Videos of Global Food Forum

Videos from the event have been posted here:

http://www.earth.columbia.edu/flashvideos/Food_09-08/

5:45 – 6:00 PM CLOSING REMARKS AND NEXT STEPS

Professor Jeffrey D. Sachs, Director, The Earth Institute at Columbia University, wrapped up the meeting with some closing remarks. Some points that he addressed/raised:

The idea that there is a profit incentive doesn't mean you can't manage these issues. There are good reasons we have a market economy. We will need incentives, taxations and regulations. Markets don't solve problems of poorest people, because they don't have a market.

There are many tools to combine a market economy with health and nutrition improvements and environmental sustainability. Any effective market economy combines public action and the private sector. We have choices and that's what we should be talking about.

It's important that we understand the tools needed. Traditional knowledge cannot feed 6.7 billion people. Professor Sachs stresses the importance of technology. Modern technology and new science. Organic farmers would not be where they are without previous technologies. We need science, technology and major investments. Markets won't solve problems. Markets and capitalism could care less. The inflection point on climate change has already been reached. We need to make investments to address these problems. If there is a problem with capitalism, it's American-style capitalism.

What can be done for the "grown-ups" in the world?

The current financial crisis doesn't matter. We are not generous because we are not thinking. There are no enemies, only problems to be solved.

• Big undernutrition problems are in Africa and South Asia. With technologies already developed, we can double or triple Africa's food production. The problem is that inputs needed (seeds and fertilizer) are beyond the means of people with no money. Africa can learn a lesson from Asian Green Revolution. Cannot work without public financing. Number one challenge is to bring the Green Revolution to Africa.

1. Still fighting the battle to get funding for African Green Revolution. Urges us all to become advocate for Green Revolution and encourage public funding.
   
2. Invites us to do things and not just talk about them. Encourages partnership with Millennium Villages Project. Crop yields have doubled or tripled without land reform or tenure, but only fertilizer and seed inputs.

• Talked about the "Willet Transition" to healthier diet. A lot of people are consuming inexpensive calories at the expense of health. No one benefits from a global obesity epidemic. Again, he urges us to work on these at two levels, at policy level and with partnerships. Need a task force on the Willet Transition. How can the Millennium Villages be local food producers? What we learn in the Millennium Villages can be brought back to the U.S. Need to bring nutritionist and agronomist together in a serious way.
  
• Need a country-scale work effort, thinking in particular of Hispaniola. There is no fertilizer available in Haiti. We have money available to move from food-aid to increasing production. On other side of Island, in Dominican Republic, there is a full-fledge obesity epidemic underway.
  

Research questions.

• Can we transition to more organic farming method in different farming contextes like Africa?
• Is what we are seeing in obesity epidemics related to marketing, lack of regulations or choices?
  
• The potential role of agro-biotechnology, in particular with drought-resistant seeds. Consider GMO debate in specific context. Number one challenge in poorest part of world is water. Water is expensive. When rains fail, crops fail.
  

Technology is not simply a market phenomena. It's always been an interplay of public and private sector action. It's never markets alone. It's usually never governments alone. Need choices and healthy debate.

He challenges us to reconvene on these issues in the Spring.

4:15 – 5:45 PM PANEL IV: Advanced Technologies, Food Safety and the Role of Local and Organic Food Production

Agro-biotechnology and other advanced technologies, and local and organic production play important roles in the global food system however each approach has distinct financial costs and benefits for both developed and developing countries. Organic systems raise particular concerns regarding scalability, relationship to rising food prices, and agricultural practices and yields whereas specific industrialization practices and technology, is a cause for concern amongst the world’s consumers not only for nutritional quality of foods but also food safety.

Moderator:
Sam Fromartz, author of Organic, Inc.

Panelists:
Martin Clough, Syngenta
Drew Goodman, Earthbound Farms
Marion Nestle, New York University
Gary Toenniessen, Rockefeller Foundation
Josh Viertel, Yale University

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Sam Fromartz kicked things off by saying the last panel got it all wrong! He said people often view organic as going backwards, but it can actually be quite innovative. He then introduced the other panelists within this context.

