For Food's Sake

Since 2015, more than 150 cities around the globe have come together to rethink the way we feed our cities. As signatories to the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact, they share a commitment to developing sustainable food systems that are inclusive, resilient, safe and diverse. The city of Valencia, the 2017 World Sustainable Food Capital, is leading by example. 

In this episode, we discuss:

• The history and vision of the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact
• The role of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation in helping to realise this mission 
• Why Valencia is the 2017 World Sustainable Food Capital
• Why cities truly matter in the fight for sustainable food and food justice

We interview:

• Guido Santini - United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (UN FAO)
• Dorothee Fischer - International Press and Communications Manager - Valencia World Sustainable Food Capital 2017
• Vincente Domingo - Commissioner of Valencia World Sustainable Food Capital 

Links:

• Milan Urban Food Policy Pact Website 
• Milan Urban Food Policy Pact Text 
• UN FAO Food for the Cities Programme 
• Valencia World Sustainable Food Capital 2017 Website
• United Nations Decade of Action on Nutrition 2016-2025

You might also like:

• FFS 017 - When Farms go Vertical 
• FFS 011 - Transforming Agriculture to Feed the Future 
• FFS 005 - Learn by Doing: a 100-Mile Diet in Paris 

For #HortAttack Valencia Campaign Visuals, visit the For Food's Sake website episode post FFS 019 - World Sustainable Food Capital 

Rob Greenfield is an adventurist and environmental activist that has made it his life's purpose to lead by example in living a truly sustainable lifestyle. Rob has completely transformed the way he lives over the last half decade. He continuously challenges himself and others by taking sustainable living to the extreme. From off-the-grid tiny houses to dumpster diving, Rob has managed to reach hundreds of thousands of people around the world, spreading his message of positive change.

In this episode, we discuss:

• How Rob's journey began
• Food waste and dumpster diving
• Rob as the 'Trash man' in New York City
• The Green Riders: Good deeds on bikes
• How individuals can make a tangible difference
• Rob's advice: get started with 'micro-challenges'
• Rob's next big challenge: One year of producing all the food he eats with his own two hands

Links:

• Rob Greenfield Website, Twitter, Facebook, Youtube
• Rob Greenfield TEDx: Be the Change in a Messed Up World

As cities and populations grow, and the space to feed them shrinks, one proposed solution is to farm upwards rather than outwards, indoors instead of outdoors, in urban spaces as opposed to rural ones. Vertical farming is no longer science fiction; investors are pouring in to support promising companies offering innovative solutions.

In this episode, I talk to Claire Gusko, growth manager at INFARM - a Berlin-based indoor urban farming company - about their approach to vertical farming and the role that indoor vertical farms can play in helping to build the cities of tomorrow.

We discuss:

• What indoor farming and vertical farming is
• Why the industry is seeing investment soar
• What is unique about INFARM, their value proposition and vision
• How consumer concerns about price, energy efficiency, and 'unnatural' farming are being addressed
• Why local farmers and vertical urban farming can and must co-exist

Links:

• INFARM Website, Facebook, and Twitter
• Vertical Farming: Is this the answer to the world's food shortage? - The independent
• Vertical Farming may not feed the world, but could empower cities - Humanosphere 
• World's largest vertical farm grows without soil, sunlight or water in Newark - The Guardian

In this week's special episode, I had the honour of speaking with Dr. Cary Fowler, the "father" of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault.

Cary has been working to preserve crop diversity for over four decades, he is the former Executive Director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, and has been described by former UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon as an "inspirational symbol of peace and food security for the entire humanity". His work is a true inspiration for agriculturalists, archivists and environmentalists across the globe. 

We discuss: 

• What crop diversity means and why it's the most important natural resource on Earth
• Why sustaining crop diversity and saving seeds are vital as we brace for climate change
• The history and role of seed banks and why they are under threat
• How the Global Crop Diversity Trust is spearheading global efforts to protect seed banks 
• Why the Svalbard Global Seed Vault is the most important room in the world
• Cary's final words of wisdom 

Links:

• Cary Fowler (2016) Seeds on Ice: Svalbard and the Global Seed Vault 
• Cary Fowler (1990) Shattering: Food, Politics, and the Loss of Genetic Diversity 
• Cary Fowler TED Talk: One seed at a time, protecting the future of food 
• GoPro Cause Documentary 'Forever Securing World Food Supply with Crop Trust' 
• Seeds of Time Documentary 

From 10-dollar plant-based smoothies in trendy Californian cafés to Vegan helmets in the Israeli Defense Force, Veganism is as diverse as it is topical. What is Veganism really all about, where has it come from and where is it heading? Is it a religion, a social movement, or an ideology? 

