“Our ability to discuss the value of food is a luxury; even on budgets, many of us are far from struggling to put food on the table. But along with the luxury to have that discussion comes the responsibility to do so. Not just talk about what kind of fruit goes best with an imported Manchego or our latest culinary adventures at a new restaurant, but talk about what building a sustainable food structure really looks like, both here and abroad.”
Anna Brones, over at the Huffington Post, on Why Caring About Food Isn’t an Option: It’s a Responsibility.
Election season is upon us, and there’s plenty going on besides the main event. Tom Philpott at Mother Jones takes a look at California’s Prop 37, which would require labeling foods that contain GMOs, and examines whether or not it has a chance of toppling Monstano if it passes.
If you’re looking for some lunchtime reading, here are two stories that present a top-to-bottom approach to the issues facing farmers and the food community right now: Tom Philpott considers why organically managed soils stand up better to the extreme weather conditions produced by climate change than their conventional counterparts, and The New York Times gives us a look at who decides what gets labeled as Certified Organic. Both serve as a good reminder of all that goes into what ends up in supermarkets and on the table— and that the process is rarely a simple one.
Walmart's environmental initiatives in China have been heralded—most recently by Orville Schell in The Atlantic—as a key force in spurring other corporations to embrace sound environmental practices. My reporting—more than a year of research that took me from Arkansas to China—suggests a more complex, less flattering story: Walmart has made laudable though modest progress on many of its goals. But with the global economic slowdown tugging at the company's profit margins, people involved with the environmental campaign say the momentum seems to be stalling or vanishing entirely.
Whatever your stance on WalMart’s efforts to green its products, stores and, by extension, reputation, this piece on whether or not they’re accomplishing those goals in the first place is a must-read. Especially since, as Kroll puts it:
“In the past, Walmart’s outsize carbon footprint had made the company a favorite target of environmentalists. But in 2009, as hope for a congressional cap-and-trade deal evaporated and the Copenhagen climate talks ended in a stalemate, they [the National Resources Defense Council and Environmental Defense Fund] began to see Walmart in a different light: If they could make the world’s largest retailer greener, other businesses might follow suit. EDF had opened its own office near Walmart headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas, embedding its employees in the “belly of the beast,” as one staffer put it. “Even though they’re a party of last resort, they’re our only hope at the moment,” said Linda Greer, an NRDC scientist who works with Walmart. “They have the potential to change the world.”
Food in the News
Organic poultry farms have fewer antibiotic resistant bacteria among the flock, lessening the chances that they will pass those pathogens on to human consumers.
Alice Waters, Nikki Henderson and Tom Philpott talk Slow Food, food justice and the diversification of the food movement. Nikki and Michael Pollan are co-teaching a course at UC Berkeley this fall as part of a program called Edible Education 101, organized by Alice to celebrate of Chez Panisse’s 40th anniversary.
