The framing of organic farming
Before the Cutting Board: July 28, 2022
Hey there,
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. Occasionally, I’ll include a “Food Fights” section that explores some of the interesting debates flying around the food news world.
Let’s dig in.
-This Week-
Problem solving and problem creating
Earlier this month, the Food & Environment Reporting Network covered a protest coalition in Iowa that has united “an unlikely mix of Bernie Bros, Fox News devotees, Women’s March veterans, and at least one Q-Anon follower” against proposals to build three carbon pipelines across the state. The pipelines would transfer liquified carbon dioxide from ethanol refineries to underground storage locations in North Dakota and Illinois. At face value the pipelines seem like an important opportunity to capture and sequester pipelines. But experts and locals worry about the intentions of the investors, the use of carbon pipelines to pump more oil, and if the pipelines will lead to more conventional corn expansion in the US. Around 40% of all corn produced in the US goes into biofuels and the environmental impacts have been felt not only in Midwestern soils, but all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico as well. Corn farmers, interestingly, are also worried about the pipelines and how they will affect the farmland they lie under.
A few weeks ago, Inside Climate News put out a piece on a less controversial solution that’s being used to reduce nitrate pollution and methane emissions on a dairy farm in Washington: worms (aka vermifiltration).
Droughts and heat waves continue to rattle food systems
From the Washington Post, Italy’s worst drought in 70 years is hitting rice farmers hard. Rice is a particularly water-intensive crop and Italy is the largest producer of rice in Europe.
Excessive heat waves across the Midwestern US have led to the deaths of thousands of cows in Kansas, which beef companies dumped into landfills and unlined pits - raising concerns about both air and water pollution. The facilities that normally convert cow carcasses into animal feed and fertilizer have been overwhelmed by the amount of heat-triggered deaths.
The framing of organic farming
In case you missed this ‘Food Fights’ from last month, I wrote about how organic farming is being blamed for Sri Lanka’s economic crisis. Here are a few other recent perspectives:
This Politico newsletter, which opines on some of the contributing factors to the crisis that have been obscured by finger-pointing at organic farming. The newsletter also interestingly delves into the geopolitical nuances of environmental change and fertilizer use.
This piece from A Growing Culture diving deep into the political ecology of Sri Lanka’s food systems and the role that histories of colonialism and IMF-driven trade liberalization played, arguing that any economic instability had little to do with organic farming.
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 :)