Monterey Bay Aquarium 2014 Sustainable Foods Institute Day 2

Cooking for Solutions program, began away from the hotel events space where most of the sessions were held. Instead, participants gathered at the Earthbound Farms "farm stand" (a shop, garden, and outdoor events venue) in Carmel, about a ten-mile drive southeast of the Aquarium itself. (Earthbound, whose packaged salad greens and other vegetables and fruits seem to appear in every grocery store in America, began as a berry stand down the street from the current facility and is today the largest producer of organic produce in the country.)

The proceedings here, after the assembled media, speakers, and chefs had enjoyed a breakfast buffet (scrupulously organic, of course) hosted by Earthbound, were an untitled conversation, hosted by Russ Parson, food editor of the Los Angeles Times, on the role of farm chemicals or their alternatives in modern agriculture. Parsons summed up the dilemma many consumers face: "It seems like you're either buying your fruits and vegetables from barefoot baby Jesus or you're mainlining Agent Orange. Is there a middle ground, a way that allows for a responsible use of chemicals when needed?"

Urvashi Rangan, director of the consumer Safety and Sustainability Group for Consumer Reports, began by reminding the audience that "It is only comparatively recently that we've realized that what hapens to the environment affects our health. For decades, we used to put lead arsenate in the ground, for instance, but when you put it in the ground, it stays in the ground. Today we have to ask whether we know what the unintended consequences of our actions will be. We have to know not just that something is effective now but whether it's going to do harm in the long run. That's the issue I have with GMOs. The long-term studies just didn't get done. We don't know — and we arebn't figuring public health costs into the cost of producing food.

Jim Lugg, a consultant for Fresh Express/Chiquita Brands International, Inc., revealed that "Nearly all of our producers today grow both conventional and organic crops. There's not enough organic land available to satisfy demand. In the future, we may be moving towards enclosed spaces where you can control light and temperature and external contaminants. My fantasy is that at the edge of every city you'd have a seven-story building with a glass front, like Baskin-Robbins, where you could go in and order greens that were just harvested upstairs."

Parsons next asked Todd Kodet, Earthbound's senior vice president of farm supply, whether organically produced food could ever scale enough to feed the world. Kodet thought that it could. "We're great at agricultural yield, but not at productivity. If you look at productivity instead of yield, we're equal to Bangladesh. A third of our cultivated land goes to animal feed, five percent goes to biofuel, a third of what we produce is wasted. We're at a point where 70 percent of our resources produce 30 percent of our food and vice versa. We have enough to feed 2700 calories per day to every person on earth, and will have that even in 2050, when there are nine billion people to feed. It's not that we don't have the food, it's a question of getting it there."

Returning to the subject of GMOs, Parsons asked if they have a place in our food supply. Lugg said "In my personal opinion, we just don't think they fit into our agricultural production system. It just isn't worth it." Rangan: "We don't have he answer." Lugg: "The definition of sustainability is that whatever you do in your daily practices is something you'll be able to keep doing in the future. If not, it's not sustainable." On another subject, he noted that "We want to kill the 'natural' label on foods. There have been lots of lawsuits over the use of this term. The FDA was asked by the courts to define 'naural' and they respectufully declined. The term just has no meaning — and our research shows that a third of consumers confuse 'natural' with 'organic.' It's a good time in the marketplace for people to stare that down."

Back indoors in Monterey, writer and editor Francis Lam kicked off the sessions with a panel called "The New American Plate" — which he redefined as a "game show" he dubbed "Food Trends: Hot or Not?". Addressing the trend terms he threw out were Georgia-based chef and cookbook author Hugh Acheson and Andrew F. Smith, who has taught food history and politics and food writing at the New School in Manhattan since 1996.

"Flying prawns" (i.e., crickets) and or other instects. Acheson: "Crickets are hot, if you fry them. They're crunchy and people love crunchy things. They're also high in protein, and a renewable resource. Other bugs are really gross, though." Smith [addressiong the audience]: "How many of you eat insects? [A few hands go up.] How many eat processed foods? {Considerably more hands.] If you eat processed foods, you're eating insects."

"Four Fish, More Fish" (i.e., bycatch). (Bycatch is fish or other marine creatures caught accidentally while fishing for target species. "Four Fish" is a reference to journalist Paul Greenberg's book of the same, about the four varieties that dominate our menus — salmon, sea bass, cod, and tuna). Acheson: "If it's hot, will it still be bycatch? If we start targeting lesser species, prices will go up. Bycatch will be hot for a time until it becomes a commodity." Smith: "If you look at accounts of American fish markets in the 19th century, there were 150 kinds of fish or shellfish for sale. We don't have anywhere near that variety in our markets today, but there's constant replacement. We will use whatever seafood is available — even invasive species like lionfish or Asian carp. These things just need advertising and promotion. They need to be on 'Top chef.' I'm serious."

