Avrom Farm sits in the hills above Green Lake in central Wisconsin. With 5,000 chickens, 200 pigs and six acres of vegetables, it’s a minnow in an industry dominated by an increasingly small number of producers and processors. In March, a stay-at-home order hit the region. In just a week, the restaurants the farm sold to shut up shop, and local farmers’ markets closed. That might have been the end for Avrom. But then something interesting happened. Owner Hayden Holbert cleared space in a corner of his barn and created a tiny fulfillment center, the back-end operation for an online store and delivery service that he had quickly set up. Then he added products from nearby farms to the site.  Soon his digital business outgrew the barn and had to be moved into a newly constructed hoop house. In a few weeks, business online had pretty much compensated for the losses from restaurants and markets. Now Holbert is raising money to outfit an even larger space nearby, complete with a retail store, which will allow him to sell direct to local people year round. Stories such as Holbert’s have popped up repeatedly in the five months since the coronavirus pandemic forced the United States into varying degrees of lockdown. "There’s been a big uptick in demand — probably 3X," Joe Heitzeberg, CEO of Crowd Cow, which connects consumers with small producers, told me this week. The demand to buy direct from producers existed before COVID. Consumers like to connect directly with farmers and to feel more confident about what they’re buying. But a combination of broken supply chains, reluctance to visit supermarkets and more time spent cooking at home has accelerated this trend.   This won’t go away any time soon. It’s really entrenched. "The consumer during COVID has been willing to explore the fastest way to secure healthy, fresh food in their home," said Anne Greven, head of food and ag innovation at Rabobank, which highlighted the rise of farm-to-consumer channels in its latest trends report. "This won’t go away any time soon. It’s really entrenched." I get this. One of the delights of summer here in San Francisco is my local farmers market, where the peaches and plums and kale taste so much better than supermarket options, which often arrive via lengthy supply chains. It's also great to see new ways for farms to prosper. Yet I think that we should be careful not to assume that farm-to-consumer channels are clearly better than alternatives.  Price is one issue. A whole organic free range chicken on Crowd Cow costs $5 per pound; the equivalent non-organic product in Safeway goes for $1.49 per pound. Don’t get me wrong: I know there are multiple good reasons for this difference, including animal welfare standards. My point isn’t to question the value of organic methods. I’m raising the issue of price to note that low-income families can’t necessarily participate in this trend. It goes back to something I raised a few weeks back in the context of race: We all agree that we need a better food system, but we don’t always ask for whom it’s better. (To be fair to Heitzeberg, he was well aware of this issue and said he was working hard to reduce the price of everyday essentials. Crowd Cow prices for some products, such as ground beef, come closer to those at Whole Foods and other premium supermarkets.)  There’s a second question about sustainability. How do you know your local small-scale producer has a lower environmental impact than a distant mega-farm? As I noted last week, our intuitions about the industrialization of food aren’t necessarily correct. We need to consider the amount of land required for production, the methods used on the farms and the transport costs. It’s a complicated comparison to make, and we urgently need more data to guide us. The good news is that progress is being made on both fronts. On the equity side, the pandemic has promoted companies and nonprofits to partner on projects that provide farm produce directly to food-insecure communities. Several research groups are looking at scale and sustainability in food systems, including one major think tank, whose report I hope to write about soon. I’ll close with an intriguing aside about Hayden Holbert and Avrom Farm. I came across his story via Steward, an investment platform that lets regular people — not just well-heeled, accredited investors — put money into sustainable agriculture projects. This means that you and anyone else can help Holbert build out his new business, and earn a projected 6 to 8 percent return in the process. (You know the drill: Projections are not guarantees of future results.) More details at Steward. This article was adapted from the GreenBiz Food Weekly newsletter. Sign up here to receive your own free subscription. Let's block ads! (Why?)

