Future of Food Series Finale

by Sarah Janes Ugoretz

As we conclude our Future of Food discussion series, I can think of few better topics on which to ruminate than that of the latest feature—the joy of food. Food means something different to each of us. To it, we attach meaning, memories, and value. We often place it at the center of our gatherings, and around it we, in the company of our friends and families, convene and converse. As we’ve followed National Geographic’s Future of Food series over the last five months, we have taken on some rather controversial topics—modern day fish farming, the Paleolithic diet, hunger in America, the industrial beef business and biotechnology’s application to food production. In this final piece, I’d like to take a step back and reflect on the worth of exploring topics such as these. There is no time like the present to consider what food means to us and to ask ourselves: “What kind of food system do I want to be a part of?”

When I’m looking for a nuanced, yet straightforward discussion around the current state of agriculture in this country, I turn—invariably—to Wendell Berry. As a farmer himself, Berry has long written of many of the topics on which we have touched and possesses that elusive ability to present an issue in a brutally honest, yet still uplifting sort of way. For the purposes of this discussion, one of the more powerful statements he has written is recorded in his book What Are People For? He states very simply that “…eating is an agricultural act.” Today, we tend to think of food as a product of agricultural toil, but we often fail to go beyond that and regard ourselves as not just customers, but as discerning consumers. We buy food in various forms and from various locales, but for the most part, we make these decisions in a passive way. We choose from among the food options presented to us, and we pay the price attached to these items without asking what that price reflects. As Berry sees it, “The industrial eater is, in fact, one who does not know that eating is an agricultural act, who no longer knows or imagines the connections between eating and the land, and who is therefore necessarily passive and uncritical.” I would modify this by suggesting that these two extremes exist not in isolation but instead along a continuum—that at any point in time, we can move closer to or further way from the industrial eater extreme.

Operating from this point of understanding, I think there’s value in addressing a topic that is often left out of this discussion—that of personal guilt. Pursuing the type of food system that Mr. Berry and we at Harmony Valley Farm are trying to imagine and create is no small feat, and in many ways, the deck is stacked against us. I’ve found that over the years, as I’ve come to more deeply understand the implications attached to my individual food choices, the more guilt I feel when I choose to move closer to the industrial eater extreme. It’s true—sometimes I buy conventionally grown grapes or cheese made with milk that is not rGBH-free. Quite honestly, I think it’s nearly impossible at this point to live a life beyond the reach of industrial, conventional agriculture. Admittedly, my main motivation for making these purchases is price—I buy them because they’re cheaper than the alternative. The guilt I feel is a product of my decision to embrace the notion that individual choices matter. Yes, it’s a romantic approach to take, but at the same time, I truly believe in the power that individual effort yields. After all, at the end of the day, individual choices are to a great degree what propel larger efforts forward.

The visual learner that I am, I often regard each individual food item as the tip of an iceberg—a small part of a much larger whole. Beneath the surface lies the collective history of that food item—the agricultural inputs, the labor practices and the farming philosophy that together created that specific product. It was not until I started digging into the literature and thinking about where this information fit in relation to me did I begin to feel intimately connected to and invested in this larger system. Similar to the topics of faith and spirituality, I think deciding what food really means to us is an individual, reflective and ever-evolving journey. Exposing ourselves to information—in the form of the pieces covered in this series, for example—allows us to gather facts, consider multiple perspectives and ultimately formulate our own opinions. From here, we take action—we join a CSA, we begin to garden, we have conversations, we rent a library book, we sit and think. There is no “right” way to approach and react to these difficult topics.

At this point, I have to bring in a critical piece that is, as yet, missing from this discussion—many people are, to varying degrees, limited in their capacity to participate in shaping the type of food system we’re envisioning. As we explored (albeit briefly) in an earlier feature on “The New Face of Hunger” there are multiple obstacles—many of them entrenched—that limit this capacity. Income, transportation, awareness, a preoccupation with basic survival—innumerable factors shape and restrict the degree to which people engage with the food systems operating around us today. While this topic requires much more space than a single paragraph, I’ll settle for the words of Geoff Tansey, a member of The Food Ethics Council: “We need a fundamental change in the food system that has developed in the rich world…It is dysfunctional and unjust—and it fails to deliver a safe, secure, sufficient, nutritious diet sustainably for everyone with equity.” Put simply, there is an enormous amount of work to be done. Naming this problem is merely the first of many steps.

