for it has more of a "new era" story attached to it.
Environment and economy
Increasing worries about global warming, and its effects on food prices, or about the cold and snowy winter in the northern hemisphere and its effects on heating fuel prices, are contagious stories.
They are even connected to the day’s top story, the revolutions in the Middle East, which, according to some accounts, were triggered by popular discontent over high food prices – and which could themselves trigger further increases in oil prices.
But my favourite dark-horse bubble candidate for the next decade or so is farmland – and not just because there have been stories in recent months of booming farmland prices in the US and the United Kingdom.
Of course, farmland is much less important than other speculative assets. For example, US farmland had a total value of $1.9 trillion in 2010, compared with $16.5 trillion for the US stock market and $16.6 trillion for the US housing market.
And large-scale farmland bubbles are quite rare: there was only one in the US in the entire twentieth century, during the great population scare of the 1970s.
But, farmland, at least in certain places, seems to have the most contagious "new era" story right now. It was recently booming, up 74 per cent in real terms in the US in the decade ending with its price peak, in 2008.
And the highly contagious global-warming story paints a scenario of food shortages and shifts in land values in different parts of the world, which might boost investor interest further.
Homes and farms
Moreover, people nowadays easily imagine that the housing and farmland markets always move together, because prices in both boomed in recent memory, in the early 2000s.
But, from 1911 to 2010 in the US, the correlation between annual real growth of prices for homes and farmland was only five per cent, and the latest data on farm prices have not shown anything like the decline in home prices.
By 2010, real farm prices in the US had fallen only 5 per cent from their 2008 peak, compared to the 37 per cent decline in real home prices since their peak in 2006.
The housing-price boom of the 2000s was little more than a construction-supply bottleneck, an inability to satisfy investment demand fast enough, and was (or in some places will be) eliminated with massive increases in supply.
By contrast, there has been no increase in the supply of farmland, and the stories that would support a contagion of enthusiasm for it are in place, just as they were in the 1970s in the US, when a similar food-price scare generated the century’s only farmland bubble.
Still, we must always bear in mind the difficulty of forecasting bubbles. And, for daring investors, it is not enough to find a bubble to pile into. They must also try to determine when to cash out and put their money elsewhere.
Robert Shiller, Professor of Economics at Yale University and Chief Economist at MacroMarkets LLC, is co-author, with George Akerlof, of Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism.
This article was first published by Project Syndicate1
A bubble forms when the contagion rate goes up for ideas that support a bubble. But contagion rates depend on patterns of thinking, which are difficult to judge.
Big speculative bubbles are rare events. Little bubbles, in the price of, say, individual stocks, happen all the time, and do not qualify as an answer to the question.
And, because big bubbles last for many years, predicting them means predicting many years in the future, which is a bit like predicting who will be running the government two elections from now.
But some places appear a little more likely than others to give rise to bubbles. The stock market is the first logical place to look, as it is a highly leveraged investment – and has a history of bubbles.
Food prices
There have been three colossal stock-market bubbles in the last century: the 1920s, the 1960s, and the 1990s. In contrast, there has been only one such bubble in the United States' housing market in the last hundred years, that of the 2000s.
We have had a huge rebound from the bottom of the world’s stock markets in 2009. The S&P 500 is up 87 per cent in real terms since March 9 of that year.
But, while the history of stock-market prediction is littered with too much failure to try to decide whether the bounceback will continue much longer, it does not look like a bubble, but more like the end of a depression scare.
The rise in equity prices has not come with a contagious "new era" story, but rather a "sigh of relief" story.
Likewise, home prices have been booming over the past year or two in several places, notably China, Brazil, and Canada, and prices could still be driven up in many other places.
But another housing bubble is not imminent in countries where one just burst. Conservative government policies will probably reduce subsidies to housing, and the current mood in these markets does not seem conducive to a bubble.
A continuation of today's commodity-price boom seems more likely, for it has more of a "new era" story attached to it.
Environment and economy
Increasing worries about global warming, and its effects on food prices, or about the cold and snowy winter in the northern hemisphere and its effects on heating fuel prices, are contagious stories.
They are even connected to the day’s top story, the revolutions in the Middle East, which, according to some accounts, were triggered by popular discontent over high food prices – and which could themselves trigger further increases in oil prices.
But my favourite dark-horse bubble candidate for the next decade or so is farmland – and not just because there have been stories in recent months of booming farmland prices in the US and the United Kingdom.
Of course, farmland is much less important than other speculative assets. For example, US farmland had a total value of $1.9 trillion in 2010, compared with $16.5 trillion for the US stock market and $16.6 trillion for the US housing market.
And large-scale farmland bubbles are quite rare: there was only one in the US in the entire twentieth century, during the great population scare of the 1970s.
But, farmland, at least in certain places, seems to have the most contagious "new era" story right now. It was recently booming, up 74 per cent in real terms in the US in the decade ending with its price peak, in 2008.
And the highly contagious global-warming story paints a scenario of food shortages and shifts in land values in different parts of the world, which might boost investor interest further.
Homes and farms
Moreover, people nowadays easily imagine that the housing and farmland markets always move together, because prices in both boomed in recent memory, in the early 2000s.
But, from 1911 to 2010 in the US, the correlation between annual real growth of prices for homes and farmland was only five per cent, and the latest data on farm prices have not shown anything like the decline in home prices.
By 2010, real farm prices in the US had fallen only 5 per cent from their 2008 peak, compared to the 37 per cent decline in real home prices since their peak in 2006.
The housing-price boom of the 2000s was little more than a construction-supply bottleneck, an inability to satisfy investment demand fast enough, and was (or in some places will be) eliminated with massive increases in supply.
By contrast, there has been no increase in the supply of farmland, and the stories that would support a contagion of enthusiasm for it are in place, just as they were in the 1970s in the US, when a similar food-price scare generated the century’s only farmland bubble.
Still, we must always bear in mind the difficulty of forecasting bubbles. And, for daring investors, it is not enough to find a bubble to pile into. They must also try to determine when to cash out and put their money elsewhere.
Robert Shiller, Professor of Economics at Yale University and Chief Economist at MacroMarkets LLC, is co-author, with George Akerlof, of Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism.
This article was first published by Project Syndicate1
And here's the link to the NFU study: Please put this URL into your browser, the link isn't working properly.
http://www.nfu.ca/press_releases/2010/06-07-losing_grip.pdf
http://www.nfu.ca/press_releases/2010/06-07-losing_grip.pdf
Monday, 28 March 2011
A Coalition Free Zone
Warning: I will make reference to the good work done by Statistics Canada which is sort of an election issue (if people will stop talking about the coalition).
I was doing some research for a presentation and came across some figures that took my breath away. In earlier posts I'd talked about the many farmers who've experienced negative incomes over the last decade. If they keep farming they pile on more debt to do it, anchored by the equity they have in their farmland. Here's what we're looking at.. (and don't worry there won't be a test, and I sum it up down below, and I left other provinces in because we do have readers elsewhere, and it's important to know this isn't just a problem here).
Taken from: http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/21-014-x/21-014-x2010002-eng.pdf
I appreciate this is pretty dense, so here's a summary of rising debt loads (just for PEI):
In 2000 : $414, 239,000
In 2004, broke the half billion dollar mark: $577,559,000
2007: $597,646,000
2009: $676,816,000
And this is all happening while the number of farmers has continued to shrink every year, and interest rates are very low.
As a reporter I know I'm obligated to say something overly dramatic, but I'm resisting. The really cynical part of me is thinking that Canadians (who pay less of their incomes for food than others) enjoy cheap food subsidized by the equity of farm families.
I know all families struggle with debt levels, but even if the combination of weather, population increase, and rising Asian incomes etc. does put upward pressure on food prices, it seems like a very long road to get farmers back on some kind of sound financial footing. I don't know what the answer is. I suspect there will have to be some kind of discussion around debt (like governments did with General Motors, and the other automakers) if food security is considered important enough, but I know even that suggestion will irritate many.
I was doing some research for a presentation and came across some figures that took my breath away. In earlier posts I'd talked about the many farmers who've experienced negative incomes over the last decade. If they keep farming they pile on more debt to do it, anchored by the equity they have in their farmland. Here's what we're looking at.. (and don't worry there won't be a test, and I sum it up down below, and I left other provinces in because we do have readers elsewhere, and it's important to know this isn't just a problem here).
I appreciate this is pretty dense, so here's a summary of rising debt loads (just for PEI):
In 2000 : $414, 239,000
In 2004, broke the half billion dollar mark: $577,559,000
2007: $597,646,000
2009: $676,816,000
And this is all happening while the number of farmers has continued to shrink every year, and interest rates are very low.
As a reporter I know I'm obligated to say something overly dramatic, but I'm resisting. The really cynical part of me is thinking that Canadians (who pay less of their incomes for food than others) enjoy cheap food subsidized by the equity of farm families.
I know all families struggle with debt levels, but even if the combination of weather, population increase, and rising Asian incomes etc. does put upward pressure on food prices, it seems like a very long road to get farmers back on some kind of sound financial footing. I don't know what the answer is. I suspect there will have to be some kind of discussion around debt (like governments did with General Motors, and the other automakers) if food security is considered important enough, but I know even that suggestion will irritate many.
Saturday, 26 March 2011
Just When You Think You're Done
I've written a lot more than I expected about Monsanto, Round-up, alfalfa and superweeds, and apparently I'm not done yet. Last week a group of U.S. farmers and environmental groups sued the U.S. Department of Agriculture over it's approval of Roundup Ready Alfalfa. This group had successful delayed approval of this new GMO through an earlier lawsuit. There's is more information in an earlier post, and here's the latest story.
http://www.truth-out.org/farmers-sue-usda-over-monsanto-alfalfa-again68656
Farmers Sue USDA Over Monsanto Alfalfa
by: Mike Ludwig,
A coalition of farmers and environmental groups filed a lawsuit against the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) on March 18 to challenge the agency's recent decision to fully deregulate Monsanto's Roundup Ready alfalfa.
This is the second time the USDA has been sued over its approval of Roundup Ready alfalfa, which is genetically engineered (GE) to tolerate glyphosate, a popular herbicide commonly sold under the Monsanto brand name Roundup. The latest lawsuit, filed by groups like the Center for Food Safety (CFS) and the National Family Farm Coalition, opens a new chapter in the five-year battle over the GE alfalfa seed developed by Monsanto and Forage Genetics.
Industry watchdogs and farmers say that Roundup Ready alfalfa will increase reliance on already overused herbicides like Roundup, encourage the spread of herbicide-resistant "superweeds" and contaminate organic and conventional alfalfa with Monsanto transgenes through cross-pollination.
About 93 percent of the alfalfa planted in the US is grown without herbicides, but up to 23 million more pounds of herbicide could be sprayed annually following the introduction of Roundup Ready alfalfa into America's fields, according to USDA estimates.
Alfalfa is not just grown for human consumption. Alfalfa seed and hay feed dairy cows and other livestock, and the growing organic food industry is concerned2 that cross-contamination of transgenes could threaten the production of organic meat and milk. The USDA, however, recently concluded that Roundup Ready alfalfa does not pose a significant "plant pest risk" despite evidence that transgenes from the alfalfa have contaminated conventional alfalfa in the past.
The USDA first deregulated Roundup Ready alfalfa in 2005. Internal emails recently obtained by Truthout3 show that Monsanto worked closely with regulators to edit its original petition to deregulate the alfalfa. One regulator accepted Monsanto's help in conducting the USDA's original environmental assessment of the alfalfa.
Farmers and biotech opponents soon filed a lawsuit against the USDA to challenge the initial deregulation. In 2007, a federal court ruled that the USDA did not consider the full environmental impacts of Roundup Ready alfalfa and vacated the agency's decision to deregulate the alfalfa. Monsanto and its allies appealed the decision, and last year, the Supreme Court reversed the lower court's ruling, but ordered the USDA to produce an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) on the alfalfa before allowing it back into America's fields.
The USDA released a final EIS on Roundup Ready alfalfa in late 2010, and the GE alfalfa was fully deregulated5 on January 27. The USDA went on to approve6 two more GE seeds within weeks of the alfalfa decision.
Roundup Ready alfalfa was deregulated just weeks after USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack was pressed7 by Republican Congressmen, some of whom recently received campaign contributions from Monsanto and the biotech industry, to dump a proposal to geographically isolate Roundup Ready alfalfa from organic and conventional alfalfa and, instead, legalize the GE seed without any government oversight.
The latest lawsuit filed by CFS and its allies argues that the final EIS ignores or downplays the threats Roundup Ready alfalfa poses to conventional alfalfa farms and the environment.
"USDA's review is inaccurate and completely failed to consider critical issues," said plaintiff farmer Phil Geertson of the family-owned Geertson Seed Farms company. "The decision to deregulate Roundup Ready alfalfa opens the door to widespread transgenic contamination, costing farmers their markets, reputation and ability to grow natural varieties."
The USDA, however, contends that Monsanto's transgenic alfalfa is just as safe as the alfalfa that the Geertson family has grown for decades
http://www.truth-out.org/farmers-sue-usda-over-monsanto-alfalfa-again68656
Farmers Sue USDA Over Monsanto Alfalfa
by: Mike Ludwig,
A coalition of farmers and environmental groups filed a lawsuit against the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) on March 18 to challenge the agency's recent decision to fully deregulate Monsanto's Roundup Ready alfalfa.
This is the second time the USDA has been sued over its approval of Roundup Ready alfalfa, which is genetically engineered (GE) to tolerate glyphosate, a popular herbicide commonly sold under the Monsanto brand name Roundup. The latest lawsuit, filed by groups like the Center for Food Safety (CFS) and the National Family Farm Coalition, opens a new chapter in the five-year battle over the GE alfalfa seed developed by Monsanto and Forage Genetics.
Industry watchdogs and farmers say that Roundup Ready alfalfa will increase reliance on already overused herbicides like Roundup, encourage the spread of herbicide-resistant "superweeds" and contaminate organic and conventional alfalfa with Monsanto transgenes through cross-pollination.
