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Regional Farm & Food Project December 2007 News If you are looking for clues to the future, these 13 news stories should interest you! 13 news stories...
* * * 1. New York Farming and Climate Instability "New York Farming and Climate Instability" is an educational event presented by Regional Farm & Food Project, Honest Weight Food Co-op and the New York Chapter of the Northeast Organic Farming Association. Dr. Cynthia Rosenzweig, IPCC/NASA scientist at Columbia University, will speak to New York State legislators and their staff members about climate instability and its impact on agriculture. Following a panel of farmers will discuss the issues and practical solutions. Wednesday, January 30th, 9:00 am to 12:00 noon 2. How It All Began: The Story of Stuff A brilliant 20-minute animated video designed to be watched on your computer. The Story of Stuff explains how planet Earth got where it is today. http://www.storyofstuff.com/?gclid=CKCy2evbuZACFRGCGgodZxvDMA 3. Regional Farm & Food Project Annual Meeting The Annual Meeting of the Regional Farm & Food Project will be held on Monday, January 14, 2008 at 6:30 pm at Java Jazz Café, 318 Delaware Avenue, Main Square Shoppes, Delmar, New York. This meeting is also the quarterly meeting of the Farm & Food Network, our business-to-business network for farm and food entrepreneurs. After a brief business meeting and RFFP board elections, Bill Reinhardt of NYSERDA will make a presentation on the NYSERDA Controlled Environment Agriculture program. All are welcome. Please join us. For more information on NYSERDA's Controlled Environment Agriculture program go to http://www.nyserda.org/programs/industry/CEA.asp New York Times, December 19, 2007 IN September, when Sasha Wizansky and Amy Standen published the inaugural issue of Meatpaper, a slender magazine that is, according to the cover, “Your Journal of Meat Culture,” they weren’t entirely surprised that both omnivores and vegetarians responded enthusiastically. “Responsible meat eating could hold its own as a philosophical position with people who are vegetarian,” Ms. Standen said. “Meatpaper is about every way of looking at meat. I think of it as a magazine that’s just as intended for vegetarians as it is for meat eaters.” “It’s about their response to meat,” Ms. Wizansky added. “And there are so many ways of responding to meat.” This week the second issue of Meatpaper, a quarterly based in San Francisco, hits newsstands. Its responses to meat are unflinching, and often humorous: a deliberation as to whether the Bible bans blood sausage, a photo essay on found meat, a married couple discussing cannibalism. (Not to give anything away, the husband both offers himself up and resigns himself to eating his companion, while the wife dodges the question.) The magazine names the present moment, when braised pork belly is comfort food and savvy diners know their Charolais from their Chianina, the “fleischgeist,” or spirit of meat. “We get e-mails from people who say, ‘We’re trying to get more in touch with our animal ethic — my friends and I are going in on a whole pig, and we’re going to learn all the traditional ways to process it,’”Ms. Wizansky said last week over a platter of house-cured salumi at Perbacco, a busy California Street restaurant in San Francisco. “It’s amazing how often we hear that,” Ms. Standen said, taking a sip of lambrusco. “I don’t know why, but our version of back-to-the-land is culinary.” Ms. Wizansky and Ms. Standen met while working at Salon, the online magazine. Last year Ms. Wizansky, now an independent graphic designer, asked Ms. Standen, a reporter for KQED public radio, to join with her in editing Meatpaper. Both are in their early 30s, and both were once committed vegetarians. (“We find over and over again that bacon is the conversion meat,” Ms. Standen said. “Bacon is how vegetarians change their minds.”) But having spent some time eating abroad — beef in England, foal in Slovenia — they devoured Perbacco’s ramekin of ciccioli, a rich pâté of shredded pork. “Sasha is an incredibly brave eater, and by far the braver of the two of us,” Ms. Standen said. “She will eat anything, and it’s a source of my undying admiration.” “So far I haven’t met the meat I wouldn’t eat,” Ms. Wizansky said. “But maybe I haven’t traveled enough to meet that meat.” “What could it be?” Ms. Standen asked. “Some organ? We ate duck testicles a few weeks ago at Incanto. They were very tasty.” “They were mild,” Ms. Wizansky said. “Like unassuming little sausages.” Chris Cosentino, the Incanto chef, contributed to the second issue with “Captain Beef Heart,” an article about his favorite offal. But if his recipe (for grilled beef heart salad) is the only one that appears in the magazine, it’s because Meatpaper, which has a circulation of 3,200, sees itself less a food magazine than an interdisciplinary art journal, more Esopus than Cook’s Illustrated. It explains why it’s available in New York not only at Marlow & Sons, the general store and pub in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, but at Project No. 8, the chic clothing boutique on the edge of Chinatown. But Ms. Wizansky and Ms. Standen have no interest in turning Meatpaper into an elitist polemic: they celebrate the fleischgeist and so far have held two publication parties, with loose plans for a third. “Meat makes a better party,” Ms. Standen said, explaining that at the second party even vegans enjoyed themselves around a table of cured meat. “It’s a little bit raunchy, kind of gross — it’s salty and savory.” “It riles people up, but in a good way,” Ms. Wizansky added. “People get very enthusiastic.” “Because they’re daring each other to taste these things,” Ms. Standen said. “There’s a certain daredevil aspect to it.” “Even the American barbecue is like that,” Ms. Wizansky said. “Meat is one of the only foods that can be the centerpiece of a gathering.” And, as they have shown, an entire magazine. Learn more about it at http://www.meatpaper.com http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/19/dining/19meat.html?ei=5070&en=148c9474dc4fb77b&ex=1198731600&emc=eta1&pagewanted=print 5. The Economist Explains the End of Cheap Food The Economist, December 6, 2007 One of the odder features of last weekend's vote in Venezuela was that staple foods were in short supply. Something