Facing the food crisis

I think that it is worth trying to understand some of the reasons we are heading towards a food crisis.

The result of all of this deregulation meant that small producers lost access to the local market giving global market access to a few global producers. Three companies—Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland, and Bunge—control the vast majority of global grain trading, while Monsanto controls more than one-fifth of the global market in seeds. Consumers from Sioux City to Soweto are more and more dependent on fewer and fewer producers. By eliminating the breadth and diversity of the system, we’ve eliminated its ability to withstand shock or manipulation.

Perhaps the greatest evidence of the scale of deregulation of the world agricultural market is the liquidation of reliable grain reserves. Though we’ve impressively deregulated financial markets, the Federal Reserve and central bankers across the globe still maintain the ability to soften the spikes and plunges of our monetary system. Not so in food markets. For centuries grain reserves have been an essential component of functioning food systems. When prices are high grain reserves can be released on the market, bringing prices down. When prices are low, reserve systems buy up grain, bringing prices back up. In the last two decades, however, the U.S. and most other governments have let reserve systems wither, placing full faith in the free market to self-correct, and eliminating their last emergency response mechanism.

Read the full article on UrbanSprout. Also further reading.

I am no fan of biofuels (or bio–plastics), but I have been a little bit suspicious that all the fingers are being pointed at it as the main cause of the food crisis.

But, looking at this, this crisis is a much more complex and deadly beast. We have already seen the same thing playing out in South Africa in both our bread and diary industries.

Unlike money supply there is currently no way to normalise the fluctuations in food prices - so where to from here? What can we do to fend of this looming crisis?

Trevor Manuel has quite clearly indicated what he thinks is best - grow as much food as possible.

Manuel said food prices had broken out of a 150-year pricing band and shot up in relation to other living expenses. “I don’t think you are going to see a reduction in prices for some time, so whatever can be done to encourage people to plant on every piece of arable land would be a benefit to all,” he said.

I think a lot of people see that comment as a drive for subsistence farming. Yes, and no. In the face of rising food prices, producing food will be a profitable business, whether on a small or large scale. And that means that growing more food makes good business (and social) sense for South Africa.

On the other hand there is a strong case for backyard growing, as well as the conversion of water loving fields of grass to food producing gardens.

"Agriculture is becoming more and more suburban," says Roxanne Christensen, publisher of Spin-Farming LLC, a Philadelphia company started in 2005 that sells guides and holds seminars teaching a small-scale farming technique that involves selecting high-profit vegetables like kale, carrots and tomatoes to grow, and then quickly replacing crops to reap the most from plots smaller than an acre. "Land is very expensive in the country, so people are saying, 'why not just start growing in the backyard?' "

So maybe amongst all the turmoil there is a great opportunity. For some it may be a financial opportunity. For others (like me) it is an opportunity to have some fun (because growing stuff is cool) and contribute in a meaningful way to a number of issues facing us.

Will you be a victim or a hero of this crisis?

The engineering design process

Problem → Idea → Concept → Design → Prototype → Refine → Produce.

In some ways that is really as simple as it is.

Changing a problem into a solution is a wonderful and rewarding process. It is about creating more value in the world around us. I often ask myself, "How does doing this make the world a better place?" By being true to that I can create (and help you create) truly great products.

Creating a culture of reuse

Reuse is the forgotten R of the three R's.

We currently have a materials chain that goes something like this: harvest resource, manufacture, distribute, use, dispose.

Recycling adds an extra step where things are collected during disposal and reintroduced into the manufacturing stage as raw materials. There are two things about recycling that need to be noted:

1. Many materials are unsuitable to be recycled into the same thing. Plastics are probably the best example. They are either used to supplement the virgin (new) feedstock, or made into entirely different products (e.g. PET from drinking bottles is recycled into clothes, insulation, credit cards, etc.)
2. Recycling often involves breaking down the product into something as close as possible to the original feedstock. This means that all the energy that went into it is lost. Glass is a good example.

Recycling uses far less energy than creating a product from raw virgin materials and it is very important that it occurs, but why do we destroy things that are in perfectly usable condition?

The things that I have read about reuse have all been focussed on reusing items in the home and giving or selling them to other people who can use them (which are both important).

I want to see industry take responsibility and start collecting items for reuse, rather than recycling (wherever possible). We have seen this happening our whole lives: glass soda bottles. Every time you took a glass soda bottle back to the store and had your deposit paid back you were putting a bottle into the reuse chain.

The reuse chain works like this: instead of disposing of something it is taken back to the distributor (the store it was bought from). When the manufacturer makes deliveries they also collect the items for reuse. At the factory the items are inspected and cleaned. Any items that are unsuitable for reuse are recycled, and the rest is reused.

This means far less energy is expended on recycling and manufacturing new items which could have been reused. The easiest thing to imagine this working with is glass bottles and jars of any type, but why not expand this to everything? Why not start designing reuse into our products?

