Fast-Growing Factory Farm Nation

Today, Food & Water Watch (FWW) unveiled a new version of their innovative Factory Farm Map, which charts the concentration of factory farms across the United States.  Their findings showed an unprecedented growth in factory farms since 1997, with livestock on factory farms Growing by 20 percent over a 5 year period. The map illustrates geographic shift in where and how food is raised and also allows users to search for the highest concentration of animals across regions, states and the county. Furthermore, it charts the different (often detrimental) impacts that these massive operations have on human health, communities, and the environment. The map and

The map was created through the analysis of USDA Census data from 1997, 2002 and 2007 (the most current census), for beef and dairy cattle, hogs, broiler meat chickens and egg-laying operations.  FWW found that the total number of livestock on the largest factory farms rose by more than 20 percent between 2002 and 2007—while the number of dairy cows and broiler chickens nearly doubled during the same time, making them the fastest-growing population of factory farmed animals.

Further key findings of the research included:

• In five years, total animals on factory farms grew by 5 million in the US.
• The average size of factory farms increased by 9% in five years, cramming more animals into each operation.
• The number of factory dairy farm cows increased from 2.5 million (1997) to 4.9 million (2007) and growth in western states (esp. ID, CA, NM & TX) shifted the industry away from traditional states (WI, NY & MI).
• One processor (Dean Foods) controls around 40% of the U.S. fluid milk supply.
• Beef cattle on industrial feedlots rose 17 percent between 2002 to 2007 – adding about 1,100 beef cattle to feedlots per day during that time period
• In 2007, the ave. factory-farmed dairy held nearly 1,500 cows and the ave. beef feedlot held 3,800 beef cattle.
• The average size of hog factory farms increased by 42% over a decade, with approximately 5,000 hogs added to factory farms every day over those past 10 years.
• The growth of industrial broiler chicken production added 5,800 chickens every hour over the past 10 years.
• The number of egg laying hens on factory farms increased by 1/4 over the past 10 years.
• The 5 States with the largest broiler chicken operations average more than 200,000 birds per farm.
• Currently, there are 4 factory-farmed chickens to every person in the US.

Although the overall number of livestock farms across the country has decreased, big farms are getting bigger, with specific regions and states bearing the brunt of intensive animal production.  Factory farming operations introduce a number of risks to the average citizen, from groundwater contamination and air pollution affecting those near by, to food from potentially unsafe facilities being distributed and shipped across the country. “The Factory Farm Map arms consumers with critical information about how our food is being produced and what we need to do to chart a course to a more sustainable food system,” said Wenonah Hauter, Food & Water Watch’s executive director. “While more light is being shed on the ways our food system is broken and consumers are increasingly interested in knowing where their food comes from, there is still a lot of information that’s hidden from public view.  It was with this purpose of providing an simple tool that anyone could operate to learn more about where their food is actually coming from that the Factory Farm Map was created.

 “This map shows the extent to which factory farms have taken over farming and our communities,” said Robby Kenner, director of the film Food, Inc. This innovative technology is starting to highlight mega-corporations that must be held accountable for the damage they are inflicting on our physical health, the environment, and the economic wellbeing of surrounding communities. Alongside the interactive map, Food & Water Watch released Factory Farm Nation, a report explaining the forces driving factory farms, and the environmental, public health, and economic consequences of this type of animal production.

The Factory Farm Map can be found here, for the companion report, Factory Farm Nation, click here.

An Issue of National Food Insecurity

According to a report released this month, food insecurity, an issue long seen as a bane of developing countries, is reaching an alarming level in the United States in the recent post-recession years. The report "Food Security in the United States 2009" found that 17.4 million households in America had difficulty providing enough food due to a lack of resources.

The report, published by the US Department of Agriculture, looked at household food access and security in the U.S. and revealed that 14.7 per cent of American households were food insecure at least some time during 2009, including 5.7 per cent with very low food security. While the latest figures for overall food insecurity and ‘severe’ food security remained close to their 2008 levels (14.6 per cent and 5.7 per cent respectively) they remain the highest recorded levels since the first national food security survey was conducted in 1995.

Highlighting the significant inequalities in food resource availability across U.S. households, the USDA report noted that the typical food-insecure household spent a whopping 33 per cent less on food than the typical food-secure household of the same size and composition. Furthermore, in households with “severe range of food insecurity” resource constraints were often the cause of eating pattern disruptions, with the food intake of members often dropping over the course of the year.

Another worrying fact uncovered by the report was the large racial divide in food security outcomes, with rates of food insecurity among African-American and Hispanic households remaining substantially higher than the national average. Insecurity was also notably higher among households with incomes near or below the federal poverty line and a single parent headed households. 