similar happened in Russia before its parliamentary election. Governments in both oil-rich countries had imposed controls on food prices, with the usual consequences. Such controls have been surprisingly widespread—a knee-jerk response to one of the most remarkable changes that food markets, indeed any markets, have seen for years: the end of cheap food. In early September the world price of wheat rose to over $400 a tonne, the highest ever recorded. In May it had been around $200. Though in real terms its price is far below the heights it scaled in 1974, it is still twice the average of the past 25 years. Earlier this year the price of maize (corn) exceeded $175 a tonne, again a world record. It has fallen from its peak, as has that of wheat, but at $150 a tonne is still 50% above the average for 2006. As the price of one crop shoots up, farmers plant it to take advantage, switching land from other uses. So a rise in wheat prices has knock-on effects on other crops. Rice prices have hit records this year, although their rise has been slower. The Economist's food-price index is now at its highest since it began in 1845, having risen by one-third in the past year. Normally, sky-high food prices reflect scarcity caused by crop failure. Stocks are run down as everyone lives off last year's stores. This year harvests have been poor in some places, notably Australia, where the drought-hit wheat crop failed for the second year running. And world cereals stocks as a proportion of production are the lowest ever recorded. The run-down has been accentuated by the decision of large countries (America and China) to reduce stocks to save money. Yet what is most remarkable about the present bout of “agflation” is that record prices are being achieved at a time not of scarcity but of abundance. According to the International Grains Council, a trade body based in London, this year's total cereals crop will be 1.66 billion tonnes, the largest on record and 89m tonnes more than last year's harvest, another bumper crop. That the biggest grain harvest the world has ever seen is not enough to forestall scarcity prices tells you that something fundamental is affecting the world's demand for cereals. The meat of the question Two things, in fact. One is increasing wealth in China and India. This is stoking demand for meat in those countries, in turn boosting the demand for cereals to feed to animals. The use of grains for bread, tortillas and chapattis is linked to the growth of the world's population. It has been flat for decades, reflecting the slowing of population growth. But demand for meat is tied to economic growth (see chart 1) and global GDP is now in its fifth successive year of expansion at a rate of 4%-plus. Higher incomes in India and China have made hundreds of millions of people rich enough to afford meat and other foods. In 1985 the average Chinese consumer ate 20kg (44lb) of meat a year; now he eats more than 50kg. China's appetite for meat may be nearing satiation, but other countries are following behind: in developing countries as a whole, consumption of cereals has been flat since 1980, but demand for meat has doubled. Not surprisingly, farmers are switching, too: they now feed about 200m-250m more tonnes of grain to their animals than they did 20 years ago. That increase alone accounts for a significant share of the world's total cereals crop. Calorie for calorie, you need more grain if you eat it transformed into meat than if you eat it as bread: it takes three kilograms of cereals to produce a kilo of pork, eight for a kilo of beef. So a shift in diet is multiplied many times over in the grain markets. Since the late 1980s an inexorable annual increase of 1-2% in the demand for feedgrains has ratcheted up the overall demand for cereals and pushed up prices. Because this change in diet has been slow and incremental, it cannot explain the dramatic price movements of the past year. The second change can: the rampant demand for ethanol as fuel for American cars. In 2000 around 15m tonnes of America's maize crop was turned into ethanol; this year the quantity is likely to be around 85m tonnes. America is easily the world's largest maize exporter—and it now uses more of its maize crop for ethanol than it sells abroad. Ethanol is the dominant reason for this year's increase in grain prices. It accounts for the rise in the price of maize because the federal government has in practice waded into the market to mop up about one-third of America's corn harvest. A big expansion of the ethanol programme in 2005 explains why maize prices started rising in the first place. Ethanol accounts for some of the rise in the prices of other crops and foods too. Partly this is because maize is fed to animals, which are now more expensive to rear. Partly it is because America's farmers, eager to take advantage of the biofuels bonanza, went all out to produce maize this year, planting it on land previously devoted to wheat and soyabeans. This year America's maize harvest will be a jaw-dropping 335m tonnes, beating last year's by more than a quarter. The increase has been achieved partly at the expense of other food crops. This year the overall decline in stockpiles of all cereals will be about 53m tonnes—a very rough indication of by how much demand is outstripping supply. The increase in the amount of American maize going just to ethanol is about 30m tonnes. In other words, the demands of America's ethanol programme alone account for over half the world's unmet need for cereals. Without that programme, food prices would not be rising anything like as quickly as they have been. According to the World Bank, the grain needed to fill up an SUV would feed a person for a year. America's ethanol programme is a product of government subsidies. There are more than 200 different kinds, as well as a 54 cents-a-gallon tariff on imported ethanol. That keeps out greener Brazilian ethanol, which is made from sugar rather than maize. Federal subsidies alone cost $7 billion a year (equal to around $1.90 a gallon). In theory, what governments mandate, they can also scrap. But that seems unlikely with oil at the sort of price that makes them especially eager to promote alternative fuels. Subsidies might be trimmed, of course, reducing demand occasionally; this is happening a bit now. And eventually, new technologies to