Haiti is an amazing test case of the risks and failures of the global food economy.  Yet most recovery funding is being guided toward the same failed models of the past.  Hands That Feed is a non-profit documentary that explores Haiti’s agricultural collapse, its role in the post-quake crisis, and the alternative, grassroots sustainable agriculture-based recovery models that seek to restore Haiti’s food supply and environment.  There are 4 days remaining for the public to decide whether this film is made.

The importance of Hands That Feed was recently written about on Civil Eats, Grist.com, Food First, Elephant Journal, Change.org, and more than a dozen other food, haiti, and social justice blogs.  The film is supported through grassroots funding on Kickstarter, and if it doesn’t hit its goal by Monday, the project simply dies.

Even former president Bill Clinton is admitting the incredible error of the policies he championed in the 1990’s, both in Haiti and globally.  The following video opens with Clinton’s striking admission before the US Senate on March 10th, 2010.  It then goes on the introduce the concept of Hands That Feed:

When will the international aid industry and policy-makers begin to actually act upon the implications of Clinton’s reversal?  This is like turning a battleship.  Yet  Haiti’s strong agricultural traditions and demographics, combined with its ecological imperatives, have made the country a testing ground for emerging, alternative development models – approaches which use sustainable agriculture and agro-forestry as the basis for fostering self-reliance, vibrant rural economies, food security, and ecological restoration.  Despite great efforts in the field, in order to secure the attention and funding required to truly shape a new future for Haiti, I believe it is absolutely critical that these demonstrated successes be brought to global consciousness through successful media.  Thus Hands That Feed.

Furthermore, Haiti stands as an extreme test case of a failed development exercise in America’s backyard.  Yet Haiti’s social and ecological challenges mirror those faced throughout much of the Developing World.  Sustainable food security is the global challenge of the 21st century – the medium through which myriad other crises will be experienced. Haiti’s collapse, and the potential to rebuild sustainably, stands as an unparalleled “teachable moment” for the world that must not slip by.

Today, urban agriculture, “urban ag”, is not simply about delicious, local food, it’s about creating new food production and delivery systems, it’s about public health and food justice. Boston chefs, community advocates and entrepreneurs are broadening the dialog and shortening the distance between farm and table. Never mind the 100 mile diet, how about 100 blocks, or 100 steps?

Meet a few new urban farmers, giving us a window into the promises and the challenges of urban agriculture in its many forms.

Since 1992 The Food Project has been bringing young people and adults together to learn about creating new food systems through urban agriculture. Today they farm 4 acres in 7 urban communities and 36 additional suburban acres. Most recent harvests included over 200,000 pounds of produce, with nearly 50,000 pounds donated to various hunger relief organizations. The rest is primarily sold via 492 CSAs and 4 farmers’ markets in low-income neighborhoods including some located in what were previously food deserts. The documentary Planting for Peace: Bury Seeds, Not Bodies (“P4P”) shows the impact of urban agriculture and support from organizations like The Food Project.

I met the film maker, Mike Cermak at a youth growers event prior to the screening of Fresh, the award-winning film by Ana Sofia Joanes. Cermak’s documentary tells the story of urban ag’s power to change young lives, documenting La Nuestra Huerta (supported by Neighborhood of Affordable Housing in East Boston and ReVision Farm in Dorchester. P4P shows how gardens and farming are used to teach valuable skills to youth against the backdrop of urban violence. Young gardeners named the two raised beds “Hope” and “Faith” – hope that they can bring change to urban food systems and enhance lives. And faith, that they can grow, sell, reinvest and replenish the food desert and work for food justice.

One of the challenges highlighted by the experience of youth gardeners is the inflexibility in school lunch systems. The gardens, often located near schools, grow more than food. They grow life skills. And yet, the young growers are unable to sell their produce into their own schools.

On the Menu

Chefs like Steve Johnson at Rendezvous in Central Square and Marco Suarez of Ledge Kitchen & Drinks in Dorchester know that fresh is better. And local – really local – is as fresh as it gets. When produce comes to the kitchen from atop your own roof, you’re making significantly less environmental impact – no trucking, packaging, refrigeration. You’re also getting produce at its peak of ripeness, something that makes chefs swoon.

On a recent visit with Johnson, I got to see how he’s capturing water from rooftop air conditioning units to water his herb garden. Through capillary action the crates of herbs and vegetables take up the water as needed. Only rarely has he had to supplement the self-watering with additional H20. Johnson’s eyes light up when he speaks of the potential to recapture water that would otherwise be wasted. “This is one small building, imagine how much water could be captured from any one of these surrounding us?” One unit alone on his roof produces 15 gallons of water per day, it’s clean water, simply condensation from the air conditioning systems.

His Sunday menu features rooftop radishes and herbs. Rosemary is used in many ways including infusing the olive oil for the crackers served with each meal. Chiles show up in ceviche. Purslane, lovage, lavender, chervil, mint, even potatoes are grown in crates and he’s built a winter box of reclaimed cedar and windows to shelter the plants which winter-over on the roof. Johnson is not seeking to fully supply his kitchen from his garden. But, like other chefs, he gets enormous personal satisfaction from the garden and from sharing the experience with his kitchen staff, many of whom are new to the experience. They find inspiration in working with produce grown steps away from the kitchen. Look for mint to show up in Rendezvous’ inventive summer libations, too.

Johnson is humble about his “little garden” but it serves as a potent, and fragrant, reminder that even small steps can be inspiring.

From Empty Lots to Full Larders

Glynn Lloyd, City Fresh Foods’ CEO and co-founder of City Growers is committed to providing local, sustainable food for the urban community. He is also focusing his company on implementing a whole new model of food production and delivery systems. Both Lloyd and City Growers co-founder Margaret Connors know very well the challenges of growing and changing infrastructure, capturing funders’ attention, and managing a base of support.

City Growers was founded on the premise that unused space in urban areas could be developed for the purpose of renewing neighbors’ connection to their food sources. Reclaiming, remediating sites that are fallow or may have become environmental “brown fields”. City Growers successfully turns them into raised bed, organic gardens producing healthy food from space that was once wasted.

In a 1/4 acre plot behind the Sportsman’s Club in Dorchester, and on two acres in Milton, City Growers is building a model of a new food system. First, land is reclaimed, improved with raised beds of clean fresh soil before healthy gardens can be planted. Sometimes this involves negotiations with the city, or landlords, or both. Can they grow a model that provides green jobs? Can economic sustainability be built into the model? So far, one talented grower, “Farmer Tim” is sustained and other farm managers, workers and volunteers are being recruited and trained from local neighborhoods.

