Chapter 1: The Climate Crisis at the End of Our Fork

The first chapter of Anna Lappé’s novel Diet for a Hot Planet discusses the effects of our fancy-pants industrialized food industry.  Like a plague, spreading to all areas, from production, to processing, to distribution, to consumption, to waste.  Because of these catastrophic effects, the industry has been dubbed “climate-intensive”.  Aren’t we proud?

·         A taste of a climate friendly farm:

Anna Lappé, begins her book with a more pleasant description of the climate-friendly farm. This is pretty neat, I thought. Let’s go exploring!

  Click here for a tour!

Nestled inside Capay Valley, CA, Full Belly Farm is a sustainable farm that is constantly discovering new ways to “tap nature’s wisdom”— Two hundred sheep weed and fertilize the soil, owls and bats dwell in homes where they zap rodents and pests, and alyssum is sown between strawberry rows, attracting beneficial insects….(and providing some beautiful décor!) 

It’s a shame Full Belly thrives amidst casino sprawl.  This sad fact can be no better said than in the words of singer Joni Mitchell: “They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.”

To set the mood, here is Joni Mitchell’s hit “Big Yellow Taxi.” It is brilliantly done, and its message, timeless. 

·         The Climate Crisis:

Before launching into the woes of our food industry, Lappé reminds the reader that there are two stories here: One of a climate disrupting industrial food system, and another of a food system that is tapping nature’s wisdom to heal the climate.

·         Now, we ease into the issue with “Getting to know your greenhouse gases”:

Methane and nitrous oxide have a direct connection to livestock production, which is responsible for 37% of methane emissions and 65% of nitrous oxide emissions. 

Dubbed “carbon on steroids”, the Global Warming Potential of methane can be 100 times more than carbon dioxide, according to Berkley’s professor of Global Environmental Health, Kirk Smith.

·         Modern Food system and global warming

The entire global food chain may account for roughly 1/3 of what’s heating out planet. 

Hot tamale! Okay, well, for the sake of being difficult, I must admit… I have a little beef (pardon the pun) with this global warming hype. Sure, the planet fluxgates in temperature….but I don’t see any apocalyptic crisis happening anytime soon. All I feel is my rear burning when I sit on my porch in December…and I can’t complain! 

• A Revolution…that digs us in deep:

Because Synthetic fertilizer doesn’t build essential organic matter, we’re losing topsoil ten times faster that we’re making it. In other words, we’re lazy…and paying for it.

Pesticides are nasty little critter-killers. Here’s Why:

1) They use up our fossil fuels, 2) they ruin agro ecological approaches for dealing with pests, 3) They allow farmers to plant monocultures, large swaths of land growing just one variety of crop instead of relying on plant diversity to help with pests, 4) 20 percent of the global total are used in the United States. They're stealing our petrolium!

·         The Meat of the Matter: Let’s take a look at how good ol’ Bessie stinks up the food business. 

Livestock account for 18 percent of all global greenhouse gas emissions.

Bessie Eats:

Today, most livestock production in the US occurs in factory farms called Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs). 

In CAFOs, livestock are raised on diets of soybeans, corn, and other feedstuffs. EWW. No wonder our meat tastes funny.

 Feed crops depend on fossil fuels.  Half of all synthetic fertilizer is used to raise feed crops.  This means they’re stealing our fossil fuels!

Oh, but it doesn’t stop there.

Feedlot cattle consume 16 pounds of grain and soy to provide us with just one pound of beef.  They’re hogging all our food—literally!

Bessie Pops a Squat:

Hogs in NC were generating as much manure as all the people in North Carolina, NY, TX, PN, NH, and ND combined. That is so not funny.

Manure from hog CAFOs is mixed with wastewater and stored as a liquid in manure lagoons

Take a look at this spill:

In cesspits, microorganisms break down matter into methane and carbon dioxide, which both enter the atmosphere.

Manure runoff could leach into surrounding waterways

What Bessie does in between:

Methane released as ruminants (that livestock digest) constitutes 27 percent of total methane. 

Oh yeah. And Bessie’s taking over the world…

As livestock production spreads, it undermines the very biodiversity of the flora and fauna. They make up 88% of all wild and domesticated animals combined. 

• Processed foods require more energy to be produced. 

What's in your poptart!?--

 Gelatin (made from by products of meat and leather industries), sodium pyrophosphate, (commonly used in detergents and as a water softener), monocalcium phosphate (leavening agent found in bird and chicken feed), TBHQ, (a preservative found in household varnishes), and Red No. 40 (banned in European Union countries because a health hazard).

Needless to say, I'm going back to cheerios. And really, who knows what dirty little secrets they slip in thOse? 

• The Transportation : A Gas Guzzlin Issue

This problem is easy to address, if we stopped shipping so many alternatives to foods and stuck to, say, simple water, which is actually healthier than Fiji water.

• The Stores

Grovery stores, food markets, and convenience stores emit more green house gases per square foot or floor space than any other type of commercial building. 

Well...this, my friends, the price we pay for frozen food. Tell America to stop eating Perdue chicken. Then, we'll see about solving this one.