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, while the “Food Fights” section usually explores some of the interesting debates flying around the food news world.
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Let’s dig in.
-This Week-
Amid unreliable and dangerous humanitarian corridors, local food workers and farmers are the backbone of Ukraine’s current food supply
Since Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, nearly 3 million Ukrainians have fled to neighboring countries. But, many more still remain in Ukrainian cities, trapped by encroaching military aggression. A few weeks. Despite all food exports being halted by a Russian blockade, food companies and farmers are still maintaining operations on the ground in order to preserve food supply for imperiled Ukrainian civilians. This week, Chloe Sorvino (Forbes) reported on how thousands of truck drivers working for MHP - the sixth largest poultry exporter in the world - are risking their lives to deliver 330 tons of chicken a day to Ukrainians who currently lack access to food. Meanwhile, farms in Ukraine are transforming into food processing facilities in order to alleviate local food shortages and get food to people in cities quickly. However, without access to the resources and inputs needed to prepare for the spring planting season, farmers are concerned that Ukrainians will run out of food. During wars and conflicts, humanitarian corridors, or demilitarized zones designed to create safe passage for humanitarian aid, are typically the route through which food aid is delivered to civilians. Unfortunately, the humanitarian corridors in Ukraine continue to be used as targets by Russia which has made it even more dangerous to safely deliver food to people.
New Read: Healing Grounds: Climate, Justice, and the Deep Roots of Regenerative Farming by Liz Carlisle
Last week, I wrote about the discussions surrounding the appropriation of regenerative agriculture techniques by big food corporations at the expense and erasure of the roots these practices have in farming communities of color. Around the same time, UCSB Environmental Studies Professor Liz Carlisle released her new book Healing Grounds: Climate, Justice, and the Deep Roots of Regenerative Farming which draws out the inherent connection between the success of regenerative agriculture and its position as an indigenous practice. The book follows four Black, Asian, Indigenous and Latina women whose applied regenerative practices are deeply tied to their ancestral connection to the land. In a Q&A with Civil Eats, Carlisle laid out her perspective on the policy discourse and emerging strategies surrounding both racial justice in agriculture and regenerative agriculture as a tool for beating back food production’s contribution to climate change. An important conversation considering the IPCC’s latest report that called for a centering of indigenous knowledge in the way we engage food-related climate solutions moving forward.
Honorable Mentions: There’s been an uptick in trendy restaurants opening shop in Chinatown, yet community residents still live in a food desert
-Food Fights-
Corporate Social (Lack of) Responsibility
Food advertising has always played a huge and complicated role in our diet choices and purchasing decisions. As our awareness about climate change and the culpability of the food industry deepens, the influence of food advertising on how we engage with food has arguably become even more murky. This week, Civil Eats interviewed NYU Associate Professor Jennifer Jacquet on a study she co-authored, which delves into the contribution of the world’s top 35 meat and dairy companies to the 37% chunk of greenhouse gas emissions that can be attributed to food systems.
The interview lays out the ways in which these companies have been able to duck, dive, dodge culpability - primarily through lobbying and advertising. These tactics are in line with the strategies the oil and fossil fuel industry has used to flip the script on climate change and responsibility. However, it seems the tactics have morphed slightly. In this case, meat and dairy companies can’t rally around individual responsibility as much, right? It would be a bit antithetical to convince you to transition away from an animal-inclusive diet. So instead these meat and dairy companies are more focused on greenwashing, or portraying their operations in a manner that makes us feel warm and fuzzy about how they’re approaching environmental issues without any legitimate transparency or proof of improvement. It plays upon the same sensibilities that grain and dairy ads are notoriously known for; whereas back in the day, food marketing and PR manipulated sensibilities around health to make you feel good about purchasing from a value chain, it’s clear that now there’s a focus on influencing the way you think about their role in climate change so that they can continue to escape blame.
Interestingly, the UK’s advertising regulation authority has been cracking down on greenwashing lately. Within the food space, the allegations seem to be trained on alternative protein and milk companies. Two plant-based milk brands, Alpro and Oat-ly, have had advertisements banned in the last year due to lack of specificity in their claims of impact and emission comparisons to dairy. This Grantham Institute report found that the fossil fuel and airline industries are increasingly being taken to task in several countries for greenwashing. But, as seen in Jacquet’s study, the scrutiny of meat and dairy remains to be seen universally.
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 :)