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Why Do People Eat (So Much) Meat?—And How Can We Eat (Much) Less?
No full textFirst paragraphs:
Humans eat a lot of meat! According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the annual consumption of meat globally in 2013 was 106 lbs. (48 kg) per capita, up from 56 lbs. (25 kg) in 1961 (FAO, 2018). This amount is projected to increase by between 75% and 145% by 2050 (Godfray et al., 2018), due to the strong correlation between increasing per-capita gross domestic product (GDP) and increasing per-capita meat consumption (Tilman and Clark, 2014). And to provide this meat (along with other animal products), there are about 30 billion livestock animals in the world at any given time—four times the number of humans; over 160 billion livestock are slaughtered annually, half of these poultry (FAO, 2018). No wonder that meat’s impact on our planet and our lives is so large.
The implied question permeating Wilson Warren’s book is “Why do we eat so much meat?” The title suggests one answer—the belief that Meat Makes People Powerful—and the text makes clear that this is in terms of health, culture, and economics. The final chapters ask a further question—How can we stop eating so much meat? They describe the major role that meat is playing in anthropogenic climate change and environmental pollution in general, as well as in the current global noncommunicable disease pandemic. They also discuss the overwhelmingly negative effects of meat consumption on animal welfare and on social equity. . .
Developing a Production Function for Small-Scale Farm Operations in Central Minnesota
No full textLocal food advocates promote direct-to-consumer food sales, arguing that such sales yield a variety of positive effects, including that smaller, direct-to-consumer producers have a greater economic impact compared to larger producers selling via wholesale channels. In this research study, we examine this claim by exploring the relative economic contribution of small-scale, direct-to-consumer vegetable operations versus larger-scale, direct-to-wholesale vegetable operations in Central Minnesota. In this article, we detail the methods used to define the project, gather primary data, and construct the two production functions following the methods developed for the U.S. Department of Agriculture Agricultural Marketing Service’s Economics of Local Foods Systems Toolkit. In our analysis, we constructed two production functions for vegetables. The first was the default production function of vegetable operations from the input-output model IMPLAN. The second production function was constructed from detailed farm financial data on the purchasing patterns of 11 small vegetable operators in a 13-county area of Central Minnesota. Our results illuminate variations in relative impacts, but also in specific aspects of operational expenditures.
The production function for the sampled farms predicted a higher per dollar economic impact than the default IMPLAN production function. Our findings indicate that the small-scale, direct-to-consumer vegetable operations may have a greater positive impact on regional businesses than larger-scale, direct-to-wholesale operations, per dollar of output. Our results inform both farm business planning and economic development decision-making in rural regions.
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The Farmers Market Metrics Project: A Research Brief on Scalable Data Collection in the Minneapolis-St. Paul Metro
No full textMaintaining funding for local and regional food system initiatives requires reliable data to demonstrate their impacts. Data that are specific to farmers markets in a localized context are not readily available. The Farmers Market Metrics Project is a three-way partnership between farmers markets, local government, and a university to elevate the capacity of the markets in the Minneapolis–St. Paul Metro region through regionally collected metrics to quantify their presence in the regional food system. In this research brief, we introduce the FM360 data collection method being developed by the project, which is scalable across geographic areas. Scalability is critical to making the data collection process adaptable and effective in cases involving multiple data sources and when flexibility is needed in defining the food system parameters to satisfy partners and prospective funders.
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Why Place-Based Food Systems? Food Security in a Chaotic World
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Techno-industrial society is founded on a ‘socially constructed’ myth of perpetual economic growth propelled by the cult of efficiency, expanding trade, and continuous technological progress. But this neoliberal vision has resulted in an increasingly unsustainable entanglement of nations in a world compromised by ecological overshoot. Today, many countries are dependent on others for critical resources, including food, even as population growth and increased consumption deplete and pollute the ecosystems essential for human survival. Climate change and energy uncertainty further threaten trade-dependent populations. Indeed, societal collapse is a growing possibility. The future food security of cities—or any size of human settlement—lies in greater regional self-reliance, particularly through the protection of arable land and the re-localization of both primary agriculture and food processing. . . .
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Out of Our Silos, Into the Movement: Community Food Systems and Cooperative Extension in Oregon
No full textOregon has a vibrant community food systems (CFS) movement, which has grown from a few key actors and organizations two decades ago to an increasingly organized, statewide network of more than 50 organizations working on the full span of food system challenges. These diverse organizations have endorsed a common vision: “All Oregonians thrive with healthy, affordable foods from an environmentally and economically resilient, regional food system.” The CFS movement aims to expand Oregon’s sustainable agriculture and local and regional food sectors in ways that address the state’s chronic challenges with food insecurity and inequitable access to healthy food. Analysts have described Cooperative Extension’s potential and actual contributions to local, regional, and community food system development. Because many Extension personnel feel limited in their ability to work toward transforming the food system, researchers suggest partnering with external organizations with a similar understanding of food system problems and possible solutions. As those partners develop their own theories of food system change and strategic paths forward, Extension can use these to organize its own CFS goals and strategies. I demonstrate that this is well underway in Oregon
Building Grantee Capacity as a Core Strategy to Improve Local Food Systems
No full textGreater Twin Cities United Way (GTCUW), Minnesota’s largest nongovernmental social services funder, connects local people and resources to change systems that limit our potential. Hunger and food insecurity require a spectrum of holistic responses that address emergency and root causes, while advancing long-term solutions for individuals, families, communities, and systems. To that end, GTCUW launched Full Lives, an innovative grantmaking strategy fostering a healthy and equitable community food system where all residents can thrive. This two-year, US$1.5 million effort employs a place-based approach to community and economic development to reduce food insecurity by improving food access, food affordability, and food justice for a low-income Minneapolis neighborhood facing systemic food security issues. Full Lives grantees focus on diverse aspects of the local supply chain that strengthen North Minneapolis’s local food system.
