NYC Food and Climate Summit

In case you haven't heard yet, next Saturday, Dec. 12, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, Just Food, and NYU will be hosting the NYC Food and Climate Summit. We are even lucky enough to be having HEN as a co-sponsor of the event, since HEN agreed to be a main contributor to making video messages possible from Vandana Shiva and Wangari Mathaai which will be shown at the plenary session and uploaded to websites afterward. The Food and Climate Summit will be happening smack in the middle of the Copenhagen (or "Hopenhagen") climate talks. It will even be held the day after 350 holds candlelit "Vigils for Survival" all across the world (these are on Dec. 11 - find one near you). In NYC, there will be one in Washington Square Park from 5-6 pm and one at Chelsea Piers from 6-8pm.

The Summit's registration was full within 36 hours of opening, which shows that it is guaranteed to be a successful event. Fortunately, as much information as possible from the conference will be posted to the conference website.

It is so important that NYC is making the connection between food and climate change, because food and climate change are so inextricably connected and it is not receiving enough attention on the global or even national scales in terms of climate change talk. Yes, Oxfam, tcktcktck, and 350, among other organizations, have been doing a great job of promoting the urgency of demanding action from our world leaders (such as limiting CO2 emissions to 350 ppm) - but as far as I can see there is not much talk here about agriculture. There are several main reasons to connect food and climate change. First of all, climate change is devastating developing countries' ability to produce crops on their own, leading to there being over a billion hungry people in the world. Climate change hits developing countries far greater than it impacts countries like the US (see some of my previous posts on Oxfam).

Second of all, producing "food" is a big contributor to climate change. If you've read Michael Pollan's book The Omnivore's Dilemma, seen Food, Inc., FRESH, King Corn, or know anything else about the sustainable, local, organic, and/or slow food movements - then you might have an idea about the gravity of unsustainable agriculture and how it is contributing to health problems, economic problems, climate change, etc. The fact that it takes 1,500 gallons of water to make one pound of beef...that is not good for the environment or our health. Monocultures are sprayed with pesticides and chemicals that make it really easy for resistant strains of bacteria to develop. Subsidies for corn and soy given to farmers are used to feed cattle and pigs with ground meat and corn. ...These are the things that contribute to the artificially low cost of unhealthy food (artificially because we do pay - later on, that is, in the form of healthcare costs).

All that stuff is unsustainable. As Michael Pollan & Joel Salatin put it, we are taking a solution - grass-fed cattle - and turning it into 2 problems: 1) unsustainable CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations, where animals standing in their own manure only leads to bacterial infections and other diseases), and 2) nutrient-deprived farmland that needs to be sprayed with chemicals and harmful fertilizers (because it doesn't have the beneficial nutrients from manure).

Sign the NYC Food Pledge & Charter

Below are the session topics for the Summit next week. Visit here for more details. (And don't forget to check out the wonderful Partnering Organizations!) Be sure to help spread the word using facebook and twitter (@nycfoodclimate) Please use the hashtags #nycfoodclimate, #cop15, and #tcktcktck on twitter. Thanks!

Informational
Session 1: Introduction to Food and Climate Issues

Skills Building
Session 2: Faith-Rooted Climate and Food Justice Organizing
Session 3: Best Practices in Institutional Purchasing
Session 4: Tackle Hunger, Health and Environment in Your Community
Session 5: Grow Food in the Big Apple
Session 6: Cool Food on a Budget: Good Diet for People, Pocketbooks and Planet.
Session 7: Cool Food Demonstration: Preservation Without Refrigeration
Session 8: Composting Your Food Waste
Session 9: What’s at Steak: Tips for Talking about Animal Food and Climate Change Connections
Session 10: How to Mobilize around Food and Climate Change Issues

Public Policy
Session 11: Urban Agriculture: Community Gardens, Urban Farms, and More
Session 12: The Food Shed: Promoting Sustainable Local Agriculture
Session 13: Greening Food Infrastructure
Session 14: Setting an Agenda for Child Nutrition, School Food and Food Education
Session 15: From Farm to Landfill: Reducing Food Waste in New York City

Informational
Session 16: Understanding Your Foodprint

Skills Builder

Session 17: Cooking Up Climate-Friendly Change: Youth Lead the Good Food Movement
Session 18: Tackle Hunger, Health and Environment in Your Community
Session 19: Grow Food in the Big Apple
Session 20: Cool Food on a Budget: Good Diet for People, Pocketbooks and Planet
Session 21: Cool Food Demonstration: Preservation Without Refrigeration
Session 22: Composting Your Food Waste
Session 23: What’s at Steak: Tips for Talking about Animal Food and Climate Change Connections
Session 24: How to Mobilize around Food and Climate Change Issues

Public Policy
Session 25: Urban Agriculture: Roofs, Walls, and Other Under-Utilized Spaces
Session 26: The Food Shed: Harnessing New Yorkers’ Buying Power
Session 27: Institutional Procurement: Buy Local and Sustainable
Session 28: The Food-Collar Economy
Session 29: Structural Discrimination Related to Food and Climate Change

Foodprint NYC - Please help now!! Call your City Council member!

Hi Friends,

It’s with great excitement for our possibility of addressing the current state of the environment and our food system that I’d like to tell you about the NYC Foodprint Resolution and ask for your help. The "FoodprintNYC" initiative, which was introduced to the City Council on June 30, 2009, would create greater access to local, fresh, healthy food, especially in low-income communities as well as city-run institutions. By increasing the availability of local, just and sustainably-produced food, New York City can decrease its ecological "Foodprint" - our food system's contribution to greenhouse gas emissions and global climate change through the production, processing, packaging, shipping, storage and disposal of food. The resolution could help the city meet its goals of reducing its greenhouse gas emissions, while increasing access to local, healthy food to NYC, particularly underserved communities.

The resolution was pushed for by the NYC Foodprint Alliance, which is made up of dozens of non-profit organizations such as Just Food, Oxfam Action Corps NYC, Slow Food USA and World Hunger Year. It proposes “FoodprintNYC,” a citywide initiative designed to lessen the impact the City’s food choices and production systems have on climate change through the launch of a public awareness campaign, greater access to local, fresh, healthy food, and the mobilization of the financial and technical support needed to sustain these efforts, especially in low-income communities as well as city-run institutions. It is meant to build on PlaNYC, which aims to reduce global warming and encourage environmental awareness, yet does not address food and farming as it stands now. The resolution also builds upon the environmentally-friendly policies and programs recommended in the Manhattan Borough President’s 2009 report “Food in the Public Interest.”

If you’ve seen movies like Food, Inc. or What’s On Your Plate?, or read books like The Omnivore’s Dilemma, then you understand the impact that decreasing food miles and supporting local, sustainable food can have on our health and the future of our planet.

I’m proud to have been involved with the NYC Foodprint Alliance and am glad our City is one of the first to take initiative at beginning a movement that I believe should occur in every city. However, in order for this resolution to become law, we need your help! So far, 16 Councilmembers have signed on as co-sponsors; the resolution needs 26 co-sponsors to even be considered for a vote. If you don’t currently live in NYC but know someone that does, please pass this message along to them. NYC residents: we need you to reach out to your City Council members and ask them to co-sponsor this resolution, which Councilmember Bill DeBlasio has been kind enough to enthusiastically introduce, with the support of Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer.

Here is a video introducing FoodprintNYC and a message from Bill DeBlasio.


Here’s what you can do:

The NYC Foodprint Alliance is asking you to call your City Council member and ask them to support FoodprintNYC. Calling your representative is fast, easy and effective. Every call that you make in support of or against a policy issue gets recorded. Calls are usually short and you are rarely asked questions, as staffers are busy and want to take down your position and get you off the phone! To find your representative and voice your support for the FoodprintNYC resolution, follow these easy steps:

1. First, find your city council member and the phone number for his or her legislative office (not the district office).

2. Next, find out if your council member has already supported this resolution.

3. If your city council member has not yet signed on as a co-sponsor of the resolution, please call and urge him or her to support the resolution. Feel free to use the following simple script:

• Hello, my name is ______________ and I am a constituent.
• I live at/in ___________ (give street address or neighborhood so they know you are a constituent).
• I'm calling to urge Council Member _______ to support Resolution 2049 calling for FoodprintNYC.
• At this time you’ll likely get thanked for calling, and then the purpose of your call will be recorded. If they do ask for more detailed information, here are the key points:
  

• The resolution was introduced in the City Council by Bill de Blasio on June 30, 2009.
• It is the first NYC resolution to exclusively address climate change through our food system.
• It calls for a citywide initiative to create greater access to local, fresh, healthy plant-based food, especially in low-income communities as well as city-run institutions.
• Increasing availability and use of local, healthy food decreases significant pollution caused by the packing, preparing and shipping of food.

If your city council member has already signed on as a co-sponsor of the resolution, please call and thank him or her for their support. Feel free to use the following simple script:

• Hello, my name is ______________ and I am a constituent.
• I live at/in ___________ (give street address or neighborhood so they know you are a constituent).
• I'm calling to thank Council Member _______ for their support of Resolution 2049 calling for FoodprintNYC! I am so glad to see the connection between food and climate change being taken seriously.
  

On behalf of the NYC Foodprint Alliance, thank you for your time! :) Kelly

The NYC Foodprint Alliance is a collaborative network of food justice, environmental, anti-hunger and human and animal rights organizations working for a more healthy, just and sustainable food system for New York City. To join the Alliance or for more information, contact Nadia Johnson at Just Food, nadia@justfood.org.

Food, Inc.

I just had the opportunity to view a screening of Food, Inc. - what a well done documentary! I felt like I had seen it before - if only because Michael Pollan was very much apart of making the movie, and he did such a good job laying out all of the hot issues in The Omnivore's Dilemma. Pollan made Joel Salatin's Polyface Farm come to life in his book, but to pack it all into 1.5-2 hours that can be easily watched on a screen definitely has the potential to reach a lot more people than would bother reading such a heavy book. It didn't matter that I hadn't eaten dinner before watching the movie, because I didn't have an appetite after it anyway; after seeing the awfully unhygienic, graphic descriptions of how meat is made. The meat that you buy in the stores...to actually see footage of the slaughter and the processing that goes on - not to mention the terrible living conditions & corn diet that *ruminant* cows are fed. Come to think of it, it seems quite impossible to eat sustainably by shopping in a supermarket. The aisles of food are really just rows of corn and genetically-modified Monsanto soy re-packaged cleverly to look like thousands of different branded foods, and even the produce comes from all ends of the earth and is laden with pesticides and God knows what else. Oh yeah and by the way, Monsanto has produced herbicides, DDT, and Agent Orange for the US Military operations in Vietnam, which has led to birth defects, as well as various health complications for veterans.

The movie airs June 12, but in the meantime you can watch the trailer. When the movie comes out, go watch it and tell everyone you know to watch it too!


From Food, Inc.: 10 Things You Can Do to Change Our Food System

1. Drink fewer sodas and other sweetened beverages.

Fact: If you replace one 20 oz soda a day with a no calorie beverage (preferably water), you could lose 25 lbs in a year.

2. Eat at home instead of eating out.

Fact: Children consume almost twice (1.8 times) as many calories when eating food made outside the home.

3. Support the passage of state and local laws to require chain restaurants to post calorie information on menus and menu boards.

Fact: Half of the large chain restaurants do not provide any nutrition information to their customers.

4. Tell schools to stop selling sodas, junk food, and sports drinks.

Fact: Over the last two decades, rates of obesity have tripled in children and adolescents aged 6 to 19 years.

5. Meatless Mondays…Go without meat one day a week.

Fact: An estimated 70% of all antibiotics used in the United States are given to farm animals.

6. Buy organic or sustainable foods with little to no pesticide use.

Fact: According to the EPA, over 1 billion pounds of pesticides are used each year in the U.S.

7. Protect family farms, visit your local farmer’s market.

Fact: Farmers markets enable farmers to keep 80 to 90 cents of each dollar spent by the consumer.

8. Make a point to know where your food comes from – READ LABELS.

Fact: The average meal travels 1500 miles from the farm to your dinner plate.

9. Tell Congress that food safety is important to you.

Fact: Each year, contaminated food causes millions of illnesses and thousands of deaths in the United States.

10. Demand job protections for farm workers and food processors, ensuring fair wages and other protections.

Fact: Poverty among farmworkers is more than double that of all wage and salary employees.

Op-Ed: Vision of a Grassroots, Grass-Fed Revolution

Here's an article I wrote for the NYU Steinhardt Public Health Student Group Fall 2008 Newsletter:

Op-Ed: Vision of a Grassroots, Grass-Fed Revolution
by Kelly Moltzen

Growing up, we were taught by the USDA that “all foods can fit,” that everything in moderation is good for us. We were taught that we needed dairy products in our diet in order to get calcium, otherwise we would develop osteoporosis. We were taught that we needed to get our protein from meat. But what if this were not the whole picture? Would the USDA actually hide information from us?

Unfortunately, yes. It seems as though Congress is more concerned about taking food industry lobbyists’ money than about giving the public scientifically sound advice, as Marion Nestle tells us in her book Food Politics. However disturbing this may sound, we cannot allow the food industry to dominate us, not when 63% of Americans are overweight or obese and children born in the year 2000 or after may be the first generation to die before their parents; not when animals are subjected to living on claustrophobic, unsanitary Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFO), force-fed corn and artificial substances that make them sick, necessitating the use of administering antibiotics before we buy and eat the omega-6 laden meat which makes us sick. Not when 25% of the foods we buy in the grocery store has some form of corn in them, and the ammonium nitrate left over from the production of explosives during World War II is used to fertilize crops – facts Michael Pollan shares with us in The Omnivore’s Dilemma.

This country needs a complete change of mindset, where we raise humanely treated omega-3 rich grass-fed animals and stop using additives and pesticides on our food. We need to craft a world that is not dominated by the need of the food industry to keep money in its wallet, but one that is driven by the need to keep real food on the table. A world where our children don’t need to learn how to read labels, but instead learn how to grow vegetables. A world where we get energy from the sun and wind, not coal and oil, and where we eat our food, not burn it as biofuel.

Fortunately there is a revolution starting, as people have banned together for such programs as the Real Food Challenge and Slow Food Nation. Californians had an initiative on their ballot this November called “Proposition 2,” which was a huge breakthrough for humane farm animal treatment. It prohibits cruel and inhumane ways of confining animals in their cages. The USDA recently passed more rigorous regulations for organic food, prohibiting the existence of organic CAFOs. The list of 2010 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee appointees looks promising as well. Yet we need to continue supporting CSA communities, creating farm to school programs, and weakening the connection between food industry lobbyists and Washington, D.C. If we don’t do it, then who will?

Big Organic

After the sustainability-nutrition program I put together for Pow back in the spring, I feel like I still have some justice to do on the topic of organic foods. So here I'll put together a list of pro's and con's based on some of Michael Pollan's wisdom.

(-)
The organic food industry is precisely that: an industry. And with an industry in America, it was virtually impossible for for the idealistic philosophical values originally instilled in the term "organic" to be saved. And even though the USDA finally agreed to put forth guidelines that organic gurus could live with, they are still not the best, and certainly not what many people envision when they think of "organic." Factory farms can be organic, which means the animals are still cooped up indoors, being fed "organic feed," except might have a small door that leads to a narrow patch of grass that they can access for the last 2 out of 8 weeks they are given to live. And the animals that are allowed outside, such as cows, are fed grains in a "dry lot - a grassless fenced enclosure," instead of being allowed to graze on grass (the natural way).
Pollan brings to light quite a few seemingly oxymoronic phrases, such as "processed organic food." Yet it exists, food additives and synthetic chemicals and all. Essentially, the USDA found it easier to accept a list proposed by the growers themselves as standards than to do the legwork on its own and come up with more wholesome standards. And new studies are emerging linking pesticides (especially the organophosphate insecticide chlorpyrifos - currently used on corn, soy, wheat, and many fruits and vegetables - to ADHD, obesity, diabetes, and learning disorders.

In addition, since most organic crops in this country are mass produced in the same way as their conventional counterparts, they are grown in monoclones, while historically varying up the fields with diverse crops is better for the soil. Growing the crops on such a large scale also depletes the soil of nitrogen, which means more nitrogen has to be added to the plants later (as opposed to smaller farms, where nitrogen-fixing bacteria take care of the problem). And the heavy tillage (done by migrant workers, no doubt) required of organic fields (to get rid of weeds the old-fashioned way, instead of chemicals) reduces the biological capacity of the soil "as surely as chemicals would."

(+)
In many respects, organic farming is still better for the environment and people's health than conventional means. Thousands of acres of farmland have been converted to organic farms within the last decade or two, which has eliminated hundreds of thousands of pounds of pesticides and petrochemical fertilizers. Earthbound, one of (if not) the biggest organic company, even uses biodiesel fuel (which is of questionable benefit). So undoubtedly, as organic farmer and founder of Cascadian Farm Gene Kahn argues, "Big Organic" (industrialized organic) is a better alternative - "Big Organic" is more effective than "Little Organic" (small farms) would be at converting the US's dependence away from the industrial food market (using leftover military weapon chemicals on our food).

As for nutritional quality, the USDA contends that "all carrots are created equal" and does not do a significant amount of research to determine if organic foods are more nutritious than conventionally grown produce. But a study done at UC Davis (J. Agric. Food. Chem. vol. 51 no. 5, 2003) found that organically grown produce had more vitamin C and polyphenols. This may be because plants grown organically have to work harder to defend themselves against pests and so need to produce these substances (which also happen to be good for humans), while plants grown with chemicals are given substances to protect themselves (which happen to be harmful to us) and so don't need to produce the polyphenols.
Even so, it still depends on the soil the crops are grown in - plants grown in soils with more nutrients will have more nutrients in them. And another thing - organic plants may have more flavor ("since they're not pumped up on synthetic nitrogen, the cells of these slower-growing leaves develop thicker walls and take up less water," and less water means more sugar and more concentrated flavors).

With that said, I think organic foods are a better alternative to conventional, but still not ideal. They are a good way to support the growth of organic farms in relation to conventional farms, but if you want true organic foods (with less food mileage, consuming less fossil fuel energy), I recommend going to a nearby farmer's market or growing them yourself (it's becoming more popular - see here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/02/AR2008080201397.html). Small farms are more productive than big farms, anyway, in terms of the amount of food produced per acre.



Here's some more information about conventionally grown produce:
(Another option is to use a product such as Veggie Wash, http://www.veggie-wash.com/)

Highest in pesticide residue:
Peaches, apples, sweet bell peppers, celery, nectarines, strawberries, cherries, pears, grapes (imported), spinach, lettuce, potatoes

Lowest in pesticide residue:
Papayas, broccoli, cabbage, bananas, kiwi, sweet peas (frozen), asparagus, mangoes, pineapple, sweet corn (frozen), avocados, onions
(Source: Today's Dietitian, April 2008)

Here are some more websites to check out:
Scientific Findings About Organic Agriculture: http://www.leopold.iastate.edu/organic/
Where do your fresh fruits and vegetables come from? http://www.leopold.iastate.edu/resources/fruitveg/fruitveg.php
More studies: http://www.leopold.iastate.edu/research/grants/completed_grants.htm#2008

Earth's Health, Our Health

Today I picked up reading The Omnivore's Dilemma, where Michael Pollan's good points and tidbits of information never cease to capture my attention. I blogged on this earlier when I talked about how corn is taking over the world, but today I'll tell you about People's Park. People's Park in California is what is left of the original 60's grassroots attempt to bring farming back to its natural state. The organic food they grow is sold to Whole Foods in Berkeley - but these aren't the farmers' pictures you see on the walls of Whole Foods touting how great their product is (sorry, Pollan's style rubs off on me). Anyway if it were up to me, we could make places like People's Park into a farmer's market and this would be the norm throughout the country - subsistence farming and locally grown foods - instead of the mass industrialized supermarket. But then, this is America, and I've always been one to love the way people lived thousands of years ago and think that's the way humans were meant to live, far superior to the industrialized society we've become. I wouldn't mind reading Sir Albert Howard's An Agricultural Testamant, though, and figuring out from the expert how to compost my food scraps. There is something instinctively right about the idea of the health of the soil being linked to the health of all the creatures that depend on it - an idea that was once discussed by Plato and Thomas Jefferson.

Organic

The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan sheds so much light on the problems of the food industry, how it has come to allow corn to dominate us, and how food should be grown & sold. This movie also looks like it has some great information, when it comes out: What's Organic About Organic? http://whatsorganicmovie.org/. It was developed by Shelley Rogers, a recent graduate of NYU's MPH program.