Michael Pollan’s rules for eating

Michael Pollan posted a request earlier this year in the NYT for reader’s rule about eating. Here is his illustrated list of the top 20, and here is a sample…

My personal favorite rule is Miss Piggy’s: Don’t eat more than you can lift.

World Bank: biofuels have increased global food prices 75%

From the Guardian:

The damning unpublished assessment is based on the most detailed analysis of the crisis so far, carried out by an internationally-respected economist at global financial body.

The figure emphatically contradicts the US government’s claims that plant-derived fuels contribute less than 3% to food-price rises. It will add to pressure on governments in Washington and across Europe, which have turned to plant-derived fuels to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and reduce their dependence on imported oil.

Senior development sources believe the report, completed in April, has not been published to avoid embarrassing President George Bush. (more…)

Summary from Green Car Congress:

• Rapid income growth in developing countries (e.g., India and China) has not led to large increases in global grain consumption and was not a major factor responsible for the large price increases.
• Successive droughts in Australia have had a marginal impact.
• The EU and US drive for biofuels has had by far the biggest impact on food supply and prices.
• Without the increase in biofuels, global wheat and maize stocks would not have declined appreciably and price increases due to other factors would have been moderate. (more…)

Michael Pollan at Google

…talking about In Defense of Food (one hour). March 4, 2008

New discovery: Google has over 300 “talks@google” on YouTube. This will keep me busy…

Drought and food

From the NYT (“A Drought in Australia, a Global Shortage of Rice”):

(…) The collapse of Australia’s rice production is one of several factors contributing to a doubling of rice prices in the last three months — increases that have led the world’s largest exporters to restrict exports severely, spurred panicked hoarding in Hong Kong and the Philippines, and set off violent protests in countries including Cameroon, Egypt, Ethiopia, Haiti, Indonesia, Italy, Ivory Coast, Mauritania, the Philippines, Thailand, Uzbekistan and Yemen.

Drought affects every agricultural industry based here, not just rice — from sheepherding, the other mainstay in this dusty land, to the cultivation of wine grapes, the fastest-growing crop here, with that expansion often coming at the expense of rice.

The drought’s effect on rice has produced the greatest impact on the rest of the world, so far. It is one factor contributing to skyrocketing prices, and many scientists believe it is among the earliest signs that a warming planet is starting to affect food production. (…)

Drought has already spurred significant changes in Australia’s agricultural heartland. Some farmers are abandoning rice, which requires large amounts of water, to plant less water-intensive crops like wheat or, especially here in southeastern Australia, wine grapes. Other rice farmers have sold fields or water rights, usually to grape growers.

Scientists and economists worry that the reallocation of scarce water resources — away from rice and other grains and toward more lucrative crops and livestock — threatens poor countries that import rice as a dietary staple. (…)

Food for SUVs

Econbrowser calls it:

How should a well-fed American react when some of the world’s poorest citizens in Haiti and Bangladesh riot over the rising price of food? To be sure, there are many factors influencing food prices. But to me it’s natural to begin with the element that represents a deliberate policy choice on the part of the United States. I refer to America’s decision to divert a significant part of our agricultural production for purposes of creating a fuel additive for motor vehicles. USDA Chief Economist Joseph Glauber predicts that 4.1 billion bushels, or 31% of the entire U.S. corn crop, will be devoted to ethanol production for the 2008/09 season.

On one level, the question of whether it is morally acceptable for us to divert the food that might have fed the hungry for purposes of driving our SUVs is no different from similar questions about any of a number of other details of how the well-off dispose of their wealth. But I’m thinking that the profound inefficiencies associated with this particular disposition of resources may also be relevant. As a result of ethanol subsidies and mandates, the dollar value of what we ourselves throw away in order to produce fuel in this fashion could be 50% greater than the value of the fuel itself. In other words, we could have more food for the Haitians, more fuel for us, and still have something left over for your other favorite cause, if we were simply to use our existing resources more wisely.

