Iceland Volcano Goes Boom

I heard an interesting report today on NPR about some of the effects of the volcano that is spewing ash in Iceland. A highly publicized byproduct is that air traffic has dramatically been slowed due to safety concerns. As a result, fresh food isn't making it to Britain and they don't have enough local production to keep up with demand. Add this to the list of "Reasons Why Local Food Production Is Good."

Interestingly this reminded me of a conversation I had few years ago about how our food supply chain relies heavily on an uninterrupted transportation network. If things go belly up--ie earthquake, major storm, etc--all of the fresh food in a typical supermarket will be gone in a few days. No more broccoli and asparagus from Chile. The whole conversation came up not in terms of missing out on delicious culinary delights, rather on how dangerous and unstable that can be for a society. How courteous and community-minded would you be if there wasn't food to put on the table?

One Dollar Diet Project

As I signed into my Yahoo mail account a link caught my eye: Couple Eats on $1 Per Day for a Month. Sounded interesting, and it was. Billions of people around the world live on $1 per day, so they wanted to see if it was possible to eat in America on that budget. Clearly this is difficult here simply because our society's food is more expensive, but they were able to do it. Along the way they learned a few things, garnered some media attention, and ate a lot of plain oatmeal. If you're interested, here's their blog.

Thanksgiving Food

I didn't want to gross you out before this year's big meal, but I found this post over at Wired Science about the food we eat to be fascinating. First, check this chart out:


The post gives a variety of examples about how the food we eat today is different than the food our grandparents ate. As you can see on the chart, turkeys are significantly bigger. One reason? Artificial insemination. Turkeys over 30 pounds are physically unable to mate which results in a virtual ceiling for turkey size. Once the biggest turkeys could artificially inseminate all the hens, their offspring sprouted (pun intended).

The article goes on to talk about how other foods have changed through the years. It's worth a read.

Time Article Numero Dos

Last night (as I sweated my ass off in 90+ degree temps, where's my aluminum?!?!) I mentioned a second article in the Time magazine that caught my eye. This one, entitled "Pain Amid Plenty" is about a topic that gets little attention, but that I find strangely fascinating: Food aid to Africa.

It is something that gets little attention when people talk about foreign policy. A couple weeks ago I asked a good friend who is very bright what she thought about the subject. After a long pause she confessed, "I dunno, I haven't really thought about it much."

The article says that the world has spent billions of dollars in food aid to Africans which has not necessarily been money well spent. Instead of teaching people how to grow their own food, we've simply provided it for free. Not only has that created dependent societies, it has also undermined the existing farmers: they have gone out of business because it is impossible to compete in a market flooded with free food. Not only that, but populations have continued to grow in areas that cannot sustain so many people.

So what to do? It appears one option, and perhaps the best, is to shift resources to agricultural training so that Africans can sustain themselves. I'm all for it. Western nations won't forever be available to ship food to these nations, so let's help them achieve self-sustainability sooner rather than later.

At only a few hundred words it's a quick read, go check it out.