Celebrating World Environment Day on 5 June 2013

Think.Eat.Save.

The theme for this year’s World Environment Day celebrations is Think.Eat.Save. Think.Eat.Save is an anti-food waste and food loss UNEP - United Nations Environment Programme campaign that encourages you to reduce your foodprint. 

According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), every year 1.3 billion tonnes of food is wasted. This is equivalent to the same amount produced in the whole of sub-Saharan Africa. At the same time, 1 in every 7 people in the world go to bed hungry and more than 20,000 children under the age of 5 die daily from hunger. 

Given this enormous imbalance in lifestyles and the resultant devastating effects on the environment, this year’s theme – Think.Eat.Save – encourages you to become more aware of the environmental impact of the food choices you make and empowers you to make informed decisions. While the planet is struggling to provide us with enough resources to sustain its 7 billion people (growing to 9 billion by 2050), FAO estimates that a third of global food production is either wasted or lost. 

Food waste is an enormous drain on natural resources and a contributor to negative environmental impacts. This year’s campaign rallies you to take action from your home and then witness the power of collective decisions you and others have made to reduce food waste, save money, minimize the environmental impact of food production and force food production processes to become more efficient. If food is wasted, it means that all the resources and inputs used in the production of all the food are also lost. 

For example, it takes about 1,000 litres of water to produce 1 litre of milk and about 16,000 litres goes into a cow’s food to make a hamburger. The resulting greenhouse gas emissions from the cows themselves, and throughout the food supply chain, all end up in vain when we waste food. In fact, the global food production occupies 25% of all habitable land and is responsible for 70% of fresh water consumption, 80% of deforestation, and 30% of greenhouse gas emissions. It is the largest single driver of biodiversity loss and land-use change. 

Making informed decision therefore means, for example, that you purposefully select foods that have less of an environmental impact, such as organic foods that do not use chemicals in the production process. Choosing to buy locally can also mean that foods are not flown halfway across the world and therefore limit emissions. So think before you eat and help save our environment! Know more at http://www.unep.org/wed/

Hard to Stomach: Two Billion Now Overweight

Mark Notaras confirms beyond doubt, that what was once viewed as a problem in Western societies, is now and will increasingly be a global one.

“The share of adults worldwide who are overweight jumped from 1.45 billion in 2002 to 1.934 billion in 2010, an increase of 25 percent.” If this opening sentence of the recent Vital Signs Online report from the Worldwatch Institute is not alarming enough, of even more concern is that the world is inevitably heading further down the track of an obesity epidemic.

In other words, rather than overweightness correlating specifically to a geographic region or certain cultural groups (think of the stereotypical “fat American”, once the butt of all jokes), the strongest causal factor is increased income, and the high calorie, meat-based, fast-food dependent “Western” diet, as well as lifestyle factors that accompany it.

With tens of millions of people joining the global middle class year on year, particularly in the fast growing economies of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa), it can be expected that the number of people with expanded waistlines will also swell, unless significant policy and behavioural changes occur.

In India for example, a country generally associated with a low-impact vegetarian diet, roughly one in five adults (19%) are now considered overweight, up from 14% in 2002. This in a country of 1.2 billion people and home to the greatest number of the world’s hungry — a figure, incidentally, that rose by 65 million from 1990 to 2005 according to a recent Oxfam report.

Overweight versus Obese

Overweightness can generally be divided into two categories — “overweight” and “obese”. In their report, Worldwatch classify “overweight” as referring to people with a body mass index (BMI) — a measure relating to a person’s height to weight ratio — of 25 or greater. If a person is obese, he or she would have a BMI of 30 or above. For the sake of this article, “overweight” refers to people in both categories, and “adult” refers to people surveyed over the age 15 from a total of 177 countries.

The global picture of obesity drawn from UN Population Division data and analysed by geographer Richard H. Weil, clearly points to a correlation of income with BMI across all regions.

While the global trend of higher income equals higher BMI is clear, there are some variations at the country level. Excluding 20 poor countries with low BMI located in Asia and Africa because they include large populations suffering from malnutrition, Japan (23%) is somewhat of an anomaly. At almost 19 percentage points better than the next (sizeable) ranked industrialised country, France (42%), Japan’s highly urbanised population have managed to draw enough from their traditional food culture (of rice, soybeans, fish and vegetables) to stay healthy.

Not surprisingly, Japan’s high health standards are reflected in the Japanese definition of obesity itself, which refers to people with BMI levels over 25 (and not the universal 30). But even the revered Japanese will be concerned at their longer terms trends towards higher meat consumption, not least because of their increasingly reliance on imported foods.

Broadly speaking, high income countries — from the United States (79%) to Australia (71.1%) to Qatar (62.7%) to Brunei (61.7%) — have high levels of average BMI regardless of which region of the world they are in.

Weighing up the Consequences

Of course, being overweight or obese is not merely an aesthetic concern for individuals and their families, friends and colleagues. Resultant health consequences like diabetes and heart disease impact on people’s quality of life and their ability to carry out day-to-day functions. And when aggregated across populations at a country and increasingly global level, overeating has monumental impacts on the health of our environmental assets.

