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.

Meet Mr. and Mrs. Dirty Boots

OK, I have to mention one of my favorite blogs, now that it appeared in www.bestgreenblogs.com

“A Self-Sufficient Life” is a blog by a UK couple who moved to a mountain in Spain where they harvest olives and almonds for very little money. They find adventure in self-sufficiency.  Yes, by all accounts they live the hippie dream. I don’t begrudge them any extra money they might make from the ads on their blog.

They call themselves “Mr. and Mrs. Dirty Boots.”

This week, Mrs. Dirty Boots is sharing recipes for cheap nutritious  breakfasts and lunches. Here’s her simple recipe for one of my favorite Indian foods: vegetable chapattis.

Sustainable Agriculture: Ideal Versus Best for Most People?

MotherJones.com will have an expert-led reader forum  April 13-17 around the provocative question that headlines this article: “Is organic and local so 2008?”

Even if you don’t participate, the article is worth reading.

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.

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.

Ethical Food Purchases Strong Despite Downturn

I’ve been keeping an eye out for evidence that the global financial crisis is prompting people on tighter budgets  to abandon sustainable agriculture, local food, fair-trade food, organic food.  Finally saw a survey on this out of Britain that suggests a cutback only in organic food purchases.  “Ethical” food sales have not declined. Wonder if this pattern is true in the U.S.?

NYT re-runs ‘Best 11 Foods’

A New York Times June 30 article on “The 11 Best Foods You Aren’t Eating ” has reappeared on the NYT Web site as one of their most-viewed stories of 2008. If you missed it the first time around or have forgotten its advice, here it is again.

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.