The USDA report was based on data from an annual food security survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau and covered about 46,000 households.  Adult respondents were asked a series of questions covering experiences and behaviors typically noted to indicate food insecurity - such as being unable, at times, to afford balanced meals, cutting the size of meals or being hungry because of too little money for food.  Household food security status was then designated based on the number of food-insecure conditions reported.

To read the full briefing click here.

For more on world food security in 2009, click here.

Questioning the Future of Farming

On November 11th, 2010 a new paper published in the International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability identified the top 100 questions of importance to the future of global agriculture.

Although there were significant increases in the abilities of both developed and undeveloped nations to produce food over the last half-century, the most important challenge facing societies today remains how to feed their populations.  By the middle of our current century the world population is expected to reach some 9 billion, making the question of how and what we feed ourselves paramount. In order to meet expected demand for food without significant increases in prices it has been estimated that the world needs to produce 70-100% more food.  (Although these numbers are debatable when you consider what levels of caloric and nutritional intake we expect this population to exist on – surely not those of the average North American)

The multi-disciplinary team of 55 agricultural and food experts from many of the world's major agricultural organizations, scientific societies, and academic institutions was appointed to identify the most important questions for global agriculture and food.

The results were organized into four overarching sections, reflecting the stages of the agricultural production system: (i) natural resource inputs; (ii) agronomic practice; (iii) agricultural development; and (iv) markets and consumption.  Some of the most pressing questions include:

*         How much can agricultural education, extension, farmer mobilization and empowerment be achieved by the new opportunities afforded by mobile phone and web-based technologies?

*         Who will be farming in 2050, and what will be their land relationships?

*         What will be the risk of mass migration arising from adverse climate change, and how will this impact on agricultural systems?

The research was funded by the UK Government's Foresight Global Food and Farming Futures project with the idea that, if asked, answered and  addressed, these questions could have a significant impact on global agricultural practices worldwide. The questions posed were seen as could offering a way to mitigate what some see as an impending calamity brought on by industrial agro-farming and unsustainable practices.  In the last 50 years the intensification of agriculture has been central to the degradation of ecosystem services, has been a leading cause of the loss of global biodiversity due to conversion of natural habitats into farmland., and has increased the production of greenhouse gases. The paper serves as a directive, offering policy and funding organizations an agenda for change. The questions are wide-ranging, are designed with the idea that they are answerable through future research and capable of realistic research design.

One of the lead authors, Professor Jules Pretty, remarked that:

"The challenges facing world agriculture are unprecedented, and are likely to magnify with pressures on resources and increasing consumption. What is unique here is that experts from many countries, institutions and disciplines have agreed on the top 100 questions that need answering if agriculture is to succeed this century. These questions now form the potential for driving research systems, private sector investments, NGO priorities, and UN projects and programs."

To read the full paper for free, click here.

Working on a FARM:shop

Today was the public opening (and one week anniversary the friends and family christening) of the worlds first FARM:Shop  in London.  FARM:shop,  a groundbreaking urban agriculture centre based at 20 Dalston Lane, is a project attempting to see how much food can be grown in a converted abandoned shop in a year.  It is the brainchild of Something & Son, an eco-social design practice in London founded by Andrew Merritt, Paul Smyth and Sam Henderson. 

FARM:shop is one of several projects funded in part by Hackney Council’s Art in Empty Spaces initiative, a project to help regenerate parts of Dalston by transform empty properties into something useful and meaningful for Hackney’s residents and visitors.

Councilor Guy Nicholson, Cabinet Member for Regeneration and the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, has called Farm:Shop: “a great joint initiative which will give residents in the borough and beyond a great opportunity to see first-hand how urban farming works.”

Since July, when the project managers (Sam, Paul and Andy) first received the keys, there have been over 40 volunteers (the author included) working away. The run down building has been transformed, with a new mushroom farm in the basement, a poly-tunnel built in the back lot and new hydroponic units for growing food in it’s many rooms.  With the help of Aquaponics UK, the storefront has been revamped with aquaponic units  - tanks for growing tilapia fish and freshwater prawns whose waste serves as a food source for plants growing in the same closed loop system. A chicken coop was constructed on the rooftop, with hens already happily laying away, oblivious to the street noise.  The backyard also includes a run and pens which will soon be home to a pair of piglets which will be reared in the garden.