This week I talk with Nina Gheihman, a sociologist at Harvard. Nina is currently pursuing her PhD, focusing on a comparative study of veganism as a cultural practice in the US, France, and Israel. She is also the President of the Harvard Vegan society, as well as the Program Director of the Ivy League Vegan Conference, and is the founder of the community advocacy group Boston Plant-Based Millennials.

In this episode, we explore Veganism in all its forms and all its wonders. We discuss how Veganism has evolved and transformed over time, how its adapting to different cultural contexts around the world, and how its grappling with a growing popularity that has it moving, slowly but surely, towards the mainstream.

We'll talk about: 

• Defining Veganism: a loaded, slippery term
• The roots of Vegetarianism and Veganism in Eastern and Western philosophies
• Is Veganism a religion? 
• The formation of the first vegetarian society in the 19th century: a tragic mistake?
• The ideological tenets of Veganism (animal rights, health and plant-based diets, saving the environment) and its move towards the mainstream 
• Skeptical vegans and practical vegans: will only impending doom shift the tide towards Veganism?
• How veganism is evolving differently across different cultures:
• • Veganism in America: the decoupling of animal rights and plant-based diets
  • Veganism in the Israeli Defense Force 
  • Veganism, animal rights and cultural heritage in France

• Is Veganism elitist? Is it only for the select few in the Western world that can afford it? 
• Veganism in the developing world
• The future of Veganism: What's next?
• A message to millennials from Nina

Links 

• Melanie Joy (2011) Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows: An Introduction to Carnism 
• Melanie Joy TEDx Talk: Beyond Carnism and Towards Rational Authentic Food Choices 
• Tristram Stuart (2008) The Bloodless Revolution: A History of Vegetarianism
• Gary Yourofsky (Vegan activist) - Official Youtube Channel 
• Pierre Bourdieu (1987) Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste
• Steinfeld, H., et al., (2006) Livestock's long shadow. Environmental Issues and Options, FAO, Rome.
• WHO (2015) Carcinogenicity of the consumption of red meat and processed meat, Q&A session

Nina's work

• On Nina's dissertation: see Veganism: An Elegant Solution to a Host of Global Problems? and her talk at the Global Food + 2017 conference
• Ivy League Vegan Conference website
• Tepperman & Gheihman (2013) Habits of Inequality 

Feeding future generations simply won't work without addressing the food we get from our oceans. Oceans serve as our main source of animal protein, with over 2.6 billion people depending on it every day.

How we'll be able to continue sourcing from our oceans however is the million-dollar question. Overfishing has plundered our oceans, pushing fish stocks and other marine life to the brink of collapse.

Seafood farming—also known as aquaculture— is one alternative. It's the fastest growing food production system in the world. Yet it continues to be shunned by some as part of the problem, not the solution.

In this episode, I talk with Mike Velings and Amy Novogratz about how sustainable, smart practices in aquaculture – adopted by local businesses around the world – provides the most promising solution to meeting the demands of a growing word population.

Mike and Amy are the Founder and Managing Partners of Aqua-spark, a global investment fund that supports sustainable aquaculture businesses around the world.

Links:

• Aqua-spark Website, Twitter, Facebook
• Mike Velings TED Talk: The case for fish farming
• Love the Wild fish company
• The Fish Site
• The World Fish Center
• Fishing for a Future

Have the crops of today bent us to their will? Is corn king? Does our agricultural system still make sense, and can it in its current form cater to the needs of future generations?

Are we smarter than a potato?

In this episode, we explore how certain crops such as wheat, rice, potato, maize (corn) and soy have come to dominate our landscapes, labour, economic policy and health. We look at the transition from a hunter gatherer lifestyle to an agricultural system 12,000 years ago and observe the fascinating co-evolution of plants and human beings.

