Hey there,
Anybody else feel like this has been the fastest-paced week of the year? The longer, sunlit days are much welcome, but adjusting to the loss of an hour has been a bit more of a feat. It’s interesting how just one thing - a simple hour - can send everything out of whack.
This is a pattern that is regularly documented in the food and supply chain world. Not with time specifically, but a more broad pattern of what ensues when one element slips out of place. We (the food and supply chain nerds) call this “the domino effect”. Food supply chains are fragile and highly dependent on each step running exactly how it was designed to operate. Each actor responds to push and pull factors - when one factor disappears or stops working correctly, a domino falls.
We’ve seen this often with the pandemic, right? Bread flour and toilet paper nowhere to be found, yet we were pouring out milk. Food suppliers and farmers were reeling from restaurants not needing even close to the same amount of food. Outbreaks among transporters jeopardizing storage and packaging, leading to food waste, and families going without enough food to put on their plate.
Herein lies the theme of today’s roundup. I’ve pointed out before that our food systems were never designed to include all, but it’s also important to note that the challenges we face can be traced to an inherent cause and response effect.
Welcome back to Before the Cutting Board, your weekly roundup of food + supply chain hot topics to help keep you up to speed on what’s going down with your food.
If you’re new to Before The Cutting Board, here’s how it works: The “This Week” section focuses on news and current events, while the “Food Fights” section usually explores some of the interesting debates flying around the food news world.
A huge thank you to everyone who has shown love and shared this newsletter! I actually really do enjoy reading that you enjoyed reading. Please keep sharing and spreading the word!
Without further ado, let’s dig in.
P.S.: If you only read one section this week, read the section about Potash in Food Fights
P.P.S: Thanks for your patience for today’s slightly tardy roundup! I don’t get paid for this (yet).
-This Week-
Shortages persist
High prices and shortages continue to weaken already unequal food access across the world. On the US East Coast, fish fries, an end-of-Lenten tradition for Christians, are being canceled due to Atlantic cod prices which have risen by nearly 50% in the last two years. The price hikes of cod are likely the combined result of overfishing in warming waters and the pandemic’s impact on the seafood industry. On the other side of the world, countries in the MENA region are strategizing around how to protect their most vulnerable communities from an impending food crisis. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has turned global wheat trade upside down, triggering intense spikes in wheat and fertilizer prices. Egypt - the world’s biggest importer of wheat - has set a price cap on unsubsidized bread and is attempting to incentivize local production. However, the country was also all but forced to devalue its currency and raise interest rates significantly in order to be considered for support from the International Monetary Fund. The IMF is notorious for strict and questionable loan terms, but is the main international institution tasked with leading financial management during global crises.
Unionizing push among food workers also persists
Two weeks ago, I talked about how Starbucks workers across the country have been unionizing. This week, workers in a Seattle location voted to unionize, bringing the union wave to the city where the coffee chain giant is headquartered. As pointed out by Civil Eats, the unionizing efforts at Starbucks reflect a larger scale push from food workers across the US to form unions in order to more powerfully challenge mistreatment in the workplace. In San Diego, grocery store workers who are members of United Food and Commercial Workers are currently voting on a strike authorization. Considering the pandemic worsened already-precarious working conditions for many food workers, who remain among the most food insecure demographics in the US, it’s not entirely surprising that unions and union actions are gaining traction quickly.
-Food Fights-
Potash-trophe in the making
When speaking about the food shortage crisis that has been born out of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, the conversation has largely centered around the wheat trade (understandably). But, in addition to devastating wheat, the conflict has also created enormous disruption to fertilizer exports. Since Russia typically accounts for 14% of the world’s fertilizer exports, prices have skyrocketed since the initial invasion last month. High gas prices have made matters worse, making it more expensive to both produce and transport fertilizer to fill the gap. The fertilizers, or inputs, that typically come out of Russia are vital to keeping large-scale corn, soy, rice, and wheat production afloat. Yields across multiple continents, especially North and South America, are now imperiled as farmers try to grapple with expectations to plant more to address high shortages with lesser fertilizer availability.
As Forbes noted this week, in spite of calls to seriously evaluate how our agricultural systems may need to change long-term to make fertilizer shortages less jarring, world leaders are committing money toward ramping up fertilizer production in other parts of the world. One of those parts is Brazil, where President Jair Bolsonaro is pushing for a law to increase mining in order to boost production of potash, a major fertilizer. Potash production in Brazil requires mining and deforestation of Amazonian land, home to Indigenous communities who have been losing practically all of their few environmental protections since Bolsonaro became President.
The link between the crash in fertilizer exports and the increasing dangers to Indigenous communities in Brazil hasn’t been drawn on a widespread scale yet - mostly just by Bolsonaro and a Canadian firm’s thirst to ‘make the most’ of the conflict. But we need to be paying closer attention to this. When our answer to crisis is to further endanger and subjugate historically marginalized communities, we are committing to perpetuating a system of imperialism that very clearly places less value on certain groups’ livelihoods. The same system of imperialism that world leaders supposedly reject when Putin drops all pretenses about it. If we can wag our fingers at Russia, then surely we can put action behind our words on building better food systems instead of simply trying to plug a hole.
(Happy?) World Water Day
This past Tuesday was World Water Day. The theme of this year’s observance was “Groundwater - Making the Invisible Visible”, a fitting theme given how much of the world is currently being battered by drought. Record-breaking dry conditions in many agriculture-reliant areas - like California, the Corn Belt, and Florida in the US, Somalia, Madagascar, and multiple countries in South America - have caused major crop shortages and launched important conversations around what growing food looks like as water access becomes increasingly scarce.
Earlier this week, the Washington Post put out a feature on the landscape of drought politics in California’s Central Valley. The piece largely focused on the drought’s impact on large-scale farmers and the resulting policy pushes. In the Central Valley, farmers typically advocate for more water storage infrastructure like dams and reservoirs. These strategies often meet resistance because they come at a significant environmental and financial cost. Showcasing the frustration that envelops the water conversation, particularly in California, were the responses to the Washington Post piece. Tom Philpott [below] challenged that the article centered on agricultural interests without covering how water policy and the current state of farming in California has created disparities in water access, primarily at the expense of marginalized communities.
That’s it for this week. 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 :)