Custodians of our memories

If you want to read a food book this year, read Eating to Extinction: The World's Rarest Foods and Why We Need to Save Them by BBC food journalist Dan Saladino. The book is about the rich biodiversity found around the planet and how humans have used that biodiversity to feed the world's population. Saladino illustrates how important this diversity is for our nourishment and sustaining the vast cultures and traditions that humans have passed on from one generation to the next. Not only is Saladino a wonderful storyteller, but the story he is telling is one of the most important in food systems today. He writes:

"We cannot afford to carry on growing crops and producing food in ways that are so violently in conflict with nature; we can't continue to beat the planet into submission, to control, dominate and all too often destroy ecosystems. It isn't working. How can anyone claim it is when so many humans are left either hungry or obese and when the Earth is suffering?"

Saladino structures the book across the main food groups — fruits, vegetables, grains, cheese, meat, seafood, alcohol, stimulants (coffee and tea), sweets, and wild foods. He discusses the importance of these food groups and their role in food security. He provides us with lush, visceral vignettes of particular places, exceptional people, and distinctive cultures uniquely trying to grow, raise, and nurture certain traditional varieties of these foods. You get a glimpse of how the hunter-gatherer Hadza hunts for honey in Tanzania. You learn how sheep meat, known as Skerpikjot, is preserved in the fragile ecosystem of the Faroe Islands. You feel the pressure of how Sicilians grow the vanilla orange amid the weight of the Cosa Nostra. You sympathize with the Syrians amid a protracted conflict who attempt to preserve their traditional sweet, Halawet el Jibn, made of war-threatened ingredients like pistachio. You realize that winemaking began in Georgia using traditional pots, known as Qvevri, a practice not done anywhere else in the world.

These stories are wonderful, but they are punctuated with startling and tragic statistics:

• 50% of all our seeds are in the hands of 4 companies.

• Of the roughly 6,000 different plants once consumed by humans, only nine remain major staples today.

• Three crops—rice, wheat, and corn—provide 50% of all our calories.

• 70 billion chickens (of roughly the same breed and ironically named "chicken of tomorrow") are slaughtered annually.

• 30 million bison roamed the great plains of the United States, all to be decimated at the hands of the white settlers.

• 95% of milk consumed in the United States comes from a single breed of cow.

• 90% of soybean grown in North and South America is genetically modified.

• 50% of all the world's cheese is made with bacteria or enzymes made by one company

• The giant Pacific bluefin tuna is down 97%. Yes, 97%.

• Only 2% of farmers are African American.

• We only consume 2% of barley that is grown. The rest is used to make beer or fed to animals.

• Speaking of beer, 25% of beer is produced by one brewer.

You learn about the heroes, like Vavilov, who spent and gave their lives conserving and preserving precious seeds, specific varieties, preservations, and processing of foods as a way to say, "remember us." We were here. They were and are the custodians of the biodiversity across the planet. They are also the custodians of our memories and humanity.

As Saladino escorts you around the world, I imagined these vignettes being turned into a beautiful documentary demonstrating the vast diversity that exists on the planet—as humans, as foods, and as cultures. As Saladino expressed, we must embrace diversity in all its forms: biological, cultural, dietary, and economical. Having more diversity across the range of agriculture systems and landscapes is vital. Capturing all this diversity on film, as the book does, could be a way to preserve these moments, memories, and the history of it all. So, we never forget what we once had.

While the book is inspiring, every chapter ends with a common tragic theme – and I am not giving anything away because it is in the book's title: Extinction. You realize how fast these ways of life, these foods, these cultures, and traditions are disappearing. Our world and food systems are transforming at a speed that is hard to comprehend and capture, and the loss along the way is disturbing. There are many reasons for this extinction, but the major ones are agricultural change, loss of habitats, disease, economic forces, hangovers and continuations of colonization, and conflict.

As Saladino expressed, these endangered foods will not become the mainstay of diets, nor should they. But they have essential and assorted roles to play; if we don't use them, we will lose them. In reference to a chapter on O-Higu, a soybean grown on the island of Okinawa made into unique tofu, "O-Higu might be an insignificant bean. But to many Okinawans, after colonialism and occupation, its return feels like an act of resistance and a celebration of who we are." Many traditions in holding onto these foods are worthy; they involve intimate knowledge, special skills, and lots of care and labor. It is not a simple path forward.

Our world and food systems are transforming into a homogenized vat of staleness. For many, saving these foods and the biodiversity that makes up these foods and our diets is not worth the effort as we move through the world at warped speed. Some argue that this savior complex is romantic and precious, and we should instead focus on the potential for technology and innovation. Growth, growth, growth. Call me sentimental, but I worry about solely following this path and what is lost along the way.

Last night, I watched Chris Marker's visceral Sans Soleil film. In it, the narrator said something that sticks with me:

When filming this ceremony, I knew I was present at the end of something.

Magical cultures that disappear leave traces to those who succeed them.

This one will leave none; the break in history has been too violent.

I want to witness the traces. I want to remember. What is the point of living in this world without cultures and all the food that punctuates those cultures? We must, as global citizens, decide what kind of world we want to live in and figure out what is worth saving. To me, it is the whole lot. I want to save it all—every food, every human, every animal, and every piece of culture. This is what makes our world interesting. As Saladino said, "the Hadza remind us that there are many ways to live and be in the world." I am hanging onto my hopes that the incredible array of people curating these endangered foods will remain the custodians of not only our memories but of our food traditions for the future.

We may not have a choice but to consume alternative proteins

Climate change is having profound impacts on the ability to grow both foods for humans and feed for livestock. Growing food and feeding livestock, in turn, exacerbates climate change. Livestock raised for beef is responsible for 6 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions largely in the form of methane. Livestock is also the number one driver of deforestation around the world, reducing the chances for large forest biomes to serve as carbon sinks.