Kelp and other seaweed. Acheson: "Very hot. People werent' eating seaweed in the U.S. ten years ago. Now it's a snack you give your kids to take to school. All the chefs are using dashi as a stock, and not just for Japanese Night."

Soylent [a kind of super-protein shake] and other food replacements. Acheson: Not. Products like this show the diviision between people who care about food and people who don't. If you just think of food as nourishment, then maybe you'll use it. Some people already eat imitation food. It's called McDonald's. I'd like to see fake meat, fake cheese, and all that give way to real grains, real vegetables, real tofu. Convenience foods to me are the devil." Smith: I think it's hot and not. I like experimention and wish the producers of Soylent well, but there's a real P.R. problem. I think there's going to be a huge backlash."

Lam's panel was followed by a presentation called "Closing the Circle of Sustainability" — which turned out to be a promotion by Paul Novak, general mamanger of WholeVine Products, which repurposes spent grape must, left over from winemaking, as flour, grapeseed oil, and other substances. It's an interesting idea, but Novak sounded a little like a fellow making an investment pitch on "Shark Tank." He would have been more in keeping with the spirit of the conference, I thought, if he'd been joined by several other people who have found ways to recycle agricultural waste.

For a panel on "Human Behavior in the Market," moderated by Natasha Loder Midwest correspondent for The Economist, the participants chose to show videos. Peter Knights, executive director of WildAid, offered a compilation of public service ads produced by his organization around the theme "When the buying stops, the killing can to." The aim is to deflate the market for shark fin, rhino horn, ivory from elephants, and other such substances. "All the efforts in conservation," he said after the video, "are on the supply side. You have to attack demand." When somebody in the audience suggested that he'll never sell his message in China and that education takes years, he replied that "People say China won't change, but I go there every six weeks and every time it has changed from my last visit. And we're not educating. We're marketing."

The video presented by Anna Blythe Lappé, a founding principal of the Small Planet Institute (and daughter of pioneering environmental activist Frances Moore Lappé, whose most famous and influential book is Diet for a Small Planet), used graphics and animation to show how fast-food marketers are targeting children. "This is food that's cheap to produce, easy to brand, and addictive," she said. "Only 16 percent of kids are getting enough fruit and vegetables. Fats and sugars are hard to find in nature, so our brains have evolved to desire them, and these companies take advantage of that fact. We don't realize the extent to which kids are being marketed to in school. Oreos counting books, Coke notebooks...McDonald's wanted to brand report cards in a Florida school district, but that was voted down."

Chris Arnold, communications director for Chipotle Mexican Grill, screened one of the chain's popular animated puppet videos (this one has had 12 million views on YouTube), depicting a scarecrow working in a fast food factory until he realizes that he can produce fresh food right out of his garden. "These videos are part of our ongoing effort to make people more conscious about food," he told the audience "The majority of consumers, even our customers, do not understand why we do what we do. But we seem to understand something other people in our category don't: In fast food, there's nothing wrong with 'fast.' It's the 'food' that's the problem.".

Coming closer to home territory, the Institute's next panel was "Aquaculture: Setting the Table for Change," moderated by the aforementioned Paul Greenburg. Michael Tlusty, corector of ocean sustainability at the New England Aquarium, noted "I'm often asked if we need aquaculture. That depends on your defintion of need. We have to create more food, with less waste, and do a better job of making that food. So do we need aquaculture? I believe we do." Kenny Belov, an early adopter of the Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch program at his Sausalito restaurant Fish, talked about how he has begun producing fish food and raising trout. "In feeding fish," he said, "the ingredient list doesn't matter, the nutrient list does. We took the fish and chicken by-products out of the feed, then the soy and corn. We're using nut oil and meal instead. It turns out that 75 percent of the nuts grown in California can't be sold to the consmer, not because there's anything wrong with them, but because they're not attractive enough."  