One of the most significant projects in sustainable food in 2020 was unveiled last week. The news is important partly because of the company involved: CPG behemoth Unilever, which reaches 2.5 billion consumers every day through 400 brands, which range from Ben & Jerry’s to Hellmann’s and appear on shelves in 190 countries. The other reason is that the plan is genuinely ambitious. The company is committing to net-zero emissions from all products by 2039, spending $1 billion on climate and nature projects over 10 years, and planning on labeling each of its products with information about the carbon emitted in the product’s creation. This last point is particularly significant. Consumers, especially younger adults, consistently say that climate concerns influence their purchasing. Yet this influence is diluted because most people have little insight into the emissions linked to specific products. Clearly communicating emissions on every product could leverage those concerns in a scalable way, boosting sales of low-carbon products and punishing emissions-heavy options. So will Unilever’s labeling decision change the way people shop? We can’t say for sure, because most consumers have never seen a carbon label. But there’s evidence for optimism. Clearly communicating emissions on every product could leverage those concerns in a scalable way, boosting sales of low-carbon products and punishing emissions-heavy options. There’s data on the impact of other kinds of labels, for instance. Over the past five years, several countries, including Chile, Mexico and Israel, have attached health warnings to sodas and other sugary beverages. A meta-analysis of 23 studies of these initiatives, released last month, showed the labels work: Consumers who see them are less likely to purchase high-sugar drinks. When carbon labels have been deployed, usually in small experiments, they also seem to work. Researchers at Chalmers Technological University in Sweden, for example, looked at the impact of emissions information on meal choices at their institution’s cafeteria. Sales of high-carbon meat dishes fell by almost 5 percent — a modest drop, but significant for an initial experiment based on a simple intervention.  A final reason for optimism is that while Unilever is by far the biggest food company to roll out carbon labels, it is not alone. Oatly and Quorn recently announced plans to start displaying carbon footprint data on products. Twelve food and beverage brands also have earned the new Climate Neutral certification and began displaying the associated label. Put all that together, and it looks like Unilever’s move could trigger structural change. But before I get carried away, let’s look at two factors that could undermine its impact. First up is the label itself. In an email, Rebecca Marmot, Unilever’s CSO, told me that her company is focusing on collecting footprint data and will turn to the labels once that’s in place. How Unilever eventually communicates carbon levels will be critical. How big will the label be? Where will it appear? Will consumers be able to make sense of it? It won’t be an easy challenge. Space on food packaging is extremely tight, and consumers are already exposed to multiple labels relating to sustainability. (457, by one count). The second issue is cost. Of those 457 labels, organic is probably the most well known. Demand for organic food has shown double-digit growth in many recent years, yet it still accounts for around only 5 percent of U.S. food sales and less than 1 percent of planted acreage. Cost is critical here: Surveys show that organic food has a 7.5 percent premium, with some goods, including milk, eggs and bread, costing close to twice as much.  This is a reminder that for many consumers, cost trumps environmental concerns. In a way, though, that’s what makes the Unilever announcement so exciting. We’re talking here about the company behind Knorr, Lipton and Magnum. These are not niche brands targeted at affluent, sustainability-minded consumers willing to pay more. By introducing carbon labeling into everyday products found in the biggest chains and the smallest corner stores, Unilever is testing whether environmental concerns resonate with a much, much larger segment of consumers. This article was adapted from the GreenBiz Food Weekly newsletter. Sign up here to receive your own free subscription. Let's block ads! (Why?)

Parts of our food systems are so bewilderingly complex that attempts to answer even basic questions can result in hours of frustrated searching. If you can relate to this, I have some good news for you — not quite a fully-fledged solution, but certainly a step toward one.The genesis of this solution dates to around six years ago, when Lawrence Haddad, who leads the nonprofit Global Alliance on Improved Nutrition, was editing an article on nutrition. "The authors had so little data to go on they had to make crazy assumptions about food systems," he recalled when we spoke this week.  Haddad and his co-editor, Jessica Fanzo of Johns Hopkins University, set about assembling the people and funding needed to fix that. Earlier this month, they unveiled the Food Systems Dashboard. "It’s very much something we built in our garages in evenings and weekends,” Haddad said. "Much to our surprise, it has gathered momentum. We now see the potential is huge." The dashboard is a data smorgasbord that covers everything from food waste and greenhouse gas emissions to food security and agricultural productivity. In total, there are more than 170 indicators, culled from 35 sources and covering nearly every country. There are gaps in the coverage, which Haddad says the team is working to fix, but the dashboard looks likely to become a first point of call for questions about food systems.  It’s for governments and businesses — the people who make decisions about actions. Poking around it this week, for instance, I found it easy to check something I had been curious about: Are young people in the United States eating more vegetables? Sadly not. Consumption hasn’t changed much in a decade. Presumably, this is related to other data I came across in the dashboard: The quantity of vegetables available per person in the U.S. food supply has been trending slowly down over the past 20 years. Businesses also can benefit from exploratory analyses such as these, suggested Haddad. There’s data on food infrastructure, government regulations and the amount of money that families have available to spend on food, all factors that guide decisions about whether to move into an emerging market. "If this is only for researchers, we’ve failed," Haddad said. "It’s for governments and businesses — the people who make decisions about actions." To make the dashboard more useful, the team is working on adding subnational data for large countries and developing guides for specific types of users. The dashboard also likely will be used by the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization as part of its 2021 Food Systems Summit.  If your organization has thoughts on data you’d like to see added to the dashboard, Haddad and the dashboard team invite you to drop them a line via the site’s contact form. As always, I’d also love to hear your thoughts on this project and other issues you’d like to see covered in Food Weekly. You can reach me at [email protected]. This article was adapted from the GreenBiz Food Weekly newsletter. Sign up here to receive your own free subscription. Let's block ads! (Why?)