As this discussion series draws to a close, where does this leave us? For starters, we know that we all need to eat, and we know that food is, inherently, the product of a larger agricultural system. The food options we are faced with reflect a complex network of explicit choices and practices. If we more fully insert ourselves into the equation and begin to transform ourselves into active, rather than passive consumers, we will be taking a firm step towards creating an alternative food system—one that is, as Tansey calls for above, both sustainable and equitable. It is my hope that throughout this series, the topics we’ve addressed and the questions we’ve raised have peaked your interest—to whatever degree—and have led you to consider your place within this food system that we are all part of.

The Future of Food Series, Part VI: Carnivore’s Dilemma

by Sarah Janes Ugoretz

In this most recent Future of Food article, Robert Kunzig—senior environmental editor for National Geographic—explores the Carnivore’s Dilemma (or, as I would comically rephrase it: How I Decided to Embrace the Feedlot System and Love Industrial Beef). Kunzig’s guiding question is one that asks whether it’s ok for Americans to eat beef, given what we know about expected population growth, rising global demand for meat, the associated and/or potential environmental and health implications of industrial meat production and livestock’s contributions to global warming. In attempting to arrive at a deeper understanding of this question, Kunzig spent one week in Texas amongst the cowboys, the nutritionists, the veterinarians and the higher-up executives of Cactus Feeders and its subsidiary, Wrangler Feedyard.

In Texas, the number of calves born each year outnumbers babies by a ratio of 10:1, while feedlots the size of Wrangler tend to ship, on average, one million head of cattle to slaughter. The existence of such industrial operations has secured the United States’ place as the world’s leader in both meat production and consumption. Last year, each American consumed an average of 54 pounds of beef, while only allocating 11 percent of their income towards food purchases (though I’ve come across numerous sources—notably, The Economist—that put this number closer to 6 percent). This is to say that we’re able to eat a lot of meat, for not a lot of money. Indeed, that appears to have been the point. Paul Engler, CEO of Cactus Feeders, recounts how his father, who founded the business in 1975, envisioned a world where beef was cheap enough for all. Considering that in 2013, the U.S. produced the same amount of beef as in 1976 but did so by slaughtering 10 million fewer cattle, the elder Engler appears to have gotten his wish.

Efficiency is the commonly held goal amongst the Wranglers and the Cactus Feeders of the world. Cactus’ creed says it all: “Conversion of Feed Energy Into the Maximum Production of Beef at the Lowest Possible Cost.” Indeed, the consensus amongst those that Kunzig cites throughout the article confirms that this level of efficiency is paramount if the U.S. is to meet the rising demand for meat across the globe—a responsibility that Kunzig adopts from the article’s onset. Unfortunately, there doesn’t appear to be a place for anything but industrial production in this most humble of quests. Other types of systems appear unable to keep up with the amount of beef needed to satiate demand. Jason Clay, a food expert with World Wildlife Fund, confirms this suspicion, stating: “Feedlots are better than grass fed, no question.” Clay insists that what we really need to do is intensify—to produce more with less.

When it comes to the question of emissions, industrial production systems come out on top again. Pointing to data collected by scientists with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Kunzig explains that cows allowed to graze on pasture produce twice as much methane as their commercially raised counterparts. With more time to belch, expel waste and gain weight, these cows appear to do little more than contribute to global warming. In terms of livestock-related emissions in general, however, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) suggests that we needn’t be very worried. At present, beef production accounts for 6 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. If the world were to abstain from beef entirely, we’d see a reduction in emissions of less than 6 percent. This is because the fertilizer and fossil fuels used in producing and shipping grain would continue to contribute to emissions, since farmers would keep growing grain. But what if Americans in particular ate less beef? Would there then be more grain with which to “feed the world?” The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) used an economic model of the world food system to ask this question and found that, apart from minor benefits, the impact on global food security would be minimal at best. Basically, if Americans were to eat less beef, American farmers would be less likely to export wheat and rice—two staples in the global food chain—to Asia and Africa.