About 93 percent of the alfalfa planted in the US is grown without herbicides, but up to 23 million more pounds of herbicide could be sprayed annually following the introduction of Roundup Ready alfalfa into America's fields, according to USDA estimates.
Alfalfa is not just grown for human consumption. Alfalfa seed and hay feed dairy cows and other livestock, and the growing organic food industry is concerned2 that cross-contamination of transgenes could threaten the production of organic meat and milk. The USDA, however, recently concluded that Roundup Ready alfalfa does not pose a significant "plant pest risk" despite evidence that transgenes from the alfalfa have contaminated conventional alfalfa in the past.
The USDA first deregulated Roundup Ready alfalfa in 2005. Internal emails recently obtained by Truthout3 show that Monsanto worked closely with regulators to edit its original petition to deregulate the alfalfa. One regulator accepted Monsanto's help in conducting the USDA's original environmental assessment of the alfalfa.
Farmers and biotech opponents soon filed a lawsuit against the USDA to challenge the initial deregulation. In 2007, a federal court ruled that the USDA did not consider the full environmental impacts of Roundup Ready alfalfa and vacated the agency's decision to deregulate the alfalfa. Monsanto and its allies appealed the decision, and last year, the Supreme Court reversed the lower court's ruling, but ordered the USDA to produce an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) on the alfalfa before allowing it back into America's fields.
The USDA released a final EIS on Roundup Ready alfalfa in late 2010, and the GE alfalfa was fully deregulated5 on January 27. The USDA went on to approve6 two more GE seeds within weeks of the alfalfa decision.
Roundup Ready alfalfa was deregulated just weeks after USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack was pressed7 by Republican Congressmen, some of whom recently received campaign contributions from Monsanto and the biotech industry, to dump a proposal to geographically isolate Roundup Ready alfalfa from organic and conventional alfalfa and, instead, legalize the GE seed without any government oversight.
The latest lawsuit filed by CFS and its allies argues that the final EIS ignores or downplays the threats Roundup Ready alfalfa poses to conventional alfalfa farms and the environment.
"USDA's review is inaccurate and completely failed to consider critical issues," said plaintiff farmer Phil Geertson of the family-owned Geertson Seed Farms company. "The decision to deregulate Roundup Ready alfalfa opens the door to widespread transgenic contamination, costing farmers their markets, reputation and ability to grow natural varieties."
The USDA, however, contends that Monsanto's transgenic alfalfa is just as safe as the alfalfa that the Geertson family has grown for decades
Friday, 25 March 2011
Grocery Giant Funds Research Into Sustainable Agriculture
Ralph Martin has done important research into organic cropping systems as the founding director of the Organic Agriculture Centre of Canada, at the Nova Scotia Agricultural College in Truro. Now he’s taking on a much bigger challenge, as the first chair of Sustainable Food Production at the University of Guelph. It’s a new position, some are calling him a sustainable food guru, but the way the position is being funded is an important benchmark too: 3 Million Dollars from Loblaws Cos. Ltd, the country’s biggest food retailer.
It’s an indication of the on-going cuts in public spending on agriculture research. Private companies have supported university research in technology, health and pharmaceuticals before, but this is the first time a private company has backed research and policy development in food production.
Ralph Martin is quoted in the Globe and Mail as saying “Loblaw stepping up to the plate on this issue … sends a signal to the government that the private sector really is interested in developing policies for the benefit of all in the long run.”
Ralph Martin has taken on a huge challenge: the food system now makes fresh nutritious meals more expensive than highly processed food, leading to poorer health for most Canadians.
Loblaws is also funding a three year project to develop a national food strategy with the Conference Board of Canada.
From: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/scientist-named-to-boost-canadas-sustainable-food-production/article1956075/
It’s an indication of the on-going cuts in public spending on agriculture research. Private companies have supported university research in technology, health and pharmaceuticals before, but this is the first time a private company has backed research and policy development in food production.
Ralph Martin is quoted in the Globe and Mail as saying “Loblaw stepping up to the plate on this issue … sends a signal to the government that the private sector really is interested in developing policies for the benefit of all in the long run.”
Ralph Martin has taken on a huge challenge: the food system now makes fresh nutritious meals more expensive than highly processed food, leading to poorer health for most Canadians.
Loblaws is also funding a three year project to develop a national food strategy with the Conference Board of Canada.
From: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/scientist-named-to-boost-canadas-sustainable-food-production/article1956075/
The Inspiring and the Chilling
There was an amazing turnout Thursday night to A Local M.E.A.L. in Charlottetown (Meet-eat- and learn). Well over 200 people crowded into a room offering a variety of local products expertly prepared by students from the Culinary Institute at one end, and a podium with two screens at the other. Farmer Paul Offer began with an emotional plea that economics and red tape is slowly killing the small farmer. Offer was recently told he could no longer serve eggs from his backyard flock to guests at his Bed and Breakfast. He also said it was only off-farm income that kept his business going all these years. He said he and wife stayed at it because they loved the work.
Nine other speakers, some farmers, some food thinkers, used power point presentations on similar themes: the opportunities and the road blocks to a true local food system. It was inspiring to see so many committed to making a more rational, sustainable food system work, and discouraging to know that there is so much economic and marketing power waged against consumers thinking too hard about where their food really comes from. Everyone in the room said they didn't want this to be the last Local M.E.A.L.
And just to remind us that quick and clever hands of investors and hedge fund managers are always on the lookout to exploit world events, a chilling reminder that outside of that direct relationship at farmer's markets, and community shared agriculture, food is a commodity, not controlled by the people who produce, or ultimately consume it.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/e-zines/investor-all-stars/how-investors-can-harvest-gains-from-agriculture/article1939122/?cmpid=1
How investors can harvest gains from agriculture
Global food prices are on the rise again, raising questions about the impact on inflation and global economic growth – not to mention how some of the world's poorest people will feed themselves.
For investors, though, there is another question: How sustainable is this latest surge in food prices and what are the best ways to gain access to it?
According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, world food prices rose 2.2 per cent between January and February. Food prices have been rising for eight consecutive months, hitting new highs that surpass the level seen during the 2008 spike.
Some of the gains are due to short-term issues, such as poor harvests in Russia, Argentina and Australia.
However, there are also bigger issues at work here, which is why few observers see these price gains as a short-term phenomenon that can be easily ignored.
More land is being used for corn production in the United States to meet demand for ethanol production, shifting acres away from other crops and creating tighter markets for commodities like wheat and soybeans.
“The competition for arable land between food and fuel has a great deal to do with the higher agricultural prices we're seeing today,” said Patricia Mohr. an economist and commodity market specialist at the Bank of Nova Scotia. “And this is a structural shift that won't go away.”
Meanwhile, demand for food is increasing. Over the next 40 years, it is estimated that global food production will have to rise by 70 per cent to meet demand. That's partly because of a rising population, which is expected to hit 9 billion, but also because of shifting diets.
As well, as people grow more affluent, they tend to consume more meat, which also has big implications for land use and crop yields.
Already, rising food prices have had a profound impact on publicly traded agriculture stocks, such as fertilizer producers, seed manufacturers, food processors and farm equipment makers.
For many investors, though, a basket of stocks is the better way to go, giving them diversification across a number industries and geographic regions.
Exchange-traded funds, which resemble mutual funds but trade on stock exchanges, are among the most popular and accessible baskets. Many of these ETFs have risen impressively since last summer and are now approaching their 2008 high points – and will continue to rise if the agriculture theme persists.
The Claymore Global Agriculture ETF (COW-T122.500.261.17%) holds three dozen stocks, including Deere & Co., Archer-Daniels-Midland Co., Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan and Monsanto Co. The ETF has risen 46 per cent since last July, or more than double the return on the MSCI World index.
Investors can also take a more direct approach to the agriculture theme by bypassing companies and investing in the underlying commodities instead.
“You're not dependent upon someone else's earnings or the good decisions of a management team,” said Jeff Tjornehoj, head of Lipper Americas Research. “People are interested in this commodity play because it's accessible and easily understood.”
The PowerShares DB Agriculture fund (DBA-N233.170.983.05%) holds futures contracts on the most widely traded commodities, including corn, sugar, wheat, cotton and even live cattle. The fund has risen 35 per cent since July.
Similarly, the BMO Agriculture Commodities index ETF (ZCA-T314.600.493.47%) also gives exposure to agriculture commodities, but removes currency risk by providing returns in Canadian dollar terms. The fund is new: It began trading in late January.
Alternatively, investors can buy exchange traded notes – which, like ETFs, also trade on stock exchanges but are actually debt securities – to pick and choose among specific commodities. This approach can deliver stomach-churning volatility from month to month.
Still, the right picks can win big: The iPath Dow Jones-UBS cotton ETN (BAL-N4101.425.425.65%) has risen 129 per cent over the past 12 months, making it the best performer among the individual commodity ETNs and puts to shame the returns on crude oil and gold over the same period.
For investors who want a wilder ride, ETNs can also provide leveraged exposure to the agriculture theme. The PowerShares DB Agriculture Double Long ETN (DAG-N513.370.937.48%) gives twice the monthly upside – and twice the downside, if commodity prices weaken – of futures contracts on corn, wheat, soybeans and sugar. Since last summer, this leverage has certainly paid off: The ETN has surged 142 per cent.
However, given their potential for big losses, these products are used mostly by investors with short-term horizons.
“They're commonly used by institutional investors who use them as a hedge or some very specialized need,” Mr. Tjornehog said. “For the retail investor, they're more like going to Las Vegas.”
Nine other speakers, some farmers, some food thinkers, used power point presentations on similar themes: the opportunities and the road blocks to a true local food system. It was inspiring to see so many committed to making a more rational, sustainable food system work, and discouraging to know that there is so much economic and marketing power waged against consumers thinking too hard about where their food really comes from. Everyone in the room said they didn't want this to be the last Local M.E.A.L.
And just to remind us that quick and clever hands of investors and hedge fund managers are always on the lookout to exploit world events, a chilling reminder that outside of that direct relationship at farmer's markets, and community shared agriculture, food is a commodity, not controlled by the people who produce, or ultimately consume it.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/e-zines/investor-all-stars/how-investors-can-harvest-gains-from-agriculture/article1939122/?cmpid=1
How investors can harvest gains from agriculture
Global food prices are on the rise again, raising questions about the impact on inflation and global economic growth – not to mention how some of the world's poorest people will feed themselves.
For investors, though, there is another question: How sustainable is this latest surge in food prices and what are the best ways to gain access to it?
According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, world food prices rose 2.2 per cent between January and February. Food prices have been rising for eight consecutive months, hitting new highs that surpass the level seen during the 2008 spike.
Some of the gains are due to short-term issues, such as poor harvests in Russia, Argentina and Australia.
However, there are also bigger issues at work here, which is why few observers see these price gains as a short-term phenomenon that can be easily ignored.
More land is being used for corn production in the United States to meet demand for ethanol production, shifting acres away from other crops and creating tighter markets for commodities like wheat and soybeans.
“The competition for arable land between food and fuel has a great deal to do with the higher agricultural prices we're seeing today,” said Patricia Mohr. an economist and commodity market specialist at the Bank of Nova Scotia. “And this is a structural shift that won't go away.”
Meanwhile, demand for food is increasing. Over the next 40 years, it is estimated that global food production will have to rise by 70 per cent to meet demand. That's partly because of a rising population, which is expected to hit 9 billion, but also because of shifting diets.
As well, as people grow more affluent, they tend to consume more meat, which also has big implications for land use and crop yields.
Already, rising food prices have had a profound impact on publicly traded agriculture stocks, such as fertilizer producers, seed manufacturers, food processors and farm equipment makers.
For many investors, though, a basket of stocks is the better way to go, giving them diversification across a number industries and geographic regions.
Exchange-traded funds, which resemble mutual funds but trade on stock exchanges, are among the most popular and accessible baskets. Many of these ETFs have risen impressively since last summer and are now approaching their 2008 high points – and will continue to rise if the agriculture theme persists.
The Claymore Global Agriculture ETF (COW-T122.500.261.17%) holds three dozen stocks, including Deere & Co., Archer-Daniels-Midland Co., Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan and Monsanto Co. The ETF has risen 46 per cent since last July, or more than double the return on the MSCI World index.
Investors can also take a more direct approach to the agriculture theme by bypassing companies and investing in the underlying commodities instead.
“You're not dependent upon someone else's earnings or the good decisions of a management team,” said Jeff Tjornehoj, head of Lipper Americas Research. “People are interested in this commodity play because it's accessible and easily understood.”
The PowerShares DB Agriculture fund (DBA-N233.170.983.05%) holds futures contracts on the most widely traded commodities, including corn, sugar, wheat, cotton and even live cattle. The fund has risen 35 per cent since July.
Similarly, the BMO Agriculture Commodities index ETF (ZCA-T314.600.493.47%) also gives exposure to agriculture commodities, but removes currency risk by providing returns in Canadian dollar terms. The fund is new: It began trading in late January.
Alternatively, investors can buy exchange traded notes – which, like ETFs, also trade on stock exchanges but are actually debt securities – to pick and choose among specific commodities. This approach can deliver stomach-churning volatility from month to month.
Still, the right picks can win big: The iPath Dow Jones-UBS cotton ETN (BAL-N4101.425.425.65%) has risen 129 per cent over the past 12 months, making it the best performer among the individual commodity ETNs and puts to shame the returns on crude oil and gold over the same period.
For investors who want a wilder ride, ETNs can also provide leveraged exposure to the agriculture theme. The PowerShares DB Agriculture Double Long ETN (DAG-N513.370.937.48%) gives twice the monthly upside – and twice the downside, if commodity prices weaken – of futures contracts on corn, wheat, soybeans and sugar. Since last summer, this leverage has certainly paid off: The ETN has surged 142 per cent.
However, given their potential for big losses, these products are used mostly by investors with short-term horizons.
“They're commonly used by institutional investors who use them as a hedge or some very specialized need,” Mr. Tjornehog said. “For the retail investor, they're more like going to Las Vegas.”
