eating for the planet
October 8, 2008
On October 25th Anna Lappe, Dan Barber, and Sally Fallon Morell will speak at the 28th Annual E. F. Schumacher Lectures. The location is the historic First Congregational Church in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. The time is 10AM to 5PM. The cost is 25 BerkShares or $25. To register call 413 528-1737 or use the donation/registration form at http://www.smallisbeautiful.org.
The August inflight magazine of Etihad Airways, the National Airline of the United Arab Emirates, carried an article by Kathryn Clark highlighting the work of featured speakers Anna Lappe and Dan Barber. We reprint it below with thanks to Etihad (www.etihadairways.com).
Please join us October 25th for good fellowship, great talks, and energetic discussion.
Best wishes,
Staff of the E. F. Schumacher Society
140 Jug End Road
Great Barrington, MA 01230 USA
www.smallisbeautiful.org
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"The Climate Change Diet"
from Etihad Inflight Magazine
August 2008
By Kathryn Clark
It's official: food production is bad for the planet. Terrible, actually. Eighteen percent of man-made greenhouse gases come from livestock production alone. That's more than the entire transportation industry combined. These figures come from a several-hundred-page 2006 UN report and, perhaps for the first time, highlight how food production has exacerbated climate change.
In the US, one person well versed in the pernicious relationship between food production and climate change is the dynamic Anna Lappe. This young American author and sought-after public speaker has acquired celebrity for her work with sustainability, food politics, globalization and social change. She has been named part of "Time" magazine's "Eco who's who," and in 'Contribute' Magazine's "21 under 40s making a difference". Lappe suggests that instead of throwing our forks away in despair, the time is nigh for us humans to eat our planet back to health.
Anna has made it her mission to raise awareness about the problem and untangle viable solutions. "There has been a huge increase in awareness about climate change, but until now, food has been an invisible part of the problem – and the solution," says Anna. The reason is that many aspects of the food system – how it's grown, what's used in the process, how it's transported, how it's packaged – fall into disparate categories. "It's challenging to tease out answers," she says. "But the figure I use when estimating the total greenhouse gas emissions cause by food production is 31 percent."
The two main culprits are livestock production and the large scale chemicalised, fossil fuel reliant farms that provide produce to many of the world's supermarkets, hotels and restaurants. "These farms are by design addicted to fossil fuels – the chemicals used are fossil fuel based," Anna says. "They use nitrogen-based fertilizers."
The effects are reverberating around the developing world. Ironically, the small scale farmers who are growing food in a sustainable manner are suffering the most, sometimes losing their farms to climatic anomalies caused by climate change. "The worst thing is that we {humans} are producing enough food to feed everyone," Anna says. "The problem is that people can't afford to buy that food. This is a food 'price' crisis – it's a very different scenario from a food crisis."
What does this mean for ordinary people? Anna and her colleagues have crafted a climate-friendly diet, and it's surprisingly easy to swallow. "I stress five key diet choices," Anna says. The first is not to buy into industrial, fossil fuel based agriculture. "Choose organic food, or food from chemical free local farms." The second, and most important, is to eat less meat. "People in the US and Europe have a huge amount of meat in their diet. Most people can cut back. No one has to go cold turkey – just skip meat in your breakfast, or eat it a few times per week." The fourth is to eat whole foods: food in its natural state. "A vast amount of energy goes into processing fruit, vegetables and grains. Eating whole foods will lower your carbon footprint."
Anna's fourth rule is one that rings around the world – buy local food. "This simply makes sense," Anna says. "It lowers your food miles by using less transport, keeps local farmers on their land and keeps money in the local community." The fifth recommendation is to buy food with the least packaging. "Packaging is a huge aspect of food production," Anna says. "Bottling water also has a weighty toll. When it's safe, drink tap water."
How does all this sit with our fine dining industry, which favours such geographically diverse products as TTsarskaya oysters from Cancale and wagyu beef from Japan? Among those fine dining restaurants on the case is the New York fine dining institution Blue Hill, which sells itself on its country credentials and juicy produce, much of which comes from the restaurant's farm in the Berkshires. Blue Hill proprietor and head chef Dan Barber explains his concept of climate friendly food. "It's food grown for its locality, picked at the perfect moment and purchased direct from the farmer," he says. "Nothing is lost in nutrition or flavour – or spent on the environment – during storage and transportation."
Local ingredients offer a flavour and a story better than any seasoning I could provide," Dan says, citing his land activist grandmother and farmers such as Eliot Coleman as inspirations. "From December through early April, 20 percent of our food comes from producers within a 250-mile radius, including Blue Hill Farm and the Stone Barns Center. That number swells to 90 percent in summer."
Following this ideology in a fine dining restaurant is not always easy. "The food from the farm next door is sometimes more inconvenient than food from thousands of miles away – that's the irony of our food system," Dan says. "I could get on the phone and have a fresh batch of beautiful produce from California or South America at the doorstep tomorrow for a fraction of the cost." But this is the creative challenge. "Seasonal cooking inspires more than it restricts – it might inspire because it restricts, how about that?" Dan muses. "When tomato season arrives, I want to see them in every dish!"
Dan and his team's efforts have not gone unnoticed. Blue Hill and its sister restaurant Blue Hill at Stone Barns received best new restaurant awards from the esteemed James Beard Foundation. Dan's advice to other restaurateurs is to get to know farmers. "Shop with the same farmer every week in one way or another," he says.
Meanwhile, Anna has traveled to some 65 American cities delivering her message. Support and encouragement have flowed along the way as awareness of the issue begins to simmer. "The media plays a huge role by providing people with positive solutions that they can be part of," Anna says. "In last month's 'O' {Oprah's magazine}, the second point in her 'top three ways to help the planet' was to eat less meat."
"There is a huge opportunity for our governments to figure out how to deal with climate change," Anna says. "We spend billions of tax dollars on farm commodities hat have been produced in an unsustainable manner. I hope that when the Farm Bill is next reviewed in 2012 that there will be a radical redirection of taxpayers' dollars away from unsustainable food systems." In the meantime, Anna says, all we can do is make our own change by eating for the planet.
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