The team at GreenBiz started Food Weekly to track progress toward a better food system. But as protestors filled streets across America last week, I was reminded that a critical question about this effort often goes unasked: Better for whom?We have to ask this question because we can't assume that any progress we make will be inclusive. Systems can evolve and remain discriminatory. We’ve seen this happen in housing, education, criminal justice and so many other areas of our society where people of color are marginalized or punished. Food and farming are no different.  If this seems questionable, take a look at farm ownership. A century ago, there were a million black farmers in the United States. Now there are around 45,000. On average, they earn a fifth of white farmers. Reasons include predatory practices by developers and systematic discrimination by government loan officers. Communities of color also lose out at the other end of the food chain. In a disproportionate number of low-income black neighborhoods, redlining, segregation and weak zoning laws have led to the proliferation of junk food outlets and a lack of healthy alternatives. Food deserts — or "food swamps," which one researcher argues is a better term — are linked to obesity and other health problems.  These disparities are systematic and ingrained and very much with us today. They are one reason among many for the anger we are seeing right now. And history tells us that these forces, unless we actively resist them, will distort attempts to improve our food system. They will prevent "better" from meaning better for everyone. Yet advocates for sustainable food — and I’m including myself here — are often guilty of treating racism as an urgent problem that somehow isn’t our problem. It’s an issue across the sustainability profession, in fact. Climate journalist Emily Atkin even has a name for it: a "Climate Chad" is an environmentalist who says they "care about pervasive racial inequality and police brutality but don’t believe these issues are related to the climate fight." There’s no magic wand to be waved here. But there are many things that people in privileged positions can do. One that feels relevant to this newsletter is to insist that people of color are always present during critical discussions about the future of food. This has certainly not been the case in the past. With that in mind, rather than signing off with my usual list of essential reads, I’ll end with links to pieces about individuals and organizations combating racism and promoting diversity in food and agriculture. Each is an opportunity to participate in change. My request to you is to consider how you might involve some of these remarkable people and projects in your work.  John W. Boyd Jr. is a fourth-generation black farmer and the founder and president of the National Black Farmers Association. More in this Guardian feature. The Castanea Fellowship is a two-year program for diverse leaders working for a racially just food system. Meet the fellows for 2019 and 2020. The National Black Food and Justice Alliance organizes for black food and land by promoting black leadership and influence in food systems and land stewardship. New Orleans chef Tunde Wey uses food and dining to push people to confront issues of race. Learn more in this GQ profile. The Seeding Power Fellowship invests in leaders creating a more equitable food system in the New York area. Here are the 2019-2020 fellows. There’s a wealth of information on how to craft better strategies for food equity at the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future and the Healthy Food Access Portal. Want more? Civil Eats has a longer list. This article was adapted from the GreenBiz Food Weekly newsletter. Sign up here to receive your own free subscription. Let's block ads! (Why?)

Today I bring you exclusive data from the cutting edge of food science.Let me begin by managing expectations. This experiment is so grievously flawed that, to paraphrase Groucho Marx, I would not submit it to any journal likely to accept it. The experiment in question is a taste test of a new product from Berkeley-based startup Prime Roots. Its flaws begin with the sample size, which is n=1. Our sole tester is Jay Giles, aged 6. Here he is, pre-test: Jay is nonetheless an interesting subject, because he frequently exhibits high levels of hostility toward novel foodstuffs. Requests that he eat something not on his (extremely short) list of pre-approved foods are typically met with claims that "today is the worst day ever," followed by various acts of low-level vandalism. Jay’s list of pre-approved foods includes bacon. It does not include fake bacon made from fungi grown in a vat, the subject of our test. Because I value my sanity and the structural integrity of my home, I have told him that it is real bacon. Which brings us to the question I set out to answer: Will he notice the difference? I had no good explanation for why his breakfast was sitting in a pool of yellow froth, so I opted for misdirection and reminded him that he was getting a side of toast. My experiment may be ridiculous, but this question isn’t. Most experts say that reducing meat consumption is an essential part of cutting greenhouse gas emissions from food systems, which contribute a quarter of the global total. It’s also one of the easier ways that individuals can make a difference. Shifting to a vegetarian meal just one day a week, for instance, saves the equivalent of driving more than 1,000 miles over the course of a year. A lot more meat-eaters will make that change if they can switch to a convincing substitute. Prior to my experiment, my wife offered to wager me any sum of money that our tester would not eat the bacon. I opened the packet and was glad I declined. The new bacon looks, at best, bacon-ish: Then I sniffed: Hint of dank. I was reminded of a musty basement from a childhood home. It wasn’t an altogether unpleasant smell, but it didn’t exactly shout "breakfast" at me.  