The Local Community Food Centre has posted a video to Vimeo that's just great!It's all about their summer programme with a bunch of local kids doing a make and bake pizza day.
.
this is so much fun--kids raiding the garden to make their own pizza for dinner. As you watch, listen to how many different foods the kids are putting on their pizza--everything from olives to carrots. My favourite moment is when the young boy listens to the slightly older (and a little bit bossy) girl tell him that what he's eating is just tomatoes. Quietly but firmly he says "No they're not. They're groundcherries." meanwhile, he just can't seem to get enough of them.
Such an excellent programme for teaching kids about food and the value of local and self-grown. And what a way to get something good into them. I'm reminded of watching Jamie Oliver's School Dinners programme and seeing kids who wouldn't eat a fresh strawberry picked from the garden--seemingly because it didn't come from a store. And now here's a programme where the kids can't get enough fresh food.
At just over two minutes, this short video hits most of the points about the current state of our food system. I'm intrigued by this being put out by a commercial food company--Hellman's.
Good short film. Pass it along....
Update: I have no idea what happened, but the embed code disappeared somewhere between me hitting save and the post publishing. Aarrgghh!! I say...
Just in case, here's the link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oKkIeCjllQ
There is a lot of serious, high-level worry going on over the state of our current and future world food supply these days. Such as the Planet Under Pressure conference that just wound up at the end of March. As the New York Times reported about a year ago:
A rising unease about the future of the world’s food supply came through
during interviews this year with more than 50 agricultural experts
working in nine countries.
These experts say that in coming decades, farmers need to withstand
whatever climate shocks come their way while roughly doubling the amount
of food they produce to meet rising demand. And they need to do it
while reducing the considerable environmental damage caused by the
business of agriculture.
Agronomists emphasize that the situation is far from hopeless. Examples
are already available, from the deserts of Mexico to the rice paddies of
India, to show that it may be possible to make agriculture more
productive and more resilient in the face of climate change. Farmers
have achieved huge gains in output in the past, and rising prices are a
powerful incentive to do so again.
Of course, if we really wanted to increase productivity, we'd do something about the size of our farms. Most of the world has small farms that are highly productive--weather permitting. But particularly here in North America and in Europe, farm sizes are large, which means high productivity per worker, but a lower calorie yield per acre. This is known as the Inverse Size Yield Relationship, and coupled with traditional farming techniques, means a higher sustainable yield from small farms over large ones. Here in Victoria, the founding farmers of Saanich Organics, a farmer-run local food distributor, have published All The Dirt: Reflections on organic farming. None of them runs more than a couple of acres, choosing to farm intesively and sustainably, rather than even try to take on a small Canadian farm of a couple of hundred acres. And they're making it pay.
But the combination of biofuel production in the US and commodities speculation following the 2008 crash, mean that food prices are headed back up again this year. Same reasons, just another speculation-driven price bubble.But, in order to ensure that speculators make their nut, a few hundred million more people will drop into food insecurity, and those already hungry will die.
We're facing a perfect storm: population pressures, unregulated capitalism, an international monopsony/monopoly market in foodstuffs, climate change seriously messing up weather patterns, the list goes on. As a society, we won't stop--Canadian rime Minister Stephen Harper has announced that the environment will not inhibit Canadian resource (read: petrochemical and mining) extraction and export. On the climate front, this winter Canada has seen records going back 150 fall regularly; one "warmest day" record was smashed by 20°C.
But this boat's too big to turn.Too many people are making far too much money with things the way they are now. As Yvo de Boer, former head of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and now Special Global Advisor to KPMG, notes [pdf],
“if companies had to pay for the full environmental costs of their
activities, they would have lost 41 cents out of every (US) $1 earned in
2010. The external environmental costs of 11 key industry sectors rose
by almost 50 percent between 2002 and 2010, from $566 billion to $854
billion.”And if you own the governments, are you going to allow a sudden tax increase of 41%? Even if it means saving the planet for your children? No, and not just because you are legally constrained from doing so, but because destruction of the world just means you better get yours now. But you don't want to believe it might well be the end of civilization (Hell, I don't want to believe it). Just like Pol Pot didn't see himself as a genocidal monster, we don't want to see ourselves as environmental criminals. But it doesn't change the fact that we are.
Over at Climate Change Agriculture and Food Security, they're worried about feeding the world in 2050. Using the following video as a teaching tool, they're showing us what a small target we're currently trying to hit. They also point out how we might make the target a bit bigger. So they, at least, are trying to remain optomistic.
