Food and Foreign Policy

As I pulled several wilted tomato plants from my sorry, soaked vegetable garden this weekend, I listened to a news report about how global warming and attendant change in weather patterns are expected to lead to famine and massive population movements.

I read two items today that remind me once again how food and foreign policy are so  profoundly linked.

One is a Washington Post story on how Michelle Obama’s celebrity in Russia is to a large degree  focused on her creating and tending an organic garden at the White House.

The other is a sentence in the May/June issue of Foreign Affairs:

“Families in the poorest parts of Africa and Asia spend up to 80 percent of their incomes on food; for the average U.S. household, that would mean an annual grocery bill of $40,000.”

How would life be different if 80 percent of earnings had to go to food? I really can’t imagine it.

In 2008, Americans on average spent 9.6 percent of income after taxes for food. But I don’t believe that really cheap food is the answer to food shortages. Food that is American-cheap and processed has given us soaring obesity and diabetes, and diminishing fertility of farmland. I’m sure it will cost more to support  food grown locally in a sustainable way. We should no more be the food provider to the world than we should be the policemen to the world. Both concepts are unsustainable.

Safeway Touts “Buy Local”

Safeway — the huge, California-based supermarket chain — is marketing “buy local” at Safeway as a way to help California’s troubled economy.

Of course it is easier in California than in any other state for supermarkets to find local (within state) suppliers.  And the buying power of Safeway will undoubtedly undercut and stress some California organic farmers and their farmers markets.  Nonetheless, isn’t the greater good done by a marketing campaign that says says local agriculture is the way to go?

There is one thing missing in this story — is the local produce they are selling produced in a sustainable way, a way that maintains or  increases soil fertility and future productivity?

Food Matters, Local and Organic

Columnist Mark Bittman points out in the International Herald Tribune why organic food isn’t always the best choice, especially when considering carbon footprint. And speaking of local food, Doug Hubley wrote a really nice summary of a presentation by  four Maine-based Bates alumni, each an expert in food issues.

What’s the True Price of Your Seafood Dinner?

That’s what I have been studying since I graduated from Bates in 2000. Did you know that commercial fishing vessels haul a lot of other marine life aboard their vessels in addition to whatever it is that ends up on your dinner plate? All that “other” marine life, the fish, marine mammals, sea turtles, sharks, sea birds, and invertebrates that are accidentally caught, are called bycatch. Bycatch is one of several things to consider when seeking out sustainable seafood. I am going to post several entries on sustainable seafood and other related topics over the next several months as Bates contemplates these important food issues. What is most important to you when choosing seafood for dinner?

White House Getting Vegetable Garden

For the first time since WWII, a vegetable garden is being carved out of the White House lawn. The First Lady says it will provide organic food for family meals, but more importantly, will help educate children  about healthful, locally grown fruit and vegetables at a time when obesity and diabetes have become a national concern.  Here’s the New York Times story.

Time To Consider CSA

No, not the Confederate States of America — Community Supported Agriculture. I started this blog last fall saying how much I appreciated everything about a new farm in my town created by a young couple using the CSA formula. CSAs are popping up all over the U.S., and this is the time of year when new ones solicit subscriptions in advance for shares of whatever they grow this summer. You pick up your shares of food once a week, fresh from the farm. Big Picture – It increases national security when we grow locally and don’t rely on food trucked from California’s Central Valley. Piety and virtue aside, it tastes better. Here’s info on the CSA I belong to in Poland Spring.

Noticing Who Gets the Good Food

For 35 years, Bates alumnus and food activist Mark Winne has been working to close the gap between the kinds of food available to rich and poor. What I really appreciate is his constant awareness that the agribusiness model we take for granted as “normal” is a chemically dependent system that only developed since World War II.

Pollan: More Change in Dietary Beliefs in Last 100 Years Than Prior 10,000

Food systems critic Michael Pollan speaks to Bates students about the craft of writing before giving an open lecture in Bates Chapel for campus and community.

Michael Pollan attracted about 200 more people Tuesday night than the 600-seat Bates College Chapel could hold. Students were promised  a repeat lecture at 9 a.m. While we were not allowed to record Pollan’s presentation, you can read both a report from Doug Hubley of the Bates  communications office and an account of Pollan’s speech in the Oct. 28 Lewiston Sun Journal.

Open Letter about Food to the Next President

Influential food writer Michael Pollan has written a nine-page open letter to the president-elect in the Oct.12 New York Times magazine on why he will have no choice but to pay attention to how we grow and eat food. He says that cheap and abundant food will die with cheap energy. But on the positive side, he says, we have a chance to produce healthier foods in a less polluting way.

(Hey, next president, be a hero. Make Pollan your Secretary of Agriculture.)

Reminder: Pollan will be speaking at Bates at 7:30 p.m. Monday, Oct. 27, in the College Chapel, College Street, for the annual Otis Lecture. His talk is titled “In Defense of Food: The Omnivore’s Solution.”

Pollan is the author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (2006) and this year’s In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto.

This Month in 1947 Was Tougher

Most people seem anxious about where the world financial crisis is heading, wondering how bad things might get. From that perspective, it was interesting to read this weekend how much more attuned the world was in 1947 to the relationship between meat production and world hunger.

Yesterday’s New York Times noted that on October 5, 1947, President Harry Truman used the first White House televised address to ask Americans to refrain from eating meat on Tuesdays and poultry on Thursdays to help stockpile grain for starving people in Europe. Government officials explained that in  the winter of 1947-48, food was the most important tool in resurrecting European productivity and, implicitly, in containing Soviet expansionism.