On World Environment Day, New Book Points to Food and Farming as Key to Protecting the Environment

We've been watching their work for awhile, and we love their focus on food and food production as key to the world environment, health and economy.

Here's a great piece they published on May 31.  It's long--we will run it over two days.  When you can, go to their site to learn more about their work.

"New book illustrates how food insecurity, malnutrition, obesity, and cultural disconnection plague the global agricultural system and demand solutions from around the world.

Washington, D.C.—Worldwide, 30 percent of food is wasted, 1 billion people go to bed hungry each night while another 1 billion suffer from health problems related to obesity, and agriculture contributes to one-third global greenhouse gas emissions. Meanwhile, young people are increasingly disconnected from how their food is grown, making solutions to the global agricultural system seem even further out of reach.In response to these problems, the Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition (BCFN) is releasing a report, Eating Planet,highlighting the challenges facing today’s food and agricultural system, as well as the myriad benefits that reform could bring. As World Environment Day approaches, it is important to appreciate the linkages between technology, culture, and agriculture, and how they can alleviate hunger and poverty.

“Access to food is one of the first and most fundamental of all human rights,” says Guido Barilla, Chairman of the Barilla Group. “Where food is lacking, it becomes impossible to live with dignity, and the rights to a healthy life and peaceful coexistence are undermined.”

The Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet project, an evaluation of environmentally sustainable solutions to alleviate hunger and poverty, collaborated with BCFN to produce the report. “The study’s conclusions represent a major step toward ensuring that agriculture contributes to health, environmental sustainability, income generation, and food security,” said Nourishing the Planet project directorDanielle Nierenberg. “The ingredients will vary by country and region, but there are some key components that will lead to healthier food systems everywhere.”

The report is divided into four sections: Food for All, Food for Sustainable Growth, Food for Health, and Food for Culture. Each of these sections ends with concrete recommendations, proposals, and actions that need to be taken to solve the global food crisis.

Food for All:Agriculture offers a crucial opportunity for effective investments in development. Because agriculture plays such a large role in rural populations in developing countries, growth in this sector is at least twice as effective in boosting incomes as growth in a non-agricultural sector. Agriculture also directly contributes to food security among the world’s poorest populations, and reforms to the sector are badly needed to reduce both poverty and hunger. These include reinforcing the mechanisms of global governance, such as curbing the trade of food-related stocks to lessen price volatility; encouraging the use of new approaches and tools to measure and promote well-being, in part by shifting away from Gross Domestic Product as a primary indicator of national development; and fostering eating habits that are healthier for humans and have a lower environmental impact.

Food for Sustainable Growth: While many agricultural activities, such as artificial fertilizer application or heavy pesticide use, may boost food production in the short term, they create serious obstacles to feeding the world over the long term. Environmental degradation, including water scarcity, soil depletion, and deforestation, are all results of the industrialized agricultural system, and these problems seriously compromise future generations’ prospects of well-being. Part of achieving sustainable well-being involves an understanding of the environmental impacts of different types of foods. To facilitate this understanding, the Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition has devised the Double Food and Environmental Pyramid. This pyramid, a new take on the traditional food pyramid, links the nutritional aspects of different types of food with their environmental impacts, to promote environmentally conscious and responsible food choices."

That first stat is stunning:  30% worldwide is wasted.  How?  Why?  How much does that translate into lost dollars?

We'll bring you more information tomorrow.

Also, this week we film six new shows, and will be live on WARL 1320 and Blog Talk Radio Weds (every Weds), 12-1p, EST, talking about sustainable investing with Calvert Funds, and others.  Please call or write in with your comments and questions.