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Martin Clough is here to talk about advanced technology spectrum.

There are a whole range of technologies to meet issues and problems discussed today. Challenge is to integrate them and make them available.

Technology can have an impact. What roles can advanced technologies have?

• Smart breeding of seeds.
  
• Genetic markers enable to not just breed for yield, but can bring together yield properties and genes responsible for aroma and nutritional qualities.
  
• Can create drought-resistant plants.
  
• Can breed plants with higher yields of life.
  
• Can introduce to control pests and diseases and increase storage life.
  
• Can produce enzymes in plants that increase digestibility.

Huge environmental capabilities with these tools. All it requires is funding, from public and private. And it needs political will and policies and public perception.

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Drew Goodman is now introducing us to the benefits of Earthbound Farm’s large scale organic farming:

• Keeps toxic and persistent chemicals out of the air, water, land, and food supply
• Safer for farm workers as well as neighboring homes, schools, and businesses
• Promotes healthy, balanced eco-systems, and biodiversity
• Conserves water because organic soils hold water more efficiently, lessening run-off and erosion
• Less danger to non-target species

With a mission to make healthy, organic food available to as many people as possible, Earthbound Farm’s 150 farmers are proving the viability of large-scale organic farming.

• 150 growers
• 40,000 crop acres on farms from 5 to 680 acres
• Distribution in 50 states + Canada
• Shipping 675,000 cartons per week

Feels that Earthbound is "Scale Neutral:" The principles of organic farming improve soil quality and protect the environment, whether practiced in a small or large operation.

Global warming benefit: If all 434 million acres of cropland in the US were managed organically, 1.6 billion tons of CO2 would be sequestered per year, mitigating close to one quarter of the country’s total fossil fuel emissions.

Earthbound Farm’s organic farming on 40,000 acres offers significant benefits and indicates what could be achieved.

Annually, Earthbound Farm’s farming:

• Avoids the use of 13 million pounds of conventional agricultural chemicals
• Conserves 2 million gallons of petroleum by avoiding the use of petroleum-based pesticides and fertilizers

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Marion Nestle admits she is uncomfortable being on this panel. She sees these issues as social issues, not technology.

She is talking about how capitalism effects food security and nutrition. Unless we put checks and balances into systems, these solutions are band-aids.

Food and nutrition can be the entry-way into difficult social problems.

Obesity and food safety are social problems that demand social solutions.

Capitalism has no incentives for social solutions. It has every incentive to produce industrial foods, and genetically-modified foods.

Social responsibility is not the same as social development, as long as profit is part of the equation.

We need checks and balances and constraints. Regulation is good for business. If we had level playing field, we could do things a lot better.

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Gary Toenniessen agrees with Marion that the root cause of malnutrition is poverty. But poverty is rooted in lack of production. Gary calls himself the "second" Green Revolution guy, focused on rain-fed agriculture. Showed slide that showed relationship between public and private sector:


Then he presented some biotechnology opportunities:

• Tissue culture ( e. g. pest & disease free bananas) is having significant impact.
  
• Marker Aided Selection-- one of the difficulties is marking for different traits simultaneously. In East India (Jharkhand & Bihar) they introduced drought tolerant rice –with high yields with adequate rainfall and resilient to drought when rains fail.
• Genetic Engineering (GMOs ). Beta-carotene-enriched Golden Rice combats vitamin A deficiency: two added genes.
  

He finished with this light-hearted comic that demonstrates some of the threats:

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Josh Viertel is speaking from the perspective of the Yale Sustainable Food project and also as a soon to be president of Slow Food USA.

He stresses the importance of understanding the relationship between land and food by demonstration within the Yale Sustainable Food project.

One way they educate is in dining halls. He is talking, tongue-in-cheek, about the integrated prevalence of Coca-Cola in the Yale dining hall.

Then he stressed the importance of finding out what's needed before you jump in to help. This makes private-public partnerships hard. Private industry is driven by profit.

Can malnutrition challenges be strategic business opportunities? Should everyone be trying to become part of the solution?

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PANEL DISCUSSION:

Martin Clough sees Syngenta partnerships with small farmers as a win-win situation, profitable for both Syngenta and farmers.

