CR and More Perfect Union Deliver Nearly 50,000 Petition Signatures to USDA to Remove Lunchables From National School Lunch Program

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WASHINGTON, D.C. – Consumer Reports and More Perfect Union delivered nearly 50,000 petition signatures to the Department of Agriculture today calling on the agency to remove Lunchables food kits from the National School Food Lunch Program. The groups are urging USDA to strengthen its eligibility standards for the program after tests by CR found that Lunchables and similar lunch kits contained relatively high levels of sodium, lead and cadmium.

“Millions of kids depend on the school lunch program every day and deserve healthier options than highly processed foods like Lunchables,” said Brian Ronholm, director of food policy at Consumer Reports. “Lunchables and similar lunch kits contain concerning levels of sodium and harmful chemicals and shouldn’t be allowed on the menu at schools. The USDA should strengthen its eligibility standards for the National School Lunch Program so that kids in schools get better choices that don’t put their health at risk.”

Earlier this year, CR issued a report comparing the nutritional profiles of two Lunchables kits served in schools and found they have even higher levels of sodium than the kits consumers can buy in the store. CR also tested 12 store-bought versions of Lunchables and similar kits and found several contained relatively high levels of lead and cadmium. All but one tested positive for phthalates, chemicals found in plastic that have been linked to reproductive problems, diabetes, and certain cancers.

The USDA currently allows two Lunchable kits – Turkey & Cheddar Cracker Stackers and Extra Cheesy Pizza – to be served to nearly 30 million children through the National School Lunch Program. To meet the program’s requirements, Kraft Heinz added more whole grains to the crackers and more protein to the Lunchables kits designed for schools compared to store-bought versions.

Transforming Food and Agriculture to Achieve the SDGs – 20 Interconnected Actions to Guide Decision-Makers

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New FAO tool lists concrete steps ways to speed up implementation of the Sustainable Development Agenda

Published: June 7, 2018

To help policy makers and other development actors accelerate progress towards global promises to end poverty and hunger, FAO has released a set of 20 inter-connected actions designed to show the impact sustainable agriculture can have on tackling the world’s greatest challenges.

Transforming food and agriculture to achieve the SDGs offers a practical guide for countries on how to strengthen food security, generate decent employment, spur rural development and economic growth, conserve natural resources and respond to climate change – all part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

“For the first time, FAO has put together a set of interconnected tools that can help fix our broken food systems, and show that from the roots of sustainable food and agriculture come the fruits of transformation,” Maria Helena Semedo, FAO Deputy Director-General, Natural Resources, said at an event during FAO’s annual governing Council meeting.

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The Slow Food View on FAO’s State of Food and Agriculture Report 2016

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Published on: October 17, 2016

The climate is changing; food and agriculture must too. This was the main message UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) chose to transmit as they honored the global World Food Day 2016 at the FAO Headquarters in Rome.

World Food Day, celebrated annually on October 16th, the day that FAO was founded in 1945, was initiated to increase public awareness of issues relating to world hunger, underline the importance of helping rural communities and create an international solidarity network in the war against hunger and poverty. On this World Food Day, FAO called attention to the profound and intrinsic relationship between the food industry and climate change, taking the Paris Agreement as a signal that:

“the international community is now committed to making transformative and sustainable changes in the face of an unprecedented challenge: ending hunger and poverty while addressing the impacts of climate change.”

In acknowledging this challenge, and the necessity for immediate and concrete action to limit the impact of climate change on food security in already food-insecure regions, it is essential that the discussion focuses on what strategies will bring about the most positive impacts.

Farmers, fishers and pastoralists are hit hard by rising temperatures and the increasing frequency of weather-related disasters. By 2030, the negative impacts of climate change will put an increasing squeeze on food production as the essential nutritional values of crops, such as of zinc, iron and protein, will diminish. Furthermore, as emphasized by FAO, the impacts of climate change are more strongly observed in rural communities, where there is a higher dependency on agriculture both as a source of income and for sustenance. The negative effects of the West’s dependence on imported foods are clear for all to see, the transport costs of which contribute significantly to carbon emissions. It is imperative that this dependence is reduced, and indeed, that nutritionally self-sustaining communities remain so.

