From mere idea to more likely reality: a huge solar power project in North Africa, funded by European investors, to provide electricity to much of Europe and perhaps to much of North Africa as well. The many billion dollar initiative could, its backers suggest, provide up to 15% of the European Union’s power in a light shade of green. Of course, Europe has sun, too, although not in the abundant, and consistent, quantities North Africa does. While the project might indicate that solar power has “arrived” and the industry could attract significant investment and policy and public support. Some question the efficiency of transporting power over a sea, when it also could be harvested from Europe’s roofs, backyards or fallow or neglected land (rural or urban).

But the project, as planned, also seems to repeat a pattern that’s been set for centuries: move resources from the south to the north. Sub-Saharan Africa is bedeviled by massive energy poverty. It stymies industries large and small and hampers provision of health care, schooling (if kids don’t have access to at least some power, how well can they study at night?), even the production of solar panels or wind turbines. The entrepreneurs behind “Desertec,” as the North African solar initiative is known, are mostly looking north. Green power for the rest of Africa is, at a large-scale, still on the drawing boards. How illuminating is that?

So, what’s a foodprint? And what’s its significance today? New York City foodprint resolution introduced today, June 30th. See news item for details on Wednesday, July 1st press conference at New York City Hall. Foodprint (n): our food system’s contribution to greenhouse gas emissions and global climate change. Why a foodprint resolution? And why in New York City? New York City has approved a number of directives to reduce global warming and encourage environmental awareness. But none addresses the enormous role food and agriculture has in accelerating or mitigating climate change. Globally, some 30% of GHG emissions come from the fossil fuel-based agricultural system ‘from pesticides and fertilizer production to how food is produced, processed, packaged, transported, stored and disposed.
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While the local food movement is growing in the U.S., Europe and even Japan (where Community Supported Agriculture – CSA – was invented), we don’t hear much about similar movements in southern regions of the world. Sometimes it seems like there’s a feeling that people in poor countries, and poor people especially, don’t have the time or the money to care about where their food comes from. Of course, this “sense” has led to the global reach of mass-produced, processed foods. But there are pockets of resistance, and also resurgence, of local food cultures. In fact, plenty. One that I heard about recently on the BBC was intriguing: fresh, organic vegetables being grown and marketed in Kenya’s, and perhaps Africa’s, largest slum: Kibera in Nairobi. And Kibera’s residents are willing to pay quite a lot of their small daily income for pesticide-free, fresh produce.

A key item of the harvest is kale, which 95% of Kenyans eat, says one of the urban farmers. An interesting aspect of the story was this. The BBC reporter told a woman buying her “Kibera kale” and other vegetables that most people in the West think she and people like her wouldn’t care about organic food — and that they’d lack the money to pay for it. In a genial tone, the woman repeated the statement back to the reporter as a question, and answered. “But we do,” she said, and went on to describe how she manages her household budget to make her purchases possible.

This struck me, even as I digested (sic) the news that mega fast food chain Burger King has a new set of commercials in which it takes its burgers to far corners of the world and records the reaction of people there who eat them. The campaign has, rightly, been criticized as an attempt at food hegemony, served up with a mocking tone: can you believe they haven’t tasted a burger? And can you imagine what it would be like to live all the way out here?! A good critique of Burger King’s venture by Derrick Z. Jackson ran recently on Common Dreams. I excerpt a few of its most trenchant paragraphs here:

In a bizarre parody of an actual documentary, Burger King sent a crew out to remote Hmong parts of Thailand, Inuit parts of Greenland, and a village in Romania where people have both never seen a hamburger nor ever heard of one through advertising. The narration starts, “The hamburger is a culinary culture and it’s actually an American phenomenon [as if we didn’t know this].”

The first part of the video involved plucking some villagers to come to a modern office in local and native dress to compare Burger King’s signature burger with a McDonald’s Big Mac. Read More

Some good news from the global climate talks in Poznan, Poland that, like many UN meetings, didn’t wrap up until the wee hours of the morning last Saturday. Groundwork was laid for a new, post-Kyoto climate agreement to be agreed this time next year in Copenhagen. And forests did make it more fully onto the climate agenda–that is, protecting standing forests and restoring those that have been lost. County delegations also agreed on the importance of supporting REDD initiatives for slowing global warming, that is reducing emissions from forest destruction and degradation. In fact, a new web portal has been set up by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to share information on REDD initiatives. However, there are some significant, shortcomings in the forest deal: language on the rights of indigenous peoples was struck, at the request of several industrialized nations, including the U.S. and New Zealand. And the forest agreement, bizarrely, doesn’t mention biodiversity protection, which could, some observers argue, allow countries to clear forests for agricultural commodities like palm oil and soy.

Nobel laureate Al Gore was in Poznan and he was impassioned. His speech drew a standing ovation. Basically, he told the delegates, the world needs to get real and loud. “I call on the people of the world to speak up more forcefully,” he said. Read More

It’s World Food Day and the focus this year is on food security within the context of soaring world food prices. To mark the occasion, here’s a short report on a food and community conference I attended recently. Good, healthy food. Local food. Organics. Food security. Food and climate change. Urban agriculture. Food from farms to cafeterias. All of these topics, and more, were on the menu at the Community Food Security Coalition’s annual conference held in early October in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. Food’what, how and who we eat and from where’is fast making its way up the list of priorities for groups and individuals working on global warming, land and water pollution, biodiversity protection, improved public health, and issues of equity and social justice. Seven hundred people traveled from around the U.S. and a few from overseas to Cherry Hill, about a half an hour outside of Philadelphia, to further the discussion.

“Grow food everywhere,” was one of the recommendations offered by Deb Habib, director of a Massachusetts family farm and non-profit called Seeds of Solidarity, as a direct way of limiting “food miles.” That’s the distance food travels from farm or production center to plate, consuming fossil fuels all the way. “Where,” she asked, “are available open spaces?” such as lots, community spaces, school yards, house of worship grounds, interstitial areas where vegetables or fruit can be grown.

Maria Jose Bezerra from the Landless Workers’ Movement/Via Campesina, in Brazil described her group’s efforts to resettle poor Brazilians on abandoned or unused land. Read More