Gary Toenniessen: what worked in Asia with the Green Revolution, won't necessarily work in Africa. The strategy in Africa is now to concentrate on breeding at local levels to adapt to their particular agro-ecosystem. Kenya along has eight different agro-ecosystems. A lot of the research needs to be done in the public sector. If there is money to be made from the seeds, we should encourage the profit to be made by local companies.

Marion Nestle: health messages on food are not necessarily for the benefit of consumer, but can be misleading marketing messages to sell the food. In the case of beta-carotene in rice, there are fat requirements in diet needed to process it into vitamin A.

Gary Toenniessen: ultimate objective is have balanced diet. Fortification and supplementation are great, but we still have vitamin A deficiencies.

Sam Fromartz asks Drew Goodman what the experience is like of conventional farmers switching to organic. Drew Goodman says it's not about conventional or organic, but coming up with the best system to accommodate the consumer.

Raj Patel asked a question about a world bank report, whether the way to feed the world is to own their own food system?

Gary Toenniessen: Land reform, in particular land reform that gives rights to women is important.

Josh Viertel: stressed the importance of owning agricultural knowledge.

Gary Toenniessen: by necessity Rockefeller was funding techniques that did not require non-organic methods, biggest funder of organic farming in Africa. These methods did not usually spread because of necessary labor inputs. Need to get away from "either or" and look at ways to combine and integrate technologies.

The question was asked, where should we start?

Martin Clough: Fundamental education and availability of skilled people and knowledge-sharing.

2:30 – 4:00 PM PANEL III: Environmental Sustainability and Food Supply and Distribution, Food Supply and Distribution

There are significant issues around how to make food supply and distribution systems environmentally sustainable, in terms of the use of water, nitrogen, land, and chemical herbicides and pesticides. Key questions arise concerning the impact of potential environmental measures on health and the consequences of environmentally sustainable food production on food prices.

Moderator:
Justin Gillis, New York Times

Panelists:
Lester Brown, Earth Policy Institute
Niels Christiansen, Nestle SA
Cheryl Palm, NASA / Goddard Institute for Space Studies
Cynthia Rosenzweig, Columbia University
Sara Scherr, Ecoagriculture Partners

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Justin Gillis is opening the panel and introducing the speakers.

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Lester Brown is bringing attention to the water table, using Saudi Arabia and India as examples. Policies in expanded irrigation and well-drilling have led to falling water tables. 15% of India is being fed from well-water that will soon be going dry.

World water use peaked in 2000. The issue looms large given the amount of over-pumping.

We are also faced with melting glaciers. The fastest ice-melting in the world goes in the Himalayas. This represents the largest projected threat to food security. China and India are largest grain producers and depend on this water.

Rising temperatures are also having a huge impact on crop yields. For each one degree rise (Celsius) in temperature, we get a 10% decline in agricultural production.

Ministries of energy might have more of an impact on food security than ministries of agriculture.

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Cynthia Rosenzweig is discussing climate change and agriculture, looking at the world food crisis as a case of climate change.

Since 2003, world maize and wheat prices have nearly doubled. The price of rice has jumped to unprecedented levels. Dairy products, meat, poultry, palm oil, and cassava, among other agricultural commodities, have also experienced price hikes. Food riots in Egypt and Haiti; 37 countries in critical need of food

She presented this graph that showed the correlation between oil prices and food prices:

The indirect climate change effect of Biodiesel:

• Almost all of the increase in global maize production from 2004 to 2007 went to bio-fuels production (World Bank 2008)
• In the United States, as much as one third of the maize crop goes to ethanol production, up from 5 percent a decade ago, and biofuel subsidies range between US$11-13 billion a year.
• Increased biofuel demand in 2000-2007 is estimated to have contributed to ~30 percent of the weighted average increase of cereal prices.
  

Future climate change will further threaten agricultural production (Parry et al., 2004)

She is presenting a graph of the predicted food outputs as opposed to actual graph above.



Goal: Improve characterization of climate risk for agriculture at both regional and global scales by an order of magnitude for use by policymakers and integrated assessment modelers.