Delivering Change

Then, there’s the delivery models. Not only the actual physical delivery (much is done by pedal power!) of the produce, but also the management of the CSA and restaurant deliveries. Can the vagaries of Mother Nature be coaxed into meeting chefs’ regular need for inventory, and on what scale? So far several local restaurants have found delicious reasons to work with City Growers for at least some of their regular produce needs.

Big goals inspire and big challenges persist, but they remain optimistic about the value of the good agricultural practices and the promise of a new urban economy. New acreage is constantly being reviewed and added, zoning meetings go on, plantings are rotated and food — good, organic, local food — is grown by and sold to locals, finding its way into neighborhood restaurants and onto the tables of families, schools, child care and senior centers who once lived in food deserts. Standing among the newly replanted beds, with the sound of children playing nearby, you feel they are growing more than beets, arugula and lettuces. They are growing hope and a future for those kids that includes healthy, local food. They are growing a new food economy.

For further info:
The Food Project: “The Food Project’s mission is to create a thoughtful and productive community of youth and adults from diverse backgrounds who work together to build a sustainable food system.”

Fresh: a film by Ana Sofia Joanes. Look for local screenings and follow news on the Fresh blog, including the series “Women Who Nourish Us.”

In my last post I described swidden agriculture, the system of clearing small patches of forest for farming, then leaving them to regenerate forest cover during decades. There are many myths and misconceptions surrounding swidden agriculture, and I wanted to address some of them in the current post. I was inspired to address this topic after seeing a video about the Alternatives to Slash and Burn project in which the Earth Institute participates. This project involves the detailed measurement of social, economic, and ecological aspects of different systems of land use in tropical forest areas around the globe. It is a long-term project, spanning over various decades. So I was surprised to see some of the old anti-swidden agriculture prejudices bandied about by people who should know better. Anyway, I’m going to address some disagreements I have with the Earth Institute’s presentation, not to pick on the Earth Institute but because the presentation touches on many contentious issues surrounding swidden agriculture. I should make the disclaimer that the presentation I saw and critique here was basically a launch for a book called Alternatives to Slash and Burn. I have not yet read this book, so I limit my comments to the video presentation. David Kummer has written a review of the Alternatives to Slash and Burn book. He knows a lot more than I do about the subject, and I feel he gives a fair review, with qualified praise and some critiques that come from his personal experience.

Corn planted in swidden

The Earth Institute conference presents some interesting charts regarding different uses of tropical forest. They compare unused forest, different styles of managed logging, swidden agriculture, intensive and extensive agroforestry plantations, annual cropping, and conversion of forest to pasture. The Earth Institute’s figures on biodiversity indicate that swidden-farmed forest is about as biodiverse as unused forest. Another graphic in the presentation shows the carbon stored in above-ground and below-ground biomass in each system. It clearly indicates that the most carbon is stored in an intact forest, followed by a swidden agriculture forest, and with annual cropping trapping the least carbon above and below-ground. I have a methodological problem with this chart. It’s not incorrect in its measurements, but what it chooses to measure is of questionable value. A forest managed by swidden farmers reaches a high level of biomass after a few decades of fallow. In fact, a forest that was cropped over fifty years ago looks little different than a so-called primary forest. Of course, when that forest is cut and burned by a farmer, much of the carbon stored in the trees and plants goes into the air as carbon dioxide. But this is not really a net emission of CO2, because the carbon released by the burned plants is carbon that was taken from the atmosphere by those plants, and the new forest that is generated after cropping will once again trap the same amount of CO2. The Earth Institute chart looks at average biomass over time, so the swidden agriculture forest comes off as if it sequestered less carbon than an intact forest, but in fact at certain moments the amount of carbon stored in both forests is about the same. The issue is that in a swidden-managed forest, the carbon is in flux, at some times being emitted when the forest is burned, and at other times being absorbed as the forest regrows. An untouched forest, on the contrary, is basically static. Once it reaches maturity, it doesn’t absorb much more carbon than it emits.

It’s understandable that industrial-world polluters that are concerned about global warming would want to minimize carbon “emissions” from tropical forest clearing, but in the case of swidden agriculture, there is really no net emission over time for a given parcel. Likewise, the idea of carbon offsets, whereby an industrial company pays a tropical farmer not to clear forest, is sort of silly in this context. If an industry is burning fossil fuels, then a standing forest doesn’t lessen the CO2 emitted by that industry. Chopping down the forest will emit even more CO2, but leaving it doesn’t absorb CO2. Carbon offsets make sense when it’s a question of replanting forest on non-forest land, because as that forest grows it will absorb CO2 that wouldn’t have been absorbed from the atmosphere otherwise.

There is also a problem in considering logged lumber as a carbon loss. In fact, if a tree is extracted from a forest to be sold as lumber, the carbon captured in that tree remains in the house or table the lumber is used for, and the new tree that grows in its place will absorb even more CO2, so the net effect is that in terms of carbon sequestration, selective logging coupled with swidden agriculture might actually be a better alternative than leaving a forest unused.

Another error that the Earth Institute makes is that it seems to consider different uses of forest as mutually exclusive. But as far as I know, most people who practice swidden agriculture are cultivating a sequence of annual crops followed by plantation crops, which they mix with selective logging, extraction of other forest resources, and hunting and fishing. The Earth Institute correctly calculates that none of these activities alone provides for a very decent livelihood, but the combination of them certainly can. Even in areas where swidden agriculture and other associated forest activities only provide a subsistence livelihood, that is an improvement over the low wages and even debt slavery that prevail in other, environmentally unsustainable systems of forest use.

The Earth Institute does sometimes draw a line between swidden agriculture and other forms of forest exploitation. But this is done almost as an afterthought, and for the most part they lump swidden agriculture together with abusive practices, presenting them all as a continuum of forest use intensity. I have to think that after their long-term, well-done, detailed research in various tropical forests of the world, they know that swidden agriculture is of an inherently different nature from clearcutting forest or converting it to plantations or cattle ranches. Swidden agriculture as it is practiced in most tropical forests today is not just one point on a gradient of forest-degrading production systems; it is totally distinct from any system that permanently replaces forest with other landscape types. This map from the January 2007 National Geographic shows how indigenous areas of the Brazilian Amazon are “islands of pristine wilderness amid destruction”. Though the “pristine” label is a bit romantic, the map shows that the areas of healthiest forest are precisely where people practice swidden agriculture.