At this point, it appears that Kunzig’s question—can Americans keep eating beef?—has a favorable answer. However, we’ve now reached the topic of sustainability. If feedlots are the model through which we’re to feed ourselves as well as the rest of the world, we must ask how sustainable they are. Kunzig states that this question is too complex to really address in this space, which I think speaks to the major limitations of this piece in general. He does take the time to mention concerns about antibiotic use in feedlots and their possible connection to the development of antibiotic resistance in humans. The environment gets a few sentences, mainly relating to the unclear effects the excretion of antibiotics might have on the environment, and the very real possibility that grain production might succeed in exhausting the Ogallala aquifer by the end of the 21st century.

When all is said and done, however, Kunzig’s conclusion is basically this: “Here’s the inconvenient truth: Feedlots, with their troubling use of pharmaceuticals, save land and lower greenhouse gas emissions.” What Kunzig doesn’t say in this space says quite a lot. He breezes over the issue of ethics and animal welfare when it comes to beef production, and his discussion of the local environmental impacts of feedlots is virtually non-existent. What strikes me most, however, is that despite discussing in detail the various cocktails of hormones, steroids and antibiotics required to keep feedlot cows healthy and able to digest a diet that they’re unable to process naturally, Kunzig doesn’t discuss the superficiality that has become inherent in this type of system. If feedlots are, as this article suggests, the way to ensure that the world gets its meat, then these questions cannot be so quickly overlooked. Kunzig expresses his wish that Americans would stop “reducing complex social problems…to morality tales populated by heroes and villains.” While I agree that too often food system discussions devolve into this “easy way out” conclusion, Kunzig seems to paint a picture that, to people who are concerned with and widely read on this issue, does not give equal weight to all of the major concerns.

I encourage you to sit down with this article and consider your own reactions, but for now, I’ll leave you with mine. In their current state, feedlot systems strike me as far from sustainable. In order to keep pace with global demand, production would need to be scaled way up, which, to put it mildly, concerns me. Alternative production systems are only mentioned in detail towards the end of the article—and briefly, at that—and yet there is great potential in smaller scale grass-based systems, like what we at Harmony Valley are committed to, and in management intensive grazing systems. These models are almost certainly accompanied by an ecological component, in which the environment and the animals themselves are afforded a considerable degree of consideration. While reading this article, I couldn’t help but think of Black Earth Meats, a nearby slaughterhouse that is humane-handling certified and that works with farmers committed to such alternative systems. The contrast between their creed and Cactus Feeders’, which I stated earlier, could not be more stark: “We Honor These Animals, for By Their Death, We Gain Life.” Efficiency is still a concern—after all, everyone needs to make a living. The difference here is that it’s obviously not the be-all end-all goal. I think it is a mistake to conclude that industrial feedlot systems are the only way in which to meet global demand for meat, and I would go as far as to say that attempting to do so would be a deeply regrettable and environmentally costly mistake. You can read the full article online at www.food.nationalgeographic.com.

The Future of Food Series, Part V

by Sarah Janes Ugoretz

This week we return to our Future of Food series with Tom Folger’s article “The Next Green Revolution,” a piece that discusses the potential role of biotechnology in the quest to feed the world. I’ll say at the outset that this is one of the more contentious issues we’ve delved into up to this point. It is very likely that each person coming to this discussion already has a strong opinion surrounding the creation and application of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Since the space that we have to discuss this issue is minimal, I’ve included a few resources at the end of this article for people who are interested in continuing the conversation.

Folger begins his piece in Tanzania, where the whitefly—invisible to the farmer’s eye—is silently ravaging cassava crops throughout the countryside. Alongside an agent from the Agricultural Research Institute, he witnesses Juma, the farmer at the center of this opening story, being told that he must immediately harvest his whole crop in order to avoid losing all of it. Harvesting one month early will hopefully allow him to feed his family, but he will have made no financial gains over the course of the growing season. Like 90 percent of Africa’s farmers, Juma practices variations of small-scale and subsistence agriculture. For these farmers who are already operating on the margins, the implications of a lost crop can be wholly devastating and may very likely have consequences that resound for years.