Raj Patel has captured these impacts in his book "Stuffed and Starved" that talks about the ironies of a world in which the number of people going hungry (approximately 1 billion) is only eclipsed by the number of people overeating.

Even though the American Heart Association recommends that moderately active adults eat around 2,500 (male) or 2,000 (female) calories per day respectively, the average American is currently stuffing themselves with 3770 calories per person per day. Other figures from the 2010 FAO Statistical Yearbook on “Dietary energy protein and fat consumption" indicate that comparable countries include Austria (3760) and Greece (3700).

All of this unnecessary consumption is having significant consequences on Earth’s already stretched land, water and soil resources.This is not to say that every overweight person is taking food straight out of the mouths of a malnourished person. The international food trade is more complex than that. However, the world’s poorest people are more likely than ever to be competing for their staple sources of calories, e.g. for corn and wheat crops, against increasing demands for biofuels and livestock feed, not to mention food market speculators. And as can be expected in any market situation where the weakest lack protection, the world’s poor farmers are coming off second best.

Incidentally, increasing awareness about the global overeating epidemic comes at a time when global hunger continues to be in the spotlight due to the onset of drought affecting millions in East Africa and continuing high world food prices. In relation to the latter, the Food Price Index measured by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations indicate that, despite drops in commodity values for certain major crops like sugar, the overall level of food prices remains at near-record highs.

The Beginning (or the End) of Overeating

So, is there any positive news from this latest research? As the report is keen to point out, experience from Japan and other countries that illustrate higher disposable incomes do not necessarily lead to unbalanced food and leisure choices and subsequently obesity, offer some hope.

It is important to bear in mind that genetic factors also account for how well different populations adapt to high-impact diets and lifestyle changes driven by urbanisation. These differences are most stark in the Oceania region where there are large discrepancies between Polynesian and Micronesian countries on the one hand (a staggering 88% overweight) and Melanesian countries like Papua New Guinea with relatively low levels of BMI.

Still, Oceania, a region of many small island states and a very small combined population, can hardly be a template for the world. Neither, it is hoped, is the US. Former US Food and Drug Administration Commissioner (1990–1997) Dr. David A Kessler outlines a positive plan for Americans to “stop the vicious and unhealthy cycle of overeating” in his 2009 book "The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite".

Yet the bottom line is that, even if the US or any other developed country more accustomed to dealing with obesity can overcome the natural tendencies of people to consume fatty, salty and sugary food, at a global level, the era of overeating is probably only just beginning.

Mark Notaras is a writer/editor for the United Nations University (UNU) Media Studio and a researcher for the UNU Institute for Sustainability and Peace (UNU-ISP).

Two Acres and a Pile of Leaves

Conner Voss explains why today's Farming is not what it used to be!

Scritch, scritch, scritch. As a shovel to soil, axe to wood or chisel to stone—putting the rake to leaves is a timeless task of cosmic constancy. When I find myself taunted, twisted and oddly bound by the realm of infinite possibility in life, there is welcome peace in the simple, undeniable progress of a big leaf pile.

For so many reasons, this is good work: my feet are gentle on the ground, and my hands hold the tool—quiet, ancient—perfectly suited to this task. Scritch, scritch. There is room here for thought. It dances among my steady breath and between the shuttering leaves, all at once connected and irrelevant, meaningful and meaningless. With an undeserved degree of self-satisfaction, I am pleased by this paradox. I tell myself that there is wisdom in there somewhere, and then I pause, assume a familiar propped position, and begin to contemplate the purpose of this heady chore.

This is chestnut-tree detritus. Every autumn, descending in ligneous, spiny abandon, this fawn mat of organic matter blankets Digging Roots, our two-acre urban farm. If raked into huge piles and left undisturbed for a few years, the unfriendly mix of burrs and leaves would eventually mellow into a nutrient-rich leaf mold. If, on the other hand, it were left in place beneath the expansive arboreal reach, the very same thing would happen on a much longer timeline—as on a forest floor—and we would sacrifice valuable summer pasture, the ability to easily pluck chestnuts from the ground and perhaps the tolerance of our 12 neighbors, who are not keen on these suburban fence-lines becoming buried beneath wind-blown leaves. And so we rake.

Scritch, scritch. Resuming the satisfying rhythm, I cannot help but feel somewhat conflicted about this energy expenditure. Will I be here to utilize this leaf mold? Does it matter if I am? Does true stewardship require a sense of security?

My wife Sarah and I moved to this suburban lot roughly three years ago, ecstatic about the opportunity to develop our farming enterprise within an inspiringly vibrant social and professional community. We gladly accepted the responsibility of tending two close-in acres for what seemed very reasonable rent and the freedom to experiment with small-scale farming systems. If two acres proved an overwhelming task, we might have the social capital to rethink our long-term aspirations. Maybe I’d go back to school or take up a trade, or open a café. There are surely many ways to build a well-rounded, fulfilling livelihood.