Wednesday, 23 March 2011
One More Round of Herbicide Spraying
It's always nice when you can clearly dump things into the good or bad box, and be done with it. I've always found the chemistry, politics, and economics of herbicides makes that difficult. They're by far the most widely used pesticide, are linked to serious health issues, and groundwater contamination. . Monsanto and Round-up could easily slip into the bad box: big corporation, synthetic chemical compound that gets a lot of press, got to be bad right? The problem is that most of the other herbicide compounds available to farmers are probably worse.
A field of one crop, with nothing else (ie. weeds) growing is very unnatural. But here's the thing, virtually every crop does go through a period where it needs protection from competition in order to be productive. But like the pristine lawn with no dandelions, there is usually a period when keeping the field "clean" has more to with pride than anything else. The options for farmers (and backyard gardeners) is to mechanically remove the weeds using your hands, hoes, or a variety of tractor implements that cut weeds and/or churn up the soil. This uses fuel, and sometimes (as most gardeners know) does little to stop certain types of weeds that are very hearty and persistent.(bind weed, quack grass, Canadian thistle, lambsquarters, mustard, etc. etc)
There are roughly 4 different types of herbicides. 2-4-D has been the most popular, and is found in all of the weed and feed formulations. That's because it's cheap to make, and is what's called a selective herbicide: kills the dandelions, but not the grass. It was created in the 1940's, and its chemistry is associated with other compounds with a far more controversial history: like agent orange, and 2-4-5T. The latter is now banned because dioxins were released during its manufacture.
Then there are the triazine family of herbicides, atrazine the most widely used. It works effectively with corn, but its drawback is that it doesn't breakdown very quickly and in the right conditions can easily contaminate groundwater.
There is paraquat (gained some notoriety when it was sprayed in Mexico to kill marijuana crops). It is quick acting and effectively kills everything it touches. If mishandled though, it can be very toxic to people. It can only be applied by licensed applicators, and was banned completely in Europe in 2007.
Then you've got the glyphosphates like Round-up, which relative to the other products in the herbicide toolbox, all of a sudden looks pretty good. Not as safe as Monsanto claimed it was. The New York attorney general ordered Monsanto to withdraw claims that it was "safer than table salt". Glyphosphates were first produced in the 1970's and prevent the production of a necessary enzyme in a plant, making it very effective. It's been particularly useful in so called no-till farming which means no plowing, and much less erosion and run-off. Round-up also breaks down quickly, and is not as dangerous to people as many other compounds. It does contain adjuvants or additives that have proven harmful.
As so often happens with pesticides, there is division within the scientific community on the danger of all of these herbicides. The bottom line for me is that RELATIVE to the other choices, Round-up appears somewhat safer.
What's upped the anti in the last decade is that Monsanto has also developed Round-up Ready crops, soybean, corn, cotton, etc that can tolerate Round-up, so farmers get to use a somewhat safer, but very effective herbicide, as little as one spray in a field, and have a productive harvest. But (here's the rub) Riound-up Ready crops have become so popular, that many weeds have developed resistance to it. And now 11 million acres in the United States have these so-called "super-weeds". I'd like to say that this was an "unintended consequence", but a lot of smart people warned against superweeds years ago. And scientists are worried: Glyphosate “is as important for reliable global food production as penicillin is for battling disease,” Stephen B. Powles, an Australian weed expert, wrote in a commentary in January.
Then there are these new concerns I touched on a couple of weeks ago:
This week another red flag came up that could have have enormous implications. Don Huber is a respected plant scientist, and a well-known opponent of GMO technologies and products. He's earned his opinions, and says he's found evidence of what he's calling microscopic pathogens in "Round-up ready" crops that he says are a huge threat to the health of livestock, plants and humans. It's the Round-up itself that he thinks is causing the problem, but obviously the development of Round-up ready crops using genetic engineering is what has lead to the huge spike, and widespread use of the herbicide.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/24/us-monsanto-roundup-idUSTRE71N4XN20110224
There are some "organic" herbicides out there, usually the active ingredient is acetic acid (vinegar). I didn't have much success with it. I use my hands, a Japanese hoe, tiller, and I do spot spray Round-up on the most difficult and persistent weeds (when all else fails) and this is on a small acreage. If I had a hundred acres to take care of, I'd have to make a much harder decision.
A field of one crop, with nothing else (ie. weeds) growing is very unnatural. But here's the thing, virtually every crop does go through a period where it needs protection from competition in order to be productive. But like the pristine lawn with no dandelions, there is usually a period when keeping the field "clean" has more to with pride than anything else. The options for farmers (and backyard gardeners) is to mechanically remove the weeds using your hands, hoes, or a variety of tractor implements that cut weeds and/or churn up the soil. This uses fuel, and sometimes (as most gardeners know) does little to stop certain types of weeds that are very hearty and persistent.(bind weed, quack grass, Canadian thistle, lambsquarters, mustard, etc. etc)
There are roughly 4 different types of herbicides. 2-4-D has been the most popular, and is found in all of the weed and feed formulations. That's because it's cheap to make, and is what's called a selective herbicide: kills the dandelions, but not the grass. It was created in the 1940's, and its chemistry is associated with other compounds with a far more controversial history: like agent orange, and 2-4-5T. The latter is now banned because dioxins were released during its manufacture.
Then there are the triazine family of herbicides, atrazine the most widely used. It works effectively with corn, but its drawback is that it doesn't breakdown very quickly and in the right conditions can easily contaminate groundwater.
There is paraquat (gained some notoriety when it was sprayed in Mexico to kill marijuana crops). It is quick acting and effectively kills everything it touches. If mishandled though, it can be very toxic to people. It can only be applied by licensed applicators, and was banned completely in Europe in 2007.
Then you've got the glyphosphates like Round-up, which relative to the other products in the herbicide toolbox, all of a sudden looks pretty good. Not as safe as Monsanto claimed it was. The New York attorney general ordered Monsanto to withdraw claims that it was "safer than table salt". Glyphosphates were first produced in the 1970's and prevent the production of a necessary enzyme in a plant, making it very effective. It's been particularly useful in so called no-till farming which means no plowing, and much less erosion and run-off. Round-up also breaks down quickly, and is not as dangerous to people as many other compounds. It does contain adjuvants or additives that have proven harmful.
As so often happens with pesticides, there is division within the scientific community on the danger of all of these herbicides. The bottom line for me is that RELATIVE to the other choices, Round-up appears somewhat safer.
What's upped the anti in the last decade is that Monsanto has also developed Round-up Ready crops, soybean, corn, cotton, etc that can tolerate Round-up, so farmers get to use a somewhat safer, but very effective herbicide, as little as one spray in a field, and have a productive harvest. But (here's the rub) Riound-up Ready crops have become so popular, that many weeds have developed resistance to it. And now 11 million acres in the United States have these so-called "super-weeds". I'd like to say that this was an "unintended consequence", but a lot of smart people warned against superweeds years ago. And scientists are worried: Glyphosate “is as important for reliable global food production as penicillin is for battling disease,” Stephen B. Powles, an Australian weed expert, wrote in a commentary in January.
Then there are these new concerns I touched on a couple of weeks ago:
This week another red flag came up that could have have enormous implications. Don Huber is a respected plant scientist, and a well-known opponent of GMO technologies and products. He's earned his opinions, and says he's found evidence of what he's calling microscopic pathogens in "Round-up ready" crops that he says are a huge threat to the health of livestock, plants and humans. It's the Round-up itself that he thinks is causing the problem, but obviously the development of Round-up ready crops using genetic engineering is what has lead to the huge spike, and widespread use of the herbicide.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/24/us-monsanto-roundup-idUSTRE71N4XN20110224
There are some "organic" herbicides out there, usually the active ingredient is acetic acid (vinegar). I didn't have much success with it. I use my hands, a Japanese hoe, tiller, and I do spot spray Round-up on the most difficult and persistent weeds (when all else fails) and this is on a small acreage. If I had a hundred acres to take care of, I'd have to make a much harder decision.
Just In Time
I had promised to include good things that are happening too. On Thursday (March 24th) there's an event in Charlottetown that celebrates local food, the actual eating of, and informed discussion about its importance. It's called a Local M.E.A.L. and begins at 6:30 at the Farm Centre on University Avenue in Charlottetown. A number of speakers including farmers will present their take on local food, in short (6mins, 40 second) chunks. A good chance to eat well, and share ideas. Everyone is invited.
And New York Times food columnist Mark Bittman has come up with a list of the positive things he sees out there. You can go to the Times from another site without hitting its paywall so I've included the link and the story. These are obviously American examples, but there are very similar trends here, and certainly growing numbers of people thinking about and acting on their beliefs about what a secure food system looks like, from both the consumer and producer's point of view.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/22/food-six-things-to-feel-good-about/?ref=opinion
March 22, 2011, 8:30 pm
Food: Six Things to Feel Good About
By MARK BITTMAN
The great American writer, thinker and farmer Wendell Berry recently said, “You can’t be a critic by simply being a griper . . . One has also to . . . search out the examples of good work.”
I’ve griped for weeks, and no doubt I’ll get back to it, but there are bright spots on our food landscape, hopeful trends, even movements, of which we can be proud. Here are six examples.
• Not just awareness, but power | Everyone talks about food policy, but as advocates of change become more politically potent we’re finally seeing more done about it. Late last year, public pressure enabled the federal government to reauthorize the Child Nutrition Act, which will improve school food, and the Food Safety Modernization Act, which will make food safer. (Gripe alert: Neither is perfect, and it’s easy to be critical of both — the child nutrition bill, for example, may be partially funded by a cut to food stamps — but they mark real progress and increase the possibility of further reform.) Combined with increasingly empowered consumers and a burgeoning food movement (one that Time magazine’s Bryan Walsh suggests has the potential to surpass and save the environmental movement), guarded optimism is called for, especially with the farm bill up for renewal in 2012. If the good guys fail to make some real gains there I’ll be surprised.
• Moving beyond greenwashing | Michelle Obama’s recent alliance with Wal-Mart made even more headlines than the retailer’s plan to re-regionalize its food distribution network, which is if anything more significant. The world’s biggest retailer pledged to “double sales of locally sourced produce,” reduce in-store food waste, work with farmers on crop selection and sustainable practices, and encourage — or is that “force”? — suppliers to reconfigure processed foods into “healthier” forms. (Yes, I think this last is ridiculous, but today I’m all sweetness and light.) Not to be outdone, just last week, McDonald’s made a “Sustainable Land Management Commitment.” We can and should be skeptical of these pronouncements, but the heat that inspired these two giants to promise change may insure that they follow through. As for the First Lady: “Let’s Move” has helped insert food squarely into the national conversation: everyone from Sarah Palin to Rush Limbaugh to Stephen Colbert talks about it, and even Ms. Palin’s nonsensical comments provoke sensible reactions. And it’s difficult to find a school where someone isn’t gardening.
• Real food is spreading | There are now more than 6,000 farmers markets nationwide — about a 250 percent increase since 1994 (significant: there are half as many as there are domestic McDonald’s), and 900 of them are open during the winter. They’re searchable too, thanks to the USDA. (Community Supported Agriculture programs — CSAs — and food coops are also searchable, courtesy of localharvest.org.) Furthermore, serious and increasing efforts are being made to get that food to the people who really need it: Wholesome Wave, for example, began a voucher program in 2008 that doubles the value of federal food stamps (SNAP) at participating farmers markets; that program has grown more than tenfold in less than three years.
• We’re not just buying, we’re growing | Urban agriculture is on the rise. If you’re smirking, let me remind you that in 1943, 20 million households (three-fifths of the population at that point) grew more than 40 percent of all the vegetables we ate. City governments are catching on, changing zoning codes and policies to make them more ag-friendly, and even planting edible landscaping on city hall properties. Detroit, where the world’s largest urban farm is under development, has warmly and enthusiastically embraced urban agriculture. Other cities, including Pittsburgh, Philadelphia (more on Philly in a week or two), New York, Toronto, Seattle, Syracuse, Milwaukee and many more, have begun efforts to cultivate urban farming movements. And if local food, grown ethically, can become more popular and widespread, and can help in the greening of cities — well, what’s wrong with that?
• Farming is becoming hip | The number of farms is at last increasing, although it’s no secret that farmers are an endangered species: the average age of the principal operator on farms in the United States is 57. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack recently noted that our farmers are “aging at a rapid rate,” and when he asked, “Who’s going to replace those folks?” it wasn’t a rhetorical question. But efforts by nonprofits like the eagerly awaited FoodCorps and The Greenhorns, both of which aim to introduce farming to a new generation of young people, are giving farming a new cachet of cool. Meanwhile, the Nebraska-based Land Link program matches beginning farmers and ranchers with retirees so that the newbies gain the skills (and land) they need.
• The edible school lunch | The school lunch may have more potential positive influences than anything else, and we’re beginning to see it realized. The previously mentioned child-nutrition bill sets better nutrition standards for school meals and vending machines and increases the number of students eligible for free or reduced-price meals. U.S.D.A. is also behind the “Chefs Move to Schools” program, which enlists culinary professionals to help revamp nutrition curricula and the food itself; around 550 schools are participating. Independent of the Feds, many chefs have been moving to schools on their own. Bill Telepan’s Wellness in the Schools, for example, is working with public schools in New York City, while “renegade lunch lady” Ann Cooper, who remade Berkeley’s school lunch, is taking on the much more challenging program in Boulder, and succeeding. There are scores of other examples, and we’re finally seeing schools rethinking the model of how their food is sourced, cooked and served, while getting kids to eat vegetables. That’s good work.
And New York Times food columnist Mark Bittman has come up with a list of the positive things he sees out there. You can go to the Times from another site without hitting its paywall so I've included the link and the story. These are obviously American examples, but there are very similar trends here, and certainly growing numbers of people thinking about and acting on their beliefs about what a secure food system looks like, from both the consumer and producer's point of view.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/22/food-six-things-to-feel-good-about/?ref=opinion
March 22, 2011, 8:30 pm
Food: Six Things to Feel Good About
By MARK BITTMAN
The great American writer, thinker and farmer Wendell Berry recently said, “You can’t be a critic by simply being a griper . . . One has also to . . . search out the examples of good work.”