With Juma, Folger quickly establishes the moral imperative that appears to largely guide his argument for advancing GM crops: we need them to keep farmers like Juma alive. We’re reminded that by 2050, our population will likely reach nine billion, with half of that growth occurring in sub-Saharan Africa and another 30 percent taking place throughout South and Southeast Asia. Incidentally, Folger points out, “those regions are also where the effects of climate change—drought, heat waves, extreme weather generally—are expected to hit hardest.” With a nod to the Malthusian panic preceding the emergence of the Green Revolution in the 1960s, Folger insists that we need another green revolution in order to once again stave off the starvation of billions.

While he does acknowledge the possibility that solutions to these dilemmas may be found within the low-tech arena, one could easily contend that Folger’s allegiance lies with the high-tech agenda. We are introduced to Robert Fraley, chief technology officer at Monsanto, and to Robert Zeigler, director of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), who expound on modern geneticists’ and plant breeders’ ability to identify and manipulate an ever-increasing number of plant genes. The ability to do so, Fraley argues, will make farming “more productive and resilient.” It follows that the geneticist’s ever evolving toolkit can be used as a force for good in a world rife with hunger and malnutrition. Folger points to Golden Rice, a GM variety produced at IRRI that contains corn genes. These genes enable the rice to produce beta carotene, the consumption of which is essential in the fight against vitamin A deficiency. Additional examples are found in salt-tolerant and flood-tolerant rice which, Folger discusses, have already been used with a certain degree of success by farmers in parts of Asia.

As a graduate student whose research revolves around small-scale and subsistence agricultural development in the Global South, I have to admit that the heavy and, at times, seemingly insurmountable burden of hunger and malnutrition makes part of me wish that there was an overarching, just solution to be found in biotechnology. But, as Janet Maro—a Tanzanian woman who co-founded and runs a nonprofit called Sustainable Agriculture Tanzania (SAT)—insists, heralding biotechnology as the solution to smallholders’ plights is simply “not realistic.” She goes on, asking: “How likely is it, in a country where few farmers ever see a government agricultural adviser, or are even aware of the diseases threatening their crops, that they’ll get the support they need to grow GM crops properly?” What this article comes down to, for me, is this question. Biotech leaders are pointing to small-scale farmers like Juma as one of the main drivers of their research and development efforts, but when it comes down to it, the introduction of new technology—whether it be GM crops or a mechanical milking machine—must be met with the extension of knowledge, of training, of ongoing support. Moreover, these approaches must be tailored to fit each local context. Folger makes no mention of this, but any student of development knows that these components are absolutely essential if the goal is long-term, effective use. In using GM crops, small-scale farmers would not only be adopting new seed varieties, they would also be tying themselves to the associated inputs—the specific fertilizer, irrigation and pesticide requirements of that particular seed. As Maro discusses, before some of the farmers she works with transitioned to organic methods, they were spending US$300 on the fertilizer and pesticides needed to treat just one acre of land (this in a country where the per capita income is US$1600). One farmer who spoke with Folger mentioned that after incurring these expenses she had no money left over to send her children to school.

An additional concern, which Folger breezes over, is the minimal safety trials that GM crops are subject to, and our subsequent limited knowledge and understanding of the possible implications of consuming GMOs. For example, Monsanto tests newly developed GMOs over the course of 45 or 90 days, using either broiler chickens or rats. In one study, a team of independent researchers reanalyzed the test results of an approved GM variety of maize. The raw data in fact revealed signs of kidney and liver toxicity in the study rats, a discovery that led to this team’s results being published in The International Journal of Biological Sciences, a peer-reviewed publication.

Folger closes his discussion in Tanzania, where he provides us with a glimpse of the low-tech alternative. With an eye on farmers, on the environment, on the local economy—this approach looks somewhat more promising, especially when considering these factors within a whole-systems framework. Farmers, some working with Maro and SAT, have begun planting a greater variety of crops, which not only works to control for pests but also provides households with a safety net in the event that one of their crops fails. The use of a specific wild sunflower variety, planted between rows, has proven effective in deterring the whitefly from cassava crops. Meanwhile, compost is being promoted as a means of improving soil quality, and the decrease in fertilizer use has had a positive impact on water quality in the region. Owing in part to the efforts of SAT, today Tanzania has the fourth highest number of certified organic farmers in the world.