James S. Diana, professor of fisheries and aquaculture at the University of Michigan's School of Natural Resources and Environment, revealed that "Something like 92 percent of the aquaculture prducts on the market come from developing countries, and 75 percent of the fish raised overseas is eaten overseas. There are 500,000 small-scale fish framers in Vietnam. Each country has developed ways of raising indigenous crops. I'd guess that 50 percent of traditional aquaculture involves not feeding fish but fertilizing ponds." When Greenburg mentioned that farmed salmon is red-listed by Seafood Watch (meaning "Avoid"), Tlusty asked "If we red-list salmon, what will people eat instead? If it's mussels, that's good. If it's hamburger, not so good." Diana proposed that "The question is whether we are better off eating farmed salmon or something else. Anyway, 30 percent of 'wild' salmon was raised in hatcheries, eating the same feed fish farms use, before being released into the wild."

Janet Ranganathan, vice president for science and research at World Resources Institute, began her address, "Creating a Sustainable Food Future," with some agricultural statistics: Agriculture accounts for 3 percent of the world's GDP (gross domestic product, the monetary value of all goods and services); 28 percent of the world's population is involved directly or indirectly with agriculture; agriculture is responsible for 70 percent of the freshwater withdrawals (i.e., water usage) worldwide; and accounts for 24 percent of the greenhouse gases released annually into the atmosphere. The quantity of food waste on a calorie basis from farm to fork, mostly on the fork end, is also 24 percent.

Contradicting the hopeful prognosis offered earlier in the day by Todd Kodet of Earthbound Farms, Ranganathan predicted that there will be a food gap of almost 70 percent between what the earth produces and what the population will need to survive by 2050. "Not only are more people people eating," she said, "they're eating higher on the food chain." She offered a digest version of the WRI's "menu" for dealing with the gap: The world, she said, must: reduce food loss; shift to healthier diets, especially reducing consumption of beef as raising it is a particularly inefficient use of calories ("What if we had a 'global landmine campaign' on changing our diets?" she asked rhetorically); limit the use of food crops for fuel; expand farming onto degraded, low-carbon land, of which there are an estimated two billion hectares (almost five million acres); increase livestock productivity on existing pasture land; and, considering that the overall wild fish catch has been stagnant since the 1980s, increase the efficiency of aquaculture. Ranganathan caused more than a few murmurs in the audience when she added "I believe these menu items will help close the food gap — but I believe that GMOs have to be on the table as well."

"Treading Sustainably: Food Security, Land Use and the Future of Agriculture" was the final panel of the day. New York Times writer Kim Severson moderated.[pullquote:left]

Eric Lambin, a professor at Stanford University's School of Earth Sciences and Woods Institute for the Environment and also at the Earth and Life Institute at the Univewrsity of Louvain, Belgium, said "I'm afraid that scientists don't get that you can't convince people with gloom and doom. We should stress the positive aspects of environmental responsibility. For instance, we found that the children of farmers who were certified organic had on the average two years more of education than those of other farmers. You'll get a larger audience if you concentrate on the up side."

Arlin Wasserman, founder of the Changing Tastes consultancy, got a laugh when he began by saying "I've been hearing about this climate-changey thing, and I keep looking out the window [at Monterey Bay glistening in the sunlight] and i'm so happy that there's going to be more ocean. Then he got more serious. Echoing Janet Ranganathan, he said "We should probably look at how we could get to 25 percent less beef consumption. How? We could ask a quarter of the people to become vegetarian, but that might not work. But let's think about the 50 million meals a day of mediocre food that one chain serves, a lot of them purchased because it's cheap, easily accessible, and meets the minimum standard for 'yummy.' A Cincinnati school district did an experiment, serving burgers that were 50 percent chopped mushroom, so they were lower in saturated fat and also in salt, because the mushrooms bring umami, so you don't miss the salt. The students didn't say anything about the substitution at all — excepte to comment that the burgers were better than the usual ones, because they were moister." Paul West, chief collaboration officer for the Global Landscapes Initiative at the University of Minnesota Institute on the Environment, added the statistic than 30 calories worth of grain convert to seven or eight calories of pork or chicken, but only one calorie of beef.

Martin D. Smith, an associate professor of environmental economics at Duke University, brought the conversation back around to aquaculture. "The more we take from the oceans, the less we have to take from the land," he said, "but that puts a lot of pressure on the oceans. We need to pay the full social cost of the food we consume. In seafood, we were doing a relatively good job of that in regulating our own fisheries, but not with the imports. But if we only buy local and not imported seafood, we are taking income from some of the poorest people in the world. " He closed by sharing another dilemma he had recently faces. "Some of my students started a CSF [community supported fishery], bringing fresh fish from the coast inland to Chapel Hill. One of the fish they brought in was flounder — but meanwhile, there was a group of law students suing gillnet flounder fishermen because they were taking sea turtles as bycatch. It's a dilemma."