I’ve griped for weeks, and no doubt I’ll get back to it, but there are bright spots on our food landscape, hopeful trends, even movements, of which we can be proud. Here are six examples.
• Not just awareness, but power | Everyone talks about food policy, but as advocates of change become more politically potent we’re finally seeing more done about it. Late last year, public pressure enabled the federal government to reauthorize the Child Nutrition Act, which will improve school food, and the Food Safety Modernization Act, which will make food safer. (Gripe alert: Neither is perfect, and it’s easy to be critical of both — the child nutrition bill, for example, may be partially funded by a cut to food stamps — but they mark real progress and increase the possibility of further reform.) Combined with increasingly empowered consumers and a burgeoning food movement (one that Time magazine’s Bryan Walsh suggests has the potential to surpass and save the environmental movement), guarded optimism is called for, especially with the farm bill up for renewal in 2012. If the good guys fail to make some real gains there I’ll be surprised.
• Moving beyond greenwashing | Michelle Obama’s recent alliance with Wal-Mart made even more headlines than the retailer’s plan to re-regionalize its food distribution network, which is if anything more significant. The world’s biggest retailer pledged to “double sales of locally sourced produce,” reduce in-store food waste, work with farmers on crop selection and sustainable practices, and encourage — or is that “force”? — suppliers to reconfigure processed foods into “healthier” forms. (Yes, I think this last is ridiculous, but today I’m all sweetness and light.) Not to be outdone, just last week, McDonald’s made a “Sustainable Land Management Commitment.” We can and should be skeptical of these pronouncements, but the heat that inspired these two giants to promise change may insure that they follow through. As for the First Lady: “Let’s Move” has helped insert food squarely into the national conversation: everyone from Sarah Palin to Rush Limbaugh to Stephen Colbert talks about it, and even Ms. Palin’s nonsensical comments provoke sensible reactions. And it’s difficult to find a school where someone isn’t gardening.
• Real food is spreading | There are now more than 6,000 farmers markets nationwide — about a 250 percent increase since 1994 (significant: there are half as many as there are domestic McDonald’s), and 900 of them are open during the winter. They’re searchable too, thanks to the USDA. (Community Supported Agriculture programs — CSAs — and food coops are also searchable, courtesy of localharvest.org.) Furthermore, serious and increasing efforts are being made to get that food to the people who really need it: Wholesome Wave, for example, began a voucher program in 2008 that doubles the value of federal food stamps (SNAP) at participating farmers markets; that program has grown more than tenfold in less than three years.
• We’re not just buying, we’re growing | Urban agriculture is on the rise. If you’re smirking, let me remind you that in 1943, 20 million households (three-fifths of the population at that point) grew more than 40 percent of all the vegetables we ate. City governments are catching on, changing zoning codes and policies to make them more ag-friendly, and even planting edible landscaping on city hall properties. Detroit, where the world’s largest urban farm is under development, has warmly and enthusiastically embraced urban agriculture. Other cities, including Pittsburgh, Philadelphia (more on Philly in a week or two), New York, Toronto, Seattle, Syracuse, Milwaukee and many more, have begun efforts to cultivate urban farming movements. And if local food, grown ethically, can become more popular and widespread, and can help in the greening of cities — well, what’s wrong with that?
• Farming is becoming hip | The number of farms is at last increasing, although it’s no secret that farmers are an endangered species: the average age of the principal operator on farms in the United States is 57. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack recently noted that our farmers are “aging at a rapid rate,” and when he asked, “Who’s going to replace those folks?” it wasn’t a rhetorical question. But efforts by nonprofits like the eagerly awaited FoodCorps and The Greenhorns, both of which aim to introduce farming to a new generation of young people, are giving farming a new cachet of cool. Meanwhile, the Nebraska-based Land Link program matches beginning farmers and ranchers with retirees so that the newbies gain the skills (and land) they need.
• The edible school lunch | The school lunch may have more potential positive influences than anything else, and we’re beginning to see it realized. The previously mentioned child-nutrition bill sets better nutrition standards for school meals and vending machines and increases the number of students eligible for free or reduced-price meals. U.S.D.A. is also behind the “Chefs Move to Schools” program, which enlists culinary professionals to help revamp nutrition curricula and the food itself; around 550 schools are participating. Independent of the Feds, many chefs have been moving to schools on their own. Bill Telepan’s Wellness in the Schools, for example, is working with public schools in New York City, while “renegade lunch lady” Ann Cooper, who remade Berkeley’s school lunch, is taking on the much more challenging program in Boulder, and succeeding. There are scores of other examples, and we’re finally seeing schools rethinking the model of how their food is sourced, cooked and served, while getting kids to eat vegetables. That’s good work.
Monday, 21 March 2011
Changes Coming Says Round-up Maker
Round-up Ready rolls off the tongue, and the genetically modified crops that use the "technology" have made Monsanto a lot of money. It's by far the biggest supplier of soybean seed in the world, and the company is doubly blessed, able to profit from the sale of glyphosphate herbicide (Round-up) the RR crops can tolerate. Farmers say it gives them a much cleaner, more productive crop with a minimum of herbicide spraying.
As I wrote yesterday, because of the important Japanese market for non-GMO soybean, RR soybean hasn't made as big an impact on PEI as elsewhere. Right now more than 80% of the soybean traded in the world is RR.
Two weeks ago a series of stories on round-up ready crops (see earlier posts, I've put a search button at the bottom of the page) raised some serious questions. Last week at an international conference the company responded, but interestingly raised yet a further concern it now says its willing to address: the overuse of round-up and the development of so-called superweeds that can also tolerate glyphosphate. Yes Virginia (and Monsanto), genetic traits do move around. Monsanto says these problems are manageable. It's joining forces with another big GMO player, BASF to make things better. Just in case you don't get through the rather densely written story, let me tell you what's right at the very end:
"Experts estimate glyphosate-resistant weeds have infested close to 11 million acres so far. More than 130 types of weeds have developed levels of herbicide resistance in more than 40 U.S. states, more resistant weeds than found in any other country, according to weed scientists."
http://www.farmmarketer.com/home/news/?storyid=3104
CHICAGO (Reuters) - In a nod to concerns about overuse of its popular Roundup herbicide, Monsanto Co (MON.N) said it would try to layer its popular "Roundup Ready" cropping system with a similar system based on a rival herbicide.
"We've relied on it too long by itself," Monsanto executive vice president of sustainability Jerry Steiner said of the company's Roundup herbicide, in an interview on Monday at the Reuters Food & Agriculture Summit.
For decades Roundup has been a top selling herbicide for farm fields around the world as well as for recreational and residential users. Monsanto, the world's largest seed company, has genetically modified corn, soybeans and other crops to tolerate treatments of Roundup, making killing weeds easier for farmers. And Roundup Ready soybeans, corn and cotton have driven rapid revenue growth for Monsanto over the last decade.
But as usage has grown, complaints have also mounted. Critics say heavy use of glyphosate-based Roundup have created multiple strains of herbicide resistant weeds. These so-called 'super weeds' in some areas are choking out crops.
Monsanto said Monday that it was collaborating with rival BASF (BASFn.DE) to develop dicamba-tolerant cropping systems. The companies have granted each other reciprocal licenses, with BASF agreeing to supply formulated dicamba herbicide products to Monsanto.
Monsanto said it would aim to commercialize dicamba-tolerant crops system, including innovative dicamba formulations proprietary to BASF, and the dicamba tolerant trait for soybeans, which is proprietary to Monsanto.
The system is expected to be introduced in the United States and Canada in the middle of this decade, pending regulatory approvals.
"What we want to see happen for weed control is to get two modes of action on every acre," said Steiner. "The dicamba will provide another great opportunity for a second mode of action that will pick up on broadleaves. It is a very effective herbicide. This partnership will bring really good farmer-friendly formulations to the marketplace."
Both Monsanto and BASF will have the right to commercialize new dicamba herbicide formulations for use with dicamba tolerant crops and the right to develop their own mixtures with certain herbicides.
Monsanto first plans to introduce the dicamba tolerance trait stacked with its new Genuity Roundup Ready 2 Yield soybean trait. Monsanto also has corn, cotton and canola dicamba tolerant crops in its research and development pipeline.
Experts estimate glyphosate-resistant weeds have infested close to 11 million acres so far. More than 130 types of weeds have developed levels of herbicide resistance in more than 40 U.S. states, more resistant weeds than found in any other country, according to weed scientists.
(Reporting by Carey Gillam; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)
As I wrote yesterday, because of the important Japanese market for non-GMO soybean, RR soybean hasn't made as big an impact on PEI as elsewhere. Right now more than 80% of the soybean traded in the world is RR.
Two weeks ago a series of stories on round-up ready crops (see earlier posts, I've put a search button at the bottom of the page) raised some serious questions. Last week at an international conference the company responded, but interestingly raised yet a further concern it now says its willing to address: the overuse of round-up and the development of so-called superweeds that can also tolerate glyphosphate. Yes Virginia (and Monsanto), genetic traits do move around. Monsanto says these problems are manageable. It's joining forces with another big GMO player, BASF to make things better. Just in case you don't get through the rather densely written story, let me tell you what's right at the very end:
"Experts estimate glyphosate-resistant weeds have infested close to 11 million acres so far. More than 130 types of weeds have developed levels of herbicide resistance in more than 40 U.S. states, more resistant weeds than found in any other country, according to weed scientists."
http://www.farmmarketer.com/home/news/?storyid=3104
CHICAGO (Reuters) - In a nod to concerns about overuse of its popular Roundup herbicide, Monsanto Co (MON.N) said it would try to layer its popular "Roundup Ready" cropping system with a similar system based on a rival herbicide.
"We've relied on it too long by itself," Monsanto executive vice president of sustainability Jerry Steiner said of the company's Roundup herbicide, in an interview on Monday at the Reuters Food & Agriculture Summit.
For decades Roundup has been a top selling herbicide for farm fields around the world as well as for recreational and residential users. Monsanto, the world's largest seed company, has genetically modified corn, soybeans and other crops to tolerate treatments of Roundup, making killing weeds easier for farmers. And Roundup Ready soybeans, corn and cotton have driven rapid revenue growth for Monsanto over the last decade.
But as usage has grown, complaints have also mounted. Critics say heavy use of glyphosate-based Roundup have created multiple strains of herbicide resistant weeds. These so-called 'super weeds' in some areas are choking out crops.
Monsanto said Monday that it was collaborating with rival BASF (BASFn.DE) to develop dicamba-tolerant cropping systems. The companies have granted each other reciprocal licenses, with BASF agreeing to supply formulated dicamba herbicide products to Monsanto.
Monsanto said it would aim to commercialize dicamba-tolerant crops system, including innovative dicamba formulations proprietary to BASF, and the dicamba tolerant trait for soybeans, which is proprietary to Monsanto.
The system is expected to be introduced in the United States and Canada in the middle of this decade, pending regulatory approvals.
"What we want to see happen for weed control is to get two modes of action on every acre," said Steiner. "The dicamba will provide another great opportunity for a second mode of action that will pick up on broadleaves. It is a very effective herbicide. This partnership will bring really good farmer-friendly formulations to the marketplace."
Both Monsanto and BASF will have the right to commercialize new dicamba herbicide formulations for use with dicamba tolerant crops and the right to develop their own mixtures with certain herbicides.
Monsanto first plans to introduce the dicamba tolerance trait stacked with its new Genuity Roundup Ready 2 Yield soybean trait. Monsanto also has corn, cotton and canola dicamba tolerant crops in its research and development pipeline.
Experts estimate glyphosate-resistant weeds have infested close to 11 million acres so far. More than 130 types of weeds have developed levels of herbicide resistance in more than 40 U.S. states, more resistant weeds than found in any other country, according to weed scientists.
(Reporting by Carey Gillam; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)
Sunday, 20 March 2011
Japan Aftershocks
We've all been touched by the misery and destruction in Japan. The BBC had a television piece that caught parents coming to a destroyed building and helplessly calling the name of their son, thinking somehow he had survived and would crawl out of the rubble. Of course he didn't. It was heartbreaking.
The people who have to put emotion aside and think about economics, trade, and markets are starting to report what they're seeing. Japan is disproportionately more important to PEI than any other province. The country's fascination with Lucy Maude Montgomery's literary creations (Anne with e) brings a lot of tourists, almost pilgrims, to the province, but it's in the realm of food that Japan's impact has been the greatest.
Japan has very discriminating consumers. While most developed countries (Europe is slowly giving in) have long ago accepted the production and consumption of genetically modified foods, Japan continues to resist. GMO crops are not allowed on commercial farms, and while GMO foods and grains are imported, there's strong consumer opposition by many against what's considered there "unnatural" food, and its these consumers who have given PEI farmers a valuable export market. An Ontario company called Hendrick Agrifoods has developed a huge market for non-gmo food-grade soybeans in Japan. Hendrick has now taken over Atlantic Soy in Belle River, and buys from dozens of farmers growing about 30 thousand acres. Another PEI company buys non-gmo canola that's exported Japan raw, and crushed as oil.
Organic farmer Raymond Loo has been to Japan many times, and is developing new markets for jams and fruit (black currants, cranberries, haskap berries), even dandelions. Essentially PEI (thank you Lucy Maude) has a sterling image there, and well-heeled and discriminating Japanese consumers allow PEI farmers and fishermen the chance to harvest and export products (like herring roe, tuna) they would be hard pressed to sell profitably anywhere else. It's also given Island farmers a little breathing room in the GMO debate. Without these Japanese consumers, the debate would have long since been settled.
The question now is will these consumers have the resources, and the emotional where-with-all to continue swimming against the GMO tide. Possibly the nuclear catastrophe will firm up their resolve to go with what's seen as natural.
Here's what else market observers are saying about Japan's agriculture trade with North America.
http://www.farmmarketer.com/home/news/?storyid=3106
Quake to affect Canadian farmers
Source: PAUL WALDIE
The fallout from Japan's earthquake will batter Canadian farmers as it reverberates through agriculture markets, although the impact is likely to be short term.
