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Food Waste

This post is part of the series EU Agriculture 2020.

Lots of discussion, even fake news, on the topic of food waste.  This is a serious problem, but not in the way it’s often presented in the media.

The way our food is produced and distributed is horrendously wasteful.  Food that’s processed (including meats), transported long distances or grown with wasteful pesticides and fertilizers is not only often of very poor quality, but horrendously wasteful if it’s thrown away.  Is the answer to this to accept foods past their use by or expiration dates?  Should supermarkets just throw this food away or give it to the homeless?

A large portion of what supermarkets sell also just isn’t really necessary, like fruits and vegetables out of season or a lot of the processed foods.

Almost every food with a nutrition label is a processed food, and these labels often trick people into buying things they don’t need.  Rather than think about the quality of the food, and if it was produced locally or in a healthy way, these labels make you think you should buy according to ingredients.  The best place to buy food is one that doesn’t label their food this way.

I think the answer lies in reforming production and distribution systems.  Buying food at farmers’ markets, or local produce shops, not only often results in higher quality food, but much less inherent waste.  When people pay more for higher quality food, they tend to think more about wasting it.  It’s also really useful if people grow a portion of the food they eat.

One of the best ways everyone can waste less food is to avoid supermarkets entirely, or only use them for very basic food like seasonal vegetables, potatoes, rice and so on.

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Climate Change — Greatest Risk

This post is part of the series EU Agriculture 2020.

No more important issue exists concerning agriculture around the world.  I’ve had discussions with people in many different places over the last few months, from mountain tops in Italy to the US pacific northwest.  Climate change is destroying fragile local ecosystems, causing widespread drought, flooding, forest fires and many other natural disasters.  It’s changing growing regions, for example allowing rice to be grown further north, or wine to be produced in Holland.  It’s causing widespread devastation to crops like coffee.  It’s requiring seeds and plant varieties be adapted to new climates and diseases, almost faster than it’s humanly possible to do the breeding work.

It’s inconceivable that Europe is still pursuing biofuels, or that we are still producing electricity from coal.

It’s time to stop conflating air pollution with greenhouse gases, the latter being far more important.  Of course air pollution is important too, but climate change must have priority.  It’s time to stop talking, and time for action.  We know what we need to do.

As well as a threat to agriculture, agriculture is also a major cause of climate change.  Healthy crops, grown sustainably, builds topsoil, which is the most effective way to sequester greenhouse gases.  Wasteful agriculture like crops for biofuels, animal feeds, bioplastics and other non-human foods, are not only wasteful in fossil fuel, pesticide and chemical fertilizer use, but they also generally degrade the topsoil, releasing stored greenhouse gases.

Sustainable agriculture also reduces air pollution.  Nitrogen based air pollution is removed from the air at the same time as carbon based greenhouse gases, and these are combined to form healthy topsoil.  If you’re a gardener, you’ll certainly understand this is how compost is formed, combining the greens (N) with the browns (C).  Of course we have to deal with the sources of pollution too, but sustainable agriculture is the solution to healing the planet.

Unsustainable agriculture causes air pollution!  Mega-greenhouses in The Netherlands discharge nutrient solutions that are very damaging to the environment.  These discharges contain a lot of nitrogen, a great deal of which ends up in the air as pollution.  Factory farm feed lots are also a major source of air pollution.

It’s time to make a complete shift to sustainable agriculture.  Sustainable agriculture is not a threat to food security, food security is threatened by unsustainable agriculture.  It’s simply false to suggest we are living in a world of scarce food, or that we need more food to feed a growing world population.  We already produce roughly twice as much food as we need to feed the world.  We need to produce food smarter, with less impact on the planet, less emphasis on meat, and make more efficient use of what we have.

This is the most important thing to do, starting now.

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Anpetu Oihankesni

 

I just received word that Anpetu, an avid seedsaver, passed away this last August, 2017.  He was the proprietor of Sourcepoint Seeds.

Although it’s aways a sad and complex situation when a seedsaver passes away, I honestly didn’t know Anpetu personally.  I only knew of his name.  I can’t really say anything about him here.

If anyone has comments, please leave them below.  If you have concerns about his seed collection, or perhaps outstanding orders, please either contact George Stevens directly, or me for George’s contact information.

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EU Agriculture 2020

Important changes are taking place in EU agriculture, and will climax in 2020 with the Regulation on Organic Production.  These are important changes and are going to significantly change the food available.  This is a very complex topic, with many aspects.  I’m going to do a series of posts in the coming days, weeks and months to discuss some of the issues.

It’s more important than ever that consumers get smarter about the food they buy.  Many consumers now trust the ‘Organic’ label, and assume this always means quality.  It’s been years since the food industry legally took over the label as their own, and in many ways their hold on it will get tighter.  Since the majority of the most damaging agriculture chemicals are being phased out and taken off the market in Europe, the difference for consumers between organic and non-organic will get less.  Increasingly the ‘Organic’ label will apply to industrial food, and non-organic food will have more value and be of higher quality, turning the world of many consumers upside down.

All crops are grown from seeds, and not all seeds are the same.  More than ever, consumers are going to need to be aware of the seeds their food is grown from.