For Vikings, pork was preferred over beef or any other type of meat.  And today you can buy bacon-flavored vegan soy products and even bacon flavor shakers to make everything taste like bacon.  The point is: Vikings like it, Vegans like it, and the rest of us like it so much we’d make everything taste like it if we could – I’m talking about pigs.

In the wild pigs would forage for stuff to eat on the forest floor and – much like us humans – they eat just about anything.  Domesticated pigs are fed nutritious feed so they grow nice and big.  They’re fed things like corn, barley, soybeans and other stuff.  Problem is that, much like us humans, usually what comes out the other end of pigs doesn’t exactly smell like roses.

Pig poop and swine farts are no laughing matter.  The flatulent feces of a conventional Yorkshire pig doesn’t just smell bad.  This poop is packed with high concentrations of phosphorus, which can cause problems for soil and waterways.

Given that there are about a billion live pigs in the world right now - half a billion in China alone – as you can imagine this is a big problem.  Yes – for some people becoming vegan or vegetarian is an option.  But for some folks pork may be one of the few sources of high-quality protein available to them.  And you can’t ignore the fact that a lot of people have a strong personal preference to eat meat products.

Luckily, about a decade ago some smart scientists at the University of Guelph in Canada developed a new genetically enhanced pig called (dun-dun-dun-duuuun) the Enviropig!  No, this pig doesn’t have super powers and can’t climb walls.  What it does do is produce a special enzyme in its saliva (the drool in its mouth) that makes it much easier for the pig to fully digest food such as cereals which are a core staple in a pig’s diet.  Since the pig can better digest its food significantly less phosphorous ends up in its manure, which is not only much better for the environment in general but it makes the manure much more useful as a fertilizer for growing crops.

You can kind of think of it in terms of how some people don’t tolerate dairy products or beans that well.  In some cases you can take an enzyme tablet that helps your body break down the food.  In the case of Enviropigs they have been genetically engineered to be able to better digest their food on their own without the need for dietary supplements.

Upon reading this you likely fall into one of two camps:
1) This is disgusting! I’m never gonna eat any frankenstein pork!  I’m calling the governor!
2) Woohoo!  Pass the pork chops please.  After all, they're eco-friendly.

Right now Enviropigs are still in the testing and approval stages.  For years now these pigs have been the subject of numerous tests to determine if they are safe for human consumption as well as other issues such as animal welfare, nutrition and if there are any differences between the make-up of a transgenic pig versus a ‘regular’ pig.  So meat from Enviropigs is not is our food supply yet, but there has been nothing so far to indicate that these little piggies won’t be approved to go to market at some point in the near future.

Human beings have been raising domestic pigs for centuries.  We’ve bred them in all sorts of shapes and sizes to suit our specifications and they’ve come a long way genetically from their wild ancestors.  Now modern science is stepping in with a genetic change that could significantly lessen the environmental impact of the Earth’s billion pigs.  It’ll be interesting to see what other types of environmentally beneficial innovations will be coming our way in the coming years.  Better pig poop may not be as sexy as a new electric car engine, but it’s still an important part of becoming a more environmentally friendly society.

» Vancouver Sun

Scientific American recently re-released an article from 1960 that examined the challenges facing agriculture in Israel.

When settlers came to the land of milk & honey in the mid 1900’s they were confronted with major issues regarding usable farmland.  Israel is basically a desert and desert farming requires a great deal of planning and maintenance.  Israel has a climate very similar to California with rainy winters and long dry summers – conditions that have remained virtually unchanged since Roman times.  The desertification of Israel is actually a man-made phenomenon, not a natural one.  Centuries of poor water management and ancient farming practices rendered all but protected lands useless.

Desert farming is a delicate operation.  Not only do you have issues like water management to deal with – erratic rainfall, water storage and irrigation – but you also have to worry about soil quality issues and erosion.  These are challenges even for agriculture in non-desert regions.

In Israel back in the 1960’s they drained marshlands, redesigned irrigation systems and rebuilt hillside terraces.  They also seeded a variety of special grasses and plants to help rebuild the soil by retaining water, releasing nutrients and protecting the soil from the elements.

Some of these efforts are controversial from our perspective today.  Draining wetlands certainly doesn’t sound like an environmentally conscious long-term solution, nor does the introduction of alien species of grass, brush and trees.  But these were still major steps in Israel’s reclamation of the desert soil.