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Cheryl Palm is focusing on Nitrogen.

We have dramatically changed the inputs of active nitrogen into the world:

She presented data on nitrogen balance in Netherlands and Rwanda. In Netherlands we have too much, leading to pollution, in Rwanda we have too little, leading to lack of food.

Two examples of Eutrophication she presented:

Either too much or too little leads to environmental problems. There are solutions.

The African Green Revolution is a good opportunity to get it right.

Only one percent of sewage is treated.

How do we get right policies and political will?

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Niels Christiansen is speaking on food availability and how it depends on environmental sustainability.

If we were to use water and land efficiently, then we would have plenty.

Three focuses at Nestle:

1. Nutrition
2. Water
3. Rural Development

Nestle helps farmers to be more productive and also more environmentally responsible. For example:

• Ensuring training of over 85,000 farmers in India milk district
• Training 6,000 lady livestock workers in Pakistan
  
• In Ethiopia they are saving water through improved post harvest techniques of washing coffee cherries
• In China they are using biogas (out of cow manure, milk district): avoid water pollution and provide free gas to farmers.
  

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Sara Scherr is speaking on agricultural landscapes and ecosystem services. Need to reconceptualize agricultural landscapes, stressing the importance of getting to a level of integration.

Where the rubber hits the road is what happens in ecroagriculture landscapes. Optimistic at how clever people can be when presented with a problem, but how do you make these solutions scalable?

She presented two examples of this problem-solving.

1. In the Mississippi watershed, high levels of Nitrogen are destroying landscape. To make transformative change:

• Multi-stakeholder landscape planning
• Re-vegetating the watershed
  
• Mobilizing factors

2. The Kikuyu escarpment in Kenya is second example. How to conserve forest and reduce poverty simultaneously?

• Again, multi-stakeholder planning
• Coordinated technical and market assistance
• Farmer capacity development
  

Lessons learned:

• It is essential to have multi-stake-holder processes.
• Recognize farmers leading role in ecosystem services and strengthen their capabilities
• Mobilize inter-disciplinary technical support and research
• Pursue market development with a landscape perspective
  
• Coordinate agricultural, and environmental and rural development policies and programs.

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Justin Gillis kicked off discussion on global warning. Who are winners and losers?

Cynthia Rosenzweig: Need rigorous testable projects that are integrated across sectors. When you look at projections of global warming, contrary to what they expected, the most negative effects were in low latitudes. These systems are already closer to biological limits and already experience more water stress. But eventually mid-latitudes will be effected. Need new studies to see where these inflection points are.


Justin Gillis asks the panel what will a lower-carbon agricultural system will look like?

Lester Brown: Shift of energy resources is a necessary. Energy required for food (blueberries from New Zealand being flown to the UK) equals that for transportation needs. Predicts that we will see an increase in "failing states." Need to cut carbon emissions by 80% by 2020. Food security is bottom line.

Sara Scherr: Ask food production sector to play their part and think about these climate issues. Need to take into account carbon and watershed subsidies.


Justin Gillis: Is organic farming the history of agriculture or is it luxury for privileged?

Cheryl Palm: Many organic systems are based on a build-up of nitrogen. If you have systems with too little nitrogen, they need to be jumpstarted with fertilizers. Not optimal for organic farming.

Lester Brown: If we did not replace nutrients, then this would lead to depletion. Need mineral fertilizer to keep the system we have going.

Sara Scherr: Depends on soils. Need to partition fertility strategies and find relative solutions. Significant portion could be farmed in a organic manner or mostly organic way.


Justin Gillis: Are we fated to see water/food refugees?

Lester Brown: Water situation getting worst year by year. 150 billion tons a year of over-pumping of water. Most of good cropland is already being used. If we need to feed increase, need to increase productivity. This involved a lot of research in past with agriculture. Haven't seen a lot of this with water. The same coordinated efforts in agriculture need to be applied to water systems. Need more water-efficient crops. Corporations need to recycle water indefinitely. Need to also look at residential water use, move on from "flush and forget" system. Rather than "think outside the box" need to not acknowledge that there isn't a box in the first place.