It goes without saying that, like the biotechnology approach, organic farming is not a simple, straightforward solution. It too, requires the ongoing training and support that I mentioned above. However, at this point let’s return to the overall concern in this Future of Food series: how we’re going to feed the world. I would argue that perhaps a narrower focus is appropriate here—rather than this large-scale, macro question, we might instead want to ask how farmers might acquire the tools, the knowledge and the skills to continue feeding themselves and their communities. While biotechnology might provide farmers with climate-tailored seeds, lower tech approaches have the potential to place power in the hands of the farmers themselves—power in the form of knowledge and real skills that they might use in deliberately cultivating a healthy, resilient, and diverse landscape. As the climate changes, farmers will have to change with it, but if they’re starting from a position of power and understanding grounded in a deep-rooted connection with their environment, this adaptation might prove to be more manageable over time.

Reading list:

United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, Trade and Environment Review 2013, “Wake Up Before it is Too Late” 

Benbrook, Charles, M. “Impacts of genetically engineered crops on pesticide use in the U.S. -- the first sixteen years”, Environmental Sciences Europe, 2012.

de Vendomois, J. S., Roullier, F., Cellier, D., & Séralini, G.E. (2009). A comparison of the effects of three GM corn varieties on mammalian health. International Journal of Biological Sciences, 5(7), 706–726.

Ford Foundation, Political Economy Research Institute, University of Massachusetts, Mann, Charles C. “Diversity on the Farm” 

Patel, Raj, “How to be Curious about the Green Revolution”, rajpatel.org, 29 Aug. 2014.

Tomorrow’s table: Organic Farming, Genetics, and the Future of Food by Pamela C. Ronald and Raoul W. Adamchak

Future of Food Series Part IV: The Evolution of Diet

by Sarah Janes Ugoretz

This week, we return to our exploration of National Geographic’s Future of Food series. In the latest featured article, “The Evolution of Diet,” Ann Gibbons—author of The First Human: The Race to Discover Our Earliest Ancestors—opens the discussion with a simple question: “Could eating like our ancestors make us healthier?” This is an incredibly timely conversation of a topic that has gained quite a bit of attention as of late. I’m referring of course to the Paleolithic Diet, better known by its abbreviated form—the Paleo Diet. Paleoanthropologist Peter Ungar of the University of Arkansas sheds some light on the craze surrounding this new Stone Age-inspired diet. One of the principle tenants underlying the Paleo Diet is the idea that we modern humans have not had sufficient time to evolve from hunter-gatherers to those who consume farmed foods. Supporters often ground this point in a discussion surrounding the general youthfulness of agriculture—it only came to the fore about 10,000 years ago. One of the Paleo Diet’s staunchest advocates, Loren Cordain, an evolutionary nutritionist at Colorado State University, draws from modern-day studies he has conducted on traditional hunter-gatherer societies. Having found that 73 percent of the societies he studied obtained at least 50 percent of their daily caloric intake from meat, Cordain thereby encourages his fellow humans to focus on eating lean meat and fish, while limiting intake of beans, cereal grains and dairy products. Doing so, he insists, will allow us to avoid the “diseases of civilization”—heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes and cancer.

Numerous studies, including a few referenced in this piece by Gibbons, partly substantiate Cordain’s findings—that eating a diet of non-processed foods can help us avoid these so-called diseases of modern civilization. However, researchers are less quick to get behind Cordain’s and the Paleo Diet’s meat-centric ideology. Gibbons lays out one of the major unwavering concerns here, which I touched on back in July: with the global population expected to reach nine billion by 2050, we need to ask ourselves which diet is best. “Simply put, a diet that revolves around meat and dairy, a way of eating that’s on the rise throughout the developing world, will take a greater toll on the world’s resources than one that revolves around unrefined grains, nuts, fruits, and vegetables.”

Moreover, if you look deeper into what academic studies on both historic and modern hunter-gatherer societies have found, they echo what Gibbons has said: that “the real Paleolithic diet wasn’t all meat and marrow.” While it appears that hunter-gathers the world over crave meat more than any other food, the amount of meat they are actually able to secure and consume on a regular basis varies widely. Overall, researchers have estimated that meat provides around 30 percent of their annual caloric intake (with the notable exception of the Inuit and other groups residing in the Arctic, who typically obtain 99 percent of their calories from seals, narwhals and fish). Amanda Henry, a paleobiologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology points out that: “There’s been a consistent story about hunting defining us and that meat made us human.” This picture, however, is incomplete. We are instead reminded that man the hunter is backed up by woman the gatherer, and that during lean times, what these societies really subsist on are plant foods.