The challenges facing Israel are not isolated to the Middle East.  From China to Australia to the Southern United States there are thousands and thousands of acres of farmland facing desertification, some of it already rendered useless through poor management and outdated (or inappropriate) farming practices.  The popular logic is that this desertification is caused simply by “over farming” and that the obvious solution is to stop farming the land and it will restore itself.  This solution has two major problems: 1) no farming = no food and that’s good for anybody and 2) there is no evidence the land will simply restore itself without some help.

So can desertification be reversed?  Can we reclaim desert lands and maintain them for future generations?  There is no single “big fix” for the issue, but there are a lot of contributions modern technology is making to make this a reality.

1. New water management and irrigation technologies.  Desert areas often suffer from erratic rainfall.  Some areas get little rain, some get a fair amount and if either area gets too much rain they risk soil erosion and have no way to store that water for a future dry spell.  And for crops, not only do you needs to “water the plants” as it were but you also need to retain moisture in the soil itself.  Modern water management technologies can be managed in near real-time to account for rainfall conditions, soil moisture can be accurately monitored on any farm and new methods of distributing water to crops ensure that water waste is kept to a minimum.  These practices are not universal, but their use is growing.

2. Environmental monitoring and forecast.  One of the underappreciated benefits of the massive growth in computing power and data storage over the past few decades is in the environmental sciences.  Never before have we been able to monitor and model our environment with the level of detail we do today.  Everything from real-time reporting of amount of water flowing through rivers to modeling the probability of a drought is now possible.  Being able to handle vast amounts of historic and current data, as well as modeling future conditions allows for better planning, preparation and reaction in desert environments.

3. Improved crop selection and new varieties of crops.  Scientists now have the ability to match the specific characteristics of a piece of land with the crops best suited to be grown there.  That, combined with detailed monitoring of weather conditions has lead to improved crop selection by farmers in desert areas.  Also, there have been big strides in the use of biotechnology to change the characteristics of plant seeds over the years, with more on the way.  Scientists are working on new types of crops that require less water and are more ‘hearty’, that is – better able to tolerate less-than-ideal growing conditions.  For farmers in arid regions these types of crops could well be a key to continuing to produce food.

As with so many of the problems we face today regarding our future and the environment, it’s easy to throw our arms up in the air when a single simple solution doesn’t present itself.  However, human ingenuity and scientific innovation should give us reason to be optimistic.

» Scientific American

Most of us like to think of ourselves as smart consumers, especially when it comes to items we purchase regularly like groceries.  But are we really as smart as we think we are?  Fact is, most of us receive our ‘education’ as consumers through marketing channels.  Marketing – an activity with the sole purpose of convincing us to make purchase decisions – is hardly the place to look for real data to drive our consumer choices.

For example, let’s take a look at a food item most of us are familiar with: the ever-popular apple.  How do you choose which apple to buy?  Let’s take a look at five of the factors that contribute to this apparently simple decision.

1. Apparent Quality
You pick up two apples.  One is big and bright red, shining under the fluorescent lights of the store.  The other is small, greenish and has a dimple on it where a caterpillar took a sample before it made its way to the market.  Which one will you choose?  Simply inspecting the outside seems to give an indication of quality, but let’s face it – you don’t really know if the big apple is tastier or more nutritious than the little one - it simply looks like the better apple.

2. Origin
This time, you select two identical looking apples.  One was shipped from the other side of the country and one came from the neighboring state.  The “eat local” rule of eco-conscious shopping dictates that you should buy the apple that came from the orchard closest to your home.  But is it the best apple?

3. Value
Price is a deciding factor as well.  If you have two apples that appear to be of identical quality but one is cheaper than the other, logic dictates you buy the cheaper one.  If your choice is between buying one pound of premium-appearance apples or five pounds of mediocre-looking ones, frugality might persuade you to get what seems like more bang for your buck.

4. Variety / Brand Preference
You may have a personal preference for a specific variety of apple because you like it’s texture and flavor more than others you’ve tried, so you always pick up a couple of Fuji apples when you shop regardless of their apparent quality compared to other varieties.  You may also find you but apples based on the brand name on the sign, bag or sticker attached to the fruit.  Again, you associate this label with certain quality expectations and it makes your purchasing decision that much simpler.

5. Organic vs. Non Organic
This factor could almost be numbered “4b” since it’s so closely associated to brand preference and labeling, but it’s so important for us as eco-conscious shoppers I think it deserves its own number.  One label that might immediately affect your decision on purchasing an apple is whether or not that apple has been designated as ‘organic’ or not.  There are entire stores that only stock organic produce and often large grocery stores will segment organic produce into its own section.  If organic is your primary decision point you may even ignore quality and value to ensure the apple you buy is an organic one.