2:00 – 2:20 PM PACIFIC HEALTH SUMMIT SYNOPSIS

Navigating the Nutrition Labyrinth.

Joanna Rubinstein, chief of staff to Jeffrey Sachs is introducing Claire Topal, from the Center for Health & Aging, The National Bureau of Asian Research, who is giving a summary on the recent Pacific Health Summit, which took place earlier this summer.

First she is stressing the importance of coordination of efforts. The goal of the Pacific Health Summit is to connect science, industry, and policy for a healthier world. Every June they invite top decision-makers in science, policy, industry, medicine, and public health to Seattle to discuss how to realize the dream of a healthier future through the effective utilization of scientific advances combined with appropriate policies for prevention, early detection, and early treatment of disease.

Every year they focus on a specific theme, this year it was The Global Nutrition Challenge: Getting a Healthy Start.

1. Policy can be approached as an experiment. Need to simultaneously put changes into place and evaluate changes, and be willing to change them.
2. We need partners whose efforts and respective strengths can make more of an impact than we ever could alone.
3. Partners need to trust each other if are ever going to get something done. Trust is key.
   

Examples of some committments made at summit:

1. Gates Foundation and Wellcome Trust are committed to do an analysis of the food industry.
   
2. Japan's ministry of health is going to make every effort to integrate nutrition into broader health agenda.
   
3. Nigel Crisp, Chair of the International Taskforce of the Global Health Workforce Alliance, is committed to making sure that nutrition is critical part of training for health workers.

Two quotes that the summit ended on:

"We must not be asking for leadership, we must show leadership." -(Jay Naidoo, Chairman of GAIN)
"We must not blame complexity for inaction." -(Maria Cattaui, Petroplus Holdings)

To read the full report from the meeting:
http://pacifichealthsummit.org/downloads/2008%20Summit/2008%20Summit%20Report.pdf

1:00 – 2:30 PM BUFFET LUNCH, The Cleaver Co.

We are breaking for lunch, which is being provided for by The Cleaver Co., New York's preeminent green caterer founded by Mary Cleaver, a pioneer in the sustainable food movement.

11:30 – 1:00 PM PANEL II: Addressing the Double Burden

The double burden of obesity and chronic undernutrition, which arises from urbanization, demographic shifts, and changing dietary patterns, affects as many as two billion people around the globe. It also places particular demands on food and public health systems and will require a well-crafted response from local farmers and the global food industry. This panel will examine some of the important questions around these issues.

Moderator:
Raj Patel, Author of Stuffed and Starved

Panelists:
Tom Arnold, Concern
Barry Popkin, Carolina Population Center
Marie Ruel, International Food Policy Research Institute
Paulus Verschuren, Unilever
Walter Willett, Harvard University

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Raj Patel is opening the panel, by saying the reason we have a food crisis is not because of a shortage of food but because of poverty. He is introducing the panelists.

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Tom Arnold is giving a historical perspective of the double-burden. We face a lot of the same issues now, but in addition we have the issue of climate change. The food problem has become a political problem and a security problem.

Can we see this food crisis as an opportunity?

Some positives:

• Developing a broader and deeper consensus on the framework in which:

1. Agriculture and rural development needs higher level of prominence.
2. Understand that food security is not nutrition security.

• New forms of partnerships are emerging.

Some negatives:

• Money has not come through.
• It will be harder to solve this crisis under the financial crisis we are under. Needs to be more burden-sharing, in particular from oil companies.
  

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Barry Popkin is now giving the Average Annual Changes in Under- and Overweight Prevalence, in China and Vietnam in the 90s:

It's a complex issue of both undernourished and overweight people, at times in the same household.

What are the commonalaties?

• Breast-feeding certainly for undernutrition, possibly for overnutrition – complex set of issues that relate partially to the food industry side.
  
• Proper weaning food and proper growth pattern –increasingly is seen as important for adult health and certainly for stunting, undernutrition in Africa and South Asia. Question of healthy protein rich, supplements vs empty calories starchy staple gruels—no food industry role.
• Clean, sanitary water supply and environment – offsets need for caloric beverages.
• Adequate maternal nutritional status – South Asia major issue linked with low birth weight.
• Farming systems: need to get back to legumes, cheaper protein sources, coarse grains and reduce milling.

