Tuesday, 5 November 2013
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Project Director, Food MythBusters and author of "Diet for a Hot Planet: The Climate Crisis at the End of Your Fork"Get Green Newsletters: Subscribe
A doorstop of a report arrived in inboxes this morning. Not so subtly called: "Wake up Before It Is Too Late," the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development new report is a rallying cry for action to move toward greater sustainability in food and farming -- to ensure food security in a changing climate.
When Monsanto and other chemical companies are pushing hard on the claim that we need their products to feed the world, when The New York Times is publishing multi-page articles on the benefits of genetic engineering, the report comes at a particularly important moment. Its authors include some of the world's leading experts on food, sustainability, and agroecology, including Miguel Altieri, UC Berkeley professor, and Olivier De Schutter, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food.
Three key findings: First, the dominant message most of us hear about hunger reduction continues to be "Grow more food!" There is not nearly enough emphasis, the report argues, on the economic and social context of hunger. "Hunger and malnutrition," the authors write, "are mainly related to lack of purchasing power and/or inability of rural poor to be self-sufficient."
In other words, to address the roots of hunger we must be occupied with how to empower farmers and promote what is known as food sovereignty. As my mother, Frances Moore Lappé, has been saying since her seminal 1977 book, Food First, "hunger is not caused by a scarcity of food, but by a scarcity of democracy."
Secondly, the report calls for nothing less than a "paradigm shift" in growing our food, away from input-intensive, monoculture agriculture, toward what they call "ecological intensification." This means not only rethinking on-farm practices, but also rethinking the farmer herself: seeing farmers as not just producers of agricultural goods, but as stewards of the land, providing us all a valuable service in protecting soil, water, biodiversity, even climate stability.
When I was writing my latest book, Diet for a Hot Planet, this was perhaps my biggest a-ha moment: Yes, farmers are at the frontlines of the climate crisis -- often the first and hardest hit by climate disasters -- but they're also the frontlines of the solutions. They're the ones who are best positioned to protect our ecosystems -- including the soil, water, and clean air on which we all depend.
Finally, the authors emphasize the need for systemic change; that's the only way to address the roots of hunger and achieve this needed paradigm shift. Folks, this isn't about "tweaking" here and there; this is a call for a "transformation" at the heart of our food system.
The report includes a trove of data proving the benefits of this paradigm shift, especially as we face an increasingly climate unstable future. In a particularly interesting chapter, Professor Miguel Altieri highlights the growing evidence about the role of sustainable agriculture practices in fostering farm resilience in the face of major climatic events. All the results showed those farmers with greater biodiversity and other agroecological qualities fared significantly better post-natural disasters.
After Hurricane Mitch ravaged Central America, the Campesino o Campesino movement organized farmer research teams to evaluate the impact. They visited 1,804 farms in 360 communities in Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. What they found was astounding: Those farmers who had adopted sustainable agriculture practices retained greater soil moisture and 20 to 40 percent more topsoil; they also experienced less soil erosion and economic losses.
The report also highlights how agribusiness and chemical corporations have influenced policy setting, regulatory agencies, and research institutions, slowing the spread of more sustainable practices in agriculture. To give just one example, Marcia Ishii-Eiteman from the Pesticide Action Network of North America describes how chemical corporations have influenced national and international chemical policy.
For instance, after Malaysia passed a 2002 ban of the highly toxic chemical herbicide, Paraquat, its manufacturer Syngenta joined the country's palm oil industry to lobby to reverse the ban, which the government did in 2006. Today, Paraquat is still widely used there.
The report also makes it very clear how important it is to act now, because the very resources we depend on for food security are at stake: from a stable climate to abundant topsoil to accessible water. In chapter after chapter, the authors highlight the importance of embracing sustainable agriculture, not only to foster greater on-farm resiliency, but to preserve these vital natural resources.
Follow Anna Lappe on Twitter: www.twitter.com/annalappe
SubscribeWednesday, 12 June 2013
Educational statistics expert Joseph Hawkins, one of my guides to the mysteries of test assessment, is impatient with the way the Montgomery County public school system is, as he puts it, "always telling the world how much better it is than everyone else." He finds flaws in its latest celebration of college success by county graduates, particularly minorities.
As a senior study director with the Rockville-based research firm Westat, Hawkins's critique has regional and national importance because it deals with the National Student Clearinghouse. This little-known information source might become the way school raters such as me decide which school families and taxpayers are getting their money's worth and which aren't.
The clearinghouse has a database of more than 93 million students at more than 3,300 colleges and universities. It originally specialized in verifying student enrollment for loan companies. Now it tells high schools how their alumni are doing.
Yeah, sure, Hawkins says, but "data from the clearinghouse is not completely accurate, especially if Social Security numbers for students are not obtained." Also, he says, some of the numbers Montgomery brags about don't look so good when compared with others.
"For example," Hawkins says, "MCPS reports that 26.7 percent of the African American graduates earned a degree in six years. Sounds okay, right? But according to the NCES [National Center for Educational Statistics, part of the U.S. Education Department], the college graduation rate for black kids is 42 percent. The graduation rate for white kids is 62 percent." Why, he asks, are Montgomery graduates doing worse?
Montgomery schools spokesman Dana Tofig works for Superintendent Jerry D. Weast, the most insatiable consumer and promoter of educational data in America, so Tofig is always ready for statistical queries. He says Hawkins is comparing "apples to pumpkins." The county is reporting the percentage of black high school graduates from the classes of 2001 to 2004 who got college degrees in six years. The NCES is reporting the percentage of black college freshmen (not including black high school grads who didn't go to college) who graduated in six years.
It is easy to stumble over these subtle distinctions, which is in part what Hawkins is saying. Montgomery has one of the best school systems in the country but has to be candid about the limits of the data supporting the valid argument that families are getting a good deal for the relatively high taxes they pay for these schools.
Washington area officeholders -- as well as real estate agents -- have been extolling the high test scores of our suburban schools for years. They rarely add that communities with such high average incomes nearly always have high scores. It is an iron rule of educational testing, Hawkins's home ground. We tend to assume a restaurant is good because the customers are well-dressed. In the same way, we think a school is good because the parents are affluent. But that is not always the case for all students.
If the National Student Clearinghouse can improve its data-gathering, we would have more indicators of which districts best prepare for college the disadvantaged students Hawkins and I often discuss.
Hawkins once worked for the Montgomery school system and applauds its many information-gathering improvements. "I'm glad that MCPS is investing in this data," he says. But he wants to see more of it, especially comparing the college success of its minority and low-income students and of those from other places.
If you think this overlooks kids who don't go to college, ask what skills good employers and trade schools want in their high school graduate applicants -- pretty much the same facility with numbers and words you need to get into a state university. I hope Montgomery and Hawkins will pursue their frank and friendly discussion to get us even better information on this.
For more Jay, go to washingtonpost.com/class-struggle.