Over at the Council on Foreign Relations, Laurie Garrett is interviewed about how the stumbling value of the US dollar and rising international food prices mean that donor pledges are worth less (although not yet worthless). $300 million just doesn't buy what it used to. So what does that mean for the starving? To say nothing of how food aid is used by governments to destroy local food markets and buy access for "their" multinational industrial food corporations. (If you dump free food onto a market you change the price local farmers can get for their crops to zero, and everyone knows, you can't compete with free. This destroys local farming communities and infrastructure, leaving the field clear for the Monsanto's and ConAgra's to come in preaching the "Green Revolution" doctrine of big farms and monocropping with high input costs). This would be an example of the law of unintended consequences, except that it was intentional.
And, in Thailand, there's a new delicacy on the menu:
I kind of have to admit, I love this guy. He has leveraged his celebrity into not more celebrity, but into actual conciousness raising, actual change. His British School Dinners series made significant changes to the way English children eat at school. When it was shown on the food network here in Canada, it sparked the formation of dozens of groups across the country. Engaged activist parents who began to pay attention to food at school.
Then Jamie took on school food in the USA with Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution. While he didn't have the effect he'd hoped for, what with being turned away from 75 LA school districts when he offered them an opportunity for a cafeteria makeover. America really didn't want anyone to know what kind of crap they were feeding their kids in school. But then this happened:
Jamie showed off the "pink slime" or "finely textured lean ground beef" used as a filler product in commercial ground beef. A USDA study shows that pink slime is used in about 70% of all commercially made ground beef in the US.
Well, things happened. Things like this report from ABC News on 21 March 2012:
Safeway, the #2 supermarket chain in the US is now refusing to stock ground beef containing the filler.That's success. In Colorado, parents have pushed school districts to reject beef using the filler. That's success.
And back in the UK, The Guardian reports that a study published in The Journal of Health Economics shows:
Jamie Oliver's
healthy school dinners continue to produce a marked improvement in
national curriculum test results five years after the chef first
launched his campaign, according to research.
A study by academics shows children eating the healthier lunches introduced by the TV chef do far better in tests.
Absenteeism from sickness was also said to have dropped by around 14%.
And
it is claimed that a child eating the healthier food will earn between
£2,103 and £5,476 more over their lifetimes due to their improved
literacy.
So you get why I love this guy? Impact. And a positive impact at that. And it's exactly this kind of impact that has caused industrial food to pursue "ag gag" bills in various state legislatures in the US.Because if you don't know about it, they can keep doing it--no matter what "it" is.
UPDATE: Read a report that said that three of Beef Products Inc.'s four factories producing "pink slime" have been closed for 60 days, pending a review of demand. The closure may be permanent. Like I said, impact.
Ground
beef processor AFA Foods filed for bankruptcy protection on Monday,
citing the impact of the uproar over a meat filler dubbed "pink slime"
by critics.
'Pink slime' company files for bankruptcy amid controversy over the ammonia treated filler
Jamie Oliver + social media = Chapter 11 proceedings.
I'm guessing that for the company's managers this was like being punched by Mike Tyson with no warning. Can't say that I'm feeling all that concerned for them, although this will affect 650 workers in multiple plants. Defenders, like Texas Governor Rick Perry, seen here chowing down on a "pink slime burger"
(an AP photo that runs with the Daily Mail Online article) claim that the substance was "safe to eat." Don't know that anyone was saying it was "unsafe to eat," just that we didn't want to eat the damned stuff. And because it was labelled "finely textured lean ground beef" rather than "ammonia-treated mechanically recovered waste meat-like substance" in general people got a bit perturbed. Interesting that the University of Guelph has chosen today to announce that it will no longer be pursuing research on the "enviro-pig," a pig designed to better withstand the industrial farm conditions under which it would be raised.
Call me crazy, call me idealistic, but you know what I believe? I
believe that when you're making a hamburger for human consumption, you
should at no time deem it necessary or desirable to treat its
ingredients in ammonia. Or any cleaning product, for that matter.
I don't think that's asking a lot--and I don't ask a lot for my fellow
burger-eaters. Only that whatever it is that you're putting in my
hamburger? That laid out on a table or cutting board prior to grinding,
it at least resembles something that your average American might
recognize as "meat."
Update III
Over at the Food Integrity Campaign, there's a really nifty timeline of the "pink slime" issue, from it's beginings to the almost total rejection of the product in this past week. Also, back in 2009, the New York Times ran an excellent article (it must have been, it won awards) about the use of ammoniated beef and the problems that were apparent with the product even then.
You know, I started out wanting to talk about a chef who has leveraged his celebrity to try and do some good in the world. I really didn't see this explosion coming, thinking it was just one more example of the crap we're stuck with eating ,and that until there was a revolution we would continue to be stuck with eating. But, man, did this thing ever achieve critical mass in a hurry!
The New England Complex Systems Institute and their President, Professor Yaneer Bar-Yam who's study I quoted when writing about debt and food prices, have issued an update to the landmark study done on the relationship between corn ethanol production, food commodity speculation and food prices. And Professor Bar-Yam is pretty convinced we're not done with the madness yet.
