Blog - Homelands Productions

July 11, 2013

When it comes to feeding the world, nothing will save us

5H3A8148 — In India, many farmers are returning to their traditional rice varieties, which often perform better than modern strains in salty soils. Meanwhile, scientists are working to incorporate salt tolerance into high-yielding varieties as stronger storms and rising seas increase the salinity of coastal fields. Photo by Sam Eaton.

One of the goals of the “Food for 9 Billion” project has been to show that keeping our growing number of selves fed (sustainably, equitably, healthily) is more than just a technical challenge.

That’s because food intersects with just about everything we humans do. It is social and cultural and political and economic. It’s about health and justice and demographics and taste. It ties us to our land and water and climate, and to the gazillions of non-human beings who share our planet.

And so we’ve produced stories about a wide range of non-technical topics, from land grabbing and trade policies to overconsumption and waste.

But the technical stuff matters, too. Certainly for better-off producers and consumers, for whom small changes can have enormous consequences. But especially, I think, for small-scale, low-income farmers in developing countries, where demand is growing the fastest, productivity is growing the slowest, undernourishment is the highest, and the strains on resources are most severely felt.

So we’ve done several pieces about technology, both high and low – agroecology, biodiversity conservation, reforestation, vertical farming, aquaponics, aquaculture, plant breeding, water harvesting, seed saving, GMOs and more.

Often, after these stories air, listeners or viewers write to tell us that we’re missing the point, that the real problem is ___________. The blank may be any number of things – population growth, poverty, lack of access to markets or land or credit or political power. No technology will help until we deal with that.

In a recent blog post in Grist, Tom Laskawy reports on efforts to get geeky tech types to turn their attention to improving the food system, then warns that it’s folly to expect technology to ensure “that adequate food is produced in a sustainable way for a growing population.” The piece carries the headline “When it comes to food, technology won’t save us.”

Fine. But no single thing will, and it would be a shame for people to stop innovating because their particular insight or gadget or method isn’t going to save the world on its own.

I think the agroecologists have it right – the world is complex. Everything interacts with everything else. Conditions differ in important ways from place to place, and they change over time. No single technology will work everywhere. Scratch that: no single technology will work anywhere.

That’s not to say that “all of the above” is the best way forward – some technologies, like some policies or ideas, are inappropriate or dangerous or counterproductive. But it’s unlikely that “none of the above” is the answer, either.

And so we’re left with “lots of the above.” Better laws, better seeds, better education, better growing methods, better financial services, better roads, better data, better trade policies, better safety nets.

I never give a journalist grief for a headline (I rarely get to write mine), but maybe a better title for Laskawy’s piece (and, for that matter, for “Food for 9 Billion”) would be “When it comes to food, ________ won’t save us.”

But maybe many things will.

Jon

July 1, 2013

Low-carbon lunch: Costa Rica aims for climate-friendly farming

Dole, the world’s largest fruit and vegetable producer, is attempting to achieve carbon neutrality in its entire Costa Rica supply chain. It has reduced water use in processing facilities like this one by as much as 80 percent. And it’s cut nitrous oxide emissions from fertilizer in half. Photo: Sam Eaton/Homelands Productions.

Food production, from farm to table, generates more than a quarter of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. It’s a vicious circle, because climate change is one of the biggest challenges facing farmers today.

In Costa Rica, farming accounts for a whopping 37 percent of all emissions. Since proclaiming four years ago that it would become the world’s first carbon-neutral nation by 2021, the country has become a laboratory for climate-friendly agriculture. Scientists, small-scale farmers and industrial plantations are all taking part.

Sam Eaton’s report is scheduled to air on PRI’s The World today as part of the What’s for Lunch series.

June 27, 2013

“What’s for Lunch” takes a global tour of the future of food

Retired schoolteacher Anne Mary Mabira, 85, with her backyard aquaponics system in Kampala, Uganda. In aquaponics, fish fertilize water for vegetables and vegetables filter water for fish. The technology has been gaining traction in the US, but is still virtually unknown in Africa. Photo: Jon Miller/Homelands Productions.

Keep your ears open for a new batch of What’s for Lunch radio stories about food and climate change on PRI’s The World. The series, part of the Food for 9 Billion project that Homelands Productions is producing with the Center for Investigative Reporting, airs Mondays and Thursdays through most of July.

Today, Homelands’ Jon Miller meets Charles Mulamata, a Ugandan engineer and entrepreneur who’s trying to spark a revolution in aquaponics, a super-efficient (but slightly intimidating) method for producing vegetables and fish in small spaces.

