India's Food Security

On March 16, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee will present a new bill on food security. The bill will promise 75 percent of rural population and 50 percent of urban households the right to 7 kg of foodgrains a person every month, at 3 rupees per kg for rice, 2 rupees per kg for wheat and 1 rupee per kg for coarse grains to the below poverty line category of people. This bill will also insure food to children under age 14, pregnant women and lactating mothers and certain marginalized people.
As great as this sounds, from an agricultural standpoint, the government is going to start needing a lot more foodgrain. This will add increased stress on the local farmers. It is said that the government will have to increase foodgrain procurement efficiency from 55 to 60 tons.
Will this cause insecurity among farmers? Private land will be harder to procure.

Due to this added need and large population, the Indian government has been working on new technology and thus are looking to biotech crops. "Biotech cotton in developing countries such as China, India, Pakistan, Myanmar, Bolivia, Burkina Faso and South Africa have already made a significant contribution to the income of millions of small resource-poor farmers in 2011; this can be enhanced significantly in the remaining four years of the second decade of commercialisation, 2012 to 2015, principally with biotech cotton, maize and rice," said Dr Navarro, manager of Global Knowledge Centre on Crop Biotechnology. 
Although this might fix a hunger problem, will GMO's cause other problems? This is a risk India's government is willing to take, but are they considering the long term effects it will have? 


-MAU

Wait...you want me to pay $8 bucks for milk??

I went to the grocery store recently, and noticed the ridiculously priced “organic milk”, while I was there. I couldn’t believe it, almost $8 bucks for milk!

Who can afford to buy organic milk? Is this a form of food injustice? In my opinion, it most definitely is. Think about it, milk is only good for about 2 weeks, and organic milk must expire much sooner due to its minimal chemical additives. Therefore, in order to eat organic, a family should be able to shell out about $30 bucks a month…for milk!

Thus, a family who wants to only eat, and purchase “organic”, would have to be a high income earner. Is this just? Should the “best” quality food be only available to high socio-economic status families?

 I feel that food is related to health and well being, so if we are depriving a group of people from the availability of healthy foods, we are in turn depriving them of a healthy lifestyle and well being. This to me is the essence of the cycle of dehumanization and food injustice.

 ~Meron A.

Child Health-Related Quality of Life and Household Food Security

http://archpedi.ama-assn.org/cgi/reprint/159/1/51

Yet another very interesting article; where researchers tested the effects of food security on the physical and psychological quality of health of children. The study concluded that there was indeed a correlation between food security and a child’s overall quality of health. Researchers found that children, who lived in food insecure households, had an overall poorer quality of psychological and physical health.

This makes complete sense to me, because I would expect that a child who grows up in an environment of high stress levels, the child will observe and take on the family stress themselves; bringing on poor mental health, due to worrying, and feeling fearful; in addition to a poor physical health due to not enough adequate nutrition food sources.

Once again, this is another article that shows the effects of food and environment on health and overall well-being. It should now be more apparent that there is a significant correlation between ones environment, food availability/quality, and their health/well-being. Knowing this, I find it hard to understand why there is not more action towards preventing these easily preventable health problems amongst neighborhoods with a high prevalence of food injustice and security.

~Meron A.

Iron Deficiency Associated with Higher Blood Lead in Children Living in Contaminated Environments

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1242086/pdf/ehp0109-001079.pdf

This was a very interesting article on a study done in 2001. In this article researchers wanted to test their hypothesis that a deficiency in iron would result in a higher blood lead count, in children who live in contaminated environments; more so than children who were not living in environments that were contaminated.

This article stood out to me because I was able to make the connection between health, environment, and diet. This study embodied all of these important aspects that environmental justice advocates care so much about.

For example, if one is living in a contaminated environment, this will in turn make this individual more prone to health problems. Also, the contamination in the environment could exacerbate their genetic predisposition to a certain illness. In addition, if one lives in a contaminated environment, it is safe to say that their food is contaminated as well. Thus, this is an example of multiple pathways of contamination.

~Meron A.

Adverse Health Effects of Plastics

In regard to our previous blog post, "Packaging Options: The Negative Effects of Plastic", this website offers a helpful chart of plastics to avoid, where to find them, and how they may affect you!

http://www.ecologycenter.org/factsheets/plastichealtheffects.html

-Dana

Food = Environmental hazards

What are food miles ? They are the miles your food travel from start to finish, from prosuction to consumption, from field to plate. So many people passively buy food from their grocery store without much consideration from where it has come from. Have you ever considered that when you buy your weekly bunch of bananas they have been shipped from Guatemala ? Globalization has caused an increase to food miles. Connor Steve, author of Buy Local Produce and Save the World said, ”The environmental cost of food transport is given as US 3.8 billion dollars a year, and it is claimed that it in-creased by 12% in the period between 1992 and 2002.” He also said, “If all of the U.K. food came from within 20 km of where we live, we could save £2.1 billion a year in environmental and congestion costs.”

Two word can be said about food and its massive transportation industry : Greenhouse gases. Our desire for whatever food we want all year long is causing harm to our environment. Eating locally would cause these CO2 emissions to decrease.

The NYTimes said, “Food is traveling because transport has become so cheap in a world of globalization,” said Frederic Hauge, head of Norway’s environmental group Bellona. “If it was just a matter of processing fish cheaper in China, I’d be happy with it traveling there. The problem is pollution.” Previously, there have been no taxes on the transportation of food, but countries specifically in the European Union are starting to force the cost of pollution on countries taxing transportation.