While these stresses continue to rise if no significant action is taken to mitigate climate change, demand for meat is rising all over the world. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, beef consumption has been steadily rising over the last few decades, and as people become wealthier, the more meat they consume. And people, well, like meat!

Some tech companies have come up with a solution—alternative proteins—which include lab-grown meat, plant-based meat, single-cell proteins from yeast or algae, and edible insects. The lab- and plant-based alternative innovations mimic the taste, smell, and texture of meat and could be significant disruptors, eliminating the need for people to raise or consume animals.

As of now, the products available for consumers are mainly plant-based proteins like Impossible Burger and Beyond Beef. Data suggests that these foods are tasty to most consumers and have lower environmental footprints and greenhouse gas emissions than beef. They also have benefits for those who care about animal welfare.

They are however under scrutiny about their health properties and cost. Some argue these foods are overly processed, with a lot of artificial ingredients to get them to a state of palatability. Beyond Burger has approximately 25 ingredients whereas beef has just one ingredient – muscle tissue. They are also costly. One Impossible burger in Washington DC’s Founding Farmer restaurant costs $17.50 as compared to the all-beef cheeseburger at $14.50.

The products in the R&D pipeline – such as lab-grown meats – will have to undergo significant regulation by governments and there is the issue of scale. In the film, Meat the Future, the company Upside Foods (formerly known as Memphis Meats), which is using cells taken from an animal to grow meat, is challenged in making enough products at scale to feed the world’s growing population. While these are hurdles, there are some glimpses of promise. Those that have tried these products are pleasantly surprised at how similar they taste to the real thing and issues of scale are just temporary roadblocks.

Yet, will consumers accept and embrace these foods? The backlash against genetically modified foods shows early signs of what may come as companies begin to get lab-grown meats to market. Many consumers may argue these foods are fake and may be hesitant about their food being “grown” in Petri dishes. 

The big issue is, that we may not have a choice but to eat lab-grown meats. It will be very difficult to raise livestock in a hotter world. Not only will feed and water be scarce, but hotter climates wreak havoc on the health of the animals. These projected adverse effects will put premiums on the price of meat in the grocery store.

So while the world can be picky for the time being, these new foods may become our mainstay survival foods because they may be the only option. To ensure these foods are affordable, accessible, and acceptable to consumers all over the world, and not just curious rich people, several things need to happen.

First, companies producing these foods need to ensure transparency in how these foods are produced, and their impacts across a broad range of outcomes, particularly health and nutrition. There is a need for transparency regarding their nutritional content that is easy for consumers to understand and find. Companies should take lessons from how genetically modified foods were communicated and the fears and doubts they have raised among consumers.

Second, for those products that have unhealthy ingredients with losing palatability, the companies should work hard to reformulate the products to decrease the content of sodium and unhealthy fats. They should also work to fortify these foods with adequate micronutrients.

Third, these foods should be low cost, or real meat should be more expensive, keeping with the true costs to produce beef. As the demand for these alternatives increases and more companies come on board with new products, as with any economies of scale, the price will come down.

Last, while the innovation for these new foods is tempting, there are many traditional foods such as legumes, insects, and algae that have important nutritional value, particularly protein, have low environmental footprints, and do not require raising animals. These traditional foods, while traditional, may offer low-cost, low-resources alternatives to shiny and new future foods.

The World’s Food System Is Too Dependent on Wheat

This opinion piece was originally posted on the Bloomberg Opinion.

The Ukraine war highlights how reliance on a few big staple crops threatens food security and global nutrition.

Stunned by Russia’s assault on Ukraine, Europe is scrambling to diversify its energy supply — from piped Russian gas to liquified natural gas, more renewable power and nuclear power. In the same way, and for much the same reason, the ongoing war should push countries to shift and diversify their food supply — to make it more secure and, at the same time, improve nutrition worldwide.

Russia and Ukraine together supply 30% of the world’s wheat. This is why the war has caused wheat prices to skyrocket, along with the prices of many other food commodities. From February to March, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Association’s Food Price Index leapt 12.6% to an all-time high. This threatens people around the world with unprecedented food insecurity.

It also highlights the need to reform the global food system, which now leaves too many people dependent for nourishment on just a handful of mass-produced grains, including wheat, rice and corn.

To deal with the immediate shortages, farmers in the U.S., India, Canada and elsewhere will have to plant more wheat. And people worldwide will have to replace wheat with rice and other available grains. In the long term, though, this crisis provides an opportunity to change the face of agriculture and reduce the world’s dependency on wheat and other big staple crops.

Accomplishing this shift will be politically challenging. Many countries have entrenched agriculture subsidies that support big commodities including corn, rice, wheat, oils, sugar and soy, and ensure that they are grown at massive scale using uniform farm production practices. In the countries that grow two-thirds of the world’s crops, governments provide $540 billion a year in agricultural support. The U.S. alone spends $16 billion annually on farm subsidies, 80% of which goes to the largest 10% of farms.

This paradigm has many flaws. After all, there will always be risks in relying too heavily on one grain or just a few. It makes it difficult to address disruptions in supply caused by conflicts, protracted crises and fragile states — as the conflict in Ukraine makes clear. And in addition to geopolitical problems, there is the age-old but now growing threat of bad weather.

Heat waves, droughts, floods and cold spells can devastate wheat, corn, soy and rice crops. Because of climate change, extreme weather has already reduced harvests enough to push food prices up to their highest levels in 40 years. Climate change also increases the risk that such extreme weather events might occur at various locations in the same season. This phenomenon of “multiple breadbasket failures” stands to compromise billions of people’s access to food.

Subsidies for the big crops also neglect the need to promote healthy diets. Take wheat, for example. Whole unrefined wheat is a major source of starch and energy, as well as protein, vitamins (notably B vitamins), dietary fiber and phytochemicals. But demand for wheat has been rising globally because of its unique gluten properties, which make it also an ideal component of bread, noodles, pasta, cookies, crackers and many other baked foods and snacks. These highly processed foods, which now constitute a significant share of the world’s diet, are depleted of healthy nutrients and contribute to poor health.

