Yale Food Systems Symposium

From the Projects to the Pasture: Food Justice on a Farm
Bobby Smith II, Cornell University 

Most studies of food justice examine how the movement is realized in places that lack access to local, healthy, or organic foods, constraining our understanding of the movement to food deserts in urban or rural spaces like Detroit, Michigan or Grafton County, New Hampshire. These studies capture the stories of farmers of color, low-income communities, and communities of color responding to issues of race, class, and food (economic and geographic) access. However, little is known about how the movement is realized in local food spaces dominated by the local food movement like Ithaca, New York. In Ithaca, local, healthy, and organically grown foods are a way of life and offered through a number of outlets such as farmers markets, community supported agriculture, grocery stores, and restaurants, but low-income people and people of color still struggle to access it. For this reason, this research attempts to expand our understanding of the food justice movement by examining it in local food spaces, dominated by the local food movement. Using food justice as lens, I interpret the story of the Rocky Acres Community Farm in Tompkins County, NY, to explore how a farm uses food justice as a way to counter issues of race, class, and food in Ithaca. This brief exploratory exercise provides a glimpse at how the food justice movement rises as a counter to the local food movement, exploiting tensions around race, class, and food that go beyond just issues of food access.

 

Puerto Rico-An Island Innovating to Link Health, Nutrition and Agriculture
Gus Schumacher, Wholesome Wave

Puerto Rico’s Agriculture Secretary has developed a unique innovation, linking her farmers, EBT consumers and farmers markets. Her El Mercado Familiar program is a collaboration between Puerto Rico’s Agriculture and Family Departments and is designed to meet the dual goals of stimulating island food production while increasing low-income families’ consumption of healthy fruits and vegetables.

The program began in August 2013 and since then more than $40 million from fruit and vegetable purchases by low-income shoppers has flowed into Puerto Rican farmers’ bank accounts, $18 million in FY 2015 alone. More than 500 farmers benefit from the El Mercado Familiar program and they have created 540 new jobs, both on-farm and selling in the markets. Last year these Puerto Rican farmers markets accepted the same amount in SNAP purchases as authorized markets and farmers in the 50 states combined.

Secretary Myrna Comas Pagan anticipates that Puerto Rican produce farmers will be earning more than $60 million per year just in sales to low-income shoppers using the Tarjeta de la Familia when the program operates island wide by 2020.

Here’s how it works. The Puerto Rican Departments of Agriculture (PRDOA) and family development (ADSEF) received approval from USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) mid-Atlantic office in New Jersey to add four percent to the monthly benefits for NAP program participants to be used only at authorized El Mercado Familiar, or farmers’ markets. These new benefits are added along with the monthly food and cash benefits and are embedded in the EBT card in a category, or “pocket”, of their own. Currently, more than 78 percent of NAP participants redeem the benefit that is exclusively for El Mercado Familiar.

When a participating shopper arrives at El Mercado Familiar her first stop is an information tent where an ADSEF staffer swipes the participant’s NAP card (Tarjeta) and provides a receipt showing the balance in the three categories on the card – food benefit, cash benefit, and farmers market benefit.

Shoppers can use their food and cash benefits for any NAP eligible food at FNS authorized supermarkets and retail food stores, but they can only use the farmers market benefit at one of the 52 participating farmers’ markets in the 44 participating municipalities organized, promoted and managed by the Agriculture Department, or PRDOA. Shoppers may also choose to use their food and cash benefits at the markets and many do. The markets also accept WIC and Senior Farmers Market Nutrition Program coupons, adding another $5 million to farmers’ sales.

Each farmer has a point of sale (POS) EBT device to accept NAP cards at these markets. Transactions are smooth, quick and efficient, rarely taking more than 30 seconds as customers swipe their NAP cards on farmers’ hand-held EBT machines, punch in their PIN and take their receipt. The funds are transferred electronically into the farmers’ local bank account. There is no need for burdensome token systems at these Puerto Rican markets, with farmers waiting for a week or more for payment.