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Pulses: Nutritious Seeds for a Sustainable Future

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The aim of raising global awareness on the multitude of benefits of pulses was integral to the International Year of Pulses. This coffee table book is part guide and part cookbook— informative without being technical. The book begins by giving an overview of pulses, and explains why they are an important food for the future. It also has more than 30 recipes prepared by some of the most prestigious chefs in the world and is peppered with infographics.

Part I gives an overview of pulses and gives a brief guide to the main varieties in the world.

Part II explains step-by-step how to cook them, what to keep in mind and what condiments and instruments to use.

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How Does Agriculture Change Our Climate?

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Agriculture, deforestation and other land use account for roughly 20 percent of all GHG emissions

Since the start of the Green Revolution, the productivity of the global agricultural system has more than doubled, improving food security for a growing population and meeting dietary demands of an increasingly wealthy world. This astounding productivity has also imposed environmental costs. While global agriculture faces a number of challenges, the most surprising challenge to food security may come from agriculture’s impact on our climate.

Right now, the world’s agricultural sector, which in this report refers to management and land clearing related to agriculture, accounts for about one fifth of total greenhouse gases. That’s more than all of the world’s cars, planes, and trains combined. Emissions from agriculture and deforestation are three times greater than emissions from the global building sector, and equal to all industrial emissions. In fact, energy production is the only sector that has a higher share of emissions (37 percent).

In this report, we consider emissions from just part of the global food system: deforestation and agricultural management. The share of emissions from transportation of products in the global food supply chain, packaging, and food waste, for example, are important but not included here. When these activities are also considered, the global food system accounts for roughly 30 percent of global emissions.

Despite agriculture’s central role in changing the global climate, there are promising opportunities for mitigating emissions and reducing the demand for high-emissions food in the first place. Developing a global food system that both achieves food security and reduces agriculture’s environmental impact is one of the foremost challenges of our time.

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Fixing Food: Fresh Solutions from Five U.S. Cities (2016)

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The nation’s cities are at the frontlines of a food system that sickens and impoverishes millions of Americans every year. Local communities where people live, shop, work, and receive healthcare bear the brunt of this system’s unhealthy, unjust outcomes, which disproportionately affect communities of color and low-income Americans.

In response, many local governments and community leaders are launching innovative efforts to make healthy food more available and affordable. Fixing Food presents case studies of programs from five U.S. cities that are helping residents grow and sell healthy food, training the next generation of farmers, and bringing healthy food to places where people gather.

The case studies

We reviewed hundreds of initiatives taking place in hundreds of U.S. cities, ultimately choosing five local efforts that show how healthy food access problems can be addressed at multiple points in the food system—by facilitating local production, creating new distribution channels, or making it easier for consumers to overcome time and transportation hurdles.

The five cities chosen—Oakland, Memphis, Louisville, Baltimore, and Minneapolis—all have populations between 400,000 and 700,000, and in all of them, the percentage of residents living below the federal poverty line is higher than the national average.

We hope these case studies may provide models that other local communities can learn from and adapt to their own unique challenges and needs. But they also demonstrate the need for comprehensive national food policy reform.

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Healthy Soils are the Basis for Healthy Food Production

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[ Italiano ]

Healthy soils are the basis for healthy food production. The most widely recognized function of soil is its support for food production. It is the foundation for agriculture and the medium in which nearly all food-producing plants grow. In fact, it is estimated that 95% of our food is directly or indirectly produced on our soils. Healthy soils supply the essential nutrients, water, oxygen and root support that our food-producing plants need to grow and flourish. Soils also serve as a buffer to protect delicate plant roots from drastic fluctuations in temperature.

What is a Healthy Soil?

Soil health has been defined as the capacity of soil to function as a living system. Healthy soils maintain a diverse community of soil organisms that help to control plant disease, insect and weed pests, form beneficial symbiotic associations with plant roots, recycle essential plant nutrients, improve soil structure with positive effects for soil water and nutrient holding capacity, and ultimately improve crop production. A healthy soil also contributes to mitigating climate change by maintaining or increasing its carbon content.

Download the Report from FAO

Food and Climate Change: The Forgotten Link

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[ English | Español | Français | Ελληνική ]

Food is a key driver of climate change. How our food gets produced and how it ends up on our tables accounts for around half of all human-generated greenhouse gas emissions. Chemical fertilizers, heavy machinery and other petroleum-dependant farm technologies contribute significantly. The impact of the food industry as a whole is even greater: destroying forests and savannahs to produce animal feed and generating climate-damaging waste through excess packaging, processing, refrigeration and the transport of food over long distances, despite leaving millions of people hungry.

