Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Campaigns, Community, Farming Practices, Food Labelling, Sustainability, World Trade
Ben & Jerry’s has announced that by the end of 2013 all of the flavours in all of the countries where Ben & Jerry’s is sold will be converted to Fairtrade CertifiedTM ingredients.
Ben & Jerry’s 100% Fairtrade commitment means that every ingredient that can be sourced Fairtrade Certified, will be. Globally, this involves converting up to 121 different chunks and swirls, working across eleven different ingredients such as cocoa, banana, vanilla and other flavourings, fruits and nuts. It also means working with six Fairtrade cooperatives that total a combined membership of over 22,000 farmers producing sugar cane, cocoa, bananas, vanilla, almond and walnuts.
Ben & Jerry’s began using Fairtrade CertifiedTM ingredients in 2005. In 2006, the world’s first ever Fairtrade vanilla ice cream was launched, with Ben & Jerry’s now promising that by by April 2010, more than 60% of their ice cream will be Fairtrade certified.
Farmers selling Fairtrade products earn a better income, which allows them to stay on their land. Fairtrade premiums also allow for reinvestment in their farms, their families, their communities and their future. Fairtrade means that certified farmers are using environmentally sound practices to grow and harvest their crops in a sustainable way.
Company co-founder Jerry Greenfield said, “Fairtrade is about making sure people get their fair share of the pie. The whole concept of Fairtrade goes to the heart of our values and sense of right and wrong. Nobody wants to buy something that was made by exploiting somebody else.”
Ben & Jerry’s recently arrived in Australia, with ice cream available at a Scoop Shop in Manly and at selected delis in Sydney and Melbourne. All Ben & Jerry’s ice creams sold in Australia will also be fully Fairtrade Certified by 2013.
Rob Cameron, Chief Executive of Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International (FLO) said, “Congratulations to Ben & Jerry’s on the scale and the depth of this commitment to take their whole range Fairtrade. Tackling poverty and sustainable agriculture through trade may not be easy but it is always worth it, and Ben & Jerry’s has demonstrated real leadership in laying out this long-term ambition to engage with smallholders, who grow nuts, bananas, vanilla, cocoa and other Fairtrade Certified ingredients. Ben & Jerry’s, like all of us in the Fairtrade movement, believe that people can have fun standing up to injustice and campaigning against poverty while enjoying some of Ben & Jerry’s best-selling favorites like Phish Food and Chocolate Fudge Brownie. How cool is that?”
Harriet Lamb, executive director of the Fairtrade Foundation applauds this commitment from Ben & Jerry’s and encourages more mainstream businesses to follow their example, saying “if we’re going to take it to scale and really enable millions of farmers and workers to benefit, then we absolutely also need to engage more mainstream businesses.”
More and more large, well known businesses have adopted Fairtrade in recent years, says Lamb “last year we had companies like Cadbury and Nestle announcing they were going Fairtrade. So the mainstream businesses are beginning to really understand the public concern about Fairtrade.”
According to Fairtrade, there are now 746 Fairtrade certified producer organizations in 58 producing countries, representing over 1 million farmers and workers. With their families and dependents, FLO estimates that 5 million people directly benefit from Fairtrade. In addition, sales of Fairtrade certified products have been growing on an average of almost 40% per year in the last five years. In 2008, Fairtrade certified sales amounted to approximately €2.9 billion worldwide, a 22% year-to-year increase.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Climate Change, Farming Practices, Food Security, Sustainability
An international panel of scientists writing in the February 12 edition of Science is urging world leaders to “dramatically alter their notions about sustainable agriculture to prevent a major starvation catastrophe” by the end of the century.
Specifically, they are urging world leaders to “get beyond popular biases against the use of agricultural biotechnology,” particularly crops that are genetically modified to produce greater yields in harsher conditions, and to base the regulation of such crops on the best-available science.
“You’re looking at a 20% to 30% decline in production yields in the next 50 years for major crops between the latitudes of southern California or Southern Europe to South Africa,” said David Battisti, a University of Washington atmospheric sciences professor.
“I grow increasingly concerned that we have not yet understood what it will take to feed a growing population on a warming planet,” said lead author Nina Federoff, science and technology adviser to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and a biology professor at Pennsylvania State University.
The challenge is becoming more difficult, the scientists said, because the world’s population is likely to increase to 9 billion people by 2050.