But there is a sixth factor, one that I haven’t mentioned yet and it should be the primary reason you’re buying an apple in the first place: nutrition.  Let’s face it: you’re standing there in the produce section with an apple in your hand because you think that the apple is good for you, right?
So look at those five factors above again.  Does the fact that your apple is pretty, locally produced, cheap, and labeled appropriately mean that it’s the better apple?  I’m going to say “no” and here’s why.

If you were going to purchase a container of whey protein powder for a post-workout shake and you were ignoring factors such as price and labeling you would grab two containers and look at their ingredients and nutrition labels.  The whey powder with the best nutritional profile (in this case, high protein, low sugar, etc.) would be your best choice.

So if you were going to buy an apple as a post-workout snack wouldn’t the best criteria be to be able to compare nutrition labels?

Now before you say, “an apple is an apple”, consider this: in the last 80 years in the United States the amount of calcium in apples has dropped 48%; phosphorous 84%; iron 96%; and magnesium, has dropped 82%.  In fact, back in 1914 a single apple would provide you with half your day’s requirement for iron.  Today you’d have to eat 26 apples to get the same amount of iron.

Not all apples are created equal and the quality has little or nothing to do with whether any pesticides were sprayed on the apple or not.  Environmental conditions and soil quality play a huge role in the nutritional makeup of fruit such as apples.

Personally, I buy apples not only because they’re tasty but because my expectation is that they are healthy and packed with nutrients.  There isn’t much “value” to an apple if I have to take a mineral supplement pill every time I eat one.  I don’t care if the apple is genetically modified, twice as expensive and is shipped from 600 miles away – if it packs 10 or 20 times the nutrition of every other apple on the shelves it’s worth every penny.

So as a consumer, keep your eyes open and do your Googling.  They don’t make nutrition labels for apples (yet), but don’t take it for granted that all apples are the same.

» XCap News

(Continued from Part I.)

In Part I of Understanding the SOLE food movement we took a look at the first two letters in SOLE: “Sustainable” and “Organic”.  Let’s examine the next to items on our list “Local” and “Ethical” before wrapping up with a few questions.

Local
This should be the easiest question of all to answer, but it’s a different answer depending on where you live.

For example the gold standard of eating local is the 100-mile diet.  If you live in Vancouver, British Columbia you have access to fresh vegetables, fish, fruit and berries thanks to local farms, greenhouses and proximity to the Pacific Ocean and rivers.  With so many resources close by a single person could easily eat foods exclusively produced within a hundred miles of her home.  Can the entire Greater Vancouver region of 2 ½ million people live exclusively on the locally produced food?  Possibly, but not with the level of bounty they are accustomed to.

Now fly 1,000 kilometres east across the Canadian Rockies to Calgary, Alberta.  Within 100 miles of Calgary you have access to some river trout, and for a few months each year you may be have access to some fresh vegetables and perhaps some wheat.  Most of the population of over 1 million Calgarians would starve to death if they had to live on a 100-mile diet.  In fact, it’s nearly impossible for a single person to do it without relying heavily on pickled and preserved foods.

So under SOLE, is the 100-mile diet too strict or not strict enough?  Should you demand that your celery be from your state but your orange juice only needs to come from the closest coast?  Or do you stop drinking orange juice altogether because you live in the Midwest?  Or do you move to California since that’s where 80% of your food comes from anyway regardless of where you live?

Don’t forget: modern food production is complicated.  Let’s say you live 20 miles away from a yogurt factory and that factory is known for sourcing all of its milk from cows in your state.  However, in making their yogurt they include a half-dozen additives from all over the country, milk powder from California, gelatine from China.... oh, and the plastic and inks for the yogurt containers are sourced from all over the planet.  Plus half of the electricity that powers the yogurt factory comes from Canada.  Plus, despite the fact that the factory is down the street from you it is actually shipped from a factory to a warehouse 300 miles away so it can be sorted for distribution to another warehouse 200 miles away before being shipped back to your local grocery store.

Whew! So tell me: is your yogurt still a “20-mile” yogurt?  You can see how impossible it would be to put a food miles stamp on something as simple as a container of yogurt.  We didn’t even get into all of the stuff involved in producing the “local” milk.

