Musings on sustainable food systems, agriculture vs. agroecology, and more!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mZ2KQ9iB_8&feature=player_embedded] Watch Urvashi Rangan from the Consumer Safety and Sustainability Group for Consumer Reports make a powerful argument for the need for the three Ts in food labeling: Truth, Trust and Transparency. Here are her main points if you don’t have the time to listen to her eloquent presentation: Many labels, such as “natural” or “fresh”, … Continue reading Labeling Fables
Only a couple of days ago, I was at lunch with friends at IKEA, where my friends were enjoying Kottbullar (the Swedish meatballs) and joking around that they were hopefully horse meat free. Yesterday, that joke turned sour as IKEA was the last in a series of enterprises that found horse DNA in their processed … Continue reading What the Horse Meat Scandal Can Teach Us
New to the mini-series? Check out Wasted (I) on farming and post-harvest waste in the North-American context, Wasted (II) for the same level of analysis in the Tropics, and Wasted (III) for the retail sector! Yay, we finally got to the end of the food supply chain – our own plates and (hopefully) stomachs. In this last part, I’ll again … Continue reading Wasted (IV – Consumer Food Waste)
New to the mini-series? Check out Wasted (I) on farming and post-harvest waste in the North-American context and Wasted (II) for the same level of analysis in the Tropics! In 2005, an Austrian documentary called “We Feed The World” brought food policy issues onto the agenda for many Europeans, showing stark pictures of many contradictions in our … Continue reading Wasted (III – The Retail Sector)
New to the mini-series? Check out Wasted (I) on farming and post-harvest waste in the North-American context! Last time, we concluded that in a more industrialized context, food waste is most prevalent at the retail and consumer level. How about in more agrarian, (for lack of a better term) less-developed countries? Here the majority of losses … Continue reading Wasted (II – Farming and Post-Harvest in the Tropics)
No, not the drunk kind. The discarded, excluded, thrown-away kind. Did you know that up to 50% of all food produced – 2 billion metric tonnes per year – are “lost before they ever reach a human stomach”, as the Institute of Mechanical Engineers put it? That is massive. What a stark contrast to our … Continue reading Wasted (I – Farming and Post-Harvest)