Transportation is not the only issue causing an increase to fossil fuel emissions. Production is also another problem. Studies show that in some cases, the transportation of goods has a lower carbon footprint then those produced locally.

Another problem is also due to the increase of humans eating meat. The FAO records that farm animals account for between 20% and 30% of global greenhouse gas emissions. This number accounts for the deforestation for grazing lands.

So how do we improve this problem ? Christopher Weber and H. Scott Matthews of Carnegie Mellon University said that adopting a vegetarian diet would reduce emissions more than if we became localivores. But this debate on what should this populated earth eat continues still. Nevertheless, we should consider our food miles and how our demand for certain foods affect the environment.

-MAU

Packaging Options: The Negatives Effects of Plastic

More and more in this society we have become more dependent on packaging for everything; specifically plastic packaging. Products that used to be packaged in glass containers or tin cans now come in plastic bottles or jars, as do products that used to come in paper or cardboard containers. As a result of the recent packaging habits, we use more plastic container each day then we did ever before. Roughly 300 million tons will be produced worldwide next year (Plastic Not so Fantastic). The amount of plastic manufactured in the first ten years of this century will approach the total produced in the entire last century.While it is a quick and easy and can be used virtually anywhere, plastic is not always that option. Besides being so versatile, plastic is leaving behind a growing trail of waste. Plastic production outstrips plastic recycling by six to one (Negative Effects of Packaging).

Plastic Recycling and Waste

Pacific Ocean Trash Vortex

If we step back now to look at the recycling process of plastics and where they usually end up, the answer usually is the garbage. Plastic is not an easy material to recycle. Producing plastic as well as recycling it deals with many nasty chemicals that are not good for human health. Plastic, produced from natural gas, is chemically altered by plasticizers during production to increase resilience. Unfortunately these plasticizers tend to vaporize during the process presenting a health risk. This is not the only risk, "diethylhexyl phthalate is cancer inducing, while other additives interfere with the human endocrine system and suppress the immune system, also leading to cancer and causing birth defects, according to planetthoughts.org, an environmental watchdog website. Toxic emissions into both the air and water are common at plastic production plants"(Negative Effects of Packaging). After production, plastics have a very short user life. Only a small portion of plastic is 'recycled' and often this is sold to other countries with more lenient protocols. Often un-recycled plastic ends up in floating trash islands in the ocean. While it is semi well known, the magnitude of the Pacific Trash Vortex still surprises people (two times larger then the size of Texas). The amount of toxic chemical that are leaking into the ocean from this large garbage pile has not even been fully understood. The local wildlife has been greatly affected. Bird carcases are found filled with plastic and garbage that the animal tried to eat as food. A quick image search on Google.com may show a picture of a turtle eating a plastic bag or other animals being affected by the horrible amount of trash humans (especially Americans) produce.

'Garbage Island' floating on the Pacific Ocean

Comparing the recycling of plastic with glass is an interesting view. While 36% plastic is recycled compared to 22% of glass containers, plastic takes up 1/4 of garbage being added to landfills by volume (Glass V.s Plastic Containers)! This is much larger then it seems as plastic is usually thin and crush-able. Glass garbage only makes up 2% by volume of all garbage going to landfills (and glass is very dense and usually thick). For both products, making recycled products uses less energy then when starting with virgin material, but we (human populations) can't seem to get the plastic in the recycling bin.

Making recycled glass containers actually uses 35% less energy then making the original product. Producers do have to worry about impurities though. While plastic containers are primarily used for their low density and durability, plastic is created from oil which is non-renewable. Sadly plastic can't be recycled forever; eventually it will result in a brittle product if it is recycled too many times. Glass has the benefit of being able to be recycled over and over without losing quality in the finished product (Plastic Not so Fantastic).

Chemical Migration from Plastic to Humans and the Environment

According to the International Plastics Task Force, harmful chemicals -- such as acetaldehyde -- can  migrate from plastic packaging to the contents of the package (or to soil and water in the landfills they sit in). There are many plastics that have such harmful chemicals including polystyrene, PVC and polyethylene.

Chemicals that are added to plastics to increase durability and to produce the flexible qualities are absorbed by human bodies. These non-naturally occurring chemicals have been found to alter hormones and produce adverse human health effects. Plastic buried deep in landfills can leach harmful chemicals that spread into groundwater coming around to effect hose living close by. An example, bisphenol A (BPA), found in polycarbonate bottles and the linings of food and beverage cans, can leach into food and drinks. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that 93 percent of people had detectable levels of BPA in their urine (Plastic Not so Fantastic). The report noted that the high exposure of premature infants in neonatal intensive care units to both BPA and phthalates is of “great concern.” BPA is known to create reproductive problems and highest exposures can lead to heart disease and diabetes.

Problems that plastic causes extend beyond humans. Over one-third of all plastic is disposable plastic that will end up littering the environment. Considering the other species inhabiting our planet, the plastic debris from littering and land fills are laced with chemicals that are often ingested by land and marine animals. Not only can this injure and poison wildlife, but this contamination also comes directly back to humans who caused the problem in the beginning. "More than 180 species of animals have been documented to ingest plastic debris, including birds, fish, turtles and marine mammals, according to the report...For example, laboratory studies have shown that phthalates and BPA affect reproduction in all studied animal groups and impair development in crustaceans and amphibians." (Plastic Not so Fantastic).

Just think for a bit the next time you are grocery shopping, buying a plastic water bottle, or heating something plastic up in the microwave. Chemical that are leeching into your food/liquids and then once you dispose of them, into the environment to effect you again through the circle of life.

Be Environmentally Aware. Think Recycling. Pick Glass.

- Marshelle