Nutritional Gaps in the Global Food System
Stephen Wood, Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies

Humans require an adequate supply of 51 key nutrients to maintain a healthy diet. Though total global food production has expanded dramatically over the last 50 years, the production of nutrients required for healthy human diets has remained static or declined. The number of people whose nutrient requirements are met per hectare has emerged as an alternative sustainable agriculture metric. Considering the amount of people fed well per hectare provides a more realistic estimate of the amount of land needed across the globe to meet a growing human population. Most existing work that integrates nutrition into agriculture measures static patterns in food production and availability. Yet food commodities are exchanged in the global economy, making food availability a highly dynamic process. This dynamic process is key to understanding agricultural sustainability—and the amount of land required for agriculture—because food items can be exchanged in a way that increases access to some and decreases access for others. Thus, although overall production may be sufficient to meet human needs, inefficient distribution may make access insufficient. In this manuscript we for the first time quantify the equity of distribution in nutritional resources across the globe. We do this by merging data on crop nutritional content with pairwise trade exchanges for every crop among every country in the world. This unique data set allows us to investigate the impact of crop trade on access to nutrition in different parts of the world.

Directed by Andreas Hernandez

This film examines a cooperative of the Brazilian Landless Movement (MST) in the South of Brazil, which struggled for access to land and then transitioned to ecological agriculture, or agroecology. This MST cooperative is demonstrating the possibility of an alternative model of flourishing rural life, which provides thriving livelihoods for farmers, produces high quality and low cost food for the region, and rehabilitates the earth. 

Defining Food Waste – The Sustainability of Animal Products: Opposing Points of View 
Mychal-Ann Hayhoe, University of Guelph

The existing definitions of food waste are reviewed and a new definition of waste is purposed suggesting that most foods produced by animals, due to the inherent inefficiencies associated with feeding animals for human consumption versus plant products being directly consumed by humans, is a form of waste. This definition is outlined in the context of increased awareness of world population growth and food insecurity. The literature describing definitions of food waste is diverse and a comprehensive definition is needed to unify the discussion. This paper presents the new definition and follows with two discussions, each facilitated by one author, that argue for or against the new definition. The inherent complexity of this issue requires the authors to draw from literature in many disciplines. This multidisciplinary paper includes a discussion of literature that describes the nutritional requirements of humans and their ability to survive and thrive with or without animal products, the food supply chain and life cycle analysis (LCA) literature, the literature that examines the social implications of certain elements of food waste definitions, a discussion of vegetarian and vegan diets and the economic and environmental impacts of making changes to our food systems. Finally, this paper attempts to situate the discussion of food waste within the conversation around a more comprehensive idea of sustainable agriculture and presents a call for more engaged scholarship, as described by Van de Ven in 2007, that brings together scholars and industry participants from all areas in order to develop a more universal approach to dealing with the issue of food waste.

 

Addressing Food Wastage in the Farming Community: Perceptions of and Motivations for Crop Donation
Leah Seifu, Johns Hopkins University

Background: According to recent national estimates, 40% of food in the United States goes to waste, resulting in significant financial, environmental and social costs and missed opportunities. One place where food is often wasted is the farm level. An approach to reduce waste at the farm level is to encourage farmers to donate otherwise wasted food by providing tax-incentives for crop donation.

Purpose: The specific aims of this study are to investigate current motivations for farmers to donate crops, further incentives for farmers to donate crops (including but not limited to tax incentives), and farmers’ perceived barriers to crop donation.

Results: Our analysis demonstrated three primary categories of discussion with the informants: motivations for, barriers to, and facilitators of crop donation. Primary motivations for crop donation included community, desire not to waste food, personal gratification, values, and business. Five identified barriers to crop donation were lack of convenience, logistics, misconceptions, lack of knowledge, and financial cost. Farmers suggested a number of facilitators that either worked to draw upon motivations or reduce barriers to crop donation.

Conclusions: Policies meant to increase crop donation from farms should look to the diverse motivations for and barriers of the process of crop donation, as identified by farmers.

 

Center for EcoTechnology Approach to Reducing Wasted Food
Lorenzo Macaluso, Center for EcoTechnology

The Center for EcoTechnology (CET) proposes to present on approaches and success stories gained from our 20+ years of experience implementing effective food waste reduction and recycling programs in the region. Recently, CET was honored for being a pioneer in food diversion with the US EPA’s Environmental Merit Award and the Environmental Business Council of New England’s Environmental-Energy Merit Award for Leadership.

As northeast states adopt or consider food waste bans, CET understands the strategies and factors important for market transformation around wasted food addressed by these policies. CET sees four main factors to spur market development including policy enactment, infrastructure development, education and technical assistance services, and active enforcement of disposal bans. We support this successful combination by providing education and technical assistance to encourage a marketplace that can meet the USDA and EPA goal of 50% reduction in food waste by 2030.

