Thoughts for Food

Summer, its days fading quickly, has been generous and kind this year. Sunshine aplenty, but without the scorching heat predicted to become a regular feature of climate change.

Gardens have done well, despite slightly less summer rain. Our vegetable patch is the best in several years. I’ve never seen apple trees in the region with so much fruit. A couple of trees I pass regularly have branches broken by the weight of the fruit.

Late summer is a time of year when there seems to be enough fresh food to feed the entire world, and then some. Unfortunately, that is far from true. The World Resources Institute estimates that by 2050 the world will need 70 per cent more food than is produced today to feed an estimated population of 9.6 billion people, 2.2 billion more than now.

Simply producing more is not a solution. Creating pasture land for grazing animals is eliminating millions of hectares of forests, which is dangerous to world survival. There is only so much land on earth and we already are seeing the dangers of messing with it.

There has been talk, accompanied by some alarm, about world food shortages eventually forcing us to farm insects for food.

One answer to food shortages is to slow population growth. That is happening but not fast enough. World population is expected to grow by only 50 per cent in this century, compared with an incredible 400 per cent in the last. Still, that’s hundreds of millions of more mouths to feed over the coming years.

One positive approach to a food crisis is lifestyle change. Our society consumes and wastes too much of everything, including food. We waste one-third of the food we produce: 1.6 billion tonnes a year, valued at $1 trillion.  Those figures come from the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization.

An accompanying problem is that food waste gets tossed into landfills where it produces methane emissions. These add to the world’s greenhouse gas and climate change problems.

No one deliberately sets out to waste food. It happens. Suppliers and growers guess wrong on what will be needed. It happens to consumers as well. We’ve all planned a dinner or a party and ended up throwing out food for a variety of reasons.

Then there are the psychological traps that trick us into buying too much. Sellers want us to buy more and try to entice us with promotions, incentives and special offers that get us to buy things we might not need. One example is the quantity discount where you buy two items and get a third for free. In many cases you don’t need the third, but can’t pass up the deal.

An avoidable factor in food waste is our expectations. We have been lured into the mindset of wanting fruits, veggies and other foodstuffs that will win beauty contests. We have no use for the marred or the malformed. Bruised apples or blackening bananas are ugly ducklings that don’t get taken home.

Fortunately there are a growing number of initiatives aimed at reducing food waste. Denmark, for instance, has become a world leader with numerous initiatives that have reduced its food waste by 25 per cent in the last five years.

A food waste supermarket in Copenhagen has been so successful that a second is scheduled to open next year. It sells food that regular supermarkets plan to discard because of overdue ‘best before’ dates, damaged packaging or incorrect labelling.

You can read more about Denmark’s campaign against food waste at: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jul/13/how-did-denmark-become-a-leader-in-the-food-waste-revolution

In San Francisco, a subscription service named Imperfect Produce buys ‘wonky’ produce from farms that will discard it because it does not conform to  industry standards of perfection. It delivers boxes of it at reduced prