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.   

Now for a little quiz! Click on the link below for a crossword on Chapters 2 and 3!

http://www.armoredpenguin.com/crossword/Data/2011.03/2116/21161957.239.html

by Lillie B.

Let's start Chapters 2 and 3 with the main points. Goodies to come!

Chapter 2:  The Shape of Things to Come

·         A Swiftly Tilting Palate

Throughout the developing world, the dietary revolution of high processed, high fat foods, meat and dairy from industrial-scale operations, is transforming the eating habits, agricultural practices, and bodies across the globe.  These global diet trends are climate-destructive.

·         Controlling Our Appetites

Food companies spend millions of dollars to construct demand for their products through advertising.  Consider the following examples:

Coke has advertised in India to replace the traditional habit of drinking tea with drinking Coke.

Marketers have studied how young children perceive the world and created packaging to appeal to them.

·         Controlling the Land

There is a trend or race among wealthy private investors and governments to invest in overseas farmland.  They use the land for large scale production. Examples include US investors buying land in the Sudan, Swedish companies buying land in Russia, and the government of Saudi Arabia buying land in Indonesia.

The investors say they are helping poor countries by providing cash needed for building infrastructures including food storage and shipping.  Critics cite the following disadvantages:

1. Land in some places (like Ethiopia) is communal.  This means it is owned and shared by the community, not owned by one private individual.  The concept of communal ownership is being violated by these investor purchases.

2. These purchases divert land that could be used for feeding the local population to instead feed peoples half a world away.

3. These land purchases erode local control of agricultural resources and weaken accountability for how the land is used.

·         Controlling Production

The US based company, Smithfield (as in Smithfield Hams), http://www.smithfieldfoods.com/  is an example of how a multinational company can enter a country and gain control of an industry.  Smithfield successfully entered Poland and became its largest pork producer and took control of the pork industry through the following steps.  (These steps are used by multinational corporations at home and abroad to secure more markets and produce their products more cheaply, regardless of the environmental and social costs.)

1. Exploiting legal loopholes.  Officially, foreign companies weren’t allowed to own farms in Poland.  Smithfield partnered with Polish companies to purchase farms. 

2.  Capitalizing on subsidies.  When Smithfield launched in Poland it initially faced 43 million dollars in losses.  Through its relationship with a pork processing plant in Poland, Smithfield received a European bank loan to get the money it needed. 

3.  Strengthening power through contract farming.  Independent farmers signed contracts, so they then take orders from Smithfield.  Smithfield gains the right to determine hog breeds, feed, vet care, time to market, price it will pay per animal.

4.  Centralizing power through vertical integration.  Smithfield controls most of the steps along the food chain including production, slaughter, processing, and marketing.

5.  Shrinking the “free” in “free market."  As Smithfield acquires more and more and becomes more dominant, the competition shrinks. 

Smithfield is now moving into Romania.  It also has subsidiaries in France, the UK, China, Mexico, and Spain.

China is now the world’s largest producer and consumer of agricultural products.

Though China’s industrial factories get most of the blame for greenhouse-gas emissions, we rarely hear about its meat industry.  China’s meat industry produces 40 times the nitrogen and 3 times the solid waste of the nation’s other factories.

Chapter 3:  Blinded by the Bite

The food-climate connection refers to the food and agriculture industries, which are part of the global warming problem and also hold potential solutions to the problem.

·    Why we missed It (Five possible reasons it’s taking so long for us to realize the food and climate-change connection.)

1. The Nature of Food

Food feels far removed from nature for most of us.   To illustrate this point, a survey was conducted by Getty Images.  People were asked what images they most associated with nature.  The most frequent answers in order were trees, oceans, rivers, waterfalls, flowers, and soaring birds.  Farms and food were never mentioned.

2. Carbon Centric

The term carbon centric means that we immediately think of “carbon dioxide” when “greenhouse gas” is mentioned.  It is the most common, man-made, greenhouse gas, and it is the cause of ¾ of global warming; however, there are other gases that play a major role including methane gas and nitrous oxide.  The food system is most responsible for their production.

3.  Systems, Oh My! The Complexity of Food

When we consume food, we don’t think about all the complex systems that operated to get the food to our plates.  These systems include agricultural chemicals, food processing plants, farm machinery, heating and cooling of supermarkets, and refrigerated trucks.

4. Farmer vs the Planet:  The Ultimate Matchup?

Advocates of sustainable farming and mainstream environmentalists are on opposite sides of the issue.  Until the last decade, the environmentalists would talk about farmers as being threats.  The farmers were considered either polluting high production big business farmers or smaller farmers who destroyed the land.

Gradually this divide between the two camps (environmental and agricultural) is closing as the connection between sustainable farming and climate change mitigation is being made.

5. Food Is Off-Limits

Policy makers and the public avoid promoting change that on the surface looks like it would make food more expensive.  There is fear of taking a position that will make it even tougher on the hungry.   (In the U.S. 36.2 million people are “food insecure,” and 1/3 of these are children.)

While some feel we need to avoid talking about the food-global warming connection, others are beginning to see that we can talk about food being part of our “ecological footprint,” based upon our recent successes in getting the public to adopt energy-efficient appliances, carpool, and change to more environmentally friendly light bulbs.

·    How We Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Climate Change, or How the Food Industry Ignores, Denies, and Embraces Global Warming.

The different sectors of the food industry have different communication strategies to respond to the growing awareness about food and climate change.  These strategies range from silence, to denial, to embracing the message.

The Silent Treatment

The meat industry has remained silent about climate change.  Many have done so by using the our hands are clean argument because they are not directly involved with growing food.  For example, a fertilizer company may use this tactic, ignoring all the energy required to produce fertilizer, and instead, talk about how they help farmers mazimize production and lessen their problems.

Doubt is their Product

Now that the climate-change fight has shifted from “Is it a real threat?” to “What’s causing it and what can we do about it?,” the food industry is fighting back, particularly the meat industry.

1. One way to foster doubt, is to fudge the math.  

Terry Stokes, head of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, thinks that anyone who critiques the cattle industry is antimeat.  He tends to underestimate livestock’s contribution to greenhouse gases; nevertheless, the cattle industry is a small contributor to greenhouse gases, compared to other industries. 

Stokes criticizes anti-meat activists who want to convert grass land for grazing cattle into farms for vegetable or grain production, saying that would have its own serious environmental consequences.  What he’s missing is that sustainable vegetable and grain production can help remove carbon and benefit emissions.

Doubt keeps people fighting about percentage point contributions to pollution, while opportunities to pass effective policies slip by.

2. A second way to foster doubt is to question the Science. 

The industrial-agricultural proponents use a win through obfuscation strategy.  

They use complicated calculations and they claim, erroneously, that it takes three times more land to raise grass-fed beef than it does grain-fed cattle, and therefore switching to all this extra land would emit more carbon dioxide. This assumption is erroneous because the land required for grass-fed vs grain-fed systems varies depending on where you are farming and whether you can grow grass throughout the year.

So the proponents of beef are saying trying to become more eco-friendly will actually have the opposite effect.  They are trying to confuse us.

Actually industrial live-stock produce greenhouse gas emissions at every stage of the process, and we need more studies to fully understand.

There are dozens of companies who have an interest in beef production and seeing the  “feed lot”’ model remain, rather than “grass fed.”  These industries include those listed below.

1.   Big pharma: (This is the term for big pharmaceutical industries.)  An example is Eli Lilly Co.  http://www.lilly.com/   Many of these companies, like Eli Lilly,  make veterinary drugs for cattle that are used to increase growth rates and stave off disease in the confined quarters of feed lots.

2.   Agrochemical industry:  An example is DuPont.  http://www2.dupont.com/DuPont_Home/en_US/index.html

      These companies make chemicals that foster plant growth and protect against pests on feed fields.

3.  Feed industry:  For example, Monsanto.  http://www.monsanto.com/Pages/default.aspx

      These companies produce or buy feed for confined livestock.  They have a direct interest in seeing the feed lot model remain.

4.   Oil industry:  The meat industry is dependent on fossil fuels to operate slaughterhouses.  The meat industry is dependent on petroleum-based chemicals used in feed production. The oil industry has an indirect interest in seeing the feed lot model remain.

·         From Silent Treatment to Market Opportunity

The chemical and food industries are now talking about climate change.  They see it as a way to court new customers, i.e., a market opportunity.  There is a growing perception that addressing global warming is inevitable.  Every company will be affected.

Diet for a Hot Planet, Chapter 9: The Biotech Ballyhoo

No fun quizzes for this chapter, sorry. I was originally planning on it, but then got wrapped up in the idea of riddling author Anna Lappe's argument with holes, until getting to the end of the chapter and being won over by her argument. And so I abandoned my attack mode and set to writing a summary of the chapter. It was while doing this that I discovered I had been HAD. Throughout the chapter, Lappe argues against genetically modified plants and any attempts to expand genetic modification when it comes to drought resistant crops for sub-Saharan Africa. And then at the end of the chapter, she explains how we don't need genetically modified plants because...we don't need chemical fertilizer? Wait, what? Although she does show compelling evidence that we don't need chemical fertilizer to be productive, (plots without chemical fertilizer and instead utilizing organic methods of fertlization had 129% higher yield than those with) her counter argument has nothing to do with her attack on GMOs. We all know GMOs are bad, but in this chapter Lappe merely spits up more information we already know in that category. However, I didn't figure this out until half-way through my summary, so for the rest of her fallacious arguments contained in this chapter, read on.

The reason for my reaction is based in the structure of the chapter. The whole thing is shaped as an argument, directed full force against the idea of genetically modified plants being able to help prevent hunger. She explains, at the beginning of the chapter, that the WEMA project (Water Efficient Maize for Africa) has been trying to engineer plants to be drought and flood resistant, to help survival in harsh sub-Saharan conditions. Her biggest arguments against this practice were: science is wrong and it will take too long.

I still do not like her first argument, but let me elaborate. She argues that the "Central Dogma" of genetic engineering, that "Particles--the genes--are decoded or expressed into proteins that are directly responsible for form and function", is wrong. To backup the BIG claim, she cites one college professor. Granted he is a professor of "microbial ecology and biotechnology", but the idea that one professor and author have the authority to debunk decades of scientific research is a little laughable.

Her second big argument, that these drought and flood resistant plants, IF they could be bred, wouldn't be ready for five-10-a zillion years, and so, basically, we shouldn't care about them. The argument was a little more refined than that, but you get the idea. Then she cited the regular arguments of lack of biodiversity, herbicide resistant weeds, etc. And after all of that, aside from the idea that science is wrong and therefore this task being impossible, I could not see a reasonable reason to give up developing these plants, even if they take a while, because at least that'd be something. Drought resistant GMOs still seem better than starving to death to me. But that's just a personal opinion.

By Alison

Diet for a Hot Planet, by Anna Lappe`: Chapter 8, Hunger Scare

For this section, instead of summarizing for you, I thought it might be more fun to take a little quiz of sorts over some of the most interesting facts I found in this chapter. All these facts have been pulled from Chapter 8 of Diet for a Hot Planet by Anna Lappe` Answers at the bottom.

1. According to a study from the University of Michigan assistant professor Catherine Badgley, how many families could 1.5 acres feed in one year, if farmed organically?
a. 500
b. 50
c. 225
d. 150
e. 75

2. In DEVELOPED countries (France, US, Britain) with high-input industrial agriculture, organic farming can produce
a. equal yield
b. 50% less yield
c. from equal to 35% less yield
d. from equal to 10% less yield
e. 12% more yield

3. In DEVELOPING countries, compared to high-input industrial agriculture, organic farming can produce
a. 2-4x more yield
b. equal yield
c. 2x less yield
d. equal or 2x more yield
e. 5x more yield

4. If the entire globe went organic, the average grain production would
a. increase by 15%
b. decrease by 30%
c. stay the same
d. decrease by 7%
e. increase by 45%

5. Due to use by soft drinks, industrial use, and livestock feed, _____________________ are consumed by the general public
a. only 40% of grains, 30% of sweeteners, and 35% of food oils
b. less than 50% of grains, 10% of sweeteners, and 25% of food oils
c. 30% of grains, 25% of sweeteners, and 45% of food oils
d. 70% of grains, 50% of sweeteners, and 60% of food oils
e. 20% of grains, 5% of sweeteners, and 2% of food oils







Answers: 1 d, 2 c, 3 a, 4 e, 5 b

By Alison

Blogging DIET FOR A HOT PLANET, Chapters 6 and 7

Chapter 6, Cool Food: Five Ingredients of Climate-Friendly Farming, begins with a description of a "cool farm": that of Mark Shepard, a Midwestern farmer with a sense of both what is environmentally friendly and what is wallet-friendly. The farm he has going sounds ideal: It takes harmful emissions out of the air rather than putting them in there; it is profitable without commodity subsidies. And boy is it productive.

Shepard isn't alone, either; he is part of a stewardship movement that stretches from Wisconsin to South Korea.

Along with many other farmers (and the author of The Wump World, a favorite book of his), Shepard is dubious about the so-called "progress" that CAFOs have made -- depleting soil, polluting rivers, damaging our climate. Shepard has "a different vision of progress" -- one that is:

- Nature-mentored: Work with nature rather than trying to control it! Grow what works rather than trying to make the land fit with what you want to grow. Trust nature to "help itself" once in awhile.
- Restorative: Count on nature to help you out. Restore, don't destroy.
- Regenerative: Make it sustainable. Don't use fossil fuels when there's a more energy-efficient way to get things done -- it can also help your yield.
- Resilient: Look to the future. It's all very well to reduce emissions, but if you don't focus on making your farm resilient, a natural disaster like a recent flood in the Midwest can destroy your crops. And a resilient farm takes a good farmer and can improve the quality of life for the farmer and his family.
- Community-empowered: You can't run a farm like Shepard's without a network of support to back you up.

Chapter 7, Myth-Informed: Answering the Critics, has answers to four common myths about "the future of food":

- The inevitability myth, aka Industrial agriculture is the only realistic way to go: "Small-scale farmers can feed the planet and cool the world." It is both possible and realistic to run an eco-friendly farm; we know because there are people doing it now.
- The false-trade-off myth, aka We can't have both "essential forests" and "sustainable farms": This contradicts the entire message of eco-friendly farms: that they can provide enough food without destroying the ecosystem. It's doable; it's being done.
- The poverty myth, aka Climate-friendly farming will bring poverty: Just because a lot of the people living in poverty live in rural areas doesn't mean that it was the rural farming that brought poverty. And besides, if industrial farming and all this productivity are really helping fight world hunger, where are the results?
- The prosperity-first myth, aka Shouldn't prosperity come before thinking about the environment?: We may not hear about it on the news, but ecological concern is alive and kicking in many areas with a huge concentration of poor people. Think Ecuador. Think Kenya.

By Erin

Blogging DIET FOR A HOT PLANET, Chapters 4 and 5

In Chapter 4, Playing with Our Food, author Anna Lappé begins to talk about how big business is getting in on the sustainability craze. She warns that this chapter, which discusses "plays from the greening playbook[s]" of various companies like Monsanto, Cargill, and Pepsi, will leave readers "a tad cynical." However, Lappé actually aims to make us more savvy -- to be able to tell which companies are making genuine efforts to become sustainable and which are in it for selfish purposes. Lappé breaks the chapter into several sections.

"What Business Do We Have Being Green?" basically covers the author's argument for why big businesses have a responsibility to the environment at all. Firstly, corporations, which were originally intended to be accountable to the government, are now often more powerful than governments. Secondly, companies owe us because they profit from us -- they use our common resources and our tax dollars -- while giving us little in return except a rapidly worsening environmental crisis. Finally, companies are not exempt from our expectations of them as a society.

"The Playbook" discusses strategies that many companies use to make themselves look green without actually going green:

- Advertise the new you: In a year and a half, McDonald's goes from a partnership promoting gas-guzzling Hummers to offering Big Mac coupons to customers who reduce their own greenhouse-gas emissions by cutting down shower times.
- Spin the story: BP: British Petroleum spends more money rebranding itself as "Beyond Petroleum" than it does actually going green.

Lappé continues with such common strategies as "Exaggerate Your Transformation" and "Reward Yourself." Once readers learn these common "plays," she claims, we will better be able to determine for ourselves which companies are actually making an effort to become eco-friendly and which are just "greenwashing."

Chapter 5, Climate Change, talks about the food industry's attempts to do, well, exactly what it says on the tin. "Big Ag," Lappé argues, is attempting to profit from our fear of climate change while not actually changing much about the way they make their food or addressing the "root causes of the ... environmental destruction." Lappé criticizes companies like our good friend Tyson for their attempts to make a profit from the production of "organic" and "renewable" fuel from byproducts like poultry poop. The plants that convert these byproducts into fuel are actually very energy inefficient and have led to concerns about both the environment and about public health.

Basically, the fuel produced by farm-animal waste could not only perpetuate environmental problems but also give corporate giants like Tyson more money for their supposedly eco-friendly practices.

In the subsection "What's the Matter with Manure?" Lappé elaborates on some major issues with supposedly sustainable and money-saving methane digesters. Methane emissions are a significant problem for farmers whose animals produce significant amounts of manure, and digesters on the surface solve the problem by using some of the methane emissions to produce energy that can be used in the place of fossil fuels.

There are several issues with this solution, however. Firstly, its benefits are often exaggerated. For example, proponents celebrate the reduction in solid waste that comes with the use of digesters; however, a 50- to 60-percent reduction doesn't sound so great when you consider that solid waste is only a fraction of the actual waste that farmers have to worry about. Lappé also mentions that although farmers may benefit from waste reductions and energy production, in the end the vast majority of surplus money goes -- as always -- to the big companies that provide the machines.

By Erin