If you miss it on the air, you can find it online on The World’s What’s for Lunch series page.

Upcoming stories are from India, China, Costa Rica, the Netherlands and Seattle, and look at issues ranging from human waste recycling to meat alternatives to urban foraging.

We’ve had a slew of stories broadcast since our last blog post. This past Monday, The World’s Mary Kay Magistad shared a meatless meal with Long Kuan, a Beijing-based pop singer who is promoting vegetarianism and veganism in meat-mad China. Last Thursday, independent producer Sam Eaton reported from Mexico on efforts to revive amaranth, a hardy and nutritious crop that once rivaled corn in importance. And last Monday, Jon Miller sent a dispatch from Qatar, where an international team of scientists is testing a suite of interlocking technologies to produce food, fresh water and energy in harsh desert areas.

You can catch Jon’s TV story about the Qatar project on the Food for 9 Billion website. While you’re there, you can watch the four other features we produced (from Singapore, India, Costa Rica and California) for PBS NewsHour on the week of June 10, and hear all the radio stories that have aired to date on The World, including reports on vertical farming in Singapore, China’s “clean your plate” campaign, industrial-scale low-carbon eating in Boston and the debate over GMOs in Uganda.

In fact, if you keep clicking the “next” button at the bottom of the page, you’ll find a trove of radio and TV stories, videos, blog posts and interactive features going back to November 2011.

June 10, 2013

This week: Seven stories about food and the climate

It’s the biggest week yet for the “Food for 9 Billion” project, with five stories scheduled to air on PBS NewsHour and two on PRI’s The World.

Today on the NewsHour, Sam Eaton visits Costa Rica, where farmers and researchers are finding that biodiversity isn’t just good for the environment, but also boosts productivity and profits. Also today, on The World, Mary Kay Magistad eats a meal with the organizers of a grassroots campaign to cut down on food waste in China, where leaving food on your plate is a sign that you’ve made it.

Tuesday on the NewsHour, Jon Miller travels to Qatar to visit a high-tech experiment in transforming sunlight, seawater and carbon dioxide into food, fuel and fresh water. On Wednesday, also on the NewsHour, Sam reports on an ultra-efficient vertical vegetable farm in Singapore.

On Thursday, Jon reports for The World from Uganda, where scientists and activists have staked out very different positions on genetically engineered virus-resistant cassava. Also on Thursday, on the NewsHour, Sam visits farmers in India who are returning to their traditional seeds to protect themselves against the ravages of climate change.

Finally, on the NewsHour on Friday, Serene Fang and Susanne Rust of the Center for Investigative Reporting look at California’s resource-hungry dairy industry, which is turning to China as domestic markets dry up.

As always, if you can’t catch the stories on the day of broadcast, they will all be archived at Foodfor9Billion.org, along with slideshows, interactive graphics and other goodies.

June 6, 2013

Cafeteria lunch: Industrial kitchens dish out climate-friendly cuisine

Boston Fish Pier — Helene York, right, of the food service company Bon Appétit, works with suppliers and chefs to reduce the climate impact of the meals served at the company’s roughly 500 cafeterias. Jared Auerbach, of Red’s Best Seafood in Boston, recently began to sell fresh, locally caught fish to area companies and institutions. Photo: Jon Miller/Homelands Productions.

By now most of us know that what we eat has an impact on the environment. And so more of us are putting our money where our mouths are—or our mouths where our money is—ordering green-listed seafood at restaurants or shopping at our local farmers’ market.

Those choices add up. After all, each of us eats more than 1,000 meals over the course of a year. Still, what you or I have for lunch today probably isn’t going to change the world.

But what if you served up 145 million meals a year? Jon Miller met someone who does—and who’s trying to make it count.

The story airs today, June 6, as part of the “What’s for Lunch” series on PRI’s The World. Listen for it on the radio or catch it later online, where you can find photos and links to other stories.

And a heads up for next week: PBS NewsHour will air one story per day in a veritable “Food for 9 Billion” extravaganza. On Monday, Sam Eaton takes us to Costa Rica, where scientists and farmers are learning the long-term value of biodiversity.

June 4, 2013

“What’s for Lunch” launches on The World

Jack Ng at SkyGreens in Singapore — Engineer-entrepreneur Jack Ng shows off a water-powered system he designed for his vertical farm, called SkyGreens, in Singapore. The plants are grown in composted food waste. Around the world, farmers are finding ways to produce food using less land, water and fossil fuel. Photo by Sam Eaton/Homelands Productions.