CET acts as a catalyst in Massachusetts and Connecticut to spur the development of the marketplace to divert wasted food at all levels of EPA Food Waste hierarchy. We have encouraged partnerships, shared information, and conducted technical assistance, while working with state governments, the US EPA, and the Fink Family Foundation. CET provided input for ReFED’s “Roadmap to Reduce U.S. Food Waste by 20 Percent.”

CET administers RecyclingWorks, a program designed with MassDEP, to help Massachusetts-based businesses and institutions maximize waste diversion opportunities. Through this program we have produced Best Management Practices and case studies, and held workshops and conferences to spur stakeholder engagement and additional activity. RecyclingWorks received a 2015 National Food Recovery Challenge Endorser Award for leading food recovery outreach and technical assistance in Massachusetts.

CET will highlight how this approach provides advice to consumers, businesses, and policymakers for a successful wasted food diversion market that will support wasted food reduction goals.

 

Changing Laws or Changing Hearts: How the Food Waste Movement Does Both
Sarah Morath, University of Houston Law Center

Change comes precisely when you do change hearts — and once that change has come, then the laws and the “allocation of resources,” and the “way systems operate” follow pretty easily.

Changing laws or changing hearts. What is the best way to solve environmental issues today? Most attorneys, legislatures, government officials, advocates, and everyday citizens would say changing laws. Laws, after all, have been the primary method for achieving environmental protection of air, water, and land in United States since the 1970s, and the enactment of NEPA, CWA, CAA, and ESA, comprise what many scholars call the first generation of environment law.

Today, laws that forbid a certain behaviors continue to be a popular means to an environmental end. Take plastic bags, for example. Plastic bags are disposed in landfills where they will take hundreds of years to photodegrade and overtime will release toxic chemicals into groundwater. Plastic bags also end up in the ocean and air, posing a threat to wildlife and marine life. In addition, manufacturing plastic bags uses resources like water and energy. In an effort to address the harms associated with plastic bags, many countries and cities have banned their use. Another approach has been to charge or tax individuals for using plastic bags. But many studies have shown the legislation and taxation are not always the best mechanism for modifying individual behavior, especially when it comes to behavior that harms the environment.

That is why the ability to change hearts is essential to solving environmental problems. Like laws and market mechanisms, changing hearts seeks to modify individual behavior, but in an indirect way by providing information, involving stakeholders, and designing for choice—essentially modifying social norms. This article evaluates changing laws and changing hearts in the context of the food waste movement. Like the approach taken with plastic bags, efforts to combat food waste are multimodal and involve more than simply enacting legislation or formal regulatory approaches like food-waste bans or composting laws. The food waste movement includes comprehensive education campaigns with the USDA and EPA, educational institutions, and business working to provide information to individuals on this issue. Furthermore, the food waste movement has an active private governance component, with retail and restaurants making efforts to combat food waste by selling misshapen fruit and vegetables or donating food.

An analysis of the food waste movement as an analysis of modern environmental law, specifically its use of and reliance on informal regulation tools and private governance—its multimodal nature. A multimodal approach can help address the concern that laws often have their limits and allows for greater collaboration between the public and private spheres, all of which is occurring in the food waste movement. The lesson learned from the food waste movement is that changing laws and changing hearts are essential to solving environmental problems today. 

Connecting the dots between livestock, their environmental burdens, dietary preference and food security in the USA
Alon Shepon, The Weizmann Institute of Science

Feeding a growing population while minimizing environmental degradation is a global challenge. It is now clear that because of the enormous regional to global impacts of livestock on air and water quality, ocean health, land use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, adequately feeding 9 plus billion humans will require thoroughly rethinking food production and consumption. Because they strongly impact food consumption, dietary preference play a major role in food systems with major impacts on the environment and public health. Recent analyses link environment, economy and health through the diet nexus, highlighting the huge environmental mitigation potential of changing diets (especially reduction in beef consumption) comparable to changes in agriculture productivity.

We quantify land, irrigation water, GHGs and reactive nitrogen (Nr) costs due to feed consumption by major animal-based categories (beef, poultry, dairy, eggs and pork), and compare them to costs of plant-based alternatives. Our results for the U.S reveal resource demands per consumed kcal of eggs, poultry, dairy and pork are mutually comparable but at least an order of magnitude lower than beef’s. We repeat our calculations also in terms of edible protein mass, revealing qualitatively similar disparities. Averaged over all categories, energy and protein efficiencies (edible output:feed input) of the five livestock categories are 7-8%. At 3% in both metrics, beef is by far the least efficient.