Speaking directly to and perhaps contradicting one of the arguments that advocates of the Paleo Diet make—that humans are not evolved enough to eat grains and other farmed foods—Henry has identified the presence of starch granules on fossil teeth and on stone tools dating back 100,000 years. These findings suggest that humans may indeed have been consuming grains and other plant foods long enough to have evolved the ability to tolerate them. “What bothers a lot of paleoanthropologists is that we actually didn’t have just one caveman diet,” says Leslie Aiello, president of the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. “The human diet goes back at least two million years. We had a lot of cavemen out there.” Where the Paleo Diet goes wrong is that it fails to replicate the wide diversity of foods hunter-gatherer societies have historically eaten. At the same time, the strong possibility that those who subscribe to this diet will fail in mimicking the active lifestyles that safeguarded our ancestors from diabetes and heart disease is often downplayed.

What this really comes down to is the notion that no one diet epitomizes the ideal human diet. Rather, one of the wonders of Homo erectus—and this has typically been true of humans today—is that we’ve been able to adapt to our environments throughout time. Adaptation is one thing, but many humans today are currently facing a new sort of dilemma. Touching on the evolution of cooking and what this development has meant for us humans, Gibbons explains how, by cooking our food, our guts get to spend less time trying to break down energy. What this means is that we’re allowed to extract more fuel by doing less work. Unfortunately, many of us have gotten a little too good at this. As Gibbons says, “For the first time in human evolution, many humans are getting more calories than they can burn in a day.” So, where does this leave us? Whether you’re the type of person who needs to have a regimented diet, or someone whose schedule doesn’t allow for much home-cooking, Gibbons leaves us with a succinct message: “If most of the world ate more local fruits and vegetables, a little meat, fish, and some whole grains, and exercised an hour a day, that would be good news for our health—and for the planet.” We will all need to figure out what sort of diet works for us individually, based on our predilections and the various responsibilities we’re faced with on a daily basis, but I would say that this framework certainly seems like a good place to start.


Read more about the "Future of Food" on National Geographic's food channel.

The New Face of Hunger

by Sarah Janes Ugoretz

This week, we return to our discussion of National Geographic’s “Future of Food” series. In the most recent article, “The New Face of Hunger,” Tracie McMillan—author and Senior Fellow at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University—examines the shifting demographics of poverty in the United States. She begins with a powerful statistic: today, one out of every six people living in the United States does not have enough food to eat. What does this mean, exactly? To be “hungry” or “food insecure” means that a person or family, at some point over the course of the last year, did not have enough food to eat. According to McMillan, many who experience hunger today “face not a total absence of food but the gnawing fear that the next meal can’t be counted on.”

Throughout this article, McMillan highlights the various forms poverty takes in our country today, challenging readers to confront their preconceived notions of what poverty “looks” like, of where poverty exists. Hunger is found not only in pockets in bustling inner cities—it persists in suburbs and in rural towns, as well as in urban centers. Amongst the poor, you’ll encounter a wide array of individuals—retired schoolteachers, farmhands, undocumented immigrant families or recent college graduates. Yet unlike the images of hunger captured during the Great Depression, the faces and material possessions of today’s poor may not so easily betray their lower socio-economic status. Vehicles, furniture, and electronics bought under installment plans and clothes found at rummage sales make it possible for families to maintain the appearance of a middle-class existence. Yet the picture McMillan paints is one of families living on the edge—not yet destitute, but only one unexpected bill or illness away from even harder times. In many cases, “pocketing food from work and skipping meals to make food stretch are so common that such practices barely register as a way of coping with hunger and are simply a way of life.”

Cuts in the amount of five billion dollars to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in the fall of 2013 very likely exacerbated the effects of poverty for many families over the last year. (SNAP, the successor of the Food Stamp Program, is a federally funded program that provides low- and no-income persons and families with food-purchasing assistance.) As families’ SNAP benefits decline, household budgets become even more constricted. McMillan reports that in 2013, average monthly SNAP benefits amounted to $133.07 per person. Broken down, this amounts to less than $1.50 per meal. At this point, the paradox of poverty in the U.S. becomes ever more visible, as households tend to purchase inexpensive processed foods that are filling but not nutritious—eating habits which may ultimately contribute to such maladies as obesity, diabetes and heart disease. “For many of the hungry in America, the extra pounds that result from a poor diet are collateral damage—an unintended side effect of hunger itself,” McMillan explains.