The project offers city dwellers the chance to see a variety of sustainable farming techniques, including mini fish farms, rooftop chicken coops, indoor allotments as well as a basement mushroom farm.  It is part inspiration and part educational unit,  offering visitors guided tours of the facility which houses a number of forms of indoor farming: hydroponics, aeroponics and aquaponics opportunity to try their hand at urban farming. FARM: Shop aims to inspire and educate Londoners, particularly Dalston residents, about how food is grown and to encourage healthy eating. It will also provide an affordable workspace and meeting room hire for start up businesses and help bring creative businesses into the borough which focus on sustainability and the food industry.

Paul Smyth, co-founder of Something & Son, said: “We’re really excited by this project and hope that we can bring a bit of the countryside into the heart of Dalston….FARM:Shop will provide a place for local businesses, community groups and families to come together and learn more about sustainable farming.”

Over the next year the project will grow as much food possible on every inch of the building. The produce will be used in the shop café and sold to local restaurants.  The café will open in mid-December in partnership with a local charity (opening in November).  The meals served will rely mainly on the in -house produce and rely on Church Farm - an eco-agriculture enterprise 30 miles way – for meat and non-perishable vegatables. The project helps to demonstrate the viability of sustainable urban food systems. It will also provide regular volunteer opportunities in growing food as well as a series of fortnightly workshops and events about sustainable food and farming.

Visitors can stop by to explore any weekend from Fri - Sun and volunteers will be running 30 minute tours of FARM:shop at 1pm.

Farmshop is located at:

20 Dalston Lane, Hackney,  London. 

(Just short walk from Dalston Junction Overground Station and Dalston Kingsland. ( MAP)

Contact:

Email: 
someone@somethingandson.com



Call or text to learn more or volunteer:


Paul : +44(0)7736 002006


Andy: +44(0)7855 027876


Sam:  +44(0)7951 123385


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BiodiverCity: Improving on PlaNYC

The year 2010 has been named the International Year of Biodiversity by the UN.  However, New York City, one of the world’s largest cities, and one with the name and where-with-all to set a global standard, still lacks a plan for maintaining and ensuring it’s biodiversity.   At a time when we are experiencing growing concerns for the diversity of our diets and its effect on our health, when crop diseases offer threats to our food security and can potentially wipe out entire harvests in our industrial mono-crop fields, and where increasingly heavy urbanization world over threatens to crowd out the natural and therefore threatens our long-term sustainability as a civilization, it seems foolish not to plan for the biodiversity of all large urban areas. While NYC began addressing biodiversity concerns in 2001 with the Freshkills Park Project - with a master plan that supported a richly diverse habitats for wildlife, birds and plant communities and used ecological innovation and creative design to attract new native plant communities – no comprehensive master plan has been made for the city concerning overarching or integrated ways of addressing biodiversity in the future. We are at a time when people are listening and looking for a change and it is important that we push them in the right direction.  

In 2007 Mayor Bloomberg released PlaNYC, a comprehensive, long-term, sustainability agenda aimed at building a stronger and greener New York City by 2030. The plan highlighted 6 major areas of concern - Land, Water, Transport, Energy, Air and Climate Change - around which the Mayor’s office planned to developed targeted actions to increase the sustainability of NYC across the board, and introduced GreeNYC, a project to reduce the cities carbon emissions.  However, nowhere in the current version of PlaNYC was there mention of addressing, maintaining or fostering NYC’s biodiversity.  Biodiversity is important for both plant and animal life to support a healthy ecosystem.  Maintaining a systems diversity can be especially difficult in large urban areas and it is therefore of great importance that any plan outlining how to increase an areas sustainability discuss maintaining and encouraging it’s biodiversity.

Greater New York currently supports more forests, marshes and meadows than any other city in the United States, however these features are quickly diminishing in the face of development and habitat degradation. New Yorkers need to begin thinking more about the nature around them, to recognize the role it plays in making the city and the lives of its residents so great. They need to highlight the important of it’s presence in the as revised PlaNYC, and the responsibility of the revised agenda to protect this resource.  The revision of the agenda, PlaNYC 2.0, is scheduled for release in April 2011.  Community conversations have already been held across the boroughs this October and PlaNYC is currently taking comments from the public.  One innovative resident, Mariellé Anzelona (a botanist and the founder of Drosera (http://www.drosera-x.com/) has also created a website where she is encouraging New Yorkers to take the opportunity to express the reasons the city’s biodiversity is important to them by contributing thoughts, photographs, and videos to her blog, which will eventually be sent to the Mayor’s office.  Click here to contribute your own ideas.

You can read about the current plan and it’s progress here 

You can investigate more about New York City’s biodiversity at the New York Public Libraries Urban Neighbors an online exhibition looking at the historical abundance of wildlife in NYC.