Japan is a major customer for many crops including corn, soybean and wheat. The country ranks among the top five customers for the Canadian Wheat Board, the global marketer for wheat grown in Western Canada.
"Sometimes they are our largest-volume export customer," said Maureen Fitzhenry, a Wheat Board spokeswoman. "Last year, they were third." Ms. Fitzhenry added that Japan is a particularly lucrative market for Canadian farmers because Japanese buyers demand the highest quality wheat "for which we ask a premium price."
Friday's earthquake damaged some of Japan's ports, feed mills and meat processing facilities. That prompted some analysts to speculate the country would reduce imports, at least in the short term. Ms. Fitzhenry said the CWB expects some short-term delays in shipments but added "we do not anticipate reduced overall exports to Japan, as they need to eat, and rely on shipments of top-quality Canadian grain."
Some analysts have estimated Japan's corn and soybean imports could fall up to 8 per cent. That would hit U.S. farmers especially hard.
The U.S. farm sector centres around corn and soybeans. The country is the world's largest corn producer and the crop is the most valuable grown in the U.S., worth an estimated $66-billion (U.S.) in total. Soybeans are second at about $39-billion, followed by wheat at $12-billion. Japan is the biggest buyer of U.S. corn and among the largest buyers of soybeans and wheat.
Futures for all three fell just over 1 per cent Monday morning on the Chicago Board of Trade, continuing a trend that had been under way before the earthquake. Prices for several agricultural commodities have been falling in recent weeks because of instability in North Africa and reports of big harvests in Brazil and elsewhere.
However, during the week prices began to rebound on news that Japan's agriculture ministry had asked an industry group called the Feed Supply Stabilization Organization to release stockpiles of feed grains. That led to speculation Japan might start buying to replenish those stockpiles. All three commodities regained earlier losses and closed higher.
Despite the recent price swings, supplies for many agricultural commodities remain tight. Corn in particular is in short supply despite an expected near-record crop this year. That's because ethanol producers will consume as much as 40 per cent of the U.S. crop, a record high.
The people who have to put emotion aside and think about economics, trade, and markets are starting to report what they're seeing. Japan is disproportionately more important to PEI than any other province. The country's fascination with Lucy Maude Montgomery's literary creations (Anne with e) brings a lot of tourists, almost pilgrims, to the province, but it's in the realm of food that Japan's impact has been the greatest.
Japan has very discriminating consumers. While most developed countries (Europe is slowly giving in) have long ago accepted the production and consumption of genetically modified foods, Japan continues to resist. GMO crops are not allowed on commercial farms, and while GMO foods and grains are imported, there's strong consumer opposition by many against what's considered there "unnatural" food, and its these consumers who have given PEI farmers a valuable export market. An Ontario company called Hendrick Agrifoods has developed a huge market for non-gmo food-grade soybeans in Japan. Hendrick has now taken over Atlantic Soy in Belle River, and buys from dozens of farmers growing about 30 thousand acres. Another PEI company buys non-gmo canola that's exported Japan raw, and crushed as oil.
Organic farmer Raymond Loo has been to Japan many times, and is developing new markets for jams and fruit (black currants, cranberries, haskap berries), even dandelions. Essentially PEI (thank you Lucy Maude) has a sterling image there, and well-heeled and discriminating Japanese consumers allow PEI farmers and fishermen the chance to harvest and export products (like herring roe, tuna) they would be hard pressed to sell profitably anywhere else. It's also given Island farmers a little breathing room in the GMO debate. Without these Japanese consumers, the debate would have long since been settled.
The question now is will these consumers have the resources, and the emotional where-with-all to continue swimming against the GMO tide. Possibly the nuclear catastrophe will firm up their resolve to go with what's seen as natural.
Here's what else market observers are saying about Japan's agriculture trade with North America.
http://www.farmmarketer.com/home/news/?storyid=3106
Quake to affect Canadian farmers
Source: PAUL WALDIE
The fallout from Japan's earthquake will batter Canadian farmers as it reverberates through agriculture markets, although the impact is likely to be short term.
Japan is a major customer for many crops including corn, soybean and wheat. The country ranks among the top five customers for the Canadian Wheat Board, the global marketer for wheat grown in Western Canada.
"Sometimes they are our largest-volume export customer," said Maureen Fitzhenry, a Wheat Board spokeswoman. "Last year, they were third." Ms. Fitzhenry added that Japan is a particularly lucrative market for Canadian farmers because Japanese buyers demand the highest quality wheat "for which we ask a premium price."
Friday's earthquake damaged some of Japan's ports, feed mills and meat processing facilities. That prompted some analysts to speculate the country would reduce imports, at least in the short term. Ms. Fitzhenry said the CWB expects some short-term delays in shipments but added "we do not anticipate reduced overall exports to Japan, as they need to eat, and rely on shipments of top-quality Canadian grain."
Some analysts have estimated Japan's corn and soybean imports could fall up to 8 per cent. That would hit U.S. farmers especially hard.
The U.S. farm sector centres around corn and soybeans. The country is the world's largest corn producer and the crop is the most valuable grown in the U.S., worth an estimated $66-billion (U.S.) in total. Soybeans are second at about $39-billion, followed by wheat at $12-billion. Japan is the biggest buyer of U.S. corn and among the largest buyers of soybeans and wheat.
Futures for all three fell just over 1 per cent Monday morning on the Chicago Board of Trade, continuing a trend that had been under way before the earthquake. Prices for several agricultural commodities have been falling in recent weeks because of instability in North Africa and reports of big harvests in Brazil and elsewhere.
However, during the week prices began to rebound on news that Japan's agriculture ministry had asked an industry group called the Feed Supply Stabilization Organization to release stockpiles of feed grains. That led to speculation Japan might start buying to replenish those stockpiles. All three commodities regained earlier losses and closed higher.
Despite the recent price swings, supplies for many agricultural commodities remain tight. Corn in particular is in short supply despite an expected near-record crop this year. That's because ethanol producers will consume as much as 40 per cent of the U.S. crop, a record high.
Saturday, 19 March 2011
The Rich Get a Little Richer
I had written earlier about the good work done in the Souris watershed, a well-respected co-ordinator, time to build trust between land owners and others, and a sufficient quantity of money to have some impact. On Friday Souris got more money from the Federal Government. It should mean important research that will benefit other areas, or it could be a lazy way for the Federal government to look like it cares about this issue before an election, maybe both.
http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/The-Government-of-Canada-Helps-Farmers-Improve-Water-Management-Practices-1414086.htm
http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/The-Government-of-Canada-Helps-Farmers-Improve-Water-Management-Practices-1414086.htm
The Government of Canada Helps Farmers Improve Water Management Practices
Food Does Matter I Guess
Several heavyweight journalistic organizations are looking at food/ farming in a much more serious way. The New York Times, the Globe and Mail has done some excellent reporting, The Atlantic, and recently the Economist, a well respected British magazine. Today in the Globe there's an interview with everyone's favourite food guru Michael Pollan, which is down below. Here's a favourite line from the Economist piece: "The historian Livy thought the Roman empire started to decay when cooks acquired celebrity status."
The Economist
A special report on feeding the world: The 9 billion-people question
THE 1.6-hectare (4-acre) Broadbalk field lies in the centre of Rothamsted farm, about 40km (25 miles) north of London. In 1847 the farm’s founder, Sir John Lawes, described its soil as a heavy loam resting on chalk and capable of producing good wheat when well manured. The 2010 harvest did not seem to vindicate his judgment. In the centre of the field the wheat is abundant, yielding 10 tonnes a hectare, one of the highest rates in the world for a commercial crop. But at the western end, near the manor house, it produces only 4 or 5 tonnes a hectare; other, spindlier, plants yield just 1 or 2 tonnes.
Broadbalk is no ordinary field. The first experimental crop of winter wheat was sown there in the autumn of 1843, and for the past 166 years the field, part of the Rothamsted Research station, has been the site of the longest-running continuous agricultural experiment in the world. Now different parts of the field are sown using different practices, making Broadbalk a microcosm of the state of world farming.
The wheat yielding a tonne a hectare is like an African field, and for the same reason: this crop has had no fertiliser, pesticide or anything else applied to it. African farmers are sometimes thought to be somehow responsible for their low yields, but the blame lies with the technology at their disposal. Given the same technology, European and American farmers get the same results.
The wheat bearing 4 or 5 tonnes a hectare is, roughly, like that of the Green Revolution, the transformation of agriculture that swept the world in the 1970s. It has been treated with herbicides and some fertilisers, but not up to the standard of the most recent agronomic practices, nor is it the highest-yielding semi-dwarf wheat variety. This is the crop of the Indian subcontinent and of Argentina.
The extraordinary results in the centre of the field are achieved by using the best plants, fertilisers, fungicides and husbandry. The yield is higher than the national average in Britain, and is as good as it gets.
Seeds of doubt
But the Broadbalk field shows something else. Chart 1 tracks its yields from the start, showing how the three different kinds of wheat farming—African, Green Revolution and modern—have diverged, sometimes quite suddenly: in the 1960s with the introduction of new herbicides for Green Revolution wheat, and in the 1980s with new fungicides and semi-dwarf varieties. Worryingly, though, in the past 15 years the yields of the most productive varieties of wheat in Broadbalk have begun to level out or even fall. The fear is that Broadbalk may prove a microcosm in this respect, too.
At the start of 2011 the food industry is in crisis. World food prices have risen above the peak they reached in early 2008 (see chart 2). That was a time when hundreds of millions of people fell into poverty, food riots were shaking governments in dozens of developing countries, exporters were banning grain sales abroad and “land grabs” carried out by rich grain-importing nations in poor agricultural ones were raising awkward questions about how best to help the poor.
This time, too, there have been export bans, food riots, panic buying and emergency price controls, just as in 2007-08. Fears that drought might ruin the current wheat crop in China, the world’s largest, are sending shock waves through world markets. Discontent over rising bread prices has played a part in the popular uprisings throughout the Middle East. There are differences between the periods, but the fact that agriculture has experienced two big price spikes in under four years suggests that something serious is rattling the world’s food chain.
The food industry has been attracting extra attention of other kinds. For years some of the most popular television programmes in English-speaking countries have been cooking shows. That may point to a healthy interest in food, but then again it may not. The historian Livy thought the Roman empire started to decay when cooks acquired celebrity status.
At a meeting of the Group of Eight (G8) industrial countries in 2009 the assembled leaders put food alongside the global financial crisis on their list of top priorities, promising to find $20 billion for agriculture over three years. This year the current president of the Group of 20 (G20), France’s Nicolas Sarkozy, wants to make food the top priority. The Gates Foundation, the world’s richest charity, which had previously focused on health and development generally, started to concentrate more on feeding the world. At last month’s World Economic Forum, a gathering of businesspeople and policymakers in Davos, 17 global companies launched what they described as “a new vision for agriculture”, promising to do more to promote markets for smallholders—a sign of rising alarm in the private sector.
Anything for dinner?
Some of this public and political attention has been sporadic, but it is justified. An era of cheap food has come to an end. A combination of factors—rising demand in India and China, a dietary shift away from cereals towards meat and vegetables, the increasing use of maize as a fuel, and developments outside agriculture, such as the fall in the dollar—have brought to a close a period starting in the early 1970s in which the real price of staple crops (rice, wheat and maize) fell year after year.
This has come as a shock. By the 1990s most agricultural problems seemed to have been solved. Yields were rising, pests appeared under control and fertilisers were replenishing tired soil. The exciting areas of research in life sciences were no longer plants but things like HIV/AIDS.
The end of the era of cheap food has coincided with growing concern about the prospects of feeding the world. Around the turn of 2011-12 the global population is forecast to rise to 7 billion, stirring Malthusian fears. The price rises have once again plunged into poverty millions of people who spend more than half their income on food. The numbers of those below the poverty level of $1.25 a day, which had been falling consistently in the 1990s, rose sharply in 2007-08. That seems to suggest that the world cannot even feed its current population, let alone the 9 billion expected by 2050. Adding further to the concerns is climate change, of which agriculture is both cause and victim. So how will the world cope in the next four decades?
That question forms the backbone of this special report. The answer to it cannot be a straightforward technical or biological one because food is basic to life. In the Maya creation myth, the first humans were made of maize dough. In the slang of Marathi, a language of west central India, the man on the street is known as “fried bread”—after the workers’ favourite snack.
Because food is so important, agriculture—more than any other form of economic activity—is expected to achieve a series of competing and overlapping goals that change over time and from place to place. The world looks to farmers to do more than just produce food. Agriculture is also central to reducing hunger (which is not quite the same thing) and provides many people’s main route out of poverty. Food is probably the biggest single influence on people’s health, though in radically different ways in poor countries and in rich ones, where the big problem now is obesity. Food is also one of the few pleasures available to the poorest. In the favelas (slums) of São Paulo, the largest city in South America, takeaway pizza parlours are proliferating because many families, who often do not have proper kitchens, now order a pizza at home to celebrate special occasions.
Given these conflicting aims, it is not surprising that the food crisis has produced contradictory accounts of the main problem and radically different proposals for solving it. One group is concerned mainly about feeding the world’s growing population. It argues that high and volatile prices will make the job harder and that more needs to be done to boost supplies through the spread of modern farming, plant research and food processing in poor countries. For those in this group—food companies, plant breeders and international development agencies—the Green Revolution was a stunning success and needs to be followed by a second one now.
The alternative view is sceptical of, or even downright hostile to, the modern food business. This group, influential among non-governmental organisations and some consumers, concentrates more on the food problems of richer countries, such as concerns about animal welfare and obesity. It argues that modern agriculture produces food that is tasteless, nutritionally inadequate and environmentally disastrous. It thinks the Green Revolution has been a failure, or at least that it has done more environmental damage and brought fewer benefits than anyone expected. An influential book espousing this view, Michael Pollan’s “The Omnivore’s Dilemma”, starts by asking: “What should we have for dinner?” By contrast, those worried about food supplies wonder: “Will there be anything for dinner?”
This special report concentrates on the problems of feeding the 9 billion. It therefore gives greater weight to the first group. It argues that many of their claims are justified: feeding the world in 2050 will be hard, and business as usual will not do it. The report looks at ways to boost yields of the main crops, considers the constraints of land and water and the use of fertiliser and pesticide, assesses biofuel policies, explains why technology matters so much and examines the impact of recent price rises. It points out that although the concerns of the critics of modern agriculture may be understandable, the reaction against intensive farming is a luxury of the rich. Traditional and organic farming could feed Europeans and Americans well. It cannot feed the world.
The Globe and Mail
Author Michael Pollan explains the war on food movement
Ian Brown sits down with Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma and god of the food movement
IAN BROWN: Why is there a backlash against foodies, in favor of Big Agriculture?
MICHAEL POLLAN: You know how journalists work. They like to set up that kind of tension. But I think it’s not that simple.”
More related to this story
IB: The Economist declares war between Big Agriculture on the one hand and small-scale sustainable farming on the other. The magazines claims the latter can never feed the world, not with 9 billion people by 2050.
MP: There are people in the food movement who aim to replace Big Ag with Small Ag. But I think there are many more people in the food movement who seek to reform Big Ag. And to cast it as a choice between the small, diversified, sustainable farm and the highly productive massified farm is a false choice. Where does Wal Mart fit in that? Wal Mart is interested in localizing its production right now, and they’re doing a lot of things to do that. They are going to big farmers and trying to get them to change the way they behave. There’s a lot of movement to get antibiotics out of production in animal farming. And that’s not about breaking those farms up into tiny little units. That’s about reforming the way they do business. So if you cast it as an either/or--if Big Ag is the only way you can feed the world, and I’m not willing to concede that, I don’t think it’s proven, though it is asserted--then that frees Big Ag to do whatever it feels it needs to do to continue to be big and productive. I think it’s a way to take the focus off them and off the fact that many of their ways of doing business are completely unsustainable and brutal and unjust. It’s an interesting formulation, but I just don’t accept it.
It’s also an interesting formulation because we just don’t have the choice of continuing down the path of this highly industrialized, highly fossil fuel-dependent food industry, even if we wanted to. Even if we decided that’s what we liked best, we’re going to find we don’t have the fossil fuel to support it. We would find that having a globalized food economy is fraught with risks, as we’re seeing with the current price spikes. And that food security, whether you’re talking about countries or smaller units, is endangered by having the food system we have. A lot of the political instability we’re seeing now is tied to problems with the globalized food system. So the idea that’s it’s working and that we could continue on this path is just not a choice available to us. We have to figure out another way to do it. And to say the only alternative is the tiny artisinal farm is false. There are many ways to do it. All of them involve changing industrial agricultural, however.
IB: What do you make of the complaints of B.R. Myers, who has aesthetic and moral objections to foodies in the latest Atlantic Monthly?
MP: His aesthetic problem is an ethical problem, and that’s that he’s a vegan. And if you look at the way he writes about these issues...everything he dismisses as gluttony always involves eating an animal. So there’s a few agendas mixed up in that, and he’s not completely open about what they are.
One of the things that strikes me about foodie-ism, to use a term that I really despise, is that it is ethically inflected in a way that other forms of past interest in food have not been. And I’m sure you noticed this amongst the chefs you were with. What’s very striking about the current interest in food is that it’s not purely aesthetic. It is not purely about pleasure--people are very interested in the system that they’re eating from. And they’re very interested in the way the food was produced and the story behind it. People are mixing up aesthetics and ethics in a very new way, that some people are uncomfortable with, frankly. The idea that you could take any pleasure from politics, that you could mix those two terms, is a very un-American idea. We see it as you’re either indulging yourself, or you’re doing the world good. The fact is, slow food and other elements of the food movement are proposing that the best choice, the most beautiful choice, is often the most sustainable choice. It might be more expensive, and that’s a problem that we need to work on. But I think the industry is feeling very threatened right now by the fact that so many people are asking hard questions about their food. And so there’s an effort underway to discredit the food movement.
If the industrial food system were working so well, you would not have so many consumers abandoning it in droves. And this is an organized PR campaign to defend industrial agriculture. In America there’s a consortium of various groups that have put together about $30 million to defend industrial Ag. The Farm Bureau is kind of leading the charge in America. The farm Bureau has always fronted for agribusiness.
IB: I have spoken to people who think the current focus on cooking, and especially high-end TV cooking, has actually alienated us even more from what we eat.
MP: It’s interesting that the media would celebrate this shallow foodie-ism [on TV] and then attack the food movement for shallow foodie-ism. But you know how the runs of the media go. Once you celebrate something, what can you do then? You attack it. I think the media has gone overboard on the food issue. I don’t even think food politics are quite as vibrant as the media would have you believe. But having built it up so much, what is left but to take it down? Still, it’s fraught. There is a real restiveness around food in this country, and a sense that the western diet is at the heart of the problems.”
IB: The food movement is also attacked for producing expensive food.
MP: There is beautiful food being served today that is expensive that only the affluent can afford, that’s absolutely true. But the food movement has many pieces. And there are also many efforts to democratize it--to bring farmers’ markets into the city and offer vouchers to the poor so they can buy food at the farmers’ market. To teach cooking classes in the inner city where the culture of cooking has been particularly undermined. So there are many elements. The Slow Food organization is a great example. It celebrates beautiful and expensive food but is also involved in getting gardens into schools, to make it possible for more people to benefit from the food.
A great many social movements in this country have begun with elites, with people who have the time and the resources to devote to them. You go back to abolition, women’s suffrage, the environmental movement. That’s not unusual. And to damn a political and social movement because the people who started it are well-to-do seems to me not all that damning. If the food movement is still dominated by the elite in 20 years, I think that will be damning. It would need to be more democratized. The reason that good food is more expensive than cheap food is part of the issue we’re trying to confront. And has to do with subsidies, and the way we organize our society and our economy. Those are big systemic problems.
IB: One of the reasons people want to eat in a more engaged way seems to be a longing for community, as an antidote to our technological isolation. Food is community--and a very physical form of community, at that.
MP: Shared meals, breaking bread, making food, with one another, with nature, across generations--there is a longing for that. One of the earmarks of industrial eating is eating alone. Our eating has become very isolated and anti-social. And the industry has atomized us in our eating. The industry would rather we didn’t eat our meals at the table with other people. You can sell more food to people if you break them up into demographic target groups, and they’ve understood this for a long time. If you go to the frozen food aisle at your store, you will see frozen entrees, designed for adult men, entrees designed for teenaged girls, entrees for women dieting, entrees designed for young boys. So if you can break people up into those pieces and sell a different entree to each one, you’ve sold a lot more food that you would have if you’d just targeted Mom and let her decide what everyone’s going to eat. So industrial eating or corporate eating has undermined the social dimension of eating. And people miss that. And I think that is one of the drivers that brings people to this movement.
The Economist
A special report on feeding the world: The 9 billion-people question
THE 1.6-hectare (4-acre) Broadbalk field lies in the centre of Rothamsted farm, about 40km (25 miles) north of London. In 1847 the farm’s founder, Sir John Lawes, described its soil as a heavy loam resting on chalk and capable of producing good wheat when well manured. The 2010 harvest did not seem to vindicate his judgment. In the centre of the field the wheat is abundant, yielding 10 tonnes a hectare, one of the highest rates in the world for a commercial crop. But at the western end, near the manor house, it produces only 4 or 5 tonnes a hectare; other, spindlier, plants yield just 1 or 2 tonnes.
Broadbalk is no ordinary field. The first experimental crop of winter wheat was sown there in the autumn of 1843, and for the past 166 years the field, part of the Rothamsted Research station, has been the site of the longest-running continuous agricultural experiment in the world. Now different parts of the field are sown using different practices, making Broadbalk a microcosm of the state of world farming.
The wheat yielding a tonne a hectare is like an African field, and for the same reason: this crop has had no fertiliser, pesticide or anything else applied to it. African farmers are sometimes thought to be somehow responsible for their low yields, but the blame lies with the technology at their disposal. Given the same technology, European and American farmers get the same results.
The wheat bearing 4 or 5 tonnes a hectare is, roughly, like that of the Green Revolution, the transformation of agriculture that swept the world in the 1970s. It has been treated with herbicides and some fertilisers, but not up to the standard of the most recent agronomic practices, nor is it the highest-yielding semi-dwarf wheat variety. This is the crop of the Indian subcontinent and of Argentina.
The extraordinary results in the centre of the field are achieved by using the best plants, fertilisers, fungicides and husbandry. The yield is higher than the national average in Britain, and is as good as it gets.
Seeds of doubt
But the Broadbalk field shows something else. Chart 1 tracks its yields from the start, showing how the three different kinds of wheat farming—African, Green Revolution and modern—have diverged, sometimes quite suddenly: in the 1960s with the introduction of new herbicides for Green Revolution wheat, and in the 1980s with new fungicides and semi-dwarf varieties. Worryingly, though, in the past 15 years the yields of the most productive varieties of wheat in Broadbalk have begun to level out or even fall. The fear is that Broadbalk may prove a microcosm in this respect, too.
At the start of 2011 the food industry is in crisis. World food prices have risen above the peak they reached in early 2008 (see chart 2). That was a time when hundreds of millions of people fell into poverty, food riots were shaking governments in dozens of developing countries, exporters were banning grain sales abroad and “land grabs” carried out by rich grain-importing nations in poor agricultural ones were raising awkward questions about how best to help the poor.
This time, too, there have been export bans, food riots, panic buying and emergency price controls, just as in 2007-08. Fears that drought might ruin the current wheat crop in China, the world’s largest, are sending shock waves through world markets. Discontent over rising bread prices has played a part in the popular uprisings throughout the Middle East. There are differences between the periods, but the fact that agriculture has experienced two big price spikes in under four years suggests that something serious is rattling the world’s food chain.
The food industry has been attracting extra attention of other kinds. For years some of the most popular television programmes in English-speaking countries have been cooking shows. That may point to a healthy interest in food, but then again it may not. The historian Livy thought the Roman empire started to decay when cooks acquired celebrity status.
At a meeting of the Group of Eight (G8) industrial countries in 2009 the assembled leaders put food alongside the global financial crisis on their list of top priorities, promising to find $20 billion for agriculture over three years. This year the current president of the Group of 20 (G20), France’s Nicolas Sarkozy, wants to make food the top priority. The Gates Foundation, the world’s richest charity, which had previously focused on health and development generally, started to concentrate more on feeding the world. At last month’s World Economic Forum, a gathering of businesspeople and policymakers in Davos, 17 global companies launched what they described as “a new vision for agriculture”, promising to do more to promote markets for smallholders—a sign of rising alarm in the private sector.
Anything for dinner?
Some of this public and political attention has been sporadic, but it is justified. An era of cheap food has come to an end. A combination of factors—rising demand in India and China, a dietary shift away from cereals towards meat and vegetables, the increasing use of maize as a fuel, and developments outside agriculture, such as the fall in the dollar—have brought to a close a period starting in the early 1970s in which the real price of staple crops (rice, wheat and maize) fell year after year.
This has come as a shock. By the 1990s most agricultural problems seemed to have been solved. Yields were rising, pests appeared under control and fertilisers were replenishing tired soil. The exciting areas of research in life sciences were no longer plants but things like HIV/AIDS.
The end of the era of cheap food has coincided with growing concern about the prospects of feeding the world. Around the turn of 2011-12 the global population is forecast to rise to 7 billion, stirring Malthusian fears. The price rises have once again plunged into poverty millions of people who spend more than half their income on food. The numbers of those below the poverty level of $1.25 a day, which had been falling consistently in the 1990s, rose sharply in 2007-08. That seems to suggest that the world cannot even feed its current population, let alone the 9 billion expected by 2050. Adding further to the concerns is climate change, of which agriculture is both cause and victim. So how will the world cope in the next four decades?
That question forms the backbone of this special report. The answer to it cannot be a straightforward technical or biological one because food is basic to life. In the Maya creation myth, the first humans were made of maize dough. In the slang of Marathi, a language of west central India, the man on the street is known as “fried bread”—after the workers’ favourite snack.
Because food is so important, agriculture—more than any other form of economic activity—is expected to achieve a series of competing and overlapping goals that change over time and from place to place. The world looks to farmers to do more than just produce food. Agriculture is also central to reducing hunger (which is not quite the same thing) and provides many people’s main route out of poverty. Food is probably the biggest single influence on people’s health, though in radically different ways in poor countries and in rich ones, where the big problem now is obesity. Food is also one of the few pleasures available to the poorest. In the favelas (slums) of São Paulo, the largest city in South America, takeaway pizza parlours are proliferating because many families, who often do not have proper kitchens, now order a pizza at home to celebrate special occasions.
Given these conflicting aims, it is not surprising that the food crisis has produced contradictory accounts of the main problem and radically different proposals for solving it. One group is concerned mainly about feeding the world’s growing population. It argues that high and volatile prices will make the job harder and that more needs to be done to boost supplies through the spread of modern farming, plant research and food processing in poor countries. For those in this group—food companies, plant breeders and international development agencies—the Green Revolution was a stunning success and needs to be followed by a second one now.
The alternative view is sceptical of, or even downright hostile to, the modern food business. This group, influential among non-governmental organisations and some consumers, concentrates more on the food problems of richer countries, such as concerns about animal welfare and obesity. It argues that modern agriculture produces food that is tasteless, nutritionally inadequate and environmentally disastrous. It thinks the Green Revolution has been a failure, or at least that it has done more environmental damage and brought fewer benefits than anyone expected. An influential book espousing this view, Michael Pollan’s “The Omnivore’s Dilemma”, starts by asking: “What should we have for dinner?” By contrast, those worried about food supplies wonder: “Will there be anything for dinner?”
This special report concentrates on the problems of feeding the 9 billion. It therefore gives greater weight to the first group. It argues that many of their claims are justified: feeding the world in 2050 will be hard, and business as usual will not do it. The report looks at ways to boost yields of the main crops, considers the constraints of land and water and the use of fertiliser and pesticide, assesses biofuel policies, explains why technology matters so much and examines the impact of recent price rises. It points out that although the concerns of the critics of modern agriculture may be understandable, the reaction against intensive farming is a luxury of the rich. Traditional and organic farming could feed Europeans and Americans well. It cannot feed the world.
The Globe and Mail
Author Michael Pollan explains the war on food movement
Ian Brown sits down with Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma and god of the food movement
IAN BROWN: Why is there a backlash against foodies, in favor of Big Agriculture?
MICHAEL POLLAN: You know how journalists work. They like to set up that kind of tension. But I think it’s not that simple.”
More related to this story
IB: The Economist declares war between Big Agriculture on the one hand and small-scale sustainable farming on the other. The magazines claims the latter can never feed the world, not with 9 billion people by 2050.
MP: There are people in the food movement who aim to replace Big Ag with Small Ag. But I think there are many more people in the food movement who seek to reform Big Ag. And to cast it as a choice between the small, diversified, sustainable farm and the highly productive massified farm is a false choice. Where does Wal Mart fit in that? Wal Mart is interested in localizing its production right now, and they’re doing a lot of things to do that. They are going to big farmers and trying to get them to change the way they behave. There’s a lot of movement to get antibiotics out of production in animal farming. And that’s not about breaking those farms up into tiny little units. That’s about reforming the way they do business. So if you cast it as an either/or--if Big Ag is the only way you can feed the world, and I’m not willing to concede that, I don’t think it’s proven, though it is asserted--then that frees Big Ag to do whatever it feels it needs to do to continue to be big and productive. I think it’s a way to take the focus off them and off the fact that many of their ways of doing business are completely unsustainable and brutal and unjust. It’s an interesting formulation, but I just don’t accept it.
It’s also an interesting formulation because we just don’t have the choice of continuing down the path of this highly industrialized, highly fossil fuel-dependent food industry, even if we wanted to. Even if we decided that’s what we liked best, we’re going to find we don’t have the fossil fuel to support it. We would find that having a globalized food economy is fraught with risks, as we’re seeing with the current price spikes. And that food security, whether you’re talking about countries or smaller units, is endangered by having the food system we have. A lot of the political instability we’re seeing now is tied to problems with the globalized food system. So the idea that’s it’s working and that we could continue on this path is just not a choice available to us. We have to figure out another way to do it. And to say the only alternative is the tiny artisinal farm is false. There are many ways to do it. All of them involve changing industrial agricultural, however.
IB: What do you make of the complaints of B.R. Myers, who has aesthetic and moral objections to foodies in the latest Atlantic Monthly?
MP: His aesthetic problem is an ethical problem, and that’s that he’s a vegan. And if you look at the way he writes about these issues...everything he dismisses as gluttony always involves eating an animal. So there’s a few agendas mixed up in that, and he’s not completely open about what they are.
One of the things that strikes me about foodie-ism, to use a term that I really despise, is that it is ethically inflected in a way that other forms of past interest in food have not been. And I’m sure you noticed this amongst the chefs you were with. What’s very striking about the current interest in food is that it’s not purely aesthetic. It is not purely about pleasure--people are very interested in the system that they’re eating from. And they’re very interested in the way the food was produced and the story behind it. People are mixing up aesthetics and ethics in a very new way, that some people are uncomfortable with, frankly. The idea that you could take any pleasure from politics, that you could mix those two terms, is a very un-American idea. We see it as you’re either indulging yourself, or you’re doing the world good. The fact is, slow food and other elements of the food movement are proposing that the best choice, the most beautiful choice, is often the most sustainable choice. It might be more expensive, and that’s a problem that we need to work on. But I think the industry is feeling very threatened right now by the fact that so many people are asking hard questions about their food. And so there’s an effort underway to discredit the food movement.
If the industrial food system were working so well, you would not have so many consumers abandoning it in droves. And this is an organized PR campaign to defend industrial agriculture. In America there’s a consortium of various groups that have put together about $30 million to defend industrial Ag. The Farm Bureau is kind of leading the charge in America. The farm Bureau has always fronted for agribusiness.
IB: I have spoken to people who think the current focus on cooking, and especially high-end TV cooking, has actually alienated us even more from what we eat.
MP: It’s interesting that the media would celebrate this shallow foodie-ism [on TV] and then attack the food movement for shallow foodie-ism. But you know how the runs of the media go. Once you celebrate something, what can you do then? You attack it. I think the media has gone overboard on the food issue. I don’t even think food politics are quite as vibrant as the media would have you believe. But having built it up so much, what is left but to take it down? Still, it’s fraught. There is a real restiveness around food in this country, and a sense that the western diet is at the heart of the problems.”
IB: The food movement is also attacked for producing expensive food.
MP: There is beautiful food being served today that is expensive that only the affluent can afford, that’s absolutely true. But the food movement has many pieces. And there are also many efforts to democratize it--to bring farmers’ markets into the city and offer vouchers to the poor so they can buy food at the farmers’ market. To teach cooking classes in the inner city where the culture of cooking has been particularly undermined. So there are many elements. The Slow Food organization is a great example. It celebrates beautiful and expensive food but is also involved in getting gardens into schools, to make it possible for more people to benefit from the food.
A great many social movements in this country have begun with elites, with people who have the time and the resources to devote to them. You go back to abolition, women’s suffrage, the environmental movement. That’s not unusual. And to damn a political and social movement because the people who started it are well-to-do seems to me not all that damning. If the food movement is still dominated by the elite in 20 years, I think that will be damning. It would need to be more democratized. The reason that good food is more expensive than cheap food is part of the issue we’re trying to confront. And has to do with subsidies, and the way we organize our society and our economy. Those are big systemic problems.
IB: One of the reasons people want to eat in a more engaged way seems to be a longing for community, as an antidote to our technological isolation. Food is community--and a very physical form of community, at that.
MP: Shared meals, breaking bread, making food, with one another, with nature, across generations--there is a longing for that. One of the earmarks of industrial eating is eating alone. Our eating has become very isolated and anti-social. And the industry has atomized us in our eating. The industry would rather we didn’t eat our meals at the table with other people. You can sell more food to people if you break them up into demographic target groups, and they’ve understood this for a long time. If you go to the frozen food aisle at your store, you will see frozen entrees, designed for adult men, entrees designed for teenaged girls, entrees for women dieting, entrees designed for young boys. So if you can break people up into those pieces and sell a different entree to each one, you’ve sold a lot more food that you would have if you’d just targeted Mom and let her decide what everyone’s going to eat. So industrial eating or corporate eating has undermined the social dimension of eating. And people miss that. And I think that is one of the drivers that brings people to this movement.
Friday, 18 March 2011
Something Important to Consider
Yep we're still in the "what's wrong with the world" cycle. I really appreciate when smart people give us a chance to take a big picture look at things, without having to devote several weeks of reading. (I can do a week maybe). Nick Cullather is one of those people who has written very intelligently on food production (and yes I generally agree with everything he says). I hadn't noticed earlier that he had an op-ed piece in the Globe and Mail. Some of you may have already read it, but for the others:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/world-food-prices-arent-too-high-theyre-too-low/article1882674/
World food prices aren’t too high – they’re too low
It is in the cities that the 2011 food crisis hits hardest. The revolution in Tunis began as a food riot. In recent weeks, markets in Algiers and Cairo have erupted, and malnutrition has reached 17 per cent in Agadez, the largest city in the Sahel. Reports from the UN and the World Bank put the blame on overpopulation and climate.
Last year’s La Niña blighted harvests in Canada, Russia and Ukraine, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture warns that an overcrowded earth is “putting unsustainable pressure on resources.” But in 2009, when the weather was good, things were not that much better. Prices get high-level attention in the odd years when they are high, not in the typical years when they are typically abysmal.
The year 2002 – the index year against which the current disaster is measured – was the bottom of a steep 50-year decline in prices. Food was cheaper by half than it is now, and there was no world crisis, only local misery. Bankrupted peasants abandoned Chinese villages for urban slums. Twenty thousand Punjabi farmers committed suicide. Sugar workers clashed with police in Mexico, and Nebraska farmers took jobs at Wal-Mart to stave off foreclosure.
Pinpointing high grain prices as a threat to recovery, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and World Bank President Robert Zoellick have urged stockpiles and “weather insurance or a rainfall index” as practical steps for dealing with nature’s limitations.
There may be another problem too, but it is hardly surprising that world leaders should overlook it. Since the 1950s, chronic underinvestment in agriculture has been considered a normal feature of a healthy, growing economy. A successful farm policy is one that delivers cheap food to urban consumers, whatever the cost at the producing end.
In the 1930s, German and Soviet planners first began to speak of an “agricultural sector,” a subordinate economy-within-the-economy whose profits could be diverted, by force if necessary, into industrial expansion. Émigré economists brought the concept to Washington, but Franklin Roosevelt initially went a different way.
New Dealers lifted food prices by creating artificial scarcities. In three years farm earnings rose to “parity” with 1916, the best year on record, and there they stayed. When the U.S. Supreme Court threw out the Agricultural Adjustment Act, policy shifted toward subsidies that held farm income steady while filling grocery shelves with low-cost staples. By the end of the 1930s, according to Rebecca West, all countries – communist, fascist, and capitalist – had accepted “the insane dispensation which pays the food-producer worst of all workers.”
Dual-economy theory soon entered the canon of development policy. Nobel economist W. Arthur Lewis realized in 1952 that the function of the rural sector was as a “reservoir of cheap labour” for the urban sector. Development models were built around the “zero value” doctrine, which held that non-industrial production had no measurable worth until liberated for use in manufacturing.
Newly independent regimes saw the potential. India’s five-year plans defined agriculture as “a bargain sector, which can produce the requisite surplus with relatively low investment and in a comparatively short time.” Taxes, price controls, duties and currency policies were subtly or overtly designed to siphon “waste” profits from rural producers. Enterprise was punished by anti-profiteering laws applied solely to the farm sector. Cheap food meant cheap labour, which gave emerging Asia its competitive edge. The Kennedy administration helped, depressing prices still further by flooding Asian markets with surplus wheat.
By 1965, India’s farmers had given up, and the country depended on an unsustainable 11 million tons of American grain. Policy had to change, and it did. The Green Revolution was hailed as the salvation of millions from drought and overpopulation, but it actually rescued Asia from its catastrophic disinvestment in agriculture. Dwarf wheat, Norman Borlaug explained, was only a “catalyst” for policies that returned resources to the countryside, especially price supports that gave peasants a rare chance to make a decent living.
Governments took the lesson and food production rose dramatically, but the 1980s debt crisis forced African and Latin American countries again to squeeze their rural sectors for cash. A neo-liberal consensus dismantled the remaining credit and subsidy programs, and when food prices spiked in the 1990s, experts discussed climate and overpopulation.
Agriculture is a transparent, responsive sector, and temporary profits led quickly to a production boom and the market collapse of 2002. The cycles have become sharper. The 2008 spike was followed by a 50 per cent plunge in soy prices and then this year’s surge.
The price of onions in India is up 80 per cent; South Korea and the Philippines face shortages of fish and powdered milk, and countries around the world are reaching for the standby solutions, cracking down on hoarders and adjusting quotas and duties to force down local food prices.
This month the World Economic Forum, in an uneasy forecast, questioned whether farmers could meet the twin challenges of demography and climate. If history is any guide, they can, as they have in the past, but not unless they get paid. A recent poll shows half of India’s farmers want to quit. Many who till high-risk lands on which the expansion of the food supply depends have already given up and left the losing sector to seek a place in the winning one. There, like the mobs in Tunis, they can demand food, instead of having to grow it.
A lasting fix will require more than an adjustment to allow cultivators to survive. It will require unlearning a half century of dogma that relegates agriculture to a subordinate status. The global economy includes the global countryside, and the return of prosperity will have to begin there.
Nick Cullather is the author of The Hungry World: America’s Cold War Battle Against Poverty in Asia, a finalist for this year’s Lionel Gelber Prize for the best book on global affairs
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/world-food-prices-arent-too-high-theyre-too-low/article1882674/
World food prices aren’t too high – they’re too low
NICK CULLATHER
It is in the cities that the 2011 food crisis hits hardest. The revolution in Tunis began as a food riot. In recent weeks, markets in Algiers and Cairo have erupted, and malnutrition has reached 17 per cent in Agadez, the largest city in the Sahel. Reports from the UN and the World Bank put the blame on overpopulation and climate.
Last year’s La Niña blighted harvests in Canada, Russia and Ukraine, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture warns that an overcrowded earth is “putting unsustainable pressure on resources.” But in 2009, when the weather was good, things were not that much better. Prices get high-level attention in the odd years when they are high, not in the typical years when they are typically abysmal.
The year 2002 – the index year against which the current disaster is measured – was the bottom of a steep 50-year decline in prices. Food was cheaper by half than it is now, and there was no world crisis, only local misery. Bankrupted peasants abandoned Chinese villages for urban slums. Twenty thousand Punjabi farmers committed suicide. Sugar workers clashed with police in Mexico, and Nebraska farmers took jobs at Wal-Mart to stave off foreclosure.
Pinpointing high grain prices as a threat to recovery, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and World Bank President Robert Zoellick have urged stockpiles and “weather insurance or a rainfall index” as practical steps for dealing with nature’s limitations.
There may be another problem too, but it is hardly surprising that world leaders should overlook it. Since the 1950s, chronic underinvestment in agriculture has been considered a normal feature of a healthy, growing economy. A successful farm policy is one that delivers cheap food to urban consumers, whatever the cost at the producing end.
In the 1930s, German and Soviet planners first began to speak of an “agricultural sector,” a subordinate economy-within-the-economy whose profits could be diverted, by force if necessary, into industrial expansion. Émigré economists brought the concept to Washington, but Franklin Roosevelt initially went a different way.
New Dealers lifted food prices by creating artificial scarcities. In three years farm earnings rose to “parity” with 1916, the best year on record, and there they stayed. When the U.S. Supreme Court threw out the Agricultural Adjustment Act, policy shifted toward subsidies that held farm income steady while filling grocery shelves with low-cost staples. By the end of the 1930s, according to Rebecca West, all countries – communist, fascist, and capitalist – had accepted “the insane dispensation which pays the food-producer worst of all workers.”
Dual-economy theory soon entered the canon of development policy. Nobel economist W. Arthur Lewis realized in 1952 that the function of the rural sector was as a “reservoir of cheap labour” for the urban sector. Development models were built around the “zero value” doctrine, which held that non-industrial production had no measurable worth until liberated for use in manufacturing.
Newly independent regimes saw the potential. India’s five-year plans defined agriculture as “a bargain sector, which can produce the requisite surplus with relatively low investment and in a comparatively short time.” Taxes, price controls, duties and currency policies were subtly or overtly designed to siphon “waste” profits from rural producers. Enterprise was punished by anti-profiteering laws applied solely to the farm sector. Cheap food meant cheap labour, which gave emerging Asia its competitive edge. The Kennedy administration helped, depressing prices still further by flooding Asian markets with surplus wheat.
By 1965, India’s farmers had given up, and the country depended on an unsustainable 11 million tons of American grain. Policy had to change, and it did. The Green Revolution was hailed as the salvation of millions from drought and overpopulation, but it actually rescued Asia from its catastrophic disinvestment in agriculture. Dwarf wheat, Norman Borlaug explained, was only a “catalyst” for policies that returned resources to the countryside, especially price supports that gave peasants a rare chance to make a decent living.
Governments took the lesson and food production rose dramatically, but the 1980s debt crisis forced African and Latin American countries again to squeeze their rural sectors for cash. A neo-liberal consensus dismantled the remaining credit and subsidy programs, and when food prices spiked in the 1990s, experts discussed climate and overpopulation.
Agriculture is a transparent, responsive sector, and temporary profits led quickly to a production boom and the market collapse of 2002. The cycles have become sharper. The 2008 spike was followed by a 50 per cent plunge in soy prices and then this year’s surge.
The price of onions in India is up 80 per cent; South Korea and the Philippines face shortages of fish and powdered milk, and countries around the world are reaching for the standby solutions, cracking down on hoarders and adjusting quotas and duties to force down local food prices.
This month the World Economic Forum, in an uneasy forecast, questioned whether farmers could meet the twin challenges of demography and climate. If history is any guide, they can, as they have in the past, but not unless they get paid. A recent poll shows half of India’s farmers want to quit. Many who till high-risk lands on which the expansion of the food supply depends have already given up and left the losing sector to seek a place in the winning one. There, like the mobs in Tunis, they can demand food, instead of having to grow it.
A lasting fix will require more than an adjustment to allow cultivators to survive. It will require unlearning a half century of dogma that relegates agriculture to a subordinate status. The global economy includes the global countryside, and the return of prosperity will have to begin there.
Nick Cullather is the author of The Hungry World: America’s Cold War Battle Against Poverty in Asia, a finalist for this year’s Lionel Gelber Prize for the best book on global affairs
Someone is Paying Attention
It’s usually organizations representing farmers who try to alert the public to the ongoing financial struggle on farms, and its impact on rural communities. This week veterinarians added their voice. A group called the Atlantic Bovine Practitioners Association issued a short statement, but with a very clear message:
Atlantic Beef is in crisis.
The Atlantic Bovine Practitioners Association (ABPA) recognizes locally produced beef as a vital component of the Atlantic agricultural industries and community. Atlantic Beef is a high quality wholesome product and its production is essential for the sustainability of rural life in Atlantic Canada. However, beef production in Atlantic Canada is in crisis as the result of many factors including (but not limited to) the importation and marketing of foreign beef in our supermarkets. The ABPA invites and supports all initiatives that develop and strengthen the local infrastructure needed for the processing and marketing of Atlantic Beef at home and supports initiatives which educate the public of the unseen benefits of buying local. The social and economic spin-offs of growing, processing, and selling beef produced in Atlantic Canada are essential to rural revitalization.
I don't think I can add much more to that.
Atlantic Beef is in crisis.
The Atlantic Bovine Practitioners Association (ABPA) recognizes locally produced beef as a vital component of the Atlantic agricultural industries and community. Atlantic Beef is a high quality wholesome product and its production is essential for the sustainability of rural life in Atlantic Canada. However, beef production in Atlantic Canada is in crisis as the result of many factors including (but not limited to) the importation and marketing of foreign beef in our supermarkets. The ABPA invites and supports all initiatives that develop and strengthen the local infrastructure needed for the processing and marketing of Atlantic Beef at home and supports initiatives which educate the public of the unseen benefits of buying local. The social and economic spin-offs of growing, processing, and selling beef produced in Atlantic Canada are essential to rural revitalization.
I don't think I can add much more to that.
Thursday, 17 March 2011
Building Trust, It's Not Easy
I find myself thinking about, and coming back to in this little blog, that grey zone where land use, economics, the environment, cheap food, politics, public perception, public demands, all mix together. It was on full display Monday night at a meeting at the Pownal Rink. The watershed enhancement group from Stratford was the host. It wanted to see if there is interest in expanding the watershed groups work further east through Hazelbrook, Earnscliffe, Vernon Bridge and so on. There was a good mix of farmers and other landowners, environmentalists, concerned citizens.
I have a lot of respect for the watershed enhancement groups throughout the province. Most are volunteers who want to see the province's rivers run clean again after decades of poor land use practices by a whole bunch of people, farmers, forest contractors, highway construction crews, the overuse of salt and sand in the winter, golf courses, home and cottage owners with poorly maintained septic fields and paved driveways, causeways, the list goes on. Climate change and "severe weather events" are just adding to the problems.
The provincial government doesn't have, or is refusing to cough up, enough money to do all the work the watershed enhancement groups want to do. That's why its asking the groups to expand their work to include adjacent watersheds, hoping the limited resources will go a little further. In some cases this has discouraged people who are interested in their own watershed, but unwilling to take on 4 or 5 more.
All of this and more was on display Monday night. Farmers worried that what folks in Stratford really want is a new source of water to meet the needs of a growing community, and that they will be jackbooted into doing things on their land to protect someone else's interests. Many complained the province had already gone overboard with environmental regulations. One farmer even suggested that cattle walking through streams actually controls the growth of weeds and keeps the streams cleaner. I'm hoping he was kidding.
I find it very discouraging to see how isolated and misunderstood farmers have become. It comes across as being stubborn and out of touch, it leads to frustration and disrespect from the general public. Farmers, livestock farmers in particular, have lost a lot of money over the last six years. Having your farming practices continually questioned on top of that has to hurt, although organizers of the meeting went out of their way to say that no one from any watershed enhancement group would or could do anything without permission from the landowner. It's almost as if farmers think if they openly agree to some of this work that it's an admission that they've done something wrong in the past, and it has to be fixed.
We've seen some of these dynamics at work before with Rails to Trails. When CN finally left, there were many well-meaning people in the tourism industry who said, well we'll just transform the railbed into walking trails and attract a new class of tourists. It's a no brainer, we were told. No one took a moment to wonder how farmers might feel about this, and there were pockets in Dunstaffnage and Eastern PEI who went to the wall to keep Rails to Trails out of their community. What might have happened if a phone call or letter to farmers early on had said "What do you think about this?" Yes there would have been objections and the need for meetings, but think of the time and legal fees spent sorting it out in the end anyway.
Towards the end of Monday night's meeting another farmer suggested that it might make more sense for landowners around Pownal and Orwell Bay to join together in a watershed enhancement group, separate from Straford. Scott Roloson talked about growing interest in a group wanting to clean up the Vernon River. He's set up a facebook page (beyond my scope to give you the co-ordinates.) More meetings are planned for the future. So, as these meetings go, this one ended pretty well.
There is an excellent example of a community coming together to improve local land use practices, in Souris. It had all the elements conflict resolution theory says is needed. A strong co-coordinator, Fred Cheverie, a retired local teacher well-known and respected by people in the community, money (it was a pilot project and received a lot of Federal dollars), and time. There were months of meetings between farmers, shellfish harvesters, and others. Information was shared, and most importantly trust was built up. A plan that well over 90% of local farmers agreed to was developed: farmers would receive small payments for taking additional steps beyond what the law requires, to protect the environment. This became the basis of what's called the Alternative Land Use Services or ALUS program that's now available across the province. There aren't a lot of Fred Cheveries across the province, and there certainly aren't the kind of federal dollars that were available in Souris for the pilot project.. In fact many of the watershed enhancement groups make a good case that they are competing with the ALUS program for provincial environment dollars, and that both groups are being shortchanged.
I've done this before, but I think it's instructive to look at how other jurisdictions deal with what is really a world-wide struggle between the demands on farmers to produce lots of cheap food, the industrialization of farming methods, and deterioration of the environment. There are countries in Europe that recognize the benefits of a working landscape to the environment and the tourist industry, and pay farmers a lot of money to maintain it. In France, farmers sign Farmland Management Contracts that pay on average $58 thousand dollars (Can) a year to maintain pastures, and protect waterways. In Switzerland what’s called the “multifunctionality” of farms is entrenched in the Constitution, with broad public support to use government subsidies to keep farmers on the land using environmentally sound farming practices. On average farmers get more than 30 thousand dollars (Can) a year under this program, with smaller farmers getting larger per hectare payments than larger farms. Organic farms, and farmers practicing humane livestock rearing, receive even more. This pales what the ALUS program pays out, a few hundred dollars at best. There is a generation of Europeans who starved during the Second World War, so they take the idea of food security and. it looks like, the environment much more seriously than we do here. The European political culture is also more collective in nature and action than in North American. We don't want others telling us what to do unless the circumstances are very dire.
Without a lot of money to throw around, trust is really the crucial currency here, but trust is never given, it has to be earned by all sides.
I have a lot of respect for the watershed enhancement groups throughout the province. Most are volunteers who want to see the province's rivers run clean again after decades of poor land use practices by a whole bunch of people, farmers, forest contractors, highway construction crews, the overuse of salt and sand in the winter, golf courses, home and cottage owners with poorly maintained septic fields and paved driveways, causeways, the list goes on. Climate change and "severe weather events" are just adding to the problems.
The provincial government doesn't have, or is refusing to cough up, enough money to do all the work the watershed enhancement groups want to do. That's why its asking the groups to expand their work to include adjacent watersheds, hoping the limited resources will go a little further. In some cases this has discouraged people who are interested in their own watershed, but unwilling to take on 4 or 5 more.
All of this and more was on display Monday night. Farmers worried that what folks in Stratford really want is a new source of water to meet the needs of a growing community, and that they will be jackbooted into doing things on their land to protect someone else's interests. Many complained the province had already gone overboard with environmental regulations. One farmer even suggested that cattle walking through streams actually controls the growth of weeds and keeps the streams cleaner. I'm hoping he was kidding.
I find it very discouraging to see how isolated and misunderstood farmers have become. It comes across as being stubborn and out of touch, it leads to frustration and disrespect from the general public. Farmers, livestock farmers in particular, have lost a lot of money over the last six years. Having your farming practices continually questioned on top of that has to hurt, although organizers of the meeting went out of their way to say that no one from any watershed enhancement group would or could do anything without permission from the landowner. It's almost as if farmers think if they openly agree to some of this work that it's an admission that they've done something wrong in the past, and it has to be fixed.
We've seen some of these dynamics at work before with Rails to Trails. When CN finally left, there were many well-meaning people in the tourism industry who said, well we'll just transform the railbed into walking trails and attract a new class of tourists. It's a no brainer, we were told. No one took a moment to wonder how farmers might feel about this, and there were pockets in Dunstaffnage and Eastern PEI who went to the wall to keep Rails to Trails out of their community. What might have happened if a phone call or letter to farmers early on had said "What do you think about this?" Yes there would have been objections and the need for meetings, but think of the time and legal fees spent sorting it out in the end anyway.
Towards the end of Monday night's meeting another farmer suggested that it might make more sense for landowners around Pownal and Orwell Bay to join together in a watershed enhancement group, separate from Straford. Scott Roloson talked about growing interest in a group wanting to clean up the Vernon River. He's set up a facebook page (beyond my scope to give you the co-ordinates.) More meetings are planned for the future. So, as these meetings go, this one ended pretty well.
There is an excellent example of a community coming together to improve local land use practices, in Souris. It had all the elements conflict resolution theory says is needed. A strong co-coordinator, Fred Cheverie, a retired local teacher well-known and respected by people in the community, money (it was a pilot project and received a lot of Federal dollars), and time. There were months of meetings between farmers, shellfish harvesters, and others. Information was shared, and most importantly trust was built up. A plan that well over 90% of local farmers agreed to was developed: farmers would receive small payments for taking additional steps beyond what the law requires, to protect the environment. This became the basis of what's called the Alternative Land Use Services or ALUS program that's now available across the province. There aren't a lot of Fred Cheveries across the province, and there certainly aren't the kind of federal dollars that were available in Souris for the pilot project.. In fact many of the watershed enhancement groups make a good case that they are competing with the ALUS program for provincial environment dollars, and that both groups are being shortchanged.
I've done this before, but I think it's instructive to look at how other jurisdictions deal with what is really a world-wide struggle between the demands on farmers to produce lots of cheap food, the industrialization of farming methods, and deterioration of the environment. There are countries in Europe that recognize the benefits of a working landscape to the environment and the tourist industry, and pay farmers a lot of money to maintain it. In France, farmers sign Farmland Management Contracts that pay on average $58 thousand dollars (Can) a year to maintain pastures, and protect waterways. In Switzerland what’s called the “multifunctionality” of farms is entrenched in the Constitution, with broad public support to use government subsidies to keep farmers on the land using environmentally sound farming practices. On average farmers get more than 30 thousand dollars (Can) a year under this program, with smaller farmers getting larger per hectare payments than larger farms. Organic farms, and farmers practicing humane livestock rearing, receive even more. This pales what the ALUS program pays out, a few hundred dollars at best. There is a generation of Europeans who starved during the Second World War, so they take the idea of food security and. it looks like, the environment much more seriously than we do here. The European political culture is also more collective in nature and action than in North American. We don't want others telling us what to do unless the circumstances are very dire.
Without a lot of money to throw around, trust is really the crucial currency here, but trust is never given, it has to be earned by all sides.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)