There would be huge savings for manufacturers, as they would not need to keep buying new materials. The only costs are the collection and logistics, which are already in place for the distribution of the product.

Packaging is a great example. If packaging can be made durable enough to be reused multiple times then consumers could just keep returning that packaging until it reached the end of its life cycle.

It does require a rethink of how we design, package and distribute things, but the benefits would be great for everyone – both manufacturers and consumers.

Engage in the discussion

"As meaningless as changing a CFL may be, the people that change the CFL bulbs get engaged in the discussion – and that's important." – Colin Bevan, aka No Impact Man

There seem to be a lot of people who challenge individual action. I have often found that those same people shift responsibility.

I am sure you have heard it before:

• "What difference can I make? The government should..."
• "For every plastic bag you recycle, someone else throws ten away."
• "How does it help if I ride my bicycle to work while someone else drives their 4x4?"

The biggest difference that our small actions make is that they change what goes on inside of us. Let's look at my personal experience with recycling in Cape Town.

I decided that it was time to start recycling as much of our waste as possible. I already had a compost heap which was taking care of any organic waste. Now it was time to deal with plastics, cardboard, paper and the likes. After dutifully sorting my plastic waste I went to the Morning Star dump expecting to be able to deposit my various recyclables. Well, things did not turn out quite as I would have hoped. There just did not seem to be the facilities that were advertised.

Being me I sent off an email to find out what was supposed to be happening. After some emails back–and–forth it seemed like things should be better. So off I went for my second attempt at recycling. This time things were organised and clear. Everything went into the proper recycling bins. I was pleased.

Third visit...unfortunately it was exactly like the first. No recycling bins. Confusion. So back to square one with another email sent off.

So what is the point of my story? My action (recycling) has got me engaged with a problem within my community. It has me engaged in a conversation around the problems and challenges that we face. Suddenly I care about the quality of the dump in my area. That one small action has changed me.

So I encourage you to take action. Just choose something you care about and start doing something. It may or may not change the world, but it will change you.

Degradable plastic

I recently bought some apples and spotted an intriguing little logo on the back of the plastic packaging. I look carefully at just about all plastic packaging these days in an attempt to identify what type of plastic it is (and therefore how recyclable).

What I found was a bit different to what I was expecting. Below a little logo was a website reference, www.degradable.net. So, off to the website to find out what this was all about.

It turns out that these smart guys have developed a low cost additive for polyethylene and polypropylene which causes the plastic to break down into a biodegradable form (the long plastic chains break down into shorter chains which can then be accessed by micro organisms which break them down to carbon dioxide and water. You can read the full details on their site). Astrapak are the South African suppliers of these plastics. There are also some alternatives to the d₂w process which make use of light sensitive, or starch additives.

The great benefit of this is that plastics which are disposed degrade much faster (they can be set to degrade after 60 days or up to 6 years later). One of the issues that this technique creates is that it impacts on recycling. The degradable plastic can be recycled, but in their words, "..there are many different and complex permutations of both input feedstock and output materials which need to be individually considered," i.e. it's complicated. It seems like it is easier to create recycled material that is degradable, while creating non–degradable recycled products is trickier.

This seems like a big disadvantage, but according to the EIA only 5% of plastics produced in America are recycled (I am sure that figure is much lower for South Africa). That means that up to 95% of the plastic produced ends up in land fills, water ways and generally strewn around the country side. At least using degradable plastics means that they will have a smaller, and shorter impact on our environment.

I am sure that a lot of people would rather argue the case for bioplastics. Personally I have always been sceptical of the benefits of bioplastics (and biofuels), mainly due to the pressure they place on food prices. More recently there have been some studies revealing that biofuels may damage the environment more ^[1][2] than emissions due to conventional fuels (bioplastics come from the same process, and therefore have a similar impact). So bioplastics may not currently have all the benefits that they claim.

Degradable plastic is a great product due to its reduced impact on the environment, but we do need to examine how we use and dispose of plastics. The reality is that plastic feedstock (oil) is a limited resource ^[3] and we need to use it wisely. Biofuels and bioplastics may not be the panacea that many people have hoped for. Only a small percentage of plastics are recycled. Plastics that are recycled are typically used to make other products rather than replace the recycled product, which means virgin feedstock is constantly required.

The real long terms solution is to reduce the amount of plastic we use, as well as reuse it as much as possible, and to continue recycling when a product reaches the end of its lifetime. So, in my mind, the question is this: how do we create plastic products with longer lifetimes? That is what really needs to change.

References:
[1] "Use of U.S. Croplands for Biofuels Increases Greenhouse Gases Through Emissions from Land Use Change" by Timothy Searchinger, et al.
[2] More on the negative impacts of biofuels.
[3] According to Waste Watch,

"It is estimated that 4% of the world's annual oil production is used as a feedstock for plastics production and an additional 3-4% during manufacture."