Max Gladwell

Supply shortages and high prices only tell part of the food crisis story.

The recent headlines on the global food crisis focus on riots in poverty-stricken countries like Nigeria, most often skewering corn ethanol as the scapegoat. Our response is largely to look at rising energy prices and demand from the developing economies of China and India. The food crisis in America, though, has less to do with prices and supply and more to do with our personal health, together with the natural resources we need to continue producing food. They are indelibly linked, and when any part of this system of health and environment goes south, it triggers a downward spiral. See Jared Diamond’s Collapse for historic context. Conversely, when we take steps to improve any one part, it can trigger an upward cycle of recovery. Let’s explore.

Shiney Varghese of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy lays down the basic premise in “Triple Threat: Our Food, Water, and Climate Challenges.”

It is time for us to get serious about understanding the way climate change affects water resources for food production and conversely the way agricultural water use is leading to climate change.

It is noteworthy that the two sectors in the world that use the most water, chemical intensive agriculture and fossil fuel-based energy production, are also the biggest contributors to global warming, which in turn further increases water stress in many regions.

In other words, this is a vicious cycle. Where can it end? Timothy LaSalle of The Rodale Institute proposes starting with the carbon problem through a specific method of organic farming.

“Organic farmers are taking carbon out of the air. They’re creating robust and healthy crops that are ensuring against drought threat, which will only get worse as climate change gets worse. And we’re improving the nutritional quality of our crops, too. At the very same time, we’re reducing costs: We’re reducing the costs of destroying our topsoil, of chemical agriculture and farm runoff.

What we’re doing, though, is pushing up against every special interest: the farm chemical companies, the genetically modified seed companies, the commodity companies. But what we’re talking about is going to appeal to people, real people — and people are listening.

Synthetic fertilizer and oil-based pesticides release carbon dioxide into the air. But the organic approach, which is truly regenerative agriculture, sequesters carbon: It takes carbon out of the air and puts it back in the soil.

If we pulled these synthetics out and put in compost and cover crops and changed rangeland and valued old-growth forests … we could pull so much carbon dioxide out of the air it would be phenomenal. Between improving forestry management, protecting our grasslands, and promoting organic agriculture, I’m not sure we couldn’t mitigate climate change by sequestering so much carbon.

With regenerative farming, we’re building in the soil mychorrhiza fungi, which creates a protein, an encasement, that has a 1,000-year half-life. So it sits down there in the soil and holds carbon for a long, long time.

When you pour fertilizer down there, you kill the fungi and it volatizes into the atmosphere into carbon dioxide. Agriculture as we now practice it is one of the biggest contributors to global warming, but it could be one of the biggest mitigators.”

The organic and “regenerative” farming approach attacks the cycle at global warming. He admits that there could be an uncomfortable transition where crop yields might drop for a short period, but he makes a strong case that we’ll emerge stronger on the other end by adopting these more sustainable agricultural policies. What’s also baked into this approach is a healthier food supply.

We spoke to Robyn O’Brien of AllergyKids.com the other day about her efforts in this arena. We were quite lucky to catch her, as she’s been featured in The New York Times, CBS, CNN, and many other mainstream news outlets. She’s also currently writing a book on food allergies for Random House. This is Erin Brockovitch for food. Her theory: that the food supply is being manipulated with additives, genetic modification, hormones and herbicides, causing increases in allergies, autism and other disorders in children.

“It was absolutely terrifying to unearth this story. These big food companies have an intimate relationship with every household in America, and they are making our children sick. I was rocked. You don’t want to hear that this has actually happened.”

What concerns parents like O’Brien is not what’s listed, but what is not. Particularly foods made with genetically modified organisms – or GMOs.

“My concern as a mother is, are these kids part of a human trial that I didn’t know that I had signed them up for,” O’Brien says.

Today, more than 90 percent of the U.S. soybean crop is genetically modified – had its DNA altered to increase production and withstand chemical weed killers like roundup. Nearly three-quarters of all corn planted in the U.S. genetically modified.

O’Brien points out that even if you’re eating organic meat or milk, it doesn’t guarantee that the cattle weren’t fed with genetically modified corn as feed. The problem is highly systemic. Replacing GMOs and chemical fertilizers with organic alternatives would, over the long term, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and lead to a healthier, more sustainable food supply. But they wouldn’t necessarily change our eating habits, which have been on a steady decline for decades. These, too, have an impact on the environment that going organic alone won’t fix.

Mark Bittman is a New York Times food writer. He spoke at TED about what’s wrong with the way we eat i.e. too much meat, too few plants, too much fast food, too little home cooking. And why it’s putting the entire planet at risk. The video presentation is 20 minutes long but well worth the watch.

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