The Institute's web site hosts three very interesting short videos (regretfully, not embeddable) about the relationship of corn ethanol production, food commodity speculation, and food prices. The first shows how food prices between 1980 and 2000 fluctuated moderately around a consistent value, where prices neither spiked nor collapsed. Then food prices begin a dramatic upward climb peaking in 2008 and 2011. These two spikes are rather dramatic, and Professor Bar-Yam draws a direct link between the price spikes and social unrest. This is shown in the second video which links social unrest (like the Arab Spring) with food prices between 2004 and 2011.
The third video graphs actual food prices with increases in demand from ethanol production and speculation. To quote the update:
Our analysis shows that dominant causes of price increases are investor
speculation and corn to ethanol conversion. Models that just treat
supply and demand are not consistent with the actual price dynamics. The
two sharp peaks in 2007/2008 and 2010/2011 are specifically due to
investor speculation, while an underlying upward trend is due to
increasing demand from ethanol conversion.
Models that just treat
supply and demand are not consistent with the actual price dynamics. I thought that bore repeating with emphasis. There is a consistent firm upward pressure on food prices from the increased demand from ethanol conversion programs, but the big driver of food prices is "specifically due to
investor speculation."
"The food price bubble of 2011 caused widespread hunger and helped
trigger the Arab spring. In 2013 we expect prices to be even higher and
may lead to major social disruptions." said Professor Bar-Yam President
of NECSI, who has just returned from Davos where he presented his
findings on speculation in global commodity markets. His paper "The Food
Crises: A Quantitative Model of Food Prices Including Speculators and
Ethanol Conversion" was called by Wired magazine one of the top 10
discoveries in science of 2011.
In 2008 and 2011 increases in global food prices triggered hunger,
food riots and social unrest in North Africa, the Middle East, and
elsewhere, at a cost to global stability which policy makers can no
longer ignore. Over the past decade, world unrest has sharply increased
at time of peak food prices; now the long-term price trend is getting
close to what used to be episodic peaks.
According to the new study, the next food price peak will take place
in about a year. The results will be dramatically higher prices than we
have encountered thus far. The study warns that should ethanol
production continue to grow according to multiyear trends, even the
underlying trend will reach social-crisis levels in just one year.
So get a garden in, build a chicken coop in you backyard, and plan to do a lot less of everything, because you're going to need your $$ for food. Our refusal to find a way to put the brakes on global capitalism means that we're in for a rough few years. A lot more people are going to fall from "working poor" into "destitute poor" and none of it needs to happen. I don't want to go off on a rant here, but really people:
Is it really going to have to take a revolution to get the comfortable to pay attention?
Notice, at about 1'10", the display of the different types of carrots being prepped for use. Steven is careful to use local and organic wherever he can when making chili. He operates under the name Opa's Suppenküche. and you can check out another video--showing how the tank is heated using green fire logs made primarily of used coffee grounds. He also serves into biodegradable and compostable bowls.And the chili looks pretty darned good too!
It's a funny ol' world. This ad comes from Hellman's--a company owned by Unilever, one of the larger corporate behemoths straddling our globe. The ad is practically a PSA for Canadian farmers and Canadian food with the seeming contradiction of being put out with one of the global food giants it decries. Yet, owning local as well as international producers, it's clear that Unilever won't suffer no matter what we as consumers do. Unless wegrow our own food and purchase from local farmers at a local market or through a CSA, the multinationals are still going to make out like bandits. But all that being said, still a good commercial.
The local cable news program ran an article on the Rainbow Kitchen on October 19th. I finally got the recording from my (amazing) sister-in-law and edited it down to the four minutes it ran. I think it went well; although the report neglects the larger issues of food security, it does a good job of reporting on the sense of community the Kitchen is trying to foster and support and on the need in the community.
That Friday we had a group of about a dozen kids about 12-15 years old come in to help for the morning. I found it interesting that one of the kids said afterwards that "I didn't know that people needed help like this here in Canada" or words to that effect. The educational component of the Kitchen seems to be almost as important as the proactical aspect of feeding people. *sigh*
This is a CBS report on school lunches in France. What impresses me is not that the kids get lunch, but that they get lunch that matters. Fresh where possible. Local where possible. The focus is on real French cuisine; to teach kids to care about food as a cultural thing.
Can you imagine what this would look like in Canada? The maple syrup lake being stored for export would be served to our kids. Alberta bison, prairie grains, Quebec cheeses.
This also denotes a culture where food matters. Where you teach kids about what is good and why. Its also a culture that actually cares about its kids--there's no sodas or junk food in the schools. You want that, you have to decide to go and get it.
Its no wonder Jose Bove and the anti-McDonald's movement grew up here. Real food still matters. Kids matter. National pride is on the line. It really is sad that I can't even imagine what Canada would look like if we cared that much.