Next, we estimated expected savings of potential dietary shifts, considering the expected resource savings under fixed food availability or the added food that can be grown on the spared land. We examine the changes in land resource usage as a result of substituting poultry for beef, two nutritionally similar but environmentally dissimilar food items. Reallocating high-quality agricultural land used for beef feed to poultry feed production can meet the caloric and protein demands of ≈120 and ≈140 million additional Americans, respectively, roughly 40% of the current population. In addition, we construct randomized plant based diets from plants consumed in the Mean American Diet (MAD) that nutritionally replace beef while minimizing environmental resource usage and emissions. The macronutrient equivalent plant based alternatives to the ≈190 kcal beef person-1 d-1 in the MAD are mostly better nutritionally considering the key vitamins, minerals, and micronutrients while requiring on average only 10%, 4% and 6% of the land, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and reactive nitrogen (Nr) the replaced beef diet does. Applied to entire US, the beef-to-plant shift can save 770 million rangeland acres, 91 million cropland acres, 278 million metric ton CO2e, and 3.7 million metric ton Nr annually. These nationwide savings are 99%, 27%, 4% and 32% of the respective national totals of the above environmental burdens. Put differently, replacing beef with a plant based diet that minimizes land demands and reallocating the spared land to producing extra food can feed ≈170 million additional Americans.

 

What are Sustainable Diets?
Hugh Joseph, Friedman School of Nutrition, Tufts University

“Sustainable diets” – a term first coined in 1986 - is characterized by this widely cited FAO definition as “those diets with low environmental impacts which contribute to food and nutrition security and to healthy life for present and future generations. Sustainable diets are protective and respectful of biodiversity and ecosystems, culturally appropriate, accessible, economically fair and affordable; nutritionally adequate, safe and healthy; while optimizing natural and human resources” (FAO, Sustainable Diets and Biodiversity, 2010).

While this specifies connections to broadly-characterized sustainability priorities, the meaning of ‘diets’ is not addressed, and a singular common understanding should not be assumed. This paper reviews multiple representations of ‘diets’ as constructs, spanning individual through population approaches. A model is proposed that incorporates foods consumed within the contexts of behaviors or ‘food practice’ (an emerging term) and food environments. In combination, this is more representative of the ‘food consumption’ component typically included in food supply chains. It is much broader than the food-centric meaning embedded in guidance such as Dietary Guidelines for Americans.

However, a food-only approach treats sustainability as a set of independent variables to which food choices are connected. Here, diet itself cannot really be ‘sustainable’ (nor ‘healthy’); rather, there is potentially to promote sustainable (and healthy) outcomes. A more comprehensive ‘food consumption’ approach better integrates the two elements and makes it much more plausible to consider ways for diets to address food systems-based and broader sustainability concerns (e.g., biodiversity, climate change, food security).

 

Impact on Climate, Freshwater, and Land-Use Footprints from Adopting Plant-Centric Diets in Selected Countries
Brent Kim, Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future

If global trends in meat and dairy intake continue as projected, the likelihood of meeting climate change mitigation targets will be slim to none. Livestock’s outsized contributions to land and freshwater use present similarly urgent challenges. This presentation will summarize recent evidence on diet-climate connections and provide preliminary results from an assessment of greenhouse gas emissions, land use, and freshwater footprints associated with various diets in country-specific contexts.

While most prior research of this nature is either global in scope or specific to a single country, we developed a model that estimates the ecological burdens of diets for any country, on the rationale that policy and behavioral interventions can benefit from information specific to the settings in which they are implemented. The model draws upon data from over 300 life cycle assessment studies, the GLEAM climate model, the Water Footprint Network, the UN FAO, and other sources to characterize country-specific environmental impacts for the cradle-to-gate production of specific food items, including seafood, which is often excluded from similar studies. The model also accounts for differences in environmental impacts across domestic and imported products based on the conditions and practices under which they are produced.

Because “what is not measured is not managed,” quantifying the ecological outcomes of reducing animal product intake is critical to aligning dietary patterns with sustainability goals. This research will strengthen the evidence base for mitigating agriculture’s contributions to climate change and resource depletion; inform policy and behavioral interventions; and help to identify where, on an international scale, animal-product reduction efforts can have the greatest benefit.