That’s not a typo.  According to the United Nations (as reported in this article in The Independent), one billion is the number of people expected to be without sufficient food and nutrition this year.

That’s despite two consecutive years of record-breaking harvests.

Obviously, it’s not about the amount of food; there’s plenty to feed the world over.  It’s about access.  Currently, with food prices climbing alongside poverty rates, more and more people are finding themselves without the monetary resources to adequately feed themselves and their families.

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I recently got turned on to Fanatic Cook, written by Bix.  Bix provides interesting tidbits of news on food safety, politics, policy, and nutrition, along with thoughtful commentary.  It’s a good read; if you haven’t yet stumbled onto Bix, you should hie yourself over there and check out the site.  Of particular interest to me is this recent post on what Daschle as Secretary of Health and Human Services might mean for the FDA.

Happy reading, everyone!

Okay, folks.  After a reprieve, it’s time to revisit Mercatus Policy Primer No 8:  “Yes, We have No Bananas: A Critique of the ‘Food Miles’ Perspective.”  I had promised a look at how local food movements take into account questions of efficiency, economic or otherwise.

Today, the focus is on the extent to which local food activists work with economic efficiency and plain old efficiency in general.  First, the study authors heartily support the idea that food should be produced where it is efficient to do so.  I absolutely agree.  They also argue that food should be eaten seasonally.  Authors Desrochers and Shimizu claim that “the importance of seasonality [...] is also easily forgotten by activists and consumers.”  If such is the case (and it may well be, though I’d certainly like some stats on that), it’s not a flaw in the local food movement, but rather a problem with its interpretation at the individual level.  The Eat Local Challenge website, a blog which describes itself as a group blog written by authors who are interested in the benefits of eating food grown and produced in their local foodshed, has several articles about the importance of eating seasonally.  Both Alice Waters and Michael Pollan, key figures in the local food movement, liberally pepper their interviews and writings with references to the importance of seasonal eating, as do other leaders such as Barbara Kingsolver and Gary Paul Nabhan. In short, the planning is sound, even if the execution could use some tweaking.

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Sorry, folks—I’m a busy bee today.  Fortunately, Mr Pollan has a new interview up.  You can find the Pollan interview on the PBS site.  Feel free to post your thoughts in the comments section here.  I’ll be back soon!

I promised I’d hold off on a full analysis of the policy primer, “Yes, We Have No Bananas: A Critique of the ‘Food Miles’ Perspective” until I had done all the backtracking to do it up right, but it turns out that this project is big enough that it’s best handled in several installments.  Today, I’d like to welcome you to the first.  One of the major concerns of the authors of policy primer, Pierre Desrochers and Hiroko Shimizu, is how local food movements might adversely impact free trade and developing nations.  To that end, it’s worth taking a look at how free trade has itself affected developing nations.

Throughout the policy primer, the authors take more than a few swipes at local food enthusiasts.  One of the most interesting for me is the authors’ claim that locavores have a “romanticized” notion of eating local–which, by the way, they characterize as “subsistence farming.”  This is a misuse of the term.   “Subsistence farming” refers to farming in which the farmers raise just enough for their families and any federal dues with little or nothing left over. If in doubt, consult the Encyclopedia Britannica or the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, for starters. In fact, you’ll find that a secondary definition describes subsistence farming as “farming or a system of farming that produces a minimum and often inadequate return to the farmer.”  Since one of the major objectives of the Eat Local movement is to encourage local farms, keep local farms in business, and provide farmers with a living wage, painting local food production as “subsistence farming” is a gross miscategorization. The locavore movement does not advocate a return to subsistence farming; rather it advocates a re-valuation of the work farmers do and the importance of a healthy food source close to where you live.