Over the past 50 years, farm subsidies, supported by complementary research and development efforts in agriculture-dependent countries, have made rice, corn and wheat the world’s most dominant crops, accounting for two-thirds of global food-energy intake. Alternative staples such as sorghum, millet, rye, cassavas, sweet potatoes and yams haven’t disappeared — at least not yet — but they have become steadily less important.

To encourage a more diverse and resilient food supply, countries should begin reorienting agriculture subsidies toward fruits, vegetables, nuts and legumes and other nutritious foods. A recent study suggests that if half of all agriculture subsidies worldwide were repurposed to support the growing of foods that benefit human health as well as the environment, it could increase the cultivation of fruits and vegetables by as much as 20% and reduce greenhouse-gas emissions from agriculture by 2%.

Shifting agriculture subsidies is no easy lift. Many farmers depend on them to support their livelihoods, and many would consider it incredibly risky to make major changes in what they grow. But with climate change increasing and geopolitics unstable, change is becoming more and more necessary. And if people are to avoid chronic health problems such as diabetes and heart disease, they need assistance from the food system to adopt more nutritious diets. The global disruption caused by the war in Ukraine should prompt governments to reconsider their efforts to influence the crops farmers grow and move toward encouraging a more diverse food supply.

The Ukraine-Russia Crisis fuels deficits of fertilizers for sub-Saharan Africa

While there is a significant concern about the availability and world prices of wheat, safflower oil, and corn commodities produced by Russia and Ukraine, Russia is also the largest global exporter of fertilizers and fertilizer ingredients such as potash, ammonia, urea, and natural gas for making nitrogen-based fertilizers. Belarus, Russia’s closest ally, is the leading producer of potash-based fertilizer, and combined, Russia and Belarus provide 42% of potash fertilizer globally. With the ongoing Ukraine-Russia crisis, Russia has now suspended its fertilizer exports, and additional sanctions against Russia and Belarus are further disrupting the movement of fertilizer supplies around the world. Already, prices of fertilizers have surged – tripling price.

The worry is that food-producing countries of sub-Saharan Africa, where almost half of their potassium chloride comes from Russia and Belarus, will struggle to meet major crop yields that rely on fertilizers. This could further exacerbate food deficits in some countries with significant food insecurity on the continent. Already, sub-Saharan Africa is 21% food insecure according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization and with compromised food production, this could make matters worse for some populations and some countries this coming season and into next year. Hunger and food insecurity have already been rising on the continent due to the COVID19 pandemic and climate change with 46 million more hungry in 2020 compared to 2019.

While governments are scrambling to reduce their dependence on fertilizers imports coming from Russia and Belarus, it will be difficult to ensure fertilizer is available, affordable, and distributed to the most vulnerable farmers in the near term. One solution could be for development donors and investment banks to create a mechanism to provide emergency funds to countries within sub-Saharan Africa who need assistance, or perhaps a fund specific to fertilizer that involves contributions from industry and development agencies, through the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program. However, both could be too slow and bureaucratic to fill the immediate needs of farmers.

While food aid is not the most sustainable solution, putting in place safety nets is critical. Governments in food-deficit countries of sub-Saharan Africa must introduce and step-up social protection programs that provide cash and food to vulnerable households to cushion the short-term impacts of high food prices and to protect smallholder farmers from taking on the brunt of fertilizer costs. Donor countries should support agencies such as the UN World Food Programme to provide food assistance to countries that want and need support.

In the long-term, there is a solid argument for sub-Saharan Africa, and the world, in fact, to reduce their dependence on fossil fuels and chemical fertilizers. The problem is, organic fertilizer is not readily available to be distributed globally. While this will not solve immediate needs, governments should invest in research and development that examines the scaling up of organic and biofertilizers, increasing efficiency of chemical fertilizers (less drop per crop), and producing more nutritious, less environmentally intensive crops and animals in environmentally sustainable ways. 

If history has taught us anything, the Ukraine-Russia crisis will not be the last one we see in the next decade. Protecting the most vulnerable and re-orienting the world’s agriculture system towards one that is producing a different food basket with less environmentally intensive inputs makes sense. Let’s start with Africa.

The mavens

Food is everywhere. You can find it in almost every store and street corner (whether someone can afford it is for another blog entry). There are food blogs, food podcasts, food documentaries, food travel shows, food cooking shows, food apps, food zines, food mags, food porn…I could go on and on. People tweet, post, and hyperbolize about food, and are watching more cooking than actually doing cooking. Go figure.  Food in and of itself has become entertainment. It is less about people eating healthy and spending quality time on preparing and sharing food, and more about bragging rights. It has become a vehicle for snobbery and status but also, social aggression and competition. In a New York Times piece alluding to food as high art, “Nobody cares if you know about Mozart or Leonardo anymore, but you had better be able to discuss the difference between ganache and couverture.”

Much of the mainstream food system writing and pontificating is from authors who do not have traditional training in science and instead are journalists or writers, some coming from the cooking/restaurant sector. Many chefs are now TV stars in their own right and authors of famous books—and not just cookbooks. Many of these writers act as advocates and have developed celebrity status personalities. They often write about nutrition issues in a more ideological sense, taking parcels of select data to tell their story. The debates on the health of organic foods, GMOs, and industrialization have all been written about: less on the science, more on a belief system of what the food system should ideally look like, but usually only does so for the few elite. They have become the mavens of the food world.