Luckily our tester was too busy playing with Lego to notice, so I hastily began frying. Matters improved. The bacon-not-bacon sizzled, the dank odor lessened and I got wafts of real bacon. Our tester wandered over. He looked hesitant. "What are those bubbles?" he asked. I had no good explanation for why his breakfast was sitting in a pool of yellow froth, so I opted for misdirection and reminded him that he was getting a side of toast. Calamity averted, he sat down. I served Jay with a plate of fungi masquerading as bacon. "What’s this?" he said, looking skeptical as he tentatively chewed the edge of one slice. "Bacon," I lied. He frowned. Sensing disaster, I abandoned methodological integrity and offered him tomato ketchup. Too late. Jay piled up the neatly sliced pieces of bacon and deposited them on my place. To my relief, he then turned his attention not to retribution but to his buttered toast. Was that it for this great emissions-reducing superfood? It seemed so... but wait! What’s this? A second tester! Eight-year-old Sam Giles was excluded from our experimental protocol because he does not like bacon. Until this morning, that is. Now he’s munching away, renewing my hope in humanity’s ability to save itself from climate catastrophe through low-carbon eating. "I don’t like the normal kind but I do like this one," said Sam. "You’re the only one," replied Jay. "It tastes like tree trunks." I’m tempted to speculate on what this means for the future of alternative proteins, but I suspect the answer is not very much. So I’ll just say that I joined Sam and enjoyed my breakfast. Prime Roots bacon doesn’t taste much like bacon, but it’s salty and crispy and generally pretty good. I’ll eat it again. Let's block ads! (Why?)

This article was adapted from the GreenBiz Food Weekly newsletter. Sign up here to receive your own free subscription."It feels like we’re peeling an onion." That’s what sustainability veteran Dave Stangis said when I asked him about the long-term changes being wrought by coronavirus. We peel back a layer to reveal one impact, only to realize there’s another beneath. "Some we may not know for months," he added. This is the third and final part of our onion-peeling exercise. We’ve already seen how the pandemic may decentralize the food system and increase emissions from last-mile deliveries. This week, we’ll look at some potentially good news from the intersection of online delivery and food waste. Any good news on waste is welcome, because the situation is insane. Wasted food is responsible for 6 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions — that’s three times the contribution of aviation and more than any country except China and the United States. Around a third of that waste comes at home, which is a head-scratcher. Why are people paying for something, only to throw so much of it away? There are a host of reasons: We buy too much, forget stuff at the back of the fridge or trash perfectly edible food because it looks less than perfect. A lot of it comes down to bad habits, which is where the pandemic comes in. Until now, food shopping seemed immune to the rise of online retail. Now Instacart is in the process of hiring more than half a million additional shoppers and a third of all consumers say they are using online grocery delivery more often. We tend to make smaller but more frequent orders when buying online. This bumps up emissions from delivery but the total emissions associated with food consumed at home can fall by as much as 41 percent. This shift is a major opportunity, because ordering online can lead to big reductions in wasted food. One reason is that we tend to make smaller but more frequent orders when buying online. This bumps up emissions from delivery but cuts waste to such an extent that total emissions associated with food consumed at home can fall by as much as 41 percent. Ordering pre-prepared meal kits also leads to less waste. This can seem counterintuitive, as meal kits are often criticized for excessive packaging. (Do the parmesan shavings really need their own plastic container?) The packaging is indeed an issue, but meal kits lead to less waste and this more than cancels out the greenhouse gases associated with the extra plastic. A new analysis of kits from one brand — HelloFresh — showed emission savings of 21 percent. One earlier study put the figure at 33 percent. We might save even more if we’re prepared to wait a few days. Last week, we looked at how advanced ordering allows delivery companies to group deliveries and reduce transport emissions. It also cuts waste at the store. Ordering ahead "helps retailers forecast the product they’ll need, leading to reduced excess and wasted food at retail," Jackie Suggitt of ReFED, a food waste non-profit, told me. "Day-of online ordering, on the other hand, may lead to more waste at retail." The potential here is significant. What I’d love to see next is the delivery companies get involved in the debate. They have some data we need to check whether these savings are being made. They also can help consumers do a better job of planning meals, which is a critical waste-reduction strategy. (I reached out to the companies for comment: Walmart said, not unreasonably, that their e-commerce team was too busy to respond; Instacart and Amazon did not reply.) Let's block ads! (Why?)