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Two weeks ago I sat in a darkened conference room listening to speakers talking about the global food system… I am doing it all again today. However, the similarity stops at the darkened room. Two weeks ago an esteemed crowd gathered in a ballroom in New York – suits as far as the eye could see. Today, we are gathered in a University Hall in Galway, Ireland – again an esteemed crowd but this time the uniform is t-shirts with ironic slogans and jeans. Two vastly different crowds, two vastly different events – same topic: food systems.
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Last week the Wall Street Journal hosted the Global Food Forum in New York. Although called 'global' it was a forum with a particular US focus and, as would be expected, food and politics crossed paths more than once, particularly on the gnarly issues of trade with China and immigration.
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The Wall Street Journal’s Global Food Forum is in its 4th year and the participant and speaker list appears to be a veritable who’s who of the food world. The US food world that is. The audience comprised lobbyists, representatives of industry associations, regulators, and food executives.
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Attending a conference session (at Seeds&Chips, Milan) on why oceans offer a reprieve for humanity was always going to challenge my way of thinking – one way or another. The panel included rock stars of the ocean conservation movement: the Chief Executive of Oceana...
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If we assume that a standard has been set for a food product or ingredient, how do we (as consumers) know that the food product matches that standard? This is not about a paper trail, with food and food science, there is a need for universal measures that describe how something should appear, how it should react, what it should contain etc.
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If the science community were to come up with a name for the ‘clean label’ movement, it is likely that it would have been a clunky acronym or long-winded scientific-jargon encased beast. But, the thing about the ‘clean label’ movement is that it is consumer-led; and the simplicity of the name reflects both that and the intention of the movement.
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Most of us don’t spend a lot of time thinking about soil – we take it for granted, it’s what the lawn grows in, it’s what the kids walk into the house, it’s what we slip over in, it’s the stuff that farms have a lot of, people plant things in it, bugs live in it. There seems to be enough of it. Until there isn’t. Rising urban sprawl, soil erosion, contamination and pollution all impact the amount of available good soil. Along with climate, soil composition often determines what can be grown and where.
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A memo from Dr Helen Darling, Food Strategist, Orchardist, Foodie and Executive Director of FoodTruths.org. "Earth’s scarce resources are being used to produce food that often does not survive the supply chain (38% of fruit and vegetables in North America doesn’t reach the consumer) or that is too contaminated to be consumed and is discarded for safety reasons. In 2018, for example, one meat recall in the US involved 6.5 million pounds of...
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