Full Lives further augments this effort through grantee learning focused on increased organizational capacity and strengthened connections among grantee organizations, with a cross-cutting theme of community development. GTCUW partners with local technical assistance providers to implement flexible, innovative, responsive, and targeted capacity-building strategies and services. This strategic investment generates cross-agency collaboration, active networking, organizational development, and enhanced food systems technical expertise. A robust evaluation—including qualitative and quantitative elements—reveals successes, challenges, and lessons learned from the design and execution of these capacity-building strategies. Practice and measurement of this grantee capacity-building investment suggests strategies and considerations for partnership development, incorporation of grantee and community voice in planning, and delivery of ongoing educational activities for grantees.
GTCUW would like to thank the General Mills Foundation for its generous support in making this work possible
Development of a Food Security Indicator Framework in British Columbia
No full textFood security is complex in both content and governance, making it difficult to measure and monitor. In 2016, the Population and Public Health Program of the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control, Provincial Health Services Authority, sought to identify or construct an evidence-based conceptual framework to guide the systematic selection of food security indicators for British Columbia (BC), Canada.
A systemized scan of the literature found no existing conceptual frameworks specific to food security indicators appropriate to the Global North. The most relevant indicator frameworks for food security in the literature were environmental health indicator frameworks. These formed the foundation for the conceptual framework for food security indicators in BC. The framework is a matrix that combines an adaptation of the environmental health casual network (i.e., determinants–current state–impact–response) with food security elements (i.e., (i) individual and household food insecurity; (ii) food systems, and (iii) capacity). Use of this framework can enable program planners and policy-makers to be clear about where and how they are attempting to assess, influence, and monitor food security. It also illustrates interconnectedness between indicators.
The creation of this framework has laid the foundation for the development of a set of indicators for BC Public Health. Its wide scope allows for the potential of various sectors to populate the framework with indicators and thus create a comprehensive assessment of food security in BC
Connecting New Farmers to Place, Agroecology, and Community through a Bilingual Organic Farm Incubator
No full textRenewed public interest in the localized dimensions of food and farming systems offers opportunities for citizens to become more engaged in decision making about how their food is produced, distributed, and consumed, and, for all these actions, by whom. This paper explores an initiative designed to reinvigorate the production components of a place-based, regional food system through connecting diverse aspiring entrepreneurial farmers, nonprofit organizations, land grant university faculty, and food consumers around shared values. The characteristics that distinguish values-based food systems can be sets of values associated with environmentally sustainable production practices, the qualities of the food, the distribution of the food, and/or relationships with particular farmers and places (Ostrom, DeMaster, Noe, & Schermer, 2017). Based on interviews and participant observation, our participatory research with the Viva Farms bilingual farm incubator program explores the role of place, social, and environmental values, and social learning in launching an incoming generation of women, immigrant, and low-income farmers. These themes have not been previously explored in the literature in relation to the success of new entry farmer initiatives. As of 2016, six years into the program, our findings show that 77 percent of past program participants were still farming in the same region, using agroecological farming practices and employing place-based marketing strategies.
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Where Have All the Direct-Marketing Farms Gone? Patterns Revealed from the 2017 Census of Agriculture
No full textFood system researchers and practitioners have used the U.S. Census of Agriculture historically as a bellwether to measure changes in the direct-marketing sector. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has made considerable improvements in measuring this sector in recent years, which formed the basis for the phrasing of the 2017 Census of Agriculture direct-marketing questions. While the new questions make it challenging to infer direct-marketing trends between 2012 and 2017, the 2017 Census of Agriculture data nonetheless reveals a considerable decline in the number of farms selling directly to consumers and wholesalers in the U.S. We discuss possible explanations for this decline and implications for the direct-marketing sector
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Place-Based Food Systems: Making the Case, Making it Happen
No full textFirst paragraph:
In less than a century, our food system has been transformed into a complex network of global-industrial supply chains, increasingly disconnecting us from the people and processes that provide our food. Such a ‘market-driven’ system externalizes many of its social, environmental, and economic costs. At the same time, it concentrates power and profits among a few stakeholders who maintain hegemonic control of the food systems, yet are often far removed from its negative impacts. The list of transgressions is long and familiar to us: extensive environmental degradation, unjust labor conditions for food workers, the collapse of farming communities, epidemic occurrence of western diet–related disease, biodiversity loss, and on it goes. It is a system that produces more food than at any period in history—more than enough to feed the global population (Holt-Giménez, Shattuck, Altieri, Herren, & Gliessman, 2012, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations [FAO], 2017)—yet leaves more than one in 10 people experiencing hunger (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations [FAO], International Fund for Agriculture Development [IFAD], UNICEF, World Food Programme [WFP], & World Health Organization [WHO], 2019)