We have adopted this policy not because we want to drive our cars, but because our elected officials perceive a greater reward from generating a windfall for American farmers. But the food price increases are now biting ordinary Americans as well. That could make those political calculations change, and may present be an opportunity for a nimble politician to demonstrate a bit of real leadership. I notice, for example, that although Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) was among those who voted in favor of the monstrous 2005 Energy Bill that began these mandates, Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and John McCain (R-AZ) were among the 26 senators who bravely voted against it.

Wouldn’t it be refreshing if one of them actually tried to make this a campaign issue?

Grains gone wild

Krugman on food prices (NYT):

Grains gone wild

The financial crisis gets most of the attention from the business press — but in terms of sheer human impact, the current food crisis may well be a bigger deal:

“Governments across the developing world are scrambling to boost farm imports and restrict exports in an attempt to forestall rising food prices and social unrest.
…
The moves mark a rapid shift away from protecting farmers, who are generally the beneficiaries of food import tariffs, towards cushioning consumers from food shortages and rising prices.

But economists warned that such actions risked provoking an upward spiral in global food prices, which have already been pushed higher by rising demand from emerging markets like China and India and pressure on land from the growing production of bio-fuels.”

What I don’t quite understand is why food prices have spiked so dramatically. Demand has been rising for a number of years; bio-fuels is a big thing, but how much bigger is it this year than a year or two ago? It can’t be speculation: that raises prices by inducing stockpiling, and stocks of wheat and rice are at or near record lows.

Worsening food supply problems

From the WSJ (sub. req.)

Rice Hoarding in Asia Pressures Supply

BANGKOK — As rice prices hit new highs, farmers across Asia are hoarding their crops, raising the prospect of a shortage in Asia and Africa that could lead to widespread unrest.

Rice prices in Asia have doubled since the beginning of the year, driven higher by rising demand, a steady depletion of government stockpiles and a pest outbreak in Vietnam, the world’s second-largest exporter after Thailand.

On Thursday, medium-grade rice exported from Thailand — a de facto market benchmark — reached $760 a metric ton, up from $360 a ton at the end of last year.

Governments around the region are curbing exports to safeguard their domestic supply, putting further upward pressure on prices.

(…)

Protests have broken out in several countries, including Guinea, Egypt and the Philippines, as prices of basic foodstuffs soar. The situation is exacerbated by higher fuel costs, which add to the cost of shipping food, as well as dwindling government stockpiles. The U.S. Department of Agriculture predicts global rice stocks will fall to their lowest level in 25 years in 2008.

In China, the government said it will pay farmers more for rice and wheat and has frozen the retail prices of rice, cooking oil and other goods in an effort to rein in food costs that jumped 23.3% in February from a year earlier.

In the Philippines, the world’s biggest importer of rice, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is considering a moratorium on converting agricultural land for building housing developments or golf courses. Her cabinet ministers are urging fast-food restaurants to offer half-portions of rice in order to cut down on the country’s rice bill.

Rice prices trundled along at a relatively low level earlier in the decade after global rice inventories hit 150 million tons in 2000. Rice traded at under $300 a ton until 2006. The price increases began accelerating in the fourth quarter last year when widespread flooding in Vietnam and the Philippines stoked demand when inventories were falling.

Continuing growth in China, India and other parts of the developing world has placed an additional strain on the world’s food supplies as their increasingly wealthy populations increase their food intake.

Urbanization has encouraged much wider consumption of rice, too, because it is easier to store, more nutritious and easier to prepare than many other staple foods. Many countries in sub-Saharan Africa have begun switching to rice over the past 20 years, taking up a greater portion of the rice exported from Thailand and Vietnam.

What’s for dinner? Not salmon

There is an article in today’s NYT about the pollution and sick fish caused by the way salmon is farmed in Chile (Salmon Virus Indicts Chile’s Fishing Methods). I had heard complaints about this from my environmentalist friends when I was in Chile last year. I don’t understand fish farming, but can easily believe it’s not benign since it’s yet another application of industrial techniques to food production, a la Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma. Here’s a picture of salmon farms I took as I took off from Puerto Montt last year on my way south to Patagonia–looks like a plume of pollution streaming from the pens…

Update 4/16/08 (NYT): Safeway the third-largest supermarket chain in America, has restricted some purchases of farm-raised Chilean salmon over concern about a virus that is killing millions of fish there.