The only explanation I can think of for the Earth Institute’s apparent lack of precision is that they think swidden agriculture is not an important phenomenon on the worldwide scale, so it’s not worthwhile to get into detailed discussions of it. The Alternatives to Slash and Burn project focuses on the forest margins in different parts of the world, where agriculture and other uses are permanently replacing forest. Indeed, if the concern is permanent deforestation at the margins of major tropical forests, swidden agriculture is not a cause, so it shouldn’t get much attention. The major causes of deforestation are the other systems the conference focuses on, which involve a permanent conversion of forest to other uses. But I have read statistics to the effect that over half a billion people in the world today make their living from swidden agriculture, so we can’t simply dismiss it as a minor global phenomenon. And given that the Earth Institute and the other groups involved with the Alternatives to Slash and Burn project are looking to promote more sustainable uses of forests, they should be giving some serious consideration to what seems to be the most ancient, long-lived system for sustainably using tropical forests.

The Earth Institute makes clear that the main causes of deforestation are logging and conversion of forest to plantations and pastures, but the general public and even policy makers (those to whom initiatives like the Alternatives to Slash and Burn project are addressed) are not so nuanced in their analyses. In the recent past, in both popular perception and even in concrete government policies, swidden agriculture is often mistakenly singled out as the prime cause for deforestation in the world. An article entitled “How blaming ’slash and burn’ farmers is deforesting mainland Southeast Asia” points out that years of prejudice and international pressure have led many Southeast Asian governments to try to change swidden agriculture communities away from their traditional practices. (There are also other political reasons for governments to want to sedentarize certain populations–permanent villages are easier to tax, easier to provide services to, and easier to keep an eye on). But if swidden-dependent communities convert to more permanent forms of agriculture, they will in fact have a grave impact on the forest. Also, by the scapegoating of small swidden farmers, world society in general is distracted from the preponderant role of large-scale commercial agriculture and logging in the clearing of forest.

A professor of mine who has worked with tribal communities in northern Thailand has done research indicating that certain draconian laws of the Thai government, which prevented these communities from practicing swidden agriculture, had destroyed their livelihoods and increased the incidence of families’ sending their daughters to Bangkok to work in the sex trade. Laos, on the other hand, seems to have some sensible policies that allow tribal people to cultivate a certain amount of forest land in a year, hence allowing swidden agriculture while ensuring that the forest is not over-exploited.

Mosaic (foreground to background) of permanent rice fields, cleared swidden fields, young forest, and mature forest in a tribal area of Laos

The Earth Institute’s Pedro Sanchez makes a frank admission towards the end of his presentation. He says he had initially believed that improving land use productivity at the forest margin would decrease the need for people to clear more forest. But in years of research he has found that to be only partially true. If the land is converted to cattle pasture or soybean fields, productivity rises but few people gain employment. So Sanchez now believes that the important thing is to make sure land use is both productive and labor-intensive. This means that it’s important to promote mixed agroforestry systems, which provide a decent income, demand lots of labor, and also happen to retain intermediate levels of biodiversity and carbon sequestration.

I think this discovery and admission on Sanchez’s part is a good thing, as is the Earth Institute’s increasing focus on landscape-scale management of forest areas (for example maybe it’s not so destructive to convert certain forest parcels to intensive annual cropping if the hilltops and some strategic corridors are maintained in natural forest or other, less destructive land uses). But I worry that by dismissing the importance and sustainability of swidden agriculture, researchers may continue to marginalize this highly sustainable system, as well as missing out on ways of making swidden agriculture more productive and incorporating some of its principles into other farming systems.

My husband and I are privileged to have 6 grandparents between us, all of whom are now in their 80s and 90s. I can clearly remember as a child watching mine at birthday parties, unwrapping presents, carefully saving each piece of paper and folding them neatly – for use again at someone else’s birthday! That, and never writing on the outside of envelopes (so that you could use them again and again) really used to make me wonder: why didn’t they just get new paper and cards each time, like we did? Who would want to give a present with some second hand tape with wrinkles in the wrong places?

They used to say, “waste not, want not“. As a child, I admit I never really understood that. It was only when I left home and became responsible for running our household, that the penny finally dropped.

Do we really think about what – and how much – we throw away every day?

Freeganism

Some discarded edible fresh goods: sustaining a Freegan lifestyle

It is a movement of people who (not for reasons of poverty or desperation, but for political, social and environmental reasons) choose an anti-consumerist way of life.

One of the main aims of Freeganism is to reduce waste and limit the amount of destruction that results from the production of goods. Freegans often frequent supermarket and restaurant dumpsters and “forage” on whatever “waste” they can find. Mostly, they will find food that is still good, but perhaps in damaged packaging, slightly burnt, a little out of shape or just about to expire.

This leads us to question what kind of waste management practices supermarkets and food service establishments have, and how ethical or conscious they are.

For anyone who runs a household, you’ll know just how much time it takes to make sure that there is enough food, drink and other consumables to keep everyone happy. And I think sometimes we too quickly just throw things in the trash, without giving it another thought. We tend to focus a lot more energy on what we are buying, and hardly give a second thought to what we throw away.

What’s in the trash?  The study of garbage.

Yes, this really does exist! Its called garbology. Marketing researchers use it to try and get a better understanding of people’s consumption behaviour (if you can monitor and analyse what people BUY, then surely analysing what people THROW AWAY can be even more insightful – since you know what they have really consumed, vs. what may have ended up in the back of the cupboard).

Anthropologists also use this technique to help us understand ancient civilizations of the past, who have left no trace or evidence of their being other than their waste. It is also now being used as an educational tool to help people and industry to understand how they can implement better waste management practices.

What can we do with our trash?

In an effort to achieve ultimate sustainability, we need to become more conscious of what we purchase – but also mindful about what we throw away. Simple practices like worm farming in the home are fabulous ways of reducing trash that may have ordinarily been discarded, and unnecessarily cluttering up a land fill site. Here are some easy steps to setting it up and getting it right.

Worm farms don’t have to take up a lot of space

Composting and mulching are also great ways of keeping your garden tidy, happy, and your trash to a minimum.

What about those that you share your household with? Instead of purchasing “specially formulated dog food” (which, by the time you feed it to your best friend is actually about a year old) how about cooking up the kitchen scraps? Any leftovers, vegetable peels and the like make a treat for our canine companions. When I tried this, I watched how not only the awful skin irritations on my border collie disappeared within days, but how his hyperactive obsessive temperament waned. I could compare him to a child with ADD who suddenly found his sense of calm. And needless to say dinner time is always a treat!