I don’t want to knock local food.  If you live in the right region of the world any moron can eat local.  But it is impossible for us to slap a “local” or “food miles” label on many food products.  If you recall my ridiculous Farmer “A” and Farmer “B” example from Part I you may recall that one farmer grew his carrots sustainably in New England and the other farmer grew his in an unsustainable fashion in Nevada.  If I live in Las Vegas, whose carrots should I buy?

Ethical

The rules that divide an ethical food choice from an unethical one are not rules that can be dictated or taught by any group.  You ethics are your own personal definitions of right and wrong and the grey areas in between (if there are any).

Are coffee beans harvested by children unethical?  Is allowing children to starve because they cannot work harvesting coffee bean unethical?

Is spraying soybeans crops with chemicals to prevent the loss of the crops unethical?  Is widespread malnutrition in a foreign country due to a lack of quality protein unethical?

Is it unethical for a farmer to “sell his soul” by growing patented genetically-modified crops?  Is it unethical for his to produce far more crops using less pesticides water and fertilizer?

Maybe the answers to these questions seem obvious to you, but those answers are likely different than your neighbour’s.  We all have our own moral code that defines our ethics.  From before the time the seed is planted until that food makes it to your plate countless of ethical choices have been made by many, many people.  Some may have been documented, but many have not and chances are only a few will match with your world view.

Check the news and check the facts... and be prepared to give up your favourite foods if their production methods don’t match your world view.

Conclusions

The SOLE concept is not something you can approach from the top-down and integrate into your life by simply remembering four simple words.   An Ecollo take on SOLE might look something like this:

Sustainable: Try you best to choose food that is produced in a non-destructive manner.  
Organic: Don’t buy low-quality or overpriced food because of a marketing label.  Quality and price should win every time.
Local: Be conservative and realistic with your menu choices.  Eat locally seasonal food and you’ll be right most of the time without worrying about food miles.
Ethical: Do your own research.  The ethical issues involved are more complex than they may seem at first.

The thing to remember is that marketing food is easy, producing food can be complicated.  Don’t buy into the hype.  You have two choices: produce your own food to your own standards or do your own research and develop your own rules for selecting your food.

» Civil Eats

SOLE stands for “Sustainable, Organic, Local & Ethical” and this popular food movement, driven by the works of influential author Michael Pollan and others, has been gaining a lot of momentum lately.  On the surface the message of SOLE seems simple, positive, and easy to get behind.  Take a closer look and it gets a little more complicated.

Before we get digging let me clarify that my goal is not a bottom-up examination of the creation of the SOLE food movement.  It can’t really be anchored to any one book, group or documentary.  SOLE is really, like so many things in our lives today, a catchy marketing phrase attached to an aspect of our consumer lifestyle.  For most people SOLE isn’t a conclusion they’ve reached after a lot of inner reflection after reading ‘Diet for a New America’ or ‘An Omnivore’s Dilemma’.  No, for most SOLE is something they’ll read about on Yahoo! News or hear about at the gym and they’ll dive in and try to change their lifestyle from the top-down, using the handy four word SOLE mantra as a guide.

So let’s take a closer look at those four powerful words.

Sustainable
 This is a pretty simple one to understand.  Sustainable activities are ones that can be performed and continue to be performed indefinitely.  Sustainable products are the products of those activities.  So what is sustainable food exactly?  Often this is a reference to the “inputs” in producing the food.  For example, to produce a bunch of carrots you need seeds, soil, water, sunlight, and perhaps a way to protect your carrots from environmental effects such as pests and disease.

Continuing with the carrot example let’s look at two extremes: Farmer “A” and Farmer “B”.  Farmer “A” grows his carrots inside a concrete bunker buried in the middle of the Nevada desert.  He fills pots with soil imported from Brazil, waters his carrots with bottle water from France.  He provides them with sunlight using special lamps powered by a diesel generator and to ensure his carrots grow big and tasty he sprays them with Miracle-Gro.  Farmer “B” lives in New England and grows his carrots in his backyard.  To protect his carrots from the cravings of his pet guinea pig, Farmer “B” built a fence around his carrot patch made of recycled newspapers and toilet paper tubes.

So quick – which farmer grows the ‘sustainable’ carrots?  If food production were as straightforward (and ridiculous) as the above example then defining sustainability would be cut-and-dry.  Provided the carrots were labelled appropriately, as a consumer I could make the right SOLE choice.  But the reality of food production is quite complicated, difficult to grade, and impossible to oversee and regulate.