Feeding all of these people will require doubling the grain production in the tropics, Battisti said, but a potentially warmer climate will reduce yields because the temperature will be too high to achieve the most efficient photosynthesis. That factor, combined with potentially less rainfall in major food-producing regions and increasing pressure from pests and pathogens, is likely to cut major food crop yields a minimum of 20% to 30%.
According to the article, yields from some of the most important crops begin to decline sharply when average temperatures exceed about 30 degrees Celsius.
The authors advocate developing systems that have the potential to decrease the land, energy and fresh water needed for agriculture and at the same time reduce the pollution associated with agricultural chemicals and animal waste.
Battisti noted that the so-called Green Revolution in agriculture in the 1970s produced a 2% increase in yields per year for 20 years, primarily through the development of new grain varieties and the use of fertiliser and irrigation. However, there is little, if any, new land available for farming, and “such yield increases cannot be sustained without further innovation.”
A major obstacle is that many of the institutions involved do not work together closely enough to succeed, and despite years of safe production and consumption, there is continued consumer resistance and trade barriers to crops such as corn and soybeans that have been genetically modified to resist insects and tolerate herbicides.
“There has to be a lot of creative thinking, a greater blending of biotechnology and agriculture and better co-ordination between private and public research efforts throughout the world for us to keep pace with the increasing demand for food,” Battisti said. “We need to be thinking about the long-term demands for food and the environmental and social ramifications of how we will produce it.”
The Science article represents the views of the authors and stems from a workshop they presented for the State Department last September in Washington, D.C.
Extracted from this article from The Land website.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Campaigns, Community, Food Security, Government Funding, Nutrition, USA
In addition to the requirement that the food supply sustaining a population be stable and sufficient; equally important is the availability of nutritious food at reasonable cost.
In the United States alone, childhood obesity or excess weight threatens the health of one third of American children. $150 billion per year is spent in the USA to treat obesity-related conditions, and that number is growing. Obesity rates tripled in the past 30 years, a trend that means American children may face a shorter expected lifespan than their parents. In a bid to address this burgeoning issue, First Lady Michelle Obama has launched the Let’s Move campaign, aimed at solving the epidemic of childhood obesity within one generation.
Let’s Move will give parents the support they need, provide healthier food in schools, help American kids to be more physically active, and make healthy, affordable food available in every part of our country. Key planks of the program include:
- Healthy choices
- Healthier schools
- Physical activity
- Accessible & affordable healthy food.
In terms of accessing safe and healthy foods, the campaign website notes that more than 23 million Americans – including 6.5 million children - live in low-income urban and rural neighborhoods that are more than a mile from a supermarket. These communities, where access to affordable, quality, and nutritious foods is limited, are known as food deserts. Lack of access to proper nutrition is one reason many children are not eating the recommended levels of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains.
A recent USDA report showed that in 2008, an estimated 49.1 million people, including 16.7 million children, lived in households that experienced hunger multiple times throughout the year. Too often, these same school age children are not eating the recommended level of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and low fat dairy products. Let’s Move aims to ensure that all families have access to healthy, affordable food in their communities.
As part of the President’s proposed FY 2011 budget, the Administration announced a new program – the Healthy Food Financing Initiative – a partnership between the U.S. Departments of Treasury, Agriculture and Health and Human Services which will invest $400 million a year to provide innovative financing to bring grocery stores to underserved areas and help places such as convenience stores carry healthier food options. Grants will also help bring farmers markets and fresh foods into underserved communities, boosting both family health and local economies. Through these initiatives and private sector engagement, the Administration will work to eliminate food deserts across the country within seven years.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Farming Practices, Food Prices, Food Security, World Trade
*Note this article is sourced from The Weekend Australian on 6 February 2010, page 33, written by Rick Wallace.
Trade barriers thrown up by the European Union, the US and other countries during the financial crisis must be torn down to alleviate looming worldwide food shortages, federal Agriculture Minister Tony Burke has warned.
Mr Burke, who addressed a Global Foundation food security roundtable yesterday, said restrictions on the international movement of food hampered efforts to feed the world. “Perversely, a number of countries, including some wealthy countries, have used the global downturn as an opportunity to make it more difficult to move food,” he told The Australian after the event.
“Increased protection, protectionist barriers and increased subsidies of inefficiencies have made the problem worse rather than better.” He cited US and EU dairy export subsidies as examples that had damaged Australian food exports.
The roundtable heard that the global financial crisis had only briefly suppressed food prices, and a repeat of the 2008 food crisis could be just around the corner.