Families who spoke with McMillan seemed to share a similar experience. Each month, with the replenishment of their SNAP benefits, they often splurge on fruits and vegetables, knowing that as the days and weeks go by, fresh food will have to be foregone for less expensive processed foods. Typically, by the end of the month, families’ benefits have run dry. It is at this point that they often turn to food pantries, where they are most likely to find non-perishable yet highly processed food items to hold them over until the beginning of the next month.

During the 1980s, a few hundred food pantries and other emergency food provisioning services could be found across the U.S. Today, there are over 50,000. What explains this massive increase in emergency food services? In her book Sweet Charity?: Emergency Food and the End of Entitlement, Janet Poppendieck, long-time Professor of Sociology at City University of New York, discusses how food pantries and similar services have taken the place of consistent and targeted public policy aimed at addressing the root causes of poverty. Essentially, food pantries are stepping in to provide a safety net that otherwise may not exist.

Unfortunately business is good for most food pantries these days and our community is no different. When we talk with representatives of the local food pantries we regularly  support, they report that the numbers of families they are serving monthly continues to rise. In an effort to prevent perfectly wholesome produce from going to waste, we donate weekly to our local pantries. Rose, a volunteer at the Living Faith food pantry in Viroqua, comes to our farm every Tuesday afternoon to pack up extra vegetables we may have had from the week before. In 2013, Rose took over 10,000 pounds of produce back to the food pantry in Viroqua where it was distributed to community members. We also support the Wafer food pantry in La Crosse, Wisconsin when we have more than the Viroqua food pantry can distribute. Last year we donated 4,643 pounds of produce to the Wafer food pantry. While these numbers are not negligible, our local food pantries are small in comparison to other areas of the country. The amount of food they distributed from our farm represents such a tiny sliver of the need in this country for access to fresh produce for those who may need support from a local food pantry.

Laurel helps Rose pick up extra produce for the Viroqua Living Faith food pantry. 

Ultimately, McMillan and Poppendieck argue that “the root problem is the lack of jobs that pay wages a family can live on, so food assistance has become the government’s—and society’s—way to supplement low wages.” While families can try to supplement their SNAP benefits and spread their limited incomes by growing, foraging for, and canning fresh foods, doing so requires time, know-how, and other resources that they may not have access to. Fortunately, grassroots efforts aimed at addressing these obstacles have begun to increase. In Madison, one example can be found in FairShare CSA Coalition’s Partner Shares program—a cost-sharing initiative that provides financial assistance to low-income households interested in participating in a CSA program. Meanwhile, a Kickstarter campaign for Good and Cheap: Eat Well on $4/Day, a cookbook that Leanne Brown created with SNAP participants in mind, recently set a new Kickstarter record.

In closing, McMillan cautions that the impacts of bottom-up efforts such as these will likely remain limited as long as federal money disproportionately favors commodity crops over “specialty crops”—the term given to fruits and vegetables. McMillan reports that in 2012, the federal government allocated approximately $11 billion to subsidize and insure commodity crops such as corn and soybeans. Meanwhile, $1.6 billion was directed towards fruits and vegetables. What do these policies have to do with SNAP recipients? McMillan points out what you may already know: “[These] priorities are reflected at the grocery store where the price of fresh food has risen steadily while the cost of sugary treats like soda has dropped.” As it is, families are faced with spending more for less if they choose to pursue healthier food options. This simple fact illustrates just how broken our system is.

Read more about the "Future of Food" on National Geographic's food channel.

Fish to Feed the World

by Sarah Janes Ugoretz

In our July 4th newsletter, we kicked off a series featuring National Geographic’s eight-month exploration of the future of food. Here, we take a look at the second feature article in the series, “How to Farm a Better Fish,” in which author Joel K. Bourne examines modern day fish farming, which has become a rather contentious issue over the last several years.