We have a dilmma. In India, increased bmi (body-mass index) is leading to diabetics or pre-diabetics.

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Marie Ruel is now giving a talk on Fostering Synergies between Agriculture, Health & Nutrition.

Global integration – across national borders – of production, processing, marketing, retailing and consumption of agricultural and food items has led to the double-burden.



We need to encourage collaboration between agriculture and health:

Will the Global Food and Fuel Price Crisis Reduce the Pace of the Nutrition Transition?

• Health problems presented by the nutrition transition will easily get forgotten.
• Assumption: return to more traditional diets.
  
• But who will reduce meat, dairy, fruit & vegetable consumption?
• What cheap foods will be available for the poor? Soft drinks (Mexico in the 90s), processed meat or snack foods.
  
• Given fuel prices, need for convenience: snack, ready-to-eat foods become even more attractive
  

What is the way forward:

• Orient national policy frameworks to promote synergies between agriculture and health
• Join efforts on problems: that require joint solutions and for which there are tangible solutions, amenable to change (E.g. fruit and vegetable schemes: bringing producers directly to poor consumers or public procurement (schools, hospitals)
• Need local solutions but with a global and national policy framework that creates incentives for better collaboration.
  

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Paulus Verschuren is addressing the double burden, stressing that we need to link business and the public sector to benefit both.

Corporate philanthropy is NOT a solution: 

• Cheque book approach is not sustainable/scalable.
• Malnutrition challenges are strategic business opportunities.
• Integrate economic and social issues in business agendas.

Partnerships are inevitable: 

• None of us is as smart as all of us ( Tex Gunning – former Unilever GVP SEA). Need to work together to find solutions that are sustainable and scalable.
  
• Bridge the gap what we do alone today and can do tomorrow together.
  
• Move from isolated projects to system change initiatives 

Double Burden deserves a single approach: 

• Bring better nutrition balance in product offerings.
  
• Develop coherent behavioural change programmes.
  
• Create local solutions that fit community needs and wants.

We need to bring under and overnutrition into one single approach. We need to experiment, learn and adapt.

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Walt Willett is now stressing diabetes as an indicator of the overall health system. There are four main dietary factors:

Soda and sugar-sweetened drinks contribute directly to obesity and also to diabetes by virtue of their high glycemic loads.

The Global Industrial Diet:

• Refined starch
• Sugar, especially beverages
• Trans fat
• Few vegetables

Add to this inactivity (television) and it becomes the perfect recipe for type 2 diabetes. It's a disease that can be easily treated with simple life-style choices, "The Global Quality Diet":

• Whole grains
• Low sugar (soda = tobacco)
• Nonhydrogenated vegetable oils
• Legumes, nuts, poultry, fish, dairy
• Some vegetables

And then add to this walking and biking and exercise.

The question is how do we get from the industrial diet to this global quality diet?

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QUESTIONS FOR THE PANEL:

Raj Patel is asking a question about political will and consensus. Why do we face the double-burden?

Tom Arnold: We can explain the burden of obesity and undernutrition individually, but the question is how to explain the connection? In both cases we need to put more emphasis on prevention. In regards to political will and food aid, we need to get away from the vested interests.

Barry Popkin: We're not talking about hunger and obesity co-existing, but the persistence and increase in obesity. We've had a globalization and modernization of food system. Mass media has had an impact. There's a lot of pieces around technologies and other areas that are hard to understand and we shouldn't point fingers at one thing (like soda) without understanding how all pieces fit together.

Paulus Verschuren: There is a gap in knowledge and offerings. Food industry has an important role to play in bridging this gap.

Walt Willet: Reiterates what others said about the multi-faceted nature of the double-burden. But in addition he brings up marketing forces. Marketing is ratcheting up and children becoming more and more vulnerable.

A Q&A then ensued. Derek Yach asks, what can we do to in marketing to kids and product labeling?

Paulus Verschuren: Need to divert marketing efforts to educational programs to change behavior in a positive way.

We are now breaking for lunch...