The supermarket chain decided late last month to stop buying from its Chilean supplier, Marine Harvest, because Infectious Salmon Anemia, or the I.S.A. virus, was “impacting the quality of the product,” Brian Dowling, a Safeway spokesman, said this week. Mr. Dowling said the virus, which does not pose a risk to humans, was nevertheless affecting the size of the salmon, “which impacts the quality and the taste.”

Food v. fuel, part 2

An earlier post covered the consequences of using food for fuel. There has also been a lot written about using fuel to to make food–i.e., the energy and environmental consequences of meat production.

But it may be an early indicator when a NYT food writer writes about the energy cost and environmental damages of meat (“Rethinking the Meat-Guzzler“). Especially when the writer is not a vegetarian, but has written a vegetarian cookbook. Something is going on…

Food versus fuel

NYT on the consequences of biofuels on the cost of food to those who can least afford it.

Rising prices for cooking oil are forcing residents of Asia’s largest slum, in Mumbai, India, to ration every drop. Bakeries in the United States are fretting over higher shortening costs. And here in Malaysia, brand-new factories built to convert vegetable oil into diesel sit idle, their owners unable to afford the raw material.

This is the other oil shock. From India to Indiana, shortages and soaring prices for palm oil, soybean oil and many other types of vegetable oils are the latest, most striking example of a developing global problem: costly food.

The food price index of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, based on export prices for 60 internationally traded foodstuffs, climbed 37 percent last year. That was on top of a 14 percent increase in 2006, and the trend has accelerated this winter.

In some poor countries, desperation is taking hold. Just in the last week, protests have erupted in Pakistan over wheat shortages, and in Indonesia over soybean shortages. Egypt has banned rice exports to keep food at home, and China has put price controls on cooking oil, grain, meat, milk and eggs. (…)

The data:

Of course, food costs more in the first world as well, due to competition from biofuels, as well as other global factors–growth in China and India, energy costs, etc. (Guardian).

Taking processed foods to a new low…

Here’s a truly American product: pancakes in a pressurized can, from “Batter Blaster.” Even more amazing, they put “organic” on the label–how do they qualify for that??

Scenario workshop in Indianapolis

I spent two days in Indianapolis helping Andy Hines (Social Technologies) with a business strategy workshop in Indianapolis. The client was a high tech agriculture science company, who is looking at new opportunities. Part of the process Andy is leading for them included developing scenarios, and Andy brought me in as an outside provocateur.

It was very interesting learning about ag science and food. Coincidently, I’m reading Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Delimma, about how four different meals–industrial, pastoral, and foraged (not sure what the fourth is yet). I’ve also read Nestle’s What to Eat earlier, which is about how to shop for food, and how food is sold to us. So food has been on my mind. There are a lot of similarities between agriculture and energy. Both are high tech, have huge environmental implications, and a re wrought with public policy issues and involvement. There were about 20 people from the ag sciences company, and I was very impressed with their knowledge (not surprising) and also with their concern about the public health implications with food and diet. One of Pollan’s comments is that we are being stuffed with corn and soy products that aren’t good for us, which is an issue much on the mind of this company as well–more as an issue of personal responsibility than profitability. Maybe a “triple bottom line” issue.

The event was held at the Indiana University Emerging Technology Center, about 1 mile north of downtown Indianapolis. Very nice facility, but it was kind of strange that virtually every room was “sponsored” by a local company. But I guess that’s a practical way to raise funds.

This event was also a nice complement to a workshop I attend last month at UC Davis’ Agricultural Sustainability Institute on life cycle analysis of food. They brought together about 12 people from universities in the US and Europe to talk about how to analyze the carbon emissions (and other pollutants) involved in growing and processing food. One of the good news items to come out of this was the instances of companies learning about their carbon footprint, and finding ways to save energy costs, and reduce pollution, at the same time.

IUETC (on left) looking down (south) what had been an old canal, toward downtown Indianapolis. This whole area was nicely redeveloped. The IU/Purdue campus is to the right. State Capitol building barely visible at end of canal:

Looking north from the center. The old brick building was a church remodeled as a restaurant.

One of the startling sights was a large coal plant in downtown Indianapolis. About five block from the state capitol…

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