convert biomass to liquid fuel will replace ethanol—but that will take time. For the moment, support for the ethanol programme seems secure. Hillary Clinton and John McCain used to be against ethanol subsidies, but have changed their minds. Russia and Venezuela are not the only countries that like to meddle in food markets for political reasons. So demand for grain will probably remain high for a while. Demand, though, is only one side of the equation. Supply forms the other. If there is a run of bumper harvests, prices will fall back; if not, they will stay high. Harvests can rise only if new land is brought into cultivation or yields go up. This can happen fairly quickly. The world's cereal farmers responded enthusiastically to price signals by planting more high-value crops. And so messed-up is much of the rich world's farming systems that farmers in the West have often been paid not to grow crops—something that can easily be reversed, as happened this year when the European Union suspended the “set aside” part of its common agricultural policy. Still, there are limits to how much harvests can be expanded in the short term. In general, says a new report by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), which is financed by governments and development banks, the response tends to be sticky: a 10% rise in prices yields a 1-2% increase in supply. In the longer run, plenty of new farmland could be ploughed up and many technological gains could be had. But much of the new land is in remote parts of Brazil, Russia, Kazakhstan, the Congo and Sudan: it would require big investments in roads and other infrastructure, which could take decades—and would often lead to the clearing of precious forest. Big gains could be had if genetically modified foods were brought into production or if new seed varieties were planted in Africa. But again, that will take time. Moreover, GM foods will not live up to their promise unless they shed the popular suspicion that dogs them, especially in Europe. And some of the new land—dry, marginal areas of Africa, Brazil and Kazakhstan—could be vulnerable to damage from global warming. By some measures, global warming could cut world farm output by as much as one-sixth by 2020. No less worryingly, high oil prices would depress the use of oil-based fertilisers, which have been behind much of the increase in farm production during the past half-century. It is risky to predict long-run trends in farming—technology in particular always turns out unexpectedly—but most forecasters conclude from these conflicting currents that prices will stay high for as much as a decade. Because supplies will not match increases in demand, IFPRI believes, cereal prices will rise by between 10% and 20% by 2015. The UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation's forecast for 2016-17 is slightly higher. Whatever the exact amount, this year's agflation seems unlikely to be, as past rises have been, simply the upward side of a spike. If prices do not fall back, this will mark a break with the past. For decades, prices of cereals and other foods have been in decline, both in the shops and on world markets. The IMF's index of food prices in 2005 was slightly lower than it had been in 1974, which means that in real terms food prices fell during those 30 years by three-quarters (see chart 2). In the 1960s food (including meals out) accounted for one-quarter of the average American's spending; by 2005 the share was less than one-seventh. In other words, were food prices to stay more or less where they are today, it would be a radical departure from a past in which shoppers and farmers got used to a gentle decline in food prices year in, year out. It would put an end to the era of cheap food. And its effects would be felt everywhere, but especially in countries where food matters most: poor ones. A blessing and a curse If you took your cue from governments, you would conclude that dearer food was unequivocally a bad thing. About a score of countries have imposed food-price controls of some sort. Argentina, Morocco, Egypt, Mexico and China have put restraints on domestic prices. A dozen countries, including India, Vietnam, Serbia and Ukraine, have imposed export taxes or limited exports. Argentina and Russia have done both. In all these places governments are seeking to shelter their people from food-price rises by price controls. But dearer food is not a pure curse: it produces winners as well as losers. Obviously, farmers benefit—if governments allow them to keep the gains. In America, the world's biggest agricultural exporter, net farm income this year will be $87 billion, 50% more than the average of the past ten years. The prairie farmers of the Midwest are looking forward to their Caribbean cruises. Other beneficiaries are in poor countries. Food exporters such as India, South Africa and Swaziland will gain from increased export earnings. Countries such as Malawi and Zimbabwe, which used to export food but no longer do so, also stand to gain if they can boost their harvests. Given that commodity prices have been falling for so long in real terms, this would be an enormous relief to places that have suffered from a relentless decline in their terms of trade. In emerging markets an income gap has opened up between cities and countryside over the past few years. As countries have diversified away from agriculture into industry and services, urban wages have outstripped rural ones. Income inequality is conventionally measured using a scale running from zero to one called the Gini coefficient. A score of 0.5 is the mark of a highly unequal society. The Asian Development Bank reckons that China's Gini coefficient rose from 0.41 in 1993 to 0.47 in 2004. If farm incomes in poor countries are pushed up by higher food prices, that could mitigate the growing gap between city and countryside. But will it? Guess who loses According to the World Bank, 3 billion people live in rural areas in developing countries, of whom 2.5 billion are involved in farming. That 3 billion includes three-quarters of the world's poorest people. So in principle the poor overall should gain from higher farm incomes. In practice many will not. There are large numbers of people who lose more from higher food bills than they gain from higher farm incomes. Exactly how many varies widely from place to place. Among