“Nutritionism”— a reductive understanding of nutrients as the key indicators of healthy food—has created much confusion for consumers, leaving journalists, such as Michael Pollan—author of the infamous Ominovores Dilemma—to feed the public digestible answers to the most vexing global food system problems. Pollan along with many other writers (think Bittman, Waters, Petrini, Andres) have effectively opened a new dialogue about food systems, how we (un)consciously eat food, and how the individual can not only eat healthier, nutritious foods but within a healthier food system as well. It took someone like Michael Pollan to distill the complexity of nutrition science into one, simple message that resonated with the public: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” Many of these food journalists argue that the nutrition field and nutrition scientists have largely failed the global population, leaving people utterly confused and lost in the swampy, ultra-processed junk food abyss.

Pollan, who has now moved onto the world of psychedelics, further explained:

“In the case of nutritionism, the widely shared but unexamined assumption is that the key to understanding food is indeed the nutrient. From this basic premise flow several others. Since nutrients, as compared with foods, are invisible and therefore slightly mysterious, it falls to the scientists (and to the journalists through whom the scientists speak) to explain the hidden reality of foods to us. To enter a world in which you dine on unseen nutrients, you need lots of expert help. But expert help to do what, exactly? This brings us to another unexamined assumption: that the whole point of eating is to maintain and promote bodily health. Hippocrates’s famous injunction to ”let food be thy medicine” is ritually invoked to support this notion.”

Gary Taubes, a science writer/journalist, and low carb diet advocate argues:

“The 600,000 articles — along with several tens of thousands of diet books — are the noise generated by a dysfunctional research establishment. Because the nutrition research community has failed to establish reliable, unambiguous knowledge about the environmental triggers of obesity and diabetes, it has opened the door to a diversity of opinions on the subject, of hypotheses about cause, cure, and prevention, many of which cannot be refuted by the existing evidence. Everyone has a theory. The evidence doesn’t exist to say unequivocally who’s wrong.”

Tit for tat, scientists also poo poo on these journalists and find their prose problematic. First, some scientists argue that the Pollans of the world interpretation of science is filled with individual dietary purity. Their idea is to bring food systems back into one’s control, into one’s environment. This is such a difficult prospect for so many people around the world, particularly for those who are suffering from hunger or are struggling to make ends meet and have no voice, no agency. Second, some scientists call these food journalists “agri-intellectuals” who boast more about what should be considered healthy and sustainable production systems without a lot of thought about how farms really operate, and farmer families’ daily struggles, inequities, and the difficulties in earning a living growing food. And last, some find their writing just disconnected from reality and instead, drowning in Americana-centric, navel-gazing arguments with a lack of focus on the perverse political and structural systems that underpin how our globalized food supply is governed that can’t be unraveled by growing your own herb garden.

Norman Borlaug, the agronomist who was largely responsible for the Green Revolution in Asia and Latin America said:

“Some of the environmental lobbyists of the Western nations are the salt of the earth, but many of them are elitists. They've never experienced the physical sensation of hunger. They do their lobbying from comfortable office suites in Washington or Brussels. If they lived just one month amid the misery of the developing world, as I have for fifty years, they'd be crying out for tractors and fertilizer and irrigation canals and be outraged that fashionable elitists back home were trying to deny them these things.”

Yikes. I wouldn’t go that far Norman…but I see your point. I think…While Norman wasn’t referring to journalists per se, he was referring to lobbyists/advocates/policy wonks that also take the “I know what’s best” high road. The point is, while we scientists can complain all we want about who is shaping decisions and the psyche of the general public, we too need to get better at messaging. We need to be savvier at influencing. We need to use the evidence in ways that convince others to take action and make a change.

I wish I could write as convincingly as Pollan does. I truly do. Wouldn’t it be cool if journalists and scientists got together, shared science, ideas, and information, and wrote joint articles and books? The incentive structures would need to change, but the output could be powerful. Now that would be mavenizing!

Bringing back community agriculture services

With food insecurity rising worldwide and nutrition-related illnesses proliferating, countries want to encourage healthier eating. But how can they ensure people are able to buy and prepare diverse, nutritious foods when farmers produce so little of them? National agricultural policies are generally designed to support the cultivation of staple grains such as corn and rice, some oils, and sugar. A recent paper shows that 1/3 of global farms cultivated maize and 1/5 cultivated wheat alone! These foods feed the world amply, and cheaply, but some in the form of highly processed foods.

@FAO

Another issue is the significant loss and waste of perishable fruits and vegetables, meat and dairy products because of inadequate food storage, poor roads, and people’s lack of access to modes of preserving food for long-term storage. Such inefficiencies along the food supply chain drive up the cost and limit the supply of nutritious, fresh foods in rural and urban areas alike.  In Ethiopia for example, perishable foods such as eggs, dairy, and fish are 8-10 times more expensive than starchy staple calories due to supply constraints.

Turning around such entrenched food systems may seem daunting. But it can be done, beginning at the grass-roots level by improving community-based agriculture extension programs. Extension workers are “door-to-door” or farm-to-farm advisers who translate agriculture science into practical applications for farmers. They help solve problems and provide the training and technology farmers need to improve their operations profitably. Extensionists, as they are called, can also be critical mediators in times of natural disasters or outbreaks of disease among livestock.

A study done in 2014 by the Global Forum for Rural Advisory Services estimated there are 1,059,528 extension agents worldwide, but that could be an underestimate. The range of extension agents in each country varies, with some countries having very few—Barbados has 6—whereas other countries have more—China has 615,000. But, of course, that depends on the number of farmers in the country and how many people each extension agent serves.

Ideally, extensionists can steer farmers toward cultivating more nutritious foods and help them do so profitably. They can guide farmers to save heirloom seeds and improve agronomic practices to produce nutritious crops such as horticulture and raising poultry and goats. They can provide training to farmer families on food preparation and nutrition. They can help farmers adopt cultivation and fertilization practices that protect the environment, limit greenhouse-gas emissions, and help store carbon in the soil. And last, they can advise on post-harvest and storage technologies to minimize food loss on farms.