The garden also loves used tea bags and coffee grounds. I collect the coffee and red espresso® “pucks” (or round ground residues that you remove from your espresso maker) from our offices and dig them into my flower beds. Rooibos tea makes excellent compost, as does coffee, and my garden has the faint, delicious scent of a bustling coffee shop!

“An historic shift found amongst consumers”

I was thrilled to read a report by Euro RSCG that shows the shifts in consumer consciousness and their discontent about mindless consumption.

It states that people are craving a more fulfilled, meaningful and satisfying approach to life, and are really starting to move away from hyperconsumerism to a more mindful approach to living and consuming.

Two thirds of the 5700 adults surveyed across the US, Brazil, China, France, Japan, Netherlands and the UK believe that we would be better off if we lived more simply. Slow food, Buy Local, “substance shopping” and actively seeking out fewer “bells and whistles” on products (and packaging) are some of the ways that people are dealing with their burgeoning quest for a simpler life.

Most fruits are already a pre-packaged gift from Nature! Why do we need more?

These shifts in consumer behaviour mean that manufacturers and marketers will not be able to rely on the old ways of triggering consumption. They will need to shift their offerings, packaging and communication to those that speak to the new ideals that are becoming increasingly important to people.

And this power of “consumerism” is what will drive industries and companies to find their consciousness – and this is where change towards sustainable business practices really will have a meaningful and significant impact on our world.

Recycling – check. Worms – check. Mulch pile – check. Household companions – check.

My ingenious mother made my puppy her favourite toy out of things that would have been trown away: an old long sock (darned too many times over) with a broken tennis ball shoved inside and tied with a knot at the end. How creative! Aside from your regular recycling, the next time you reach for the trash can, think creatively about what else you could be doing with that item you’re about to throw away.

Waste not, want not.

Our grandparents, could be classified as “set in their ways”. They still, at their ripe old age, are saving paper and envelopes at birthdays. Their motivations may have been different to ours (they did grow up during the wars and the Great Depression) but I love what their actions stand for, and how relevant they are to us in today’s modern world.

If we have this mantra at home or the office: “waste not, want not” just think of the positive implications on both our pockets and on our environment. And if we do not change our ways, just think of what the garbologists of the future will say about our “modern” society?

Recently in my own work I was reminded of the quote from Lampedusa’s The Leopard – “If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change” (translated from the original – “Se vogliamo che tutto rimanga com’è bisogna che tutto cambi.”)  Now I am not sure that we really want all things to stay as they are in the food and agriculture world but we do want to produce sufficient, healthy, interesting food in a manner that does not inhibit our ability to feed future generations.

In this way we do want things to stay a bit the same (or at least how we imagine they used to be, a generation ago). But obviously to get there in the face of scarce resources and changing values we do have to do things differently. The question then is – how do we get from here to there? Should change be driven from the top down, percolate from the bottom up or arrive in surprising transformative ways? The answer is probably all of the above and that is certainly what is happening in the food industry. 

On the food safety front, the EU Food Safety Agency and Center for Disease Prevention Control released their most recent study of food borne illnesses in the EU (45000 illnesses and 32 deaths in 2008 generally down from 2007 levels). The report provides data that can be used to focus government and industry efforts to improve food safety.

 Thus it might be of use to China as it established a new food safety commission after another melamine recall. This commission is part of a new set of laws on food safety in China. The US food safety reform laws continue to be discussed in Congress. However, some recently expressed concern about the potential for increasing corporate influence over those bills due to the recent Supreme Court ruling removing limits on corporate campaign contributions. So government is the change agent and industry is the problem, right?

 Well maybe not so fast. The retail chain Target in the US recently received kudos from Greenpeace among others for phasing out farmed salmon from more than 1700 stores in the US. This should help encourage sustainable seafood consumption -and is being followed by other corporations as well.  However, those are only small examples and not relevant when many parts of the agriculture industry continue with factoring farming practices that are evil, right?

 See, for example, this account of recent expose in the US media on ABC-TV.  So thank goodness we have government to reign in industry particularly when it may be engaged in monopolistic practices in the market for such basic inputs such as seeds. See some commentary here on the new US Dept. of Justice investigation into Monsanto. But government also gets it wrong by banning traditional products such as raw milk. So we need revolutionaries such as this Canadian. And of course Michael Pollan is here, there, and everywhere (including now Oprah) to remind us to eat like our grandparents. So the blogospherists, locavores, bio crowd are our protectors and should drive the change right?

 But, according to some, they may not be advocating a practical way to actually feed the world in a sustainable way (see this review of James McWilliams new book Just Food on Pamela Ronald’s website) And they are part of an elitist trend of good food for the rich. So we need the politicians to use the bully pulpit to get us to behave better as Michelle Obama recently tried to do on the topic of childhood obesity with her Let’s Move initiative  According to some who did not believe it was appropriate for her to personalize the issue, this is the wrong way to go about it.   

 So where exactly does that leave us now? Honestly I do not know where this all ends up. It is good to see so much energy and activity being put into debate around food and agriculture. It is too much to think it can be channeled in any one direction and that the free market of ideas will steer us toward a sensible result. In the meantime, I will escape from the real world for a bit and try my hand in the virtual world of Farmville where maybe I can avoid these debates for a while….

Today I received a call from one of our producers in Mexico. It was a sad call. Although they continue to survive, the economic downturn has taken its toll. And our inability, as their importers, to make inroads into the US market for their product has been a major factor. Yet if each of our customers knew their story, tried their product, visited their land, they would all come to the same conclusion that I did the first time I met them. This small company, rooted in its community, is doing the work necessary to save their small corner of the World.

Xoxoc is a producer of prickly pear products in the Hidalgo region of Mexico, an area that was once a major producer of Pulque, a favorite fermented alcohol produced from the Maguey plant. But in the mid 1900’s when beer became popular, the maguey plants were left to die and the local economy along with them. Over subsequent years, many of the region’s men left to look for income elsewhere, and devastating erosion washed away the deserted fields.

Yet in this harsh land, one type of plant survives well – the nopal or cactus. There are over 300 types of nopal, many of them producing a sweet edible fruit. Of these, only nine are considered Xoconostle, the type of prickly pear used in the Xoxoc products. The xoconostle fruit has a higher acidity and the seeds are located in the center of the fruit (as opposed to spread throughout the fruit) making them easier to de-seed. It is the fruit of the xoconostle that the folks at Xoxoc are betting on to save their community and the land.