the losers from higher food prices are big importers. Japan, Mexico and Saudi Arabia will have to spend more to buy their food. Perhaps they can afford it. More worryingly, some of the poorest places in Asia (Bangladesh and Nepal) and Africa (Benin and Niger) also face higher food bills. Developing countries as a whole will spend over $50 billion importing cereals this year, 10% more than last. Rising prices will also hurt the most vulnerable of all. The World Food Programme, the main provider of emergency food aid, says the cost of its operations has increased by more than half in the past five years and will rise by another third in the next two. Food-aid flows have fallen to their lowest level since 1973. In every country, the least well-off consumers are hardest hit when food prices rise. This is true in rich and poor countries alike but the scale in the latter is altogether different. As Gary Becker, a Nobel economics laureate at the University of Chicago, points out, if food prices rise by one-third, they will reduce living standards in rich countries by about 3%, but in very poor ones by over 20%. Not all consumers in poor countries are equally vulnerable. The food of the poor in the Andes, for example, is potatoes; in Ethiopia, teff: neither is traded much across borders, so producers and consumers are less affected by rising world prices. As the World Bank's annual World Development Report shows, the number of urban consumers varies from over half the total number of poor in Bolivia, to about a quarter in Zambia and Ethiopia, to less than a tenth in Vietnam and Cambodia. But overall, enormous numbers of the poor—both urban and landless labourers—are net buyers of food, not net sellers. They have already been hard hit: witness the riots that took place in Mexico over tortilla prices earlier this year. According to IFPRI, the expansion of ethanol and other biofuels could reduce calorie intake by another 4-8% in Africa and 2-5% in Asia by 2020. For some countries, such as Afghanistan and Nigeria, which are only just above subsistence levels, such a fall in living standards could be catastrophic. So it is no good saying “let them eat cake”: there are strong welfare arguments for helping those who stand to lose. But the way you do it matters. In general, it is better to subsidise poor peoples' incomes, rather than food prices: this distorts price signals the least and allows farmers to benefit from higher prices. Where it is not possible to subsidise incomes (because to do so requires a decent civil service), it is still possible to minimise the unintended consequences if food subsidies are targeted and temporary. Morocco fixed bread prices (the food of the poor) during Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting; at the same time, it cut tariffs on food imports to increase competition. But a problem too In contrast, Russia shows how not to do it. It imposed across-the-board price controls on milk, eggs, bread and other staples, benefiting everyone whether they needed help or not. Food is disappearing from shelves and farmers are bearing the brunt. As Don Mitchell of the World Bank points out, “if you want to help consumers, you can do it without destroying your producers but only if you go about it in the right way.” In reality, many of the recent price controls are blatant politicking. About half the countries that imposed price controls did so before elections or other big political events. Russia's are due to run out just after next year's presidential election. Funny, that. There is one last important knock-on effect of agflation. It is likely to help shift the balance of power in the world economy further towards emerging markets. Higher food prices have increased inflation around the world, but by different amounts in different countries. In Europe and America food accounts for only about one-tenth of the consumer-price index, so even though food prices in rich countries are rising by around 5% a year, it has not made a big difference. There have been clucks of concern from the European Central Bank and a consumer boycott of pasta in Italy, but that is about all. In poor countries, in contrast, food accounts for half or more of the consumer-price index (over two-thirds in Bangladesh and Nigeria). Here, higher food prices have had a much bigger impact. Inflation in food prices in emerging markets nearly doubled in the past year, to 11%; meat and egg prices in China have gone up by almost 50% (although that is partly because pork prices have been pushed up by a disease in pigs). This has dragged up headline inflation in emerging markets from around 6% in 2006 to over 8% now. In many countries, inflation is at its highest for a decade. Central bankers are determined to ensure that what could be a one-off shift in food prices does not create continuing inflation by pushing up wages or creating expectations of higher prices. So they are tightening monetary policy. China increased interest rates in August, Chile in July, Mexico in May. The striking thing about these rises is that they are the opposite of what has been happening in some rich countries. The Federal Reserve reduced rates by 50 basis points in September and 25 points in October; the Bank of Canada cut rates this week. The indirect effect of food-price rises has therefore been to widen the interest-rate differential between rich and emerging markets. And all this is going on as the economic balance of power is shifting. Growth in America and Europe is slowing; China and India are going great guns. Financial confidence in the West has been shaken by the subprime-mortgage crisis; capital flows into emerging markets are setting records. This shift will be tricky to handle. Such transitions always are. The risk is of a bubble in emerging markets. As Simon Johnson, the IMF'S director of research, wryly notes, “every bubble starts with a change in the real economy.” Food markets are an obvious place to start. How emerging countries fare—and how poor consumers cope—depends on their economic policies. The imposition of food-price controls was not exactly a good start. http://www.economist.com/PrinterFriendly.cfm?story_id=10250420 6. Duped Tax Payers Fund For-Profit Bottled Water Companies On September 4th 2007, Nestlé Waters North America announced that it will further expand its operations in the United