A new food system could be a key driver of solutions to climate change. People around the world are involved in struggles to defend or create ways of growing and sharing food that are healthier for their communities and for the planet. If measures are taken to restructure agriculture and the larger food system around food sovereignty, small scale farming, agro-ecology and local markets, we could cut global emissions in half within a few decades. We don’t need carbon markets or techno-fixes. We need the right policies and programmes to dump the current industrial food system and create a sustainable, equitable and truly productive one instead.  

Food and climate: piecing the puzzle together

Most studies put the contribution of agricultural emissions – the emissions produced on the farm – at somewhere between 11 and 15% of all global emissions.[1] What often goes unsaid, however, is that most of these emissions are generated by industrial farming practices that rely on chemical (nitrogen) fertilizers, heavy machinery run on petrol, and highly concentrated industrial livestock operations that pump out methane waste.

The figures for agriculture’s contribution also often do not account for its role in land use changes and deforestation, which are responsible for nearly a fifth of global GHG emissions.[2] Worldwide, agriculture is pushing into savannas, wetlands, cerrados and forests, plowing under huge amounts of land. The expansion of the agricultural frontier is the dominant contributor to deforestation, accounting for between 70-90% of global deforestation.[3] This means that some 15-18% of global GHG emissions are produced by land-use change and deforestation caused by agriculture. And here too, the global food system and its industrial model of agriculture are the chief culprits. The main driver of this deforestation is the expansion of industrial plantations for the production of commodities such as soy, sugarcane, oilpalm, maize and rapeseed.

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Agroecology and the Right to Food

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[ English | Español | Français | 中国 | Русский ]

Summary

The reinvestment in agriculture, triggered by the 2008 food price crisis, is essential to the concrete realization of the right to food. However, in a context of ecological, food and energy crises, the most pressing issue regarding reinvestment is not how much, but how. This report explores how States can and must achieve a reorientation of their agricultural systems towards modes of production that are highly productive, highly sustainable and that contribute to the progressive realization of the human right to adequate food.

Photo credit: Flickr / Grassroots International

Drawing on an extensive review of the scientific literature published in the last five years, the Special Rapporteur identifies agroecology as a mode of agricultural development which not only shows strong conceptual connections with the right to food, but has proven results for fast progress in the concretization of this human right for many vulnerable groups in various countries and environments. Moreover, agroecology delivers advantages that are complementary to better known conventional approaches such as breeding high-yielding varieties. And it strongly contributes to the broader economic development. The report argues that the scaling up of these experiences is the main challenge today. Appropriate public policies can create an enabling environment for such sustainable modes of production. These policies include prioritizing the procurement of public goods in public spending rather than solely providing input subsidies; investing in knowledge by reinvesting in agricultural research and extension services; investing in forms of social organization that encourage partnerships, including farmer field schools and farmers’ movements innovation networks; investing in agricultural research and extension systems; empowering women; and creating a macro-economic enabling environment, including connecting sustainable farms to fair markets.

Download the Report from the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food

Food and Climate: Connecting the Dots, Choosing the Way Forward

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Food & Climate: Connecting the Dots, Choosing the Way Forward, outlines the climate requirements for successful food production, and examines two competing food production methods – industrial and organic – to reveal how they contribute to climate change, how resilient they are in the face of escalating climate shocks, and how organic and related agricultural systems can actually contribute to solving the climate crisis.

In this report, Center for Food Safety examines how industrial agriculture – the dominant method of food production in the U.S. – externalizes many social and environmental costs while relying heavily on fossil fuels. Organic farming, by comparison, requires half as much energy, contributes far fewer greenhouse gasses, and, perhaps most surprisingly, is more resilient in the face of climate disruption.

Food & Climate: Connecting the Dots, Choosing the Way Forward also recommends that government agricultural policies and regulations be designed to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and toxic chemicals and calls on the public to pressure elected officials to act now to slow down climate change. The report rallies individuals to work toward a stable climate and an abundant food supply three times a day by choosing climate-friendly “cool foods.”

Download the Report from the Center for Food Safety