The event, hosted by the Pratt family and attended by Woolworths chief executive Michael Luscombe, scientist Tim Flanneiy and business and academic leaders, was also told that global food production needed to rise by between 40 and 70 per cent by 2050. The increased demand for food was being driven by people in developing nations adopting richer diets as incomes rose, as well as population increases.
The growing demand would need to be met by higher crop yields as little new arable land was available, the roundtable heard. Participants said the government needed to cut red tape in food regulation and increase research and development to assist producers and processors. Mr Burke said Australia’s food regulation system was a “mess” that he hoped to cleanup. He said the federal grant system for food producers was an unfair “raffle” that did little to boost productivity.
SunRice, a large Australian owned food producer, endorsed Mr Burke’s free trade push, saying developing countries, including India, Thailand and others, had also thrown up import barriers that were an impediment to increasing world food supply.
The forum, held at the Pratt family’s home, Raheen, also heard Australia faced a looming skills shortage in farming with the average age of the nation’s farmers now in the mid to high 60s. The food industry also faced challenges from increased biofuel production. The industry needed to resolve the question of whether new genetically modified crops could be introduced. the forum heard.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Campaigns, Community, Nutrition, Sustainability, Waste
The UK’s Love Food Hate Waste campaign aims to raise awareness of the need to reduce food waste. The campaign illustrates that a few easy practical everyday activities in the home can reduce the amount of food we waste (8.3 million tonnes in the UK each year), which will ultimately benefit our purses and the environment.
Love Food, Hate Waste was developed by WRAP, who are also responsible for encouraging recycling and home composting. WRAP is funded by the UK government and works to encourage and enable businesses and consumers to be more efficient in their use of materials and recycle more things more often.
The site contains information about portion control, food storage solutions, some great recipes and some other interesting information about food waste in the UK (information which is just as relevant right across the globe).
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Carbon Sequestration, Climate Change, FAO, Farming Practices, Food Security
Beyond soil carbon sequestration, more efficient fertilizer use and management of livestock systems are also promising options that enhance emission removals and reductions. Many of these activities may also reduce deforestation and forest degradation due to their associated productivity gains, that means more food can be produced without expansion of agriculture into forests.
FAO stresses that improved farming practices required for climate change mitigation are often the same as those needed to increase productivity, food security and adaptation, including the restoration of degraded agricultural lands, integrated nutrient and soil management and agro-forestry.
- Farmers in poor countries are crucial to fighting climate change
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Community, FAO, Food Security, Nutrition
The Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) and World Health Organisation (WHO) defined “food security” in 1992 as access by all people at all times to the food needed for a healthy life. Achieving food security means ensuring that sufficient food is available; that supplies are relatively stable and those in need of food can obtain it.
Food security in essence means access to a range of quality and nutritious foods with assured supply and at a reasonable cost. The barriers to such an assured supply of fresh food include geographic isolation, seasonal climatic conditions, the cost of transport over long distances on poor roads, and poor food handling and storage conditions. Food security is particularly relevant for those who are physiologically and socio-economically vulnerable.
Food security within a whole-of-community setting is a consequence of the underlying social, economic and institutional factors that affect the quantity and quality of available food and its affordability. Community food security thus occurs where all community members have access to a safe, culturally acceptable, nutritionally adequate diet through a sustainable food system that maximises community self-reliance and social justice.
A situation of food insecurity exists when a person cannot obtain a nourishing, culturally acceptable diet, resulting in poor nutritional status. Poor nutrition can have profound long-term effects on a person’s health, lifestyle, activity level, ability to find work, well-being and lifespan.
See Wood B, “Food Security for All – Building Healthier Communities“ 5(4) Food Chain (2001) pp 1-3.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Climate Change, Food Security, Sustainability
The Sustaining Food Supply blog focuses on media and research in the area of food sustainability. The issue of food insecurity is of growing concern as the following factors converge to push up prices of basic commodities around the globe:
- Extreme climate events
- Rising energy prices
- Low global food stocks
- Changing urban diets
- Growing populations, particularly growing middle class populations
- Competition for cropland by urbanisation, the growth of biofuels and mining activities
- Declining water sources.
Climate change also has the potential to further disrupt food production and bring uncertainty and volatility to food prices.
This blog seeks to synthesise the material in a balanced manner, and provide some thoughts on what this means for policy makers globally. The emphasis of this blog is primarily geared towards Australian policy-makers, however the issues canvassed are of universal concern.