States with a new water bottling plant in Greenwood, Indiana. The 215,000 square foot plant will produce approximately one million single serve bottles of water per day and source its water from the public water system. This means that Nestlé will be adding another plant in the US – Nestlé already bottles tap water in Tennessee - that sources its water from municipal taps. While Pepsi (Aquafina) and Coke (Dasani) are the biggest users of municipal tap water as their primary source for bottling operations, Nestlé, which has until now sourced its water from wells or springs, has signaled a move to take water directly from municipal systems. Nestlé’s choice of location in Greenwood, Indiana is significant because the municipal water system is owned and managed by a huge multinational water services company: Indiana American Water, a subsidiary of German services giant RWE. While this is may not be the first time a large beverage company has sourced its water from a municipal system owned or managed by a multinational private water services company – 15% of US municipal systems are privately run, 5% in Canada – this is the first time Nestlé has strayed from wells or springs and settled in close to a tap. Aside from the numerous concerns inherent with the bottled water industry there are a number of disturbing issues that arise when bottled water companies purchase water from a private water company that specializes in taking over public water services from cash strapped municipal governments and then running them on a for-profit basis. The private water company in this case, Indiana American Water, manages water delivery in twenty one Indiana counties for 272,000 customers. Nestlé’s new plant will be located in Johnson County where Indiana American Water provides service to an area encompassing the cities of Greenwood and Franklin, as well as portions of Clark, Needham, Pleasant and White River townships. The company also sells water to municipally owned systems in New Whiteland and Whiteland. Undermining confidence in public water systems – a competitor in common Nestlé already plays a central role in undermining the public’s confidence in public utilities by convincing people to drink bottled water through advertising campaigns. Cultivating consumers’ willingness to pay more for a litre of bottled water than they pay for gasoline can help set the stage for public acceptance of privatized water services. The two industries, after all, share the same competitor – municipal managed tap water systems. When confidence in tap water is diminished through multibillion dollar advertising campaigns and the dependence on bottled water is grows, the likelihood of taxpayers advocating for municipally managed and delivered tap water will disappear. Funding for municipal water systems will decrease and local governments will eventually be forced to privatize when water infrastructure begins to crumble. This is when the private water services industry can move in and take over municipal systems, placing control of a precious resource in the hands of a few corporations. Bottled water companies occupy an important role in the dangerous play of privatization of public water services. Great Lakes Compact Loophole A major environmental issue arising from the proposed plant is its location in the Great Lakes basin and the large amount of water that will be diverted out of the region as bottled water. The Great Lakes St. Lawrence River basin is ostensibly protected from large water diversions by an agreement signed by the Governors of the eight Great Lakes states along with the Premiers of Ontario and Quebec. Despite the intentions of the agreement a loophole persists that will allow bottled water companies to divert large amounts of water away from the region in little plastic bottles. Signed in 2005, The Great Lakes St. Lawrence River Basin Water Resources Compact sets out how the State governments will manage and protect the Basin. One of the ways the Compact will do this is to control large diversions of water from the region. In the section dealing with water diversion the compact declares that "future diversions and consumption uses of basin water resources have the potential to significantly impact the environment, economy and welfare of the Great Lakes - St. Lawrence River region.” This strongly worded declaration is later contradicted when the Compact allows the diversion for consumption use of water provided it is shipped in containers no larger than 5.7 gallons (21.5 litres). This loophole will help facilitate bulk water transfers out of the Great Lakes Basins in trucks laden with bottled water. The only difference between this and a tanker truck of water are the thousands and thousands of little plastic bottles. Exporting millions of litres of water from the basin is made possible by this loophole, a loophole that serves the interest of Nestlé and Indiana American Water. CEO Water Mandate The bottled water and private water services industries are already working together to gain more control of this precious resource through the United Nations CEO Water Mandate an initiative by some of the global water giants, Nestlé, Coca Cola and Suez included. The Mandate, a non-binding voluntary agreement between corporations organized through the United Nations Global Compact, pushes for corporate control of water governance structures at all levels of government, civil society and in local communities. Alarming example Much like the CEO Water Mandate, Nestlé’s proposed plant in Johnson County represents an alarming example of how private water services corporations and bottled water multinationals are joining ranks to push for greater control and commodification of water resources. Feel free to distribute or cite this material on the condition the Polaris Institute is appropriately credited. Encourage friends and family to subscribe to NewsBytes, check out http://www.insidethebottle.org - monthly bytes exposing what's inside the bottle. Got a comment? - Let us know what's on your mind at richard@polarisinstitute.org Join the Water-warriors mailing list Water-warriors@fwwatch.org 7. Ingredients in Pepsi's Aquafina Alive Wellness Water Aquafina Alive WellnessWater "Aquafina Alive WellnessWater helps replenish and cleanse your body to help you feel your best. With only 10 calories per serving, a splash of real juice and E and B vitamins, Aquafina Alive is a simple thing you can do for your healthy lifestyle. Make your body happy. Drink Aquafina Alive." Ingredients listed on label:
For questions or comments call: 1-800-433-2652 According to Foodlinks America: Sugar is back in school. It was just last year that the major international beverage companies – Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and Cadbury Schweppes – in a deal brokered by ex-President Bill Clinton, agreed they would sell only water, low-fat milk, and 100 percent juices in U.S. elementary and middle schools to help reduce sugar intakes that are contributing to America’s obesity problem. In addition, sports drinks and light juices with no more than 66 calories per eight ounces would be allowable for high school students. But earlier this year, the beverage companies amended the agreement to permit “other drinks” with no more than 66 calories per eight ounces to be sold in high schools, opening the door for the vending of vitamin waters – basically sugar water with vitamins added. Vitamin waters appear to be a fast growing market the beverage companies want to cash in on. Industry claims it was just tweaking the standards and the changes are “much ado about nothing,” according to the American Beverage Association. Not so, say nutrition advocates. “This is a huge loophole that will bring lots more sugar and calories into kids’ diets,” claimed Margo Wootan, director for nutrition policy at the Center for Science in the Public Interest in Washington, D.C. Kate Cyrul, a spokesperson for the Senate Agriculture Committee, chaired by Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA), who has long sought federal oversight of school drink sales, called the industry move a “quiet backsliding to sneak sugary beverages into our schools again. For the sake of our children’s health, Congress should pass science-based school nutrition standards that cannot be altered at the request of just a few parties and without public input,” she added. Foodlinks America is published by California Emergency Foodlink in Sacramento, CA. Foodlinks America is not copyrighted, so the information can be freely shared with colleagues and friends, though attribution for reprinted articles is appreciated. 8. Local Author Publishes Ground-Breaking Farm to School Cookbook Fresh From the Farm: The Massachusetts Farm to School Cookbook Better student nutrition and a boost for farm sales are the dual aims of a new groundbreaking book, Fresh From the Farm: The Massachusetts Farm to School Cookbook. The book, which is now available online through the Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources website, is a tool for school food service staffs, training them how to work with farm-fresh food and introduce more local produce into school lunches. Print copies will be published and distributed to every school district in the state through the Massachusetts Department of Education, who will soon list it on their website where school food service directors procure their food. With the new federal mandate to include more produce in school lunches and the increasing discussion of childhood obesity, the schools are under enormous pressure to improve school lunches. But they have tight budgets and limited food preparation time. Fresh From the Farm: The Massachusetts Farm to School Cookbook contains 46 recipes using seasonal produce, many emphasizing valued-added farm produce such as already sliced carrots or peel butternut squash, to ease school preparation time. The book is jammed with easy-to-follow educational tips on preparing fresh produce and seasonal buying, along with resources for procurement from nearby farms. All recipes include a nutritional analysis and safety guidelines. There is an addendum for educators with classroom lessons, focusing on the importance of fresh food and the farm to table connection, with a lesson plan development bingo game for educators on how to integrate the book’s concepts into existing mandatory school frameworks. The book’s recipes were tested statewide for their ease of preparation and student receptivity. School food service professionals submitted requests, some of the recipes, as well as ideas on how to make the book effective. As a result, this empowering book quotes specific personnel who participated in the project. “I wasn’t interested in creating a book that would get dusty on the shelf,” says author Amy Cotler. “I want to implement real change. So I needed to engage the kitchen staff and appeal to the students. The book’s recipes were served at school lunches and tastings were wheeled around in carts with questionnaires for feedback, which I incorporated into the book.” Ms. Cotler conceived and wrote the grant for this yearlong project after giving numerous cooking lessons in school kitchens across the state. The Mass Farm to School Project was already starting to connect schools to farms, but after working with processed foods for decades, many school kitchens personnel simply didn’t have the skills necessary to prepare fresh foods. Ms. Cotler was formerly executive director of Berkshire Grown, a non-profit supporting local food and farms, and has consulted and lectured nationally on farm to table issues. The book project was a unique collaboration, supported by an advisory board of members from The Massachusetts Farm to School Project, The Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources, The Massachusetts Department of Education, the School Nutrition Association of Massachusetts, as well as several school nutritionists and food service directors. Fresh From the Farm: The Farm to School Cookbook can be easily downloaded: http://www.mass.gov/agr/markets/Farm_to_school/index.htm Contact Amy Cotler, Fresh & Company at amy@freshcotler.com 9. How We Killed the Gulf of Mexico Monsanto GE Corn Technology Approved for Insurance Pilot Program A new pilot program recently approved by the Federal Crop Insurance Corporation (FCIC) will provide farmers an opportunity to pay lower premiums if they plant a majority of their corn acres using hybrid seeds that feature YieldGard Plus® with Roundup Ready® Corn 2 or YieldGard VT Triple™ technology from Monsanto Company (NYSE: MON). The insurance product will be offered as a pilot program in cooperation with Western Agriculture Insurance Company and will be