Eat This Newsletter 193: Disconnected
Hello
Taken individually so many things we read about the food system make no sense whatsoever. Perhaps Corinna Hawkes is right, and it really needs to see a doctor.
The Great Disconnect
Quite a few stories over the past couple of weeks have left me scratching my head and feeling that I don’t understand anything about food or farming. Let me just summarise a few.
Avian ‘flu is hitting food producers everywhere. In the UK, supermarkets have few eggs and no free range eggs. But in the US, chicken prices are starting to fall. That is down, in part, to a bad choice in male birds a year ago. Back in the UK, small-scale turkey farmers are urging panicky shoppers to ignore warnings of an impending turkey shortage. I wonder, though. Are the people who are prepared to pay over the odds for a free-range turkey really going to buy a commodity frozen bird just in case?
In the UK, an unseasonably warm autumn, which may be a new normal, has left vegetable growers looking at mountains of surplus that nobody wants, at least not now. Food charities are taking what they can, but come January and February, when those crops were supposed to mature, there’ll be a shortage and prices will rocket. One extra-large savoy cabbage could easily become sauerkraut at a household level; 13,000 extra-large savoy cabbages, perhaps not so much. It’s the old story; what the farmer really wants is to do well while others are not. Gluts help nobody, except, perhaps, suppliers that don’t lower their prices even when their costs have plunged.
Sticking with what farmers receive, the USDA’s latest report on how the average food dollar gets divided up shows farmers receiving 14.5 cents in 2021, an historic low. The rest “goes to food supply chain establishments for post-farm activities that transform raw food into finished food products”. And yet, US farm profits are forecast to beat record highs in 2022. Marion Nestle points out that FAO has been collecting similar data for other countries, and saves me having to complain that the site “is not particularly intuitive to use; it will take some fiddling to make it work”.
In the UK, the campaign group Sustain compared farm profits with record supermarket profits on a range of everyday items. On the wheat that goes into a loaf of sliced bread, the farmer’s profit is 0.09 pence, less than 0.1%. (Sustain cannot say what the supermarket’s profit is on a loaf that costs £1.14.) On a loaf bought from an independent bakery, the farmer’s profit is five times greater. A pity Sustain didn’t look at turkeys, but I understand why.
If there is a conclusion, for me it is that if you can, buying ingredients via a short chain and cooking your food is the thing to do.
When You’re a Shark …
Nobody looks out for you, and the result is that you may well be headed for (commercial) extinction. A recent research paper in Science (behind a paywall) examined historical data for large, predatory fish, all of which were declining rapidly before about 2008. That’s when global regulation gave some species — tuna, swordfish and marlin — a lot more protection while sharks were more or less ignored. Today, populations of big sharks continue to spiral down, while the protected species are doing much better.
A report in Anthropocene magazine gives more detail. Changes in fisheries management, it points out, “can directly—and relatively quickly—influence the overall health of large predatory fish species”. That’s good news for tuna etc, but not much help, yet, for sharks, which need global regulators to show them a lot more love.
Challenging but Normal
Surveillance capitalism may know your child is pregnant before you do. It is now enabling makers of baby milk formula to evade a UK ban on advertising direct to parents of babies under six months old.
Online searches for folic acid supplements allow formula manufacturers to target a woman who is trying to get pregnant. A woman looking for advice on breastfeeding is another easy mark, as is a parent frazzled by their crying baby. A WHO report earlier this year “suggested companies were deliberately targeting pregnant women and new mothers in their ‘most vulnerable moments’.”
“Content that appears to offer information personally tailored to meet mothers’ concerns can be delivered at the very moment a woman seeks information on infant feeding,” it added.
“The content of these promotions typically presents a [breastmilk substitute] as the solution for challenging but normal infant behaviours like hunger, crying or digestive discomfort.”
Good luck regulating that industry.
Pig Madness
A couple of years ago, I linked to what was, at the time, the world’s largest pig-raising property; in China, of course. Muyuan Foods aimed “to produce around 2.1 million pigs a year”. I’ve no idea how that is going — these things are hard for a non-expert to keep track of — but there may be a new top pig. A recent article in The Guardian says that “by far the biggest single-building pig farm in the world” has opened at Ezhou in Hubei province. But it also says that the property has “a capacity to slaughter 1.2 million pigs a year”.
I’ll let Zhongxin Kaiwei Modern Farming battle it out with Muyuan Foods as to who is top; for all I know, they could be part of the same company. I will acknowledge that at least Zhongxin Kaiwei has plans for its pigs’ poop.
The company says waste from the pigs will be treated and used to generate biogas, which can be used for power generation and heating water inside the farm.
So, that’s alright then.
The Food System is Under the Weather
Are you sitting comfortably? Then Corinna Hawkes will begin.
”One day, the food system went to the doctor.”
You can read the rest of her story, a couple of thousand words about that diagram, or listen (and watch) as she tells it to the Uppsala Health Summit.
Furthermore …
Here are some extra things that, to be honest, I have not yet been able to digest.
Chloe Sorvino, a reporter at Forbes has a new book coming out on the US meat industry, which I hope to read and talk to her about. In the meantime, here are two recent articles by her.
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Universal food access ought to be a human right in this age of abundance.
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Industrialized meat has devastating impacts. Can ’good meat’ exist?
I do not have a slow cooker. I have read Life in the Slow Lane, a long read. I am no nearer getting a slow cooker, but I have been informed and entertained.
Take care.