However, in many countries, they lack the training, tools, transportation, and communication tools to reach farmers. Nutrition training provided to extension agents at agricultural technical schools and universities is ineffective and inadequate, which impedes the ability of agents to identify nutritional needs and provide advice or solutions. They also do not have tools to share with communities nor the training to raise awareness of nutrition as a priority.

In many countries, extensionists also lack the tools that would help them work efficiently with more farmers. For example, in some parts of rural Africa, extension agents do not have mobile phones (or top-ups) to contact farmers about real-time issues like food prices in regional markets or motorbikes to reach far-flung communities. With COVID-19, many extensionists cannot get out to the field, so in places like China and Iran, extensionists are using smartphones and the radio to communicate market information and technical support along with public health safety. Farm Radio International is working with 1,000 stations in Africa to help get out information through extension agents.

It starts at the university level—improving extension curricula in universities or after high-school technical training schools. Investments in refresher certification programs for extension agents are needed in most places globally as technologies change and the latest science and technological know-how on agronomy, nutrition, and climate science tools become available. Continual updates to training modules of extension agents such as the New Extensionist Nutrition Learning Kit developed in Rwanda can strengthen training in nutrition within agriculture. Many local non-governmental organizations can provide this training along with the Food and Agriculture Organization in partnership with Ministries of Agriculture.

Techniques employed by extension agents such as peer-to-peer engagement through model farmers, community champions using a “train-the-trainer” approach, or the “walk-and-talk” methodology, wherein agents interact with client farmers through hands-on demonstrations. One example could be forest walks with farmers. Extension agents could teach farmers how to harvest wild, nutrient-dense foods, followed by demonstrations in preparing and incorporating the food into conventional dishes. The International Fund for Agriculture Development (IFAD) has a program, The Last Mile, which is expected to engage 15,000 extension agents in 18 countries to provide business and market-oriented skills to over 1.5 million smallholder farmers over the next five years. 

Last, women extension agents should be promoted and empowered. Only 15% of extension agents are women, and only 5% of women farmers reap the benefits from extension services. Most extension services have traditionally targeted their resources and interventions towards male farmers. Women extensionists understand the needs and challenges of women farmers, particularly in low- and middle-income countries where 45% of the agriculture workforce is made up of women. They should be invested not only to jumpstart careers but also to support the many women working in food systems that ultimately feed us.

Investing in the people who best understand their communities' needs, be it health or agriculture community workers, is critical to address the challenges that farmers face. However, it won’t be enough to transform global agriculture. Governments, international organizations and the private sector must invest in infrastructure along the entire food supply chain to help farmers grow, store and deliver perishable, nutritious foods. In addition, there is a need to provide farmers the latest climate-smart technologies and tools that would allow them to be resilient when facing natural disasters and other shocks. Insurance and credit are also crucial as safety nets in these uncertain times. That said, face-to-face contact with people exchanging ideas, advice, and knowledge isn’t a bad place to start. So let’s reinvigorate and invest in extensionists.

Can Fixing Dinner Fix the Planet?

Two years ago, I embarked on the writing of my very first book. Coming from a field of expertise that values peer-reviewed scientific publications more than books, I did not think it was in the cards to consider authoring a book about my discipline and my experience working in that discipline. But here we are, and tomorrow, my JHU Press Wavelength series trade book, Can Fixing Dinner Fix the Planet? will be released. The pandemic helped, unfortunately. It nudged me to sit still and put pen to paper.

The book investigates the interactions among food systems, diets, human health, and the climate crisis. It draws on my experiences (along with my team and many colleagues) working and living in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas. It describes how food systems must change to slow and reverse the stark trends we see with increased hunger and obesity, catastrophic climate change, and inequities. The book draws attention to the idea that the very nature of food and food systems can play a significant role in fixing these vexing challenges and bring communities together.

Food books abound—cookbooks by celebrity chefs (thanks Anthony Bourdain!), history of food and cuisines, and self-help diet books. My book does not delve into these areas much. Instead, it delves deep into politics and shows that if we take a “business as usual” path of how food systems have, are, and will operate, there will be significant negative consequences on human and planetary health. It provides examples of what can be done by the various actors like government and food and agriculture industries to promote healthy, sustainable, and equitable diets, sustain the earth’s biodiversity, and protect the environment and all species living on the planet. And last, it raises readers’ food and environmental literacy and empowers readers to take immediate and long-term changes by helping them make informed decisions when they walk into restaurants, grocery stores, farmers' markets, and their kitchens.

The book changed the way I communicate my work. It is not easy to write about a complex topic like food systems and ensure that it inspires eaters, global experts in governments, and those working in and shaping food systems to make better decisions. I tried my best to bring to life some of my experiences working in different countries—from very poor to prosperous—and the experiences of those I have worked with and shared time with in deeply rural and urban pockets of the planet. It provides a nuanced story that takes you away from computer and desk research to farmer’s fields, families’ kitchens, and United Nations’ working forums.

I hope the book shows readers how our everyday diets are the products of massive, interconnected, and highly complex food systems that extend from the seedlings in a farmer’s field to the global distribution and marketing networks that deliver food to our plates. These systems have direct and substantial impacts on poverty, the planet’s natural resources, the nutrition of individuals and populations, the composition of the atmosphere, and social equity. They also are incredibly vulnerable to the climatic changes that we have already seen and that will accelerate in the future.

The lost art of reading a book

I recently did an interview for the Reading List with Phil Treagus. I am a big book fan (my better half is a book publisher and archiver) but especially books on food (go figure). I also have two books coming out this year that I am pretty excited about. The first is through Johns Hopkins University Press titled “Can Fixing Dinner Fix the Planet?” The book is my own take on improving food systems and brings in a lot of my own experiences working on food issues in different places in the world. It comes out May 2021. The second book is a textbook published by Palgrave titled “Global Food Systems, Diets and Nutrition: Linking Science, Economics and Policy.” My colleague Claire Davis and I are excited to see this book out in June 2021.