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Jeffrey Smith at Huffington Post has an interesting article up today about the people he calls “Biotech Yes Men” lined up to find places in the new administration.  Aside from the back story on several key figures, he also provides several other interesting pieces of information on the biotech industry, such as the following:

• The industry boasts that GMOs reduce herbicide use; USDA data show that the opposite is true.
• We hear that GMOs increase yield and farmer profit; but USDA and independent studies show an average reduction in yield and no improved bottom line for farmers.
• George H. W. Bush fast-tracked GMOs to increase US exports; now the government spends an additional $3-$5 billion per year to prop up prices of the GM crops no one wants.
• Advocates continue to repeat that GMOs are needed to feed the world; now the prestigious International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development has joined a long list of experts who flatly reject GMOs as the answer to hunger.

Check it out.  The whole article on GMOs and the biotech proponents can be found at HuffPo.

Steph Larsen has a great post up at Ethicurean about thinking beyond the Secretary of Agriculture when considering how to transform the USDA.  She outlines the different key positions and responsibilities and points to several places readers can go for more info or to try to make themselves heard.  Also—she reports that word is Vilsack is out of the running for the Secretary of Agriculture post.  Check it out.

It’s being rumored that Barack Obama is considering Former Iowa governor Tom Vilsack for his Secretary of Agriculture.  Vilsack is for reducing subsidies and claims he wants to make agriculture more environmentally-friendly.  Which is all fine and dandy, but for Vilsack’s enthusiasm for corn-based ethanol and his support of genetically modified crops, including pharmeceuticals in crops.

Leaving aside the ethanol question for right now, I want to say that I do not support GMOs as a long or short term solution to the challenges facing agriculture.  Labeling requirements on GMO crops are nonexistent, making it basically impossible to monitor for long-term health consequences or allergenic effects.  In addition, they may cause health problems in pollinators (speculation abounds about their possible role in colony collapse disorder in honeybees), and they can contaminate and push out non-GMO crops, reducing biodiversity and thereby threatening our long-term food security.

Most importantly, we do not have enough long-term data on the effects of GMOs to push for their expansion.  Vilsack’s willingness to do so is deeply troubling.  Despite all our fondest illusions, plants are not under our control.  Cross-pollination occurs with wind, with insects, with a wide variety of critters—all of which we can not predict, control, or contain.

Despite all that, Big Ag commodity groups have apparently been mobilizing to try to block Vilsack’s apointment, due to his otherwise environmentally-friendly leanings.  Whether or not to support Vilsack as front-runner is a tough call for a lot of people.  I know I still need to do some digging on the top contenders for myself, though Vilsack’s GMO stance is hard for me to get past.  And it’s not just me; a few petitions have been making the rounds at Care2 and the Organic Consumers association to ask Obama not to choose Vilsack.  If you want more info on the future of the USDA,  check out the short list of potential Secretaries of Agriculture at Grist.  Get the details and then decide…who would you choose, and why?  Let me know in the comments section here.

Marion Nestle at What to Eat posted an interesting blurb on Sunday about a report from the Mercatus Center of George Mason University entitled, “Yes, We Have No Bananas: A Critique of the ‘Food Miles’ Perspective.”  Basically, the thrust of the Mercatus publication is that concern about food miles is a distraction from real issues about food policy–trivial at best, dangerous at worst.  I read the complete paper yesterday, and I have several things to say about it.  However, I want to write a full analysis, which is going to require a significant amount of background digging on the institute and the sources they cite.  So, in the meantime, I thought I’d see what your gut reactions were to it.  Give it a read; you can find the whole “policy primer” here.  What do you think?

Okay, so it’s been around for a while, but it’s amusing.  What can I say?  I’m on the road again, busy lady, reading like crazy on the airplane so I have loads of exciting new stuff to post for you.  Anyway, this animation is from Sustainable Table.  Check it out.  (Yes, they do have sequels.)

And in the lineup for the near future, you can expect a review of Food Security for the Faint of Heart by Robin Wheeler, the nitty gritty about the modern turkey, holiday recipes, and so much more! I’m in Wisconsin…cheese for everyone!  Huzzah!

(Except for the vegans, of course.  I’ll get you folks some baby rice popcorn from the farm down the way.  So good!)