called the Biotech Yield Endorsement (BYE). Western Agriculture Insurance will make the program available to all other approved insurance providers to offer to their farmer customers. The pilot program will initially be available in four states: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa and Minnesota. Implementation of BYE has yet to be determined pending available resources and priorities for the deployment and administration of the program by the Risk Management Agency (RMA). To be eligible for the program, a farmer must plant 75 to 80 percent of their corn acres with seeds featuring YieldGard Plus with Roundup Ready Corn 2 or YieldGard VT Triple technology. Refuge requirements must also be respected. Depending on the grower’s production history, amount of coverage purchased and other criteria, the farmer may be able to reduce the yield component of their premium up to 24 percent. “As a technology provider, our goal is to create technologies that help farmers consistently deliver better yields, manage their production risk and capture more value from their corn fields,” said Robb Fraley, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer for Monsanto Company. “This program recognizes the consistently high yields that farmers using our technologies are able to deliver. We’re pleased farmers will be able to take advantage of this new insurance product.” Under adverse conditions, Monsanto “triple stack” technologies, or seeds that feature three biotechnology genes, have exhibited higher yields and lower yield risk than conventional hybrids without the technology. These triple stack technologies are widely available to farmers and can be purchased through more than 250 corn seed companies that license the technologies. According to 2006 harvest figures from the National Corn Growers Association, the four pilot states accounted for more than 50 percent of the corn acres harvested for grain in the United States. In 2007 there were more than 90 million acres of corn planted overall, representing the largest crop since 1944. 10. Pesticide Exposure Tied to Asthma in Farmers Scientific American, September 17, 2007 NEW YORK (Reuters Health) -- Exposure to several commonly used pesticides appears to increase the risk of asthma, US researchers report. This finding stems from a study of nearly 20,000 farmers, which was presented Sunday at the European Respiratory Society Annual Congress in Stockholm. Pesticide exposure is a "potential risk factor for asthma and respiratory symptoms among farmers," lead author Dr. Jane A. Hoppin, from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, told Reuters Health. "Because grains and animals are more common exposures in agricultural settings, pesticides may be overlooked," Hoppin warned, adding: "Better education and training of farmers and pesticide handlers may help to reduce asthma risk." Of the 19,704 farmers included in the study, 127 had self-reported (doctor diagnosed) allergic asthma and 314 had non-allergic asthma. The main finding was that a history of high pesticide exposure was associated with a doubling of asthma risk, Hoppin noted. The link remained statistically significant after adjusting for a variety of potentially confounding factors including age, smoking, body weight, and state of residence. Overall, 16 of the pesticides studied were associated with asthma: 12 with the allergic variety of asthma and 4 with the non-allergic type. Coumaphos, EPTC, lindane, parathion, heptachlor, and 2,4,5-TP were most strongly linked to allergic asthma. For non-allergic asthma, DDT, malathion, and phorate had the strongest effect. "This is the first study with sufficient power to evaluate individual pesticides and adult asthma among individuals who routinely apply pesticides," Hoppin noted. Moreover, this is the only study to date to do this for allergic and non-allergic asthma separately, the researcher said. Copyright 1996-2007 Scientific American, Inc. 11. Organic: Even Rats Know the Difference New York Times, October 3, 2007 IN any controversy it can be helpful to consider the views of disinterested parties. So, on the subject of agricultural policy and practice, it’s worth noting that an unimpeachably neutral group has joined the ranks of those who prefer organic foods over foods produced with the help of synthetic chemicals. That group is 40 Swiss rats. A team of Swiss and Austrian scientists recently concluded a 21-year study of organic wheat production. As an “integrative method” for assessing quality, they gave lab animals a choice of biscuits made from organic or conventional wheat. The rats ate significantly more of the former. The authors call this result remarkable, because they found the two wheats to be very similar in chemical composition and baking performance. In fact, the rats were better at telling the difference between organic and conventional foods than many humans have been. In the handful of carefully designed taste-offs reported in the last few years, people were often unable to identify the organic foods, and often didn’t prefer them. This is puzzling, since organic produce generally does pack more antioxidants and other potentially healthful — and potentially flavorful — phytochemicals than conventional produce. Just last July, Professor Alyson Mitchell and colleagues at the University of California, Davis summarized 10 years of data from tomatoes grown in carefully controlled organic and conventional systems. The antioxidant contents varied from year to year, but were consistently higher in the organic tomatoes. What do phytochemicals have to do with flavor? Phytochemicals are chemicals created by plants, and especially those that have effects on other creatures. Plants make many of them to defend themselves against microbes and insects: to make themselves unpalatable, counterattack the invaders and limit the damage they cause. Most of the aromas of vegetables, herbs and spices come from defensive chemicals. They may smell pleasant to us, but the plants make them to repel their mortal enemies. Why should organic produce have higher phytochemical levels? The current theory is that because plants in organic production are unprotected by pesticides and fungicides, they are more stressed by insects and disease microbes than conventional crops, and have to work harder to protect themselves. So it makes sense