This is what I had to say about books and you can also go to the original interview here.

How do you describe your occupation?

Educator and researcher of food systems.

Talk us through a typical day for you…

My day starts with a series of very early morning (begins around 5 am) zoom meetings with other researchers and organizations (UN, NGOs, etc.) working in Europe, Africa, and Asia on projects, publications, or initiatives. If I am not teaching a course that semester, I usually have one guest lecture to do and am usually on one or two public panels/webinars/keynote talks throughout the day. I try to block some time to read, write and do data analysis and, of course, to exercise (one hour a day)—usually mid-morning or late afternoon. Sometimes, I have 10-15 meetings throughout the day, so having concentrated focus time is challenging. Dinner is always the highlight of the day. We eat early, like 5:30, and my husband whips up gourmet meals. We usually watch something on Netflix or Criterion for about an hour or so. Then back at it to do a bit of writing in the early evening. I am in bed (and asleep) by 10 pm.

What are you reading at the moment, and what made you want to read it?

Science Fictions: How Fraud, Bias, Negligence, and Hype Undermine the Search for Truth by Stuart Ritchie. With so much dis- and misinformation on facts, data, and evidence, and the significant conflicts of interest in the food world, I was very keen to look inward into the science community that generates information. Where have we failed? Where are our faults? What could we do better? This book highlights the pitfalls of how we develop, communicate and vet science (with nutrition examples throughout the book) and turns the mirror on the science world. It is fantastic!

Can you remember the first book you read by yourself?

It is a toss-up. The two that stand out to me and are forever imprinted on my brain is Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh by Robert O’Brien and James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl. Strangely, and I haven’t thought about this until just now, both involve the food world. Mrs Frisby (a mouse) needs to move her home, which is endangered from the fields’ annual spring plowing. She asks a sophisticated bunch of rats for help. The story of James centers on a boy who enters a peach, and his world changes. Both stories highlight the magic and mysticism of ecosystems and experiences with that magic.

Are you a page folder or a bookmarker?

Page folder. But I go one step further. I fold the top of the current page I am reading so I know where I am the next time I pick up the book. I fold the page’s bottom if there is something on that page I want to go back to or research later.

Can you tell us a little more about the Global Food Security Journal?

The Journal strives to publish evidence-informed strategic views of experts from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives on prospects for ensuring food security, nutrition, and health across food system issues. We wish to publish reviews, perspectives articles, and debates that synthesize, critique and extend findings from the rapidly growing body of original publications on global food security, nutrition, food systems, and related areas; and special issues on critical topics across food security, food systems, and nutrition including how these are impacted by climate and environmental dynamics.

If you could gift yourself books at age 16 and age 25 – what would they be and why?

The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan and The End of Food by Paul Roberts. Pollan has mastered the craft of telling compelling food stories that have political, social and environmental repercussions in such an approachable way. While the book focuses mainly on the United States, it does raise questions as to the sustainability and ethics of how we grow our food and the individual dietary choices we make every day. Pollan has his fair share of critics, but I have yet to see an academic write such a compelling narrative on the fractured global food system. Paul Roberts’s book had an even deeper impact on me. It was hard to eat after reading his book because essentially, you feel the world is doomed! As Jim Morrison of The Doors sang, “the future is certain and the end is always near.” The End of Food, as the title suggests, brings those lyrics to life…

If you could invite 5 authors (dead or alive) to a dinner party – who would they be and why?

Amartya Sen (for his incredible influence on how we view poverty, famine, and human development and his many authored books including Poverty and Famine). Mark Kurlansky (for his incredible journalistic deep dives into things like Salt, Cod and Paper). Leah Penniman (author of Farming While Back and co-owner of Soul Fire Farm. A walking the talk author and entrepreneur!). Rachel Carson (for her landmark book Silent Spring that influenced the entire environmental movement). Joseph Campbell (his vast knowledge on the human experience and author of A Hero with a Thousand Faces). I highly recommend the interviews he had done towards the end of his life with Bill Moyer. After watching that, I wanted to be better at my craft.

What was the last book you purchased, and why did you buy it?

New Climate War by Michael Mann. Michael is a climatologist at Penn State. He is a clear communicator and fantastic science whose work has helped build the evidence on global warming. His new book is all about the politics of inaction on climate. In the food world, and very much tied to climate, we face similar issues of political inertia, interference and power imbalance of powerful industry players and complex scientific messages. Hopefully, I can learn something from Mann’s experience in battling the “merchants of doubt” and how he and others have fought to keep the evidence of climate change on the top of the global agenda.

What is your favourite thing about reading?

The quiet time and the ability to reflect on other’s views, worlds, and perspectives. I also find that I like the feel, experience, and act of reading an actual book as opposed to an e-book or an audiobook.

What’s the best book you’ve read in the last 6 months?

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin. Written in 1962 but felt like it was written in 2020.

In your Twitter bio you describe yourself as a ‘goat lover’, I have to ask you to elaborate on this…

Goats are just so cool. Resilient, smart, and independent. And did you know they can surf? My husband and I even keep a blog, named “Goat Rodeo.” Speaking of books, there is a great book about goats entitled Goat Song by Brad Kessler who leaves New York City with this partner to go raise Nubian goats in Vermont.

If you could insert yourself into any book, which would you pick and why?

This is a tough one! Maybe Rats: Observations on the History and Habitat of the City’s Most Unwanted Inhabitants by Robert Sullivan. Robert would roam the city streets of New York in the silence and darkness of night observing what rats would feast on, and how they lived their lives. I am disgusted by but fascinated with these resilient little creatures and it would have been fun to spend a year doing this sort of rodential research. Turns out their diets are a lot like humans…they like junk food.