Links:

• Lee & Devore (1966) Man the Hunter (birth of Original Affluent Society theory)
• Jared Diamond (1987) 'The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race' 
• Yuval Noah Harari (2014) 'Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind' 
• Michael Pollan 'When a crop becomes King 'New York Times 
• Masanobu Fukuoka (1975) – One Straw Revolution

A.k.a. Lab-grown meat or in vitro meat, there is a lot of hype surrounding cultured meat today. I talk with Erin Kim, Communications Director at New Harvest, about the future prospects of cultured meat.

New Harvest is a non-profit research institute in the United States that funds and conducts open, public, collaborative research in the field of cellular agriculture. They're all about reinventing the way we make animal products - without animals.

Erin started out at as a volunteer at New Harvest in 2014, whilst she was pursuing a law degree at the University of Alberta, specialising in environmental law.

In this episode, we discuss:

• The definitions and terminology of cultured meat and cellular agriculture
• The origins, milestones and long road ahead for cultured meat
• The benefits of cultured meat and it's amazing potential
• Managing expectations on cultured meat: The enormous media hype vs. the facts on the ground
• The problems of scaling, funding, and framing the debate around cultured meat
• What we can do to support the cultured meat movement

Links:

• New Harvest website
• New Harvest twitter
• Perfect Day: Animal-free dairy products
• Memphis Meats Cultured Meat business

Humans have been producing food using the same paradigm for 10,000 years. But the burden of a growing population and the impacts of an industrial approach to farming threaten the entire enterprise. The Land Institute is working on a solution.

In this episode, we talk with Fred Lutzi, President of The Land Institute, about their unique approach to transforming current destructive agricultural practices.

The Land Institute is a science-based research organization based in Kansas, US, that is developing perennial crops as an alternative to current unsustainable practices in agriculture. Instead of relying on and tweaking extractive industrial systems, the institute focuses on perennial grains grown using regenerative agricultural practices. "Agriculture must understand and mimic sustaining natural systems if we hope to feed a growing world population".

In the episode we discuss:

• What Fred thinks are the major problems of agriculture today
• What the Land Institute means by transforming agriculture by developing a 'Natural Systems Agriculture'
• What perennial crops are, what they promise, and how they differ from annual crops
• The Land Institute's Kernza® wheatgrass crop and the road to commercialization
• Why perennial crops are currently not the norm: what's holding us back?
• What Fred thinks we can all do as consumers to work towards a common goal
• A pilgrimage to the beer of the future: Long Root Ale – a Kernza®-based beer by Patagonia Provisions

Links

• The Land Institute website
• More about Perennial plants
• Great video about Long Root Ale - A Kernza®-based beer by Patagonia Provisions
• The Land Institute's global research partners

This week, I discuss my thoughts on tackling food waste together with Merit 360. Merit 360 is a year-long World merit program bringing 360 young individuals together to develop a set of action plans to help tackle the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

I share my views on SDG #12 : Responsible Consumption and Production. More specifically, how do we tackle crippling global food waste and food losses and how can we incentivise lasting sustainable consumption habits?

The episode also touches upon :

• The current famine crisis in East Africa affecting up to 20 million people

• My visit to Mozambique and the local solutions I found addressing local food problems

• My ideas of how we can move forward to address some of these issues

This episode is part of For Food's Sake's Learn By Doing project in which we practice what we preach in sustainability by taking action on concrete issues.

Links

Donate

• Red Cross East Africa crisis appeal

• World Vision East Africa appeal

• Support my Fundraising page for Merit 360

Aline Okello - mobile software supporting farmers to combat climate change

• The Guardian - 'App for all seasons could dampen effects of climate change in Mozambique'

On large-scale agricultural projects in Africa

• FoodTank 'What Value are value chains for Small-scale farmers in East Africa'?

Debating pros and cons of the Cerrado Savannah agricultural transformation in Brazil

• The Economist - 'The miracle of the Cerrado' boosting Brazil's agricultural economy
• WWF - How the Cerrado's unique biodiversity and vital ecosystem is threatened by Soybean production
• Scientific American - 'Hunger for Meat Plows up Brazil's Cerrado Plains'