They cultivate their own xoconostle and they have convinced farmers from three surrounding towns to plant xoconostle, promising to purchase their harvest at a fair price. Their efforts have not only begun to revive the local economy, and bring hope back to the community but it has begun to reverse some of the erosion that has devastated the land. Over the last few years, they have watched the flora and fauna return to their land as they continue to cultivate more xoconostle. And more farmers are turning to this crop for income.

With initial funding from the government they have built a small facility using local materials and labor and relying on the power of the sun and gravity to help process their product. With the help of local women (in a community where there is very little hope of employment), they peel, cut, sun-dry, and cook the xoconostle to prepare it for market.

The Xoxocs of the world are the reason I founded Rooted Foods, an initiative within my import business that recognizes products that are truly rooted in their communities. Visiting them, it is so clear the interconnectedness of our every day purchasing decisions and how they affect the world we live in. Every unit of Xoxoc that is sold in the U.S. brings the company closer to achieving their goal of building a self-sustaining community – economically, socially, and environmentally.

By supporting small companies like Xoxoc through our purchasing decisions, we as consumers are helping to:

Protect Genetic Diversity – small producers around the world grow century-old varieties and heritage breeds that are unique to their environment. With no demand for these products, they are often left to die out.

Promote Cultural Diversity – recipes that have been passed down through the generations are cultural treasures to be preserved and enjoyed.

Provide Healthier and Tastier Food – native foods produced using local naturally grown ingredients are healthy and flavorful, and they often contain medicinal properties that have been lost in the over-bred foods of the western world.

Encourage Sustainable Practices – small producers are more tightly woven into the fabric of their communities and are often the true stewards of the land.

Strengthen Local Economies – small businesses are at the foundation of a thriving local economy. In the case of Xoxoc, there efforts have helped to reduce emigration from the land and immigration to the US. Thus we strengthen their economy while reducing the burden of immigration on ours.

Ensure Food Security – food and water scarcity are serious problems worldwide. Supporting small producers protects communities from global food crises by empowering them to feed themselves. It also reduces the need for poverty-reduction support services.

People often ask me how I reconcile my work as a food importer with my belief in supporting local food producers. I live in the Pacific Northwest and am fortunate that I can get a high percentage of my food from local sources for a good part of the year. But for the items that I can’t purchase locally, I want to ensure that my dollars are going to support small local producers in other communities. Last I checked, prickly pear doesn’t grow near Seattle.

Over 80% of all food products on grocery shelves are produced by a handful of large multinational corporations. Take a few moments to absorb that fact. Very little of what we purchase as consumers actually goes to support the people or communities who supply the resources or is produced in a manner that is restorative to the environment.

We need to flip/flop these statistics. I envision whole aisles of foods that are truly rooted in their communities, produced by independently-owned and dedicated producers somewhere in the world.

Supporting foods that are rooted in their community, regardless of where that community is, encourages healthier, more stable and self-sufficient local economies worldwide. To me, being a food importer and a supporter of local economies is one in the same.

A recently published article in the New York Times about genetically modified salmon made me wonder if I was a dogged ideologue. Or rather, are my strong opinions regarding food hindering my ability to see the whole picture? It was my initial reaction to this article about genetically modified protein that made me wonder. I am sure it was similar to the one I imagine everyone would give: “Genetically Modified Salmon!!!—insert gasp here—That’s Horrible”. But after I thought about it, I realized, I am making a judgment based on a science with which I am not too familiar.

It is commonplace to immediately reject certain foods in our country because of the perception attached to it. Many time reactions are perpetuated by a blog, a sensational story about food on the news or because your produce has dirt on it. Using the phrase “farmed” isn’t usually a bad thing for instance, but when referring to fish it is a four letter word. Is there a chance that these rejected products could feed millions of people at a low cost with minimal risk? I suspect that many people—even the ones who campaign against it—are not 100% certain.

Do we really know all the information and science behind these topics, or are we cherry picking reports that support an idealistic and uncompromising solution? And more importantly, why is it universally accepted that this conversation about genetically modified foods is happening behind closed doors as if it were an X-file? What is our vision for innovative research if we can’t encourage scientists to study GMO’s in public?

Knowledge Gap

Every hot-blooded food junkie has an opinion about how our food system should change. On the other hand, the average American couldn’t tell you the difference between corn syrup and Aunt Jemima. Jammed between these two voices is uncertainty, silence, and a legitimate illiteracy about consumption habits.

Rants about food are polarized to include two camps: Those who don’t care about what they eat, and therefore would rather pay less for artificial nutrients, and those who are very aware of the food they eat, and would much rather see a system in which food was, well, food.

The crossfire includes biotechnology, carbon analysis, economics, federal regulation, health and public policy to name a few. Just thinking about it makes me less hungry (and this is a rarity). People are stumped about the food they eat and how to feel about this convoluted talk. Perplexity makes it easy to accept parroted arguments promoting one food’s categorical sovereignty without actually examining the issues. Such ignorance is exemplified by the seemingly universal acceptance of the junk that is being served to children at schools.

Jumping on the Bandwagon

Somehow the disengaged consumer is forced to side with one extreme camp on these divided issues; there is no middle of the road. Either accept the manipulation from the food marketing titans, or protest all genetically modified foods, corn products, grain-fed beef, and farmed fish because someone said they are bad. Consider if the thousands of people who object to eating corn products actually understand why they are doing this.

As for genetically modified foods, does a legitimate two-sided forum and education outreach exist? Is everyone aware of the pros and cons? Drought-resistant gm crops could help to alleviate famine in developing countries, where low rainfall often leads to food shortages. Why are people against farmed salmon when most of the scientific evidence against it is lacking and outdated? How about Carbon Footprint. Is this a savvy term that sounds good at dinner parties or a legitimate argument when supporting your favorite locavore?

What’s the Issue?

Is it really about food, or is it an issue of lifestyle and the ubiquitous rejection of the kitchen?Knowing the US has no distinguishable food culture, maybe these debates are becoming too advanced, polarized and are missing the underlying problem: We (and I mean the majority of the country) don’t spend enough time in the kitchen, learning about food, examining our food system, touching real food, trying fresh vegetables and fruits, examining the basic issues of supply and demand, questioning elementary principals of food distribution. We are detached.

It is a fact that Americans spend less and less time around food, at the market, and ultimately at the dinner table. This minutes-per-day-with-food metric has been on the decline for years. A family dinner routinely consists of a few speed bumps through a fast food joint, and for those harried work and eat types, the “prepared” aisle of the supermarket will suffice. And why are restaurants so busy on Friday and Saturday nights? Shouldn’t this time be spent cooking with friends and family?