What is the book that you feel has had the single biggest impact on your life? What impact did it have?

This is really a tough one. I want to say Ulysses by James Joyce but that is a total lie. Perhaps Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. As a trained molecular nutritionist, it upended the way I think about food, human health and environmental sustainability. I pulled my head out of the petri dish and have focused much more on their connections and the macro- long view of food systems and how and where they fit into sustainable development.

If you could only own three cookbooks, which would you pick and why?

Anything by Alice Waters but especially The Art of Simple Cooking. She lays out the necessities of cookware, ingredients and basic recipes you need to at least feel like you are cooking organic, wholesome food straight out of the 1970s Berkeley. She also just propels food and cooking to an art form. Bibi’s Kitchen because it highlights the diversity of Africa’s cuisine told through and shared by grandmothers. Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking by Samin Nosrat. She makes cooking so approachable.

Are there any books you haven’t mentioned that you feel would make your reading list?

I’d also include:

Chronicles by Bob Dylan,
Just Kids by Patti Smith (I am a big fan of music books),
Salt Sugar Fat by Michael Moss,
Blood, Bones and Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef by Gabrielle Hamilton,
Food Politics and Soda Politics by Marion Nestle (see our interview with Marion Nestle),
Mass Starvation by Alex De Waal,
One Day I will Write About this Place by Binyavanga Wainaina,
Four Fish by Paul Greenberg,
Sweetness and Power by Sidney Mintz,
The Wizard and the Prophet by Charles Mann,
and The Way we Eat Now by Bee Wilson.

Which book sat on your shelf are you most excited about reading next and why?

The Secret Life of Groceries by Benjamin Lorr. I love the premise of this book. The author takes the reader through the inner workings of the nebulous supermarket that has become the powerhouse influencer on our diets. I am sort of scared though. I have a feeling I am going to never want to set foot in a supermarket again after reading this. Much like how I felt after reading Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser. I have yet to eat at McDonald’s (not that I really want to) since reading that book…

In Africa, Covid-19 Threatens to Worsen Hunger

This is a cross-posted blog and originally on Bloomberg Opinion. The original can be read here.

The continent has some unique strengths, but food insecurity is a special vulnerability. 

“It is easy to see the beginnings of things and harder to see the ends,” Joan Didion wrote in “Goodbye to All That.” Her words resonate in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, when no one has a clue whether we’re at the beginning, in the middle or near the end. In sub-Saharan Africa, not knowing is especially worrisome because it’s difficult to tell whether the continent’s fragile food supply systems will weather the strain.

 While the continent has made great strides toward economic security over the past several decades, Covid-19 could stymie that progress. Conditions vary greatly from country to country, but many struggles to ensure that their citizens have access to basic essentials: soap to clean hands, potable water and nutritious food to keep immune systems strong. Hunger and food insecurity have not gone away. Twenty-three percent of people in sub-Saharan Africa are undernourished. Because of the global economic fallout from Covid-19, the number of people worldwide facing acute food insecurity could nearly double this year to 265 million, the United Nations World Food Programme estimates, and much of that impact will be felt in Africa.

 At the same time, obesity and noncommunicable diseases (heart disease and diabetes for example) are rising in many low-income countries, Africa included, and both are proving to be serious complications for people infected with Covid-19. Much of the continent is also still dealing with other complex infectious diseases – HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, and other neglected tropical illnesses – that will make it more difficult to treat Covid-19 infections.

 As it expands on the continent, Covid-19 will put further stress on already strained health systems – with limited numbers of ventilators and proper beds, minimal personal protective equipment, and, in some places, too few health care workers.

At the same time, food supply chains are starting to falter. Lockdowns in 30 African countries have made it very challenging for farmers to sell their goods in markets or for workers to get to fields. Food assistance is not always making it to those most in need. Many informal markets – the infamous wet or open-air markets, where most Africans shop for food – are closed, further imperiling food insecurity and threatening malnutrition. Reports from the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition’s offices in Nigeria and Mozambique noted that prices of food, particularly the fruits and vegetables, have increased significantly.

In many African cities, social distancing and self-isolation are a recipe for disaster. Slums and informal settlements are overcrowded and lack basic services such as running water, cooking facilities, and electricity. And even if people infected with the coronavirus had safe places to isolate, some feel they must work to keep their families fed. Commutes to work often involve overfilled buses and long traffic jams – which increase the spread of disease.

With global unemployment rising, remittances worldwide are also are expected to fall – by 20%, or nearly $110 billion, according to the World Bank. In sub-Saharan Africa, they may drop by 23%. This will push more people to go to work, increasing their exposure.

To be sure, African countries have a few things working in their favor. For one, they have experience with massive infectious diseases – HIV/AIDS, Ebola, and polio, to name a few – and public health systems have been strengthened over the last decade. The Democratic Republic of the Congo has been hard hit by Ebola, but there are signs of progress with a declining case load in early 2020.

 In the current crisis, African governments can take some early lessons from the rest of the world that has been grappling with the pandemic a month or two longer, and work to keep the food supply moving. The continent is still 60% rural, and many urban Africans have close ties to the countryside, owning land or family plots. With luck, lower population density in rural areas may slow the spread of Covid-19, allowing farmers to continue to grow food, that is if they can get access to seeds and the technologies needed to plant and harvest. Support to food producers is an absolute necessity to keep the continent food sufficient.

 Sub-Saharan Africa is also fortunate to have a relatively young population, which may make it better able to weather outbreaks of Covid-19 with less hospitalization and death.

 Still, it remains hard to see the end. Some people hypothesize, with little evidence, that Africa may not be hit as hard as other places because of its warm climate. Perhaps, they say, the spread will be slower in Africa, and that will buy extra time. Given how easily Covid-19 has spread in other warm places such as Singapore and Thailand, that’s not something to count on.

