Hey there,
Happy last day of Earth Month! April is one of the busiest times of year for me. April is the month when there are expectations to ramp up, recognize, and celebrate efforts to re-align our relationship with the planet for the better. When you work in sustainability, it can honestly be easy to roll your eyes at this. Every day is Earth Day, and every month is Earth Month, so why should April be any different?
One thing I've noticed throughout my career - whether it was talking about organic transitions with farmers for Point of Origin or working with chefs to test delicious, climate-friendlier menu offerings - is that inspiration goes a long way. Especially when you're up against years of habits, traditions, or expectations. And if we're being honest, in the current political/economic/metaphysical/insert-descriptor-here climate, inspiration and motivation feel a bit hard to come by. So amid the extra workload that Earth Month brings, I try to remember that it's an opportunity to facilitate inspiration, learning, and hope. Which is what we need a lot of to address a changing climate that is not growing any less in urgency and importance.
In the spirit of the Earth Month (albeit the final day), the theme of this month's roundup is understanding the linkages between food and climate change through the lens of a few current topics. This is often implied in my roundups, but I chose some recent articles that I think help connect the dots more directly. A little spoiler alert: the dots outline a circle.
Welcome back to Before the Cutting Board, your roundup of food + supply chain hot topics to help keep you up to speed on what’s going down with your food.
Let’s dig in.
-This Month-
Bird Flu
Adding another tick on the 'unprecedented times' list, we are witnessing the worst bird flu outbreaks on record. When we talk about bird flu and food, we tend to focus on egg and poultry prices. There's also a lot of talk about dairy now that we're seeing infection spread to cows for the first time ever, which has led to drops in dairy production. There's a lot to unpack here about how the ways in which industrial poultry and dairy farming operates lends itself to such rapid viral spread and the resulting practice of livestock culling. Price gouging and wage suppression in poultry are also well-documented in the US.
Aside from these sociopolitical dynamics that add fuel to the fire, there is a growing understanding of the link between the proliferation of zoonotic diseases and climate change. As weather patterns change, so do the seasonal patterns that trigger animal migrations. As Inside Climate News points out, scientists are beginning to more clearly understand how climate change is leading this particular strain of bird flu to spread in never-before-seen ways.
This impacts our food realities in two ways. 1) Meat production continues to be the highest source of the agriculture-based greenhouse gas emissions that are contributing to climate change. 2) As long as we continue to consume high amounts of meat, sourced in particular from industrial production systems, we will continue to be exposed to the ramifications of how climate change is fueling the spread of zoonotic diseases - whether that's through increased prices or otherwise.
Inflation and Food Access
Farming and the decisions that go into growing food are largely dependent on climate. Temperature and rain patterns dictate soil nutrient levels as well as pest and fungi incidence which ultimately determines both overall yield and the quality of that yield. As weather patterns continue to become more extreme, the resulting shocks at the farm level become more extreme and trickle down throughout the supply chain in a domino-like fashion. This impacts not only produce and food grown for processed goods, but also the food grown to feed livestock.
Animation by Paris Coyne
Thanks or no thanks to the pandemic, the average consumer understands more clearly how shocks at the beginning of our supply chains impact the price tags or availability we see at the retail level. Traditionally, when we speak about how climate-related supply chain disruptions impact prices, there tends to be a lot of focus on energy and transportation of goods. But the relationship between climate-related farm productivity shocks and food inflation is becoming better understood.
Late last month, a new study from the European Central Bank and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research found that we could see the cost of food rise almost 2 percentage points per year during the next decade as a result of weather and climate shocks. We're seeing this play out in real time in several countries, including Zambia, Malawi, and Zimbabwe which have all declared a national disaster-level drought.
US Farm Bill
What does policy and legislation have to do with the intersection of climate change and food? Great question, I'm glad you asked.
In the US, small farms have been on the decline for several decades. Recent census data shows that we've lost nearly 150,000 farms since 1997 with the steepest decline taking place among farms less than 10 acres. Meanwhile, large farms have grown - farming operations with acreage in the 100,000+ range now control two-thirds of US agricultural land. It's also understood that crop diversity had dropped over time, which is something that anyone who grew up having to be in the backseat during Midwestern road trips can attest to. Crop diversity and phasing out monoculture farming remains key to mitigating agricultural greenhouse gas emissions
Also in the US is the Farm Bill, one of the few legislations that has to be formally reauthorized every five years or else we live under threat of a codified reversal to agricultural laws from the 1930s. One of the articles I enjoyed reading the most this month was this New York Review piece from Christopher Bosso that explains the history of the Farm Bill and the pivotal role it plays in what we grow, what we eat, and how we pay for food. When we talk about the industrialization patterns in US agriculture and by proxy its contributions to climate change, we must also talk about the historical political and economic decisions that have created a pathway toward that industrialization. Anyone who eats and purchases food in or from the US, should be invested in this legislation.
What else I'm reading:
Bioplastics have quickly proliferated our single-use food serviceware experience without much interrogation as to why we're comfortable labeling synthetic vessels as "bio" or "eco-friendly products". As the USDA National Organic Program weighs whether or not to allow synthetic, 'biodegradable' food packaging in certified organic compost, Civil Eats documented how organic farmers are pushing back against what they view as a potential threat to the core values of organic agriculture.
I recently started reading Retail Inequality by Kenneth Kolb
Carrefour and Pepsi squashed their beef
That’s it for this month. If you enjoyed reading this, please forward to a friend. Even if you didn’t enjoy reading it, still tell your friends - misery loves company :)