that organic produce would have more intense flavors. For some reason, taste tests haven’t consistently found this to be the case. This puzzle remains unsolved. But a few pieces have come together to reveal a simple way of getting more flavor into some kinds of produce no matter how or where it’s grown. And that includes backyards and windowsills. Plants sense and respond to any kind of attack by means of chemical signals. Cells in the attacked area first detect telltale molecules from the invader. Then they respond by releasing warning molecules that trigger the rest of the plant — and even neighboring plants — to start producing chemical defenses. Biologists discovered many years ago that they could induce the plant’s defensive response without any live insect or fungus. All they had to do was supply the initial chemical signals — the invader molecules or the plant’s warning chemicals. At Clemson University, Dr. Hyun-Jin Kim and Professor Feng Chen recently exploited this fact to intensify the flavor of basil plants. They induced a defensive response in the plants by exposing them to a material derived from chitin, a long chainlike molecule that funguses use to reinforce their cell walls. Insects and crustaceans also build their hard exoskeletons out of chitin. The chitin from crab and shrimp waste is processed industrially to make a shortened form called chitosan, and this is what the Clemson food scientists used. They soaked basil seeds for 30 minutes in a chitosan solution, then soaked the roots again when they transferred the seedlings to larger pots. After 45 days, they compared the chemical composition of leaves from treated and untreated plants. They found that at the optimum chitosan concentration, the antioxidant activity in treated plants was greater by more than three times. The overall production of aroma compounds was up by nearly 50 percent, and the levels of clove-like and flowery components doubled. Chitosan is readily available as a dietary supplement that supposedly encourages weight loss. When I asked Professor Chen by e-mail if chitosan capsules from the health food store dissolved in water would work as well as his lab-grade chemical, he replied, “I would guess they will have the same or similar effect.” He added, “I would like to encourage master gardeners to try them for fresh aromas.” A few years ago I gave up my big garden for a few pots of dwarf citrus and herbs. I’m currently pseudostressing a pot of basil and cilantro seedlings, hoping for freshly intensified flavors that won’t require a rodent’s nose to appreciate. Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company 12. New York State Council on Food Policy Issues Report to Governor http://www.agmkt.state.ny.us/foodpolicycouncil.html The New York State Council on Food Policy was created in May of 2007 by Governor Eliot Spitzer’s Executive Order No. 13, in which it is recognized that a need exists to support the State’s agricultural industry as well as to ensure that all New Yorkers have access to safe, affordable, nutritious food. The twenty-one members of the Council on Food Policy were appointed in September of 2007 after a rigorous and thoughtful selection process. The Council members include seven state agency heads and 14 members from the public and non-profit sectors. Together they represent nearly all aspects of the food system. At the time of appointment, Governor Spitzer charged the members of the Council with the tasks of helping the State coordinate its food-related policies and promote healthier communities. In October of 2007, the Council on Food Policy held its first meeting in Albany, NY. This meeting was open to the public and well attended. The meeting consisted of short overviews of: State demographics, some of the existing food security and nutrition related programs operating in the State, and the food industry in the State. A discussion period followed in which Council members expressed their food policy priorities and offered suggestions for key issue areas to focus upon in the coming year. Many members of the public seized the opportunity to contribute their food policy related comments and concerns to the Council members. As a result of information shared at the Council meeting, individual expertise, and consideration of public comments, Council members identified four (4) key food policy issue areas for more in-depth examination in the coming year. Maximization of collaboration potential along agency, public and private sector lines within these key issue areas contributed to the discourse. Health concerns, such as the need to combat diet-related diseases such as obesity, diabetes and heart disease strongly influence all priorities presented. Key Issue Areas identified by the Council on Food Policy are as follows:
Researching and evaluating the efficacy of the Key Issue Areas and associated priorities to meet the objectives of Executive Order No. 13 will be the basis for Council activities in the coming year. The Council proposes to develop and recommend a specific food policy for the State that will ensure the availability of an adequate supply of affordable, fresh and nutritious food to its residents, and expand agricultural production. Additionally, the Council proposes to develop and recommend a strategic plan for implementation of the State food policy, including benchmarks and criteria for measuring progress. Further, the Council intends on offering comments on State regulations, legislation and budget proposals in the area of food policy. Being highly sensitive to the value of stakeholder input to gain accurate perspective on the issues, the Council members are preparing to hold numerous public hearings around the State. The next scheduled meetings for the Council are in May and October of 2008 or as business requires. The full text of the NYS Council on Food Policy Report to the Governor and Appendixes are available at http://www.agmkt.state.ny.us/foodpolicycouncil.html For information about the NYS Council on Food Policy contact: 13. The Ethicurean: Chew the Right Thing eth•i•cu•re•an n. (also adj.) Someone who seeks out tasty things that are also Sustainable, Organic, Local, and/or Ethical — SOLE food, for short. A news round-up farm and food blog with an entertaining perspective: http://www.ethicurean.com |
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