 To ensure that Africa doesn’t starve and that it can weather the Covid-19 storm, it is essential to make sure people are guaranteed access to food, water, soap, masks, and cash transfers to support their families. The poorest and most vulnerable should be the priority. World governments with their donor partners, including the World Bank and the World Food Programme, will be counted on for support over the next four months. Businesses who make food products need support as well. We must all help make sure they come through.

The COVID-19 Crisis and Food Systems: Addressing threats, creating opportunities

Lawrence Haddad, Jess Fanzo, Steve Godfrey, Corinna Hawkes, Saul Morris, and Lynnette Neufeld

With the spread of COVID-19, we find ourselves plunged into a global health crisis. By most accounts, we are only at the early stages of the pandemic so it is going to reshape economy, society, and politics, probably permanently.

Pre-COVID-19 crisis, many families the world over already spent a lot of time and energy thinking about getting access to food. During the crisis, the most vulnerable face the rapid loss of their income - spent mainly on food - and this is an immediate threat that should be prioritized. For many others, simple access to shops has also become very worrying and needs swift attention. Even the wealthy are increasingly thinking about food access at this time.

But are governments, businesses and civil society thinking enough about food access and the wider food system?

How will the crisis shape the food system if we do nothing? And what can we do in the context of the crisis to get the food system in better shape to improve the consumption of nutritious foods for all, especially the most vulnerable?

We desperately need to focus on the operation of food systems at the moment because we know that the quality and quantity of the food we eat is the number one risk factor in the prevention of general mortality and morbidity. If we forget the food system right now, the COVID-19 health crisis will unwittingly use the food system as a catapult to have an even bigger impact on the global burden of disease. If we think and act to change the food system right now, we can reposition it to be more effective at delivering affordable nutritious food during the crisis, and perhaps even after the crisis.

What are the probable effects of COVID-19 (and the efforts to control it) on the food system which shapes our access to nutritious food?

It is difficult to say for sure, but in this table we share some thoughts on the potential impacts throughout the food system of COVID-19 (and the response to it), and some ways of mitigating the impacts. We do this for high- and low-income contexts, which may well exist within the same countries. Many of our suggested actions are responses to immediate needs, but many would have positive impacts well after the crisis is under control.

What are the main threats? We are of course worried about food prices, especially for more nutritious foods, which are already more expensive than staples and unaffordable for many people, especially those on low incomes who already spend much of their money on food. More food staples will be consumed as a result of price hikes, but likely also more, unhealthy, highly processed foods that are cheaper, have longer shelf lives and may provide comfort in tough times. In addition, increased food price volatility (due in part to hoarding and cross border impediments) generates uncertainty and makes it more difficult for food system actors to take all manner of decisions.

We are also deeply worried about negative income shocks on the most vulnerable, through the loss of livelihoods as the demand for certain services collapses and certain production systems are disrupted due to affected workers. Farming, in particular, seems very vulnerable given the older age profile of farmers and the mortality pattern of COVID-19 as well as the sector’s common reliance on mobile workforces. This vulnerability, if realized, will mean less food produced and weaker non-farm rural livelihoods and higher food prices for all, wherever we live. Physical distancing will have an impact on the costs of moving food around, within countries and across borders leading to more food loss and emptier markets. Lapses in food safety, which potentially started all this in a wet food market in Wuhan, will likely exacerbate if no action is taken. 

What are the probable effects of COVID-19 (and the efforts to control it) on the food system which shapes our access to nutritious food?

But there are opportunities. Healthier foods build immune systems throughout life but especially among vulnerable ages, including early life and the elderly, and so there is a window of opportunity to make the case for safe nutritious food. Diabetes and other non-communicable diseases are risk factors for COVID19 mortality and additional attention should be given to preventing the former because of the latter. 

We expect to see food safety move strongly up the policy priority list because of the origins of COVID-19. Social protection programs should be more linked to promoting the consumption and production of nutritious food, not just preventing food insecurity. We expect the prevention of food loss, especially fresh food, during storage and transport to gain a greater profile. The aging of farming capacity will be treated more seriously, with efforts increasing to make farming more profitable and appealing to younger generations.

We can see opportunities for reshaping public sector messaging, not only about hygiene but about nutritious food consumption and preparation. Will there be new opportunities to disrupt food transport by using shared economy models capitalizing on any underutilized haulage capacity to lower costs? Will we see more financing facilities for investing in nutritious food production, processing, storage, distribution and retailing? Will civil society become more organized and active about the provenance of food and about the behavior of businesses and governments in ensuring the provision of affordable food? 

Social protection programs should be more linked to promoting the consumption and production of nutritious food, not just preventing food insecurity. © Unsplash

Finally, will we see greater collaboration between government and the private sector during the crisis spill over into a reshaped narrative post-crisis about how the two sectors - public and private - can work better together to improve access for all to safe nutritious foods?

This is the first of a series of blogs that we will put out in the coming months. We have asked Nutrition Connect to set up a COVID-19 and food systems site and we would like to encourage our partners, colleagues, friends, and fellow travelers to post blogs, opinion pieces and research reports and papers that are relevant to this topic on the site, with full organizational recognition and lots of cross-posting. 

The COVID-19 health crisis is here. Let’s work together to stop it turning into a food crisis and further exacerbating disease burdens.

Governments, communities, and businesses around the world are showing astonishing energy and innovation to cope with COVID-19. The short-term priority is to stabilize food systems and keep trade open – all people working in food systems from the farmer to the check-out supermarket agent are critical to keep the food system moving. But it is in times of great crisis that fundamental reforms are born. The United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the advance of the welfare state were developed in the darkest days of the Second World War.

So let’s stand by our neighbors, critical workers, and communities today. Let’s also work to reshape our food systems for tomorrow - to deal with the new COVID-19 crisis as well as the much bigger diet-related health crisis; one that has been with us for decades. 

Download the mitigation and adaptation table here.