November 2012

The biggest threat for agriculture at the 18th Conference of Parties (COP) of the UNFCCC is the certain likelihood (oxymoron intended) of “non-decisions” for setting ambitious emissions reduction targets for the post-2012 period, when the Kyoto Protocol’s first commitment period expires. Bill McKibben’s widely circulated article Global Warming's Terrifying New Math tells us in starkly clear terms what we need to do to set things right:

We have five times as much oil and coal and gas on the books as climate scientists think is safe to burn. We'd have to keep 80 percent of those reserves locked away underground to avoid that fate. Before we knew those numbers, our fate had been likely. Now, barring some massive intervention, it seems certain.

McKibben lays out in simple terms what we policy advocates and scientists have failed to do thus far: convince the average citizen in the industrialized world why immediate, ambitious and drastic cuts in our fossil fuel use is necessary to prevent the deadliest impacts of global warming, not just for future generations, but for this generation. Yet, government representatives will be going to the climate talks prepared to take years to cobble together a legally binding deal to cut emissions worth the paper they sign. 

I’ve been a feminist all my life. It had something to do with having three brothers and no sisters, perhaps—that and parents who encouraged me to be who I wanted to be.  It had to do, too, with the sexism I experienced. The school careers councillor who suggested that it might be awkward to be a diplomat because it would mean my husband would have to follow my career, for example. But of course, I am one of the lucky women. Not only did I have access to an education; so did my mother, and her mother before her, who was one of the first two graduates from her all-girl high school in London to attend university, in 1929. I have my own career, economic independence, a vote, and legal protections that ensure my assets, and my share of the assets I have built with my spouse, are and will be mine—whether I stay married, divorce or am widowed. These are protections and entitlements only too few women enjoy: education, economic independence, a political voice and legal protection. They are essential to allowing women to enjoy their rights.

On Monday 19th November, Oxfam launches a two-week online policy discussion called: Making the food system work for women. Over ten days, ten essays will be presented, each written by a different contributor—I had the chance to write about trade, and former IATP Trade and Global Governance Program Director, Alexandra Spieldoch, makes a pitch for women’s leadership. Other contributors include eco-feminist Vandana Shiva; Jayati Ghosh, feminist economist at Jawaharlal Nehru University, and ActionAid International’s Director, Joanna Kerr. Olivier de Schutter, UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, will provide a concluding analysis.

A Harvard study just published in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine journal, associates a mother's low level exposure to mercury while pregnant with greater risk of her child later developing ADHD-related behavior.

The research coincides with another study earlier this year that correlated the increased prevalence of ADHD in the U.S.—along with other developmental disorders, including autism—with the introduction of high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) to the American food supply. The link is that until quite recently, it was common for HFCS to be manufactured using mercury-contaminated caustic soda.

Together the findings are leading to closer examination of the myriad toxins that fetuses are exposed to such as lead, nicotine, pesticides, and mercury; science consistently shows such exposures early in life contribute to the development of brain and behavior disorders later in life.

In the case of mercury, exposure from food occurs through the consumption of fish, HFCS and food colors according to a 2009 article published in the Behavioral and Brain Functions journal. Through its website, the U.S. Department of Agriculture records average annual consumption in the U.S. of 9.5 pounds per year of fish and shellfish and 28.7 pounds per year HFCS.

This piece is an introduction to a new collection of commentaries by the IATP Food and Community Fellows, originally published on www.foodandcommunityfellows.org. Follow the links below for each piece.

The Norman Rockwell painting “Freedom from Want” is a tribute to one of the four freedoms that President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared people ought to enjoy in his 1941 State of the Union speech. For Roosevelt, this freedom meant having “economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants—everywhere in the world." His words later influenced the inclusion of the right to an adequate standard of living—which includes a right to food—in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Reading these words 70 years later, we need to recognize that our country of over 300 million people has close to an equal number of images of what "freedom from want" really means. An extended family enjoying an enormous turkey dinner for Thanksgiving is just one idealized perspective from the dominant culture.

With these diverse perspectives come very different ideas for what government’s role should be in achieving a truly just and healthy food system. The past 70 years have brought different actors to our dinner table, most notably agribusiness and food marketers. Given these new dinner companions, how many spaces should be saved for Congress and local government officials?