Maybe there’s a solution that doesn’t dive right into the deep-end of confusing discourse

Maybe it is time to take a step back and just get people to appreciate real food as more than a commodity. Focus on getting people into the kitchen and show them how simple it is to eat well without guilt. Perhaps Monsanto should try cloning Rachel Ray!

Increasing the Learning Curve

Here are my suggestions:

• Step 1. Start With Kids: Children are the educators for adults. Introduce a food curriculum into our compulsory education that would mirror that of English, social studies, algebra and gym. People will not just know more about where our food comes from, but they will eat better food. In addition, the principal mechanisms of the kitchen can teach kids about following instructions, teamwork, examining what they put into their body (anti-drug message?), and mindfulness of the senses. Food is economics, world trade, ethics, and law. I surely would have done better in my Macro-Econ classes if we were talking about trading food and not micro-processors. Why not stretch to advocate for this to be part of standardized testing as well.
• Step 2. Simplify, Simplify and Simplify a Little More: It is all too confusing. Behind the titles of these unflinching articles is a litany of words and stories that would sedate 99% of Americans. Confusion about good food forces people to McDonald’s. The conversation should function to get people into the kitchen. Show them how simple it is to prepare good food.
• Step 3. Objectivity: Food is steeped in politics. As a result of this, campaigns are established and money flows to sway public opinion—insert vivian krause. Like any educated voter, when examining our food it is essential that we learn about the issues rooted deep within the terroir of conversation.
• Step 4. Food Labeling: If the differences between food products are not on the label, people can not make an educated decision. If one drive is to harness the power of a free market, and let people vote with their fork, the information must be transparent, and the votes counted properly.
• Step 5. Start a Sustainable Tastes Better Campaign: At the end of the day, most people want a high quality product that won’t kill them. If food treated with antibiotics isn’t killing them, and Americans have been living longer lives year after year, why not keep eating these products. Sustainability is becoming a political movement, and politics certainly don’t taste good. So how is it possible convince someone that they should buy sustainably even if they don’t care about the environmental aspects? Show them that it tastes better. Quality equals sustainability.

Haiti’s post-quake humanitarian disaster is directly tied to its food supply and the collapse of the rural economy.  But will the long-term recovery model in Haiti simply repeat the mistakes of the past?  Combating the dominant paradigm is an accelerating grassroots movement  – from farmers burning Monsanto seeds to edible schoolyards — seeking to create a new future for the nation; one that will restore both the food supply and the environment.

I’m currently working with a team to produce Hands That Feed .  The documentary film will explore the agricultural collapse in Haiti, its role in the post-earthquake food crisis, and the emerging grassroots development models that seek to restore Haiti’s rural economy and environment.  We stand at a critical juncture for Haiti, as well as at an unparalleled “teachable moment” for the world.  Through this work, I have continued to uncover an incredible, unfolding story of people working at the grassroots level to create a new, sustainable agriculture-based development paradigm.

In the aftermath of the earthquake, the world watched news footage that conveyed looting and wrestling for morsels of food in Haiti.  The result was an unprecedented upwelling of international compassion and support.  Yet the underlying social and political causes of the crisis are not widely covered or known, and it is easy at first glance to simply blame natural events.

But there’s of course a larger story.  The development paradigm enacted in Haiti over the last 30 years – while converting the small country into America’s 4th largest rice export market – flooded Haiti with cheap, subsidized food imports that rapidly changed the face of the largely rural, agriculture-based country.  As economic opportunity dwindled in the countryside, the population of Port-au-Prince has more than doubled since 1989.   The resulting build-up of urban slums, flimsy structures, crime, deforestation for charcoal fuel, and lack of local food supply chains, created the perfect storm when met with natural disaster.  I wrote in detail on this process, based on my work in Haiti after the earthquake, in Why Did the Haitian Earthquake Become a Food Crisis?

Then, there was the humanitarian aid mission.  Groups such as the World Food Program, the Red Cross, UNICEF, the US Military, the Israeli Defense Forces, and many others thankfully did their best to rapidly distribute much-needed food and medical supplies.  Yet the permaculture and sustainable agriculture practitioners had much to teach.  Why should the Red Cross add 20,000 plastic water bottles to Haiti’s waste stream when Port-au-Prince has a fantastic aquifer?  Admitting that refugees will likely remain in the camps a long time, why not build common areas within the compounds where people can graze their animals rather than simply depend on handouts?  Why not compost waste into soil.  And why import so much plastic and wood for shelters when their are endless stands of bamboo?

This amazing NPR video segment from two days ago captures the current status of the food supply: The Problem with Giving Free Food to Hungry People.

GiveLove.org Alternative Shelter Design

The organization Permaculture Relief has attacked a number of these issues and maintains a list of active organizations in Haiti.  GiveLove has been building sustainable refugee shelters using locally available materials.  SOIL , recently covered by Kristoff, is building and distributing inexpensive compost toilets.  Much of this work builds uponthe success of Cegrane Permaculture Refugee Camp, which housed up to 43,000 refugees in Macedonia in 1999 while maintaining regenerative systems and food supply.

Finally, there is the long-term recovery.  Haiti’s population is still 75% farmers, they have amazing year-round growing conditions, and the urban population desperately needs food.  Investing in agriculture should be a slam dunk, right?  Wrong.  The State Department and USAID are pushing the same old dogma which turned Haiti into the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere (and America’s 4th largest rice export market): Invest only in the cities; subsidize the textile industry; and let the countryside collapse, providing a flood of cheap labor for urban industry (and an epic buildup of slums).

All this despite former President Bill Clinton’s groundbreaking admission of failure and need for new policies:

“It was a mistake. I have to live everyday with the consequences of the loss of capacity to produce a rice crop in Haiti,” Clinton told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on March 10, 2010. “The country has the best chance in my lifetime to achieve this objective: to build a modern self-sustaining state. But what it means is that we have to think about our roles in a different way, and how we will play them in this reconstruction process.”

But this time, there is a counter-movement, and that’s exactly what we seek to capture.  Andrew Jones, founder of Cegrane (see above), is responsible for developing the permaculture program within Nouvelle Vie Youth Corps, one of the primary subjects of Hands That Feed.  Nouvelle Vie is training, and paying, 30 vibrant young Haitian leaders to go out and teach a thousand Haitians sustainable agriculture skills, build intensive agriculture plots in schoolyards and refugee camps, and teach yoga-based post-trauma breathing techniques.  From this thousand, Nouvelle Vie will recruit a new batch of 100 Youth Corps members, who will then teach 10,000.  And so on, and so forth.  All the while developing Haitian self-reliance both in food supply and leadership.