Aquaculture is essentially the cultivation of aquatic life for food. As a practice, it has been traced back at least 2500 years to Chinese farmers who introduced carp to their rice fields. Unlike the symbiotic approach adopted by the Chinese so long ago, however, modern day agriculture has evolved into something quite different. Although complexities remain, Bourne quickly and plainly states the basic issue at hand:  “The problem isn’t the ancient art of aquaculture per se; it’s the rapid intensification of it.” Intensification of a production model typically signals a rising demand for the final product, and this is certainly true of the seafood business. Over the last few decades, increased consumption of seafood has resulted in double-digit growth rates within the industry. Today, nearly half of all seafood comes from aquaculture.

Supporters of aquaculture point to something called the “feed conversion ratio.” Basically, the amount of food that it takes for a fish to gain one pound of body mass is lower—at times, significantly so—than that required by other common sources of animal proteins, like beef, poultry and pork. According to Bourne, “As a source of animal protein that can meet the needs of nine billion people with the least demand on Earth’s resources, aquaculture…looks like a good bet.” Based on this optimism, fast-growing varieties of carp and tilapia have been developed to aid in the advancement of the Blue Revolution, as this approach has come to be called.

However, just as with the Green Revolution—which Andrea and Richard discussed several weeks ago—the Blue Revolution has had a myriad of criticisms levied against it. Habitat destruction, water pollution, and food safety scares have gone hand-in-hand with the rise of intensified aquaculture. Perhaps more immediately urgent for the U.S., which imports 90% of its seafood, is the widespread use of antibiotics and pesticides by countries dominating the industry. Many of these substances have been banned for use in the U.S. and include suspected or known carcinogens. With only 2% of seafood imports being inspected by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), oversight is sorely minimal.

Approaching this topic from a critical stance should not, however, automatically render aquaculture participants as “the bad guys.” Take the words of a Chinese fish geneticist, quoted by Bourne: “That is my duty. To make better fish, more fish, so farmers can get rich and people can have more food.” There is no doubt that profit motives abound and drive the intensification of industries like aquaculture and agriculture. And yet, there remains a real and pressing need to find ways for farmers to survive economically, and for the world’s people to access safe and nutritious foods regularly. These are answers that we are still looking for.

Fortunately, positive examples of successful, environmentally friendly aquaculture models exist and may offer a platform off which the industry as a whole can begin moving forward. Bourne shares with us one such operation. Run by Brian O’Hanlon, an American working off the coast of Panama, Open Blue is the largest offshore fish farm in the world. Anchoring his pens of cobia 60 feet below the surface, O’Hanlon has been able to use dilution—basically the rushing of water through his pens—to avoid both pollution and disease. Thus far Open Blue has avoided using antibiotics to keep their fish healthy, and researchers from the University of Miami have not been able to detect any traces of fish waste outside the pens. This type of system, O’Hanlon insists, “is the future.”

One major issue that remains unresolved with Open Blue’s operation, however, is the food requirements of the fish O’Hanlon is growing. Cobia are carnivores, and voracious ones at that, and therefore feeding them places significant pressure on the bottom of the food chain. Aquaculture critics insist that building a system in this way is not only superficial, but it is akin to “ecological insanity.” As Bourne points out, “Figuring out what to feed farmed fish may ultimately be more important for the planet than the question of where to farm them.” Fortunately, more fish farmers have begun working with omnivorous fish, like tilapia.

While reading this article, my mind kept returning to Milwaukee’s Will Allen of Growing Power, Inc and his work with aquaponics. While this system differs from aquaculture in that it incorporates fish into a re-circulating system that includes edible plants, there is certainly a place for aquaponics in this discussion. One of the more notable aspects of Allen’s operation is its water filtration system, which is set up to convert the toxic ammonia found in fish waste into Nitrogen, which in turn fuels healthy plant development. O’Hanlon insists that re-circulating systems like Growing Power’s won’t be able to produce enough fish to feed the world. This is likely true, but just as small-scale vegetable farmers fill a niche by catering to their regional population, small-scale aquaponics systems can meet localized demand, support local and regional economies, and serve as an alternative to large-scale production. Meanwhile, if businesses like Open Blue continue to refine their practices and work towards a more environmentally friendly means of providing healthy and affordable animal protein to a broader swath of the population, fish farming might just become the wave of the future.