The word that makes more sense to me is “Non-destructive”.  If my carrot has been genetically engineered to be extra resistive to drought, or if it has been sprayed with a small amount of chemical to protect it from a disease that would’ve otherwise killed the crop I don’t see the big deal.  If someone deforested a mountainside and destroyed a river to produce my carrot that’s the type of activity that can easily filed in the unsustainable category.

Organic
Funny how times change things, even the meaning of words.  Even just 20 years ago the word “organic” didn’t carry the weight it does today.  Not to mention the marketing hype, government regulatory confusion and regional differences in understanding in what the word means.

Honestly, with the way organics are marketed today really this part of the SOLE mantra really just means “food labelled as organic” or “food that is promised to match your personal definition of organic”.  Forget that it’s been pasteurized into oblivion, that 49% of the ingredients are not organic or that it was produced in the same processing plant as the non-organic items that cost half the price.

I’m not against organic food – far from it – but I distrust the black-and-white picture of our food supply that’s painted with the “organic” brush.  The problem isn’t with organic-style food production itself, it’s with the marketing.  So much of the marketing of organic products ignores the complexity of food production that it can be difficult to take the hype seriously.

“But wait,” you say, “an organic carrot is the one I want.  I want to pesticides, no fertilizers, no GMOs!”

Fair enough, and that’s an understandable position.  So at your local grocery store, do you know for certain what inputs made your carrot an organic one?  Is it no fertilizers at all or no artificial fertilizers?  Is it okay that the carrot is not genetically modified but is grown from special hybrid seeds?

The bottom line is: if you truly want organic produce grown to your own personal definition of organic you’ll just have to grow them yourself.

Stay tuned for Part II!

» Civil Eats

Imagine this: there is a disease spreading across the country and there have been outbreaks of this disease in your home town.  It’s deadly and the few that survive are never the same once infected.  To protect yourself and your family you wear protective suits and ventilators.  Your entire family takes dozens of pills a day to prevent infection.  You then discover that you are expecting a new baby and through the miracles of modern science you have an option never available before: the doctors can make your baby resistant to the deadly disease by altering her DNA.  Would you do it or doom your child to a life of living in a bubble?

This extreme example represents a debate that rages right now.  Vaccinations for common diseases are hardly comparable to gene manipulation, yet every year thousands of people oppose them.  Yet if there was a mass pandemic of flu or a new version of polio or tuberculosis these same people would be screaming for a cure.

So what the heck does this have to do with eggplants?  Be patient, we’re getting there.

There have been headlines recently over India’s delay on approving a new type of aubergine (aka. Eggplant) over safety concerns despite nearly a decade’s worth of scientific trial data.  The government wants to study it further and certainly, if a government is taking action to protect public safety it should be applauded for doing so.

One tweet I read recently was a declaration not for the thoroughness of the cautious government authority but – and I quote – “India kicks Monsanto right in the eggplants! [link withheld]”.  Many eco-lovers are also Monsanto-haters so I guess I understand the sentiment.  But stepping back for a moment you can see the motivation behind the development of this new GMO crop.

If you want to grow a field of a certain type of crop, like eggplants, then you’re bound to attract certain types of pests.  In the case of eggplants there are pesticides that have been applied to protect them safely since the time your grandparents were babies.  A bunch of scientists came up with a way to build this protection into the genetic code of the eggplant, which eliminates or reduces the amount of pesticide required.

Keep in mind that the reasons pesticides exist is to protect plants from pests.  More often than not if there is an outbreak and no pesticide is used to protect the plant then the crop is lost.  But still we, as consumers, don’t like the idea of chemicals being sprayed on our food.  But we’re consumers and – particularly in the West – we’re stupid consumers.  We think the choice is always between a “conventional” eggplant and an “organic” one.  We never stop to think that maybe the choice is between a “conventional” eggplant and no eggplant at all!

That’s where the biotechnology comes in.  The big idea is to build the protection into the seed itself so the plant is protected no matter what.

I’m not saying these biotech eggplants don’t require further study – I’m no scientist – but reading the press on this incident I’m reading protesters and policital ministers quoted as if they are scientists.  Everyone is entitled to an opinion, but it is irresponsible to quote that opinion as scientific fact.

I hope they do run further tests on these eggplants and it’ll be interesting to see what the results are.  As long as the methods are scientifically sound, India and the rest of the world should have nothing to worry about.

» Veg Paradise