For the last year and a half, the “Food for 9 Billion” project has examined the many-sided challenge of keeping ourselves fed at a time of rapid social and environmental change. Yesterday we launched a new chapter, called “What’s for Lunch,” a series of features on PRI’s The World and PBS NewsHour that look at the connections between what we eat and our changing climate.

In our first piece, producer Sam Eaton visits SkyGreens, a super-efficient vertical farm in the heart of Singapore. A companion piece will air next week on the NewsHour. For a taste of what else is coming, check out this blog post from The World’s environment editor, Peter Thomson.

We’re using the hashtag #Whats4Lunch on Twitter and Instagram. If you’re an Instgrammer, you can upload a photo of your climate-changed lunch along with an explanation of how it’s different.

April 10, 2013

New Stories to Probe Food-Climate Connections

The Sahara Forest Project facility in Qatar uses seawater and sunlight to produce vegetables, energy, fresh water, desert plants, animal feed and salt. Photo by Elsa Naumann/Sahara Forest Project.

Reporters Jonathan Miller, Sam Eaton and Mary Kay Magistad have been in Mexico, Costa Rica, India, Singapore, China, Qatar, Uganda and the Netherlands gathering tape for a series of radio and TV stories about the future of food in a climate-changed world. Topics will include alternatives to meat, alternative staples, GMOs, traditional seeds, foraging, vertical farming, agroecology, aquaponics, aquaculture, carbon-neutral farming and agrobiodiversity. Oh, and low-carbon cafeteria meals.

The series, part of the “Food for 9 Billion” project, will air on PRI’s The World and PBS NewsHour beginning in June. For updates, follow the project (and look for the #Foodfor9Billion hashtag) on Twitter.

February 12, 2013

“Food for 9 Billion” looks to the future

The Homelands blog may have been idle, but that doesn’t mean we have been! Clearly, though, it’s time for a quick catching up.

School snack bar in Crete — Many schools in Crete have voluntarily banned soft drinks and sweets from their snack bars. The percentage of overweight children in Greece is higher than in the US. Photo by Jon Miller.

In October, Jon Miller’s feature Greece’s diet crisis aired on Marketplace as part of the “Food for 9 Billion” project. The story looked at the rapid rise of obesity in Crete, home to one of the world’s healthiest traditional diets. In November, Mary Kay Magistad (China correspondent for our new radio partner, PRI’s The World; more about that below) joined forces with Cassandra Herrman and Serene Fang at the Center for Investigative Reporting on China strains to satisfy growing demand for meat, which aired on PBS NewsHour.

Then, just before the holidays in December, Jon’s piece Taking the climate fight to the table aired on Marketplace. That story, which looked at how our own eating decisions might affect the world’s ability to feed itself, wrapped up our fruitful and enjoyable year-long partnership with Marketplace (a shout-out to our excellent editors Ben Adair, George Judson and Sitara Nieves).

For the last few months we’ve been laying the groundwork for a second phase of Ff9B — a series of ten or more stories for The World, to air in a two- or three-week burst this spring. The topic is much more focused than what we’ve done so far; we sometimes describe it as “the future of food in a climate-changed world.” Jon Miller and Sam Eaton will do most of the reporting; as we write this, they’re madly preparing for trips to Singapore, India, Mexico, Costa Rica, Uganda, The Netherlands and Qatar. We also expect to continue working with CIR on a handful of companion pieces for PBS NewsHour.

Group photo — Homelands producers Alan Weisman, Sandy Tolan, Jonathan Miller, Cecilia Vaisman and Beckie Kravetz (Alan’s wife) in Los Angeles in January.

Finally, in January, Sandy, Cecilia, Alan and Jon descended on Sandy’s place in Los Angeles for a weekend retreat. We are spread around the country (western Massachusetts, upstate New York, Chicago, LA) and rarely find ourselves together in the same place. It was wonderful to talk and plan and recharge each other’s creative batteries. A highlight was a party on Saturday night for a few dozen radio friends in LA. Being radio people, nobody thought to take any pictures.

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About Homelands

WHAT WE ARE

Homelands Productions is an independent nonprofit journalism cooperative. Since our founding in 1989, we have reported from more than 60 countries, produced nine special series for public radio and television, and won 22 national and international awards.

We also serve as a nonprofit fiscal sponsor for projects that excite us, and our Public Interest Reporting Defense Fund helps journalists whose work has gotten them in trouble.