But two acres isn’t too much for us. Quite the opposite—it isn’t enough, and we are yearning for more. The more we plan, the more we learn, the more we allow ourselves to reach for a full-time farming future, the more difficult it becomes to rake leased chestnut leaves on a sparkling Saturday afternoon. It’s impossible to pinpoint the exact moment in time when we became dissatisfied with our short-term arrangement. Slowly, subtly, we began to question the sanity in a system that does not encourage long-term decisions about our place.

Scritch, scritch, scritch. How do these monstrous piles of mined minerals, later to be deposited upon our vegetable beds, and eventually spread upon our dinner tables, fit into a month-to-month lease? How does the improvement of our pasture, later to be grazed by healthy chickens and lambs, further enhanced through dung and selective palates, and transformed into sustainable solar protein, fit into a month-to-month lease? Scritch, scritch. This labor, this tined effort is at least a four-year investment in soil fertility, self-sustenance and business security. As human participants in an all-encompassing cycle of life, death and return, the most efficient work is work that provides a service toward future fertility, diversity and resilience. Sarah and I are learning that the principle of working less, smarter, is easily applied within a system that maximizes the natural regeneration of our most valuable resources.

Our successful role as stewards seeking to survive, thrive and grow from the bountiful surplus of solar energy is completely dependent upon unwavering observation and well-timed participation. We need to see ourselves as part of the future of a place, and then perhaps we may be rewarded with the “interest” of life-long stewardship.

With this in mind, we hope to own land someday soon. Over two years ago and many leaf piles later, we started our farm search. It is an emotional trial far beyond anything we could have anticipated. We’ve researched hundreds of properties, and visited dozens and dozens more. Every candidate is cause for the difficult condition of detached projection—where we try to articulate the possibilities without fostering an unhealthy connection. Weekend after weekend, we’ve thrown ourselves into this arresting duet, frequently tumbling through a brief existential crisis when the chips don’t fall quite right. Many times we’ve returned home to wonder if this limbo is worth the trouble.

Neither of us was born into farming. There is no land to return to, and no native cultural knowledge to draw upon. Our approach is largely a scratch-and-sniff, pay-to-play, fake-it-’till-you-make-it type of operation. Given this pursuit, there is occasion to consider how wealth (specifically land) is transferred through time and space in our culture. We come from solid, middle-class families who have worked tirelessly to provide us with a plethora of options in life. In the first place, this safety net allows us to imagine a life as farmers at all. Our parents emerged during a time when small family farms were evaporating amidst the rapid commoditization of our food system, along with a depressing decline in rural agrarian communities.

It was the ’50s, and canned food was cool. And now, as the privileged offspring of baby-boomers, we are bequeathed the resources to examine voluntary simplicity, endowed the good credit to gamble with debt, and gifted the ideological support to swim against the social fish ladder. Even so, given our relatively affluent backgrounds, strong educations and bull-headed determination, good farmland feels like an uncomfortable financial stretch.

Perhaps the single greatest irony for us is that farming itself does not initially pave a welcome path toward owning a family farm. The major reason we transplanted to Portland was to work to save money to buy land. Full-time farming, for the time being, was put on hold. The burning question is: If there is an entire generation of young, aspiring farmers chomping at the bit to realize their agricultural destiny, but they must first move to the city to gain the capital to afford the inception of that destiny, will a resettling of our rural communities happen soon enough to change the game? That the prevailing method of changing the paradigm is to capitalize on it first is a mind-boggling contradiction. Doesn’t such a model imply that we are fighting ourselves?

To put farmers on the land, and keep them there, we may need a cultural reckoning wherein the true definition of profit involves the sustained ability to productively harness the energy of the sun. And let that be enough. Unfortunately, we can’t pay a mortgage with sunshine, and in many cases, with many lenders, we aren’t even enabled to pay a mortgage with farming.

My question is: In the end, what is land really worth? Is it worth its utility? Beauty? Ecological richness? Potential for subdivision? We’ve found that this assessment is grossly arbitrary, depending on who holds the deed, and what predominates the surrounding land use. In addition, the fate of farmland no longer accessible through traditional financing structures is utterly dependent on the emotional constitution and financial expectations of the owner. Are they willing to carry the loan? Are they willing to sell below “market (development) value” so that a couple of modest means might be provided the opportunity to carry on true small-scale agriculture in that place?

One of my favorite Chinese proverbs states: “You cannot build a foundation upon the sand.” Long-term tenure is the bedrock of our future foundation. Without it, there is little incentive to prioritize regenerative agriculture over short-term gains. The management processes that flow from cautious observation are qualified only as we build life in our soil—this takes time, patience and a measure of success not easily captured through cut-and-dry cost-benefit economics. The soil, our greatest asset, appreciates in value with time and dedicated care—a task for which we, as humans, are well suited, and to which we cannot afford to tend without complete commitment to our future.

Conner Voss first joined 'Oregon Tilth' as an AmeriCorps member and has served as the Organic Education Center’s garden coordinator since October 2008. He is currently establishing a farm. This essay originally appeared in In Good Tilth , a magazine devoted to the organic movement. IGT is project of Oregon Tilth , a non-profit advocating for biologically sound agriculture.