Is this just “Eco-Imperialism” (a term I recently learned from a conservative blog)?  Not if you ask the Haitian government officials who are begging international donors to stop sending food.  Nor if you ask Jean Ked Neptune, a director at the Ministry of Environment, who is developing programs to employ women as worm composters in refugee camps, despite his department’s virtually absent budget.  And finally, not if you ask the homegrown MPP Peasant Movement.  With membership of 50,000, and a rising star named Chavannes Jean-Baptiste, the group recently led a demonstration of 10,000 peasants who burned early shipments of Monsanto’s “gift” of 475 tons of seeds.  These seeds contain the carcinogenic pesticides Maxim XO and Thiram, which the EPA bars for home gardening in the U.S., and requires commercial farmers to use protective gear.  How many Haitians do you think own plastic goggles, gloves, and protective jumpsuits?  Furthermore, these seeds are hybrids, which means that the traits are not passed on to the next generation through the traditional practice of seed-saving.  You need to purchase the seeds next year from Monsanto, as well as all of the special irrigation, fertilizer, and other expensive inputs required to cultivate these species – which means going into debt.  (But if your neighbors do it, you have to do it to compete – leverage-up or get out.)  These seeds are being distributed through USAID with your tax check.

This harkens back to when the U.S. Pork lobby asked the State Department in the late-1970’s to pressure the Haitian government to order the slaughter of the creole pig, the ubiquitous and locally-adapted Haitian icon which provided both a source of meat and “savings”.  Now Haitians import their meat.

Courtesy Noramise.org

Let’s not have a repeat performance.  Haiti is full of locally-adapted species, agricultural labor, rich land, and hungry people.  Agro-ecological methods are now very highly developed, producing huge yields while restoring eroded soils.  The problem is, they are labor and knowledge-intensive, not capital and chemical intensive, so they don’t make anyone any money.  Even a moderate investment in restoring Haitian agriculture through sustainable methods and domestic skills could easily feed the nation, while making Haiti independent from aid and more protected against future natural disaster.  Let Haiti learn from the past, and the world learn from Haiti.

To help us highlight these groups and this movement, we really need support.  Please check out Hands That Feed, make even a small donation, and forward the link to anyone interested in Haiti, international development, and/or sustainable agriculture.

While culinary schools enroll more women, they’re disproportionately enrolled in pastry and baking curricula. The meat cutters’ union remains largely male and the “rock star butchers” trend often revolves around hulking men with serious ink.

But I met Marissa Guggiana, the soft-spoken “charcuterie curator” at the inaugural Slow Food Nation event. The founder of Sonoma Direct, she aims to bring her grandfather’s ideals, and sausage, to the masses including better, grass-fed meat.

I’ve been gathering stories as if I were gathering seashells while walking on the beach. Only my finds are connections, and stories, they’re women and men with skills, like making steaks from a cow. My pockets are full of hunters, butchers, and cooks with bloody hands. You may keep your pretty shells, I’m happy.

An avid participant in this butchery renaissance, I’ve attended demos and talked to butchers in many places. At two local pig butchering demos I noted the male-female ratio was nearly even. At the IACP Meat Revival demo in Portland, a capacity class of both men and women watched a side-by-side butchering demo of French and American styles.

Emboldened by some Oregon Pinot Noir and the presence of the female farmer who supplied the pigs, I had to ask: “Where ARE the women butchers?” To my delight, not one, but two, women raised their hands, Tray Satterfield and Camas Davis. When Tray spoke of her life-changing career move from finance to butchering she noted that she “had to work dog-years to be taken seriously by the guys doing this.”  She quickly added that she was willing to do it, because she knew this was what she was meant to do.

This called to mind the old saw about Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. You know, Ginger did everything Fred did, only she did it in heels. And backwards.

Kari Underly learned the butchering trade at her father’s shop. Seeing what he did with the carcasses and learning the skills from him, she naturally followed his path. Beyond her father’s shop, she faced challenges. Butchers refuse to take her as an apprentice, others told her she’d “never cut meat in a big store.” Only last year a large chain in Baltimore was forced to pay damages and to hire women who were routinely denied well-paid meat cutters’ jobs on the basis of gender.

Underly candidly admits her decision to become a butcher was driven by economics. Working her way through school, she knew she could make more as a meat cutter than working behind the deli counter. With so much processing done in large plants, there are fewer butchers around to take on apprentices. Kari’s experience showed her how critical training opportunities are. She’d love to see the trade get more recognition for the art that it is, “It’s honest, and it’s good – it’s a good job.”

Jessica Applestone, co-founder of Fleisher’s along with her husband Joshua, finds their apprenticeships are nearly always booked a few months out or more. “They have taken off beyond our wildest dreams.” The classes are quite diverse, including a mix of men and women. Some take the courses for their own education, others are preparing to launch shops or restaurants of their own. “We get big burly guys and tiny women 5’ tall. Pig farmers, food stylists, paralegal, chefs, and home cooks. Right at this moment the shop’s full of women!”

While more women are breaking in she says it is still a male-dominated profession. Some of this might be due to subtle sexism. “I know people look past me to my husband even though I may know the answer…so, many times I think the public is to blame, too.” In general, she says their shop is very open and it helps that Joshua was raised by a feminist. There’s a camaraderie common to restaurants, even it comes with some coarse jokes.

Butchery is understanding the anatomy and using muscle, gravity, and knife skills. It’s tearing something at the seams, finding that space between the muscles and joints. These are not gender-specific skills. In fact, she finds women are often better at these skills than men. Using the rock-climbing example she says “a man might simply muscle his way up a rock wall, while a woman might use more finesse to work their way up. Both will get there.”

“I like touching meat.” Chichi Wang, Serious Eats Nasty Bits columnist, was sort of nervous at first remembering how sobering it was to don the metal gear and how scary to think of a knife going right into you. It happened to her instructor. She believes butchery “does require some brute force”. While you can use a hand saw to get through a hind quarter, “at 5’3” 100 lbs it is just going to take me longer. The guys would say ‘move like you’re punching someone’ or ‘use your back’. They kept thinking the motion was wrong, but really it’s just strength.”

She started lifting weights and found the work got easier.

“It’s really satisfying to pop joints out of place. I like the sound and the satisfaction if you hit the right tendon or sinew, the tip of the knife is an extension of your hand. It’s really satisfying to tunnel into the animal with your own sense of feel.”

Camas Davis, on the other hand, talks about how much butchery can literally be done with bare hands. The founder of PDX Meat Collective grew up fishing and hunting before becoming a magazine editor. While working for Saveur, she met an old-school Italian butcher who left an impression on her. She was intrigued by him and the artisan nature of his business. When she later lost her job at Portland Monthly, she took the opportunity to return to working with meat, apprenticing with Dominique Chapolard in Gascony.

Education is key to what Davis is doing at PDX Meat. “There’s a lot of interest in knowing more about where your food comes from.” Her classes are about evenly split male-female. “I’m so surprised that we keep selling out. So many people want to learn more.” She hopes to create a culture of people wanting better meat from known sources. “Picking up a knife, putting it into an animal changes you, changes your respect for it. You’re less willing to waste what you’ve paid for.”

Dave Budworth, butcher at Avedano’s says “it’s different for everyone. It is like an art form. Like painting, you learn the fundamentals but then you leave your thumbprint on it.”

Watching a good butcher at work I often think of ballet. There’s such grace and elegance in the movements, but strength and discipline behind it. Come to think of it ballerinas spend more time facing the audience than Ginger did. Now just imagine a carcass in front of her.

# # #

Fleisher’s – Grass-fed & Organic Meats – 845-338-6666

Avedano’s – San Francisco 415-285-MEAT

Range Partners – http://www.rangepartners.com/ 312-850-2044

Sonoma Direct – Marissa Guggiana – http://www.sonomadirect.com 877-5-SONOMA

PDX Meat – Portland Meat Collective, Camas Davis. PDXMeat.com

- posted by Joshua

Like any Top 5 list, this is rough and biased; it is meant to stimulate conversation and to put perspective on the junctures at which we stand today.

The Canal at Bassorah, Sumeria

1. Neolithic Revolution

The last ice age ended 13,000 years ago, leaving behind a warmer environment full of the flora and fauna we know today and starting the Neolithic Period. This environmental shift fueled a 13,000-year explosion of population, technology, and culture. One plant that prospered in the newly warmed climate was wheat. Around 10,000 BC, in Mesopotamia, humankind began mastering cultivation of this plant for bread and ale, and the Egyptians later developed yeasted breads. The surplus calories of the Neolithic Revolution give birth to civilization, and bread and ale become the gastronomic backbone of the West.

2. Fall of Rome

Is it possible that Rome fell because of food? It would appear that “Roman Bread” – the West’s first experiment in a social welfare system – was more economically disastrous than the decadence of the rich. Julius Caesar got the government dole of bread down to “just” 150,000 plebians, about one sixth of the population. Yet after another 50 years, that number had doubled – a third of the population was on the dole! The grain was largely shipped in from government-owned fields in North Africa.

The Romans also had an insatiable desire for Asian products, especially black pepper, which was elemental to Roman foods. Pepper, spices, porcelain, silk, and other items were already contributing to a massive trade deficit (the only thing the Romans had to offer in return was silver and gold) even before the Silk Road was opened to China and the trade winds to India were discovered in the 1st century AD. Roman currency devalued so much that three centuries later, the cost of wheat had increased by over 300,000 times! Roman money eventually collapsed, causing the society to fall back on a barter economy. Yet currency is necessary to support long-distance, complex food supply chains. Roman cities began depopulating, leaving them open to barbarian attacks, which led to further depopulation.

Europe was consequently de-urbanized, and we entered 600 years nearly devoid of technological, philosophical, or cultural innovation.

As a side note, when the barbarians first amassed in the early 400’s at Rome’s gate, what did they demand? Subsidies, land, titles. . . and 3,000 pounds of black pepper!

3. Ploughs and Rotating Beans

In the 6th century, the Northeastern Slavs developed the moldboard plow (the Chinese had already been using them for a thousand years) and introduced the technology to Europe. The plow dramatically increased yields and allowed new land to be brought into cultivation (deforesting Europe). About the same time, Medieval Europe discovered triple crop rotation: grains, beans, and letting fallow. The realization that beans invigorate the soil also spelled increased protein intake and nutrition for Europe. These two discoveries allowed the European population to multiply, and the growth arguably provided the demographic push for the Crusades.

4. The New World

Europeans returned from the Crusades with an invigorated taste for Asian spices, and the Italian traders monopolized this trade during the Renaissance. Determined to break the monopoly, the Spanish, then the Portuguese and the Dutch, sought overseas routes to Asia. These missions were so costly and risky that the richest financiers still had to pool assets and risk together, giving birth to the first corporations.

Colombus did not find black pepper in the Americas, but his discovery brought chillies, peppers, corn, potatoes, tomatoes, cocoa, and many other foods which revolutionized cuisine throughout Europe, Asia, and Africa. They also revolutionized the food supply, as corn and potatoes, for example, grow on rougher, rockier soils than wheat.

500 Years of Population Growth

5. Scientific Agriculture

For 10,000 years, human consciousness was fed by the sun. In the early 20th century, we broke free of that fiery ball and discovered how to fuel ourselves by burning dead dinosaurs. The Haber Process was first developed by Fritz Haber in the summer of 1909, using large amounts of energy to break triple bonds and produce nitrates from the air. Haber and Carl Bosch (who brought the technology to industrial scale) were later awarded the Nobel prize. Artificial fertilizers have brought the global food supply to unprecedented levels, and consequently, our population. Subsequent developments and deployments in biotechnology, fertilizer systems, pesticides, and hybrid seeds, known as the “Green Revolution“, further multiplied yields in Mexico, India, and Southeast Asia. Global population is now more than triple what it was 100 years ago.

In the past 100 years, we have experienced world-changing innovations in a variety of sectors – the nuclear bomb, the computer, space travel. Yet for the majority of history, the innovations of truly continental magnitude were almost always in food. Man was tied to the land, and any increase, even temporary, in the proportion of calories to population, enabled forward leaps in civilizational development and power.

6. Post-Modern Eco-Agriculture?

We now have a global food supply and global food challenges. Driven by increased population, wealth and meat consumption, the UN expects mankind’s food demands to double by 2030. Yet global environmental constraints and regulation are impending. What combination of social and scientific models will arise to meet these wholly new scenarios?

Historical data was drawn from the following sources:
Food in History, by Reay Tannahill
Spice: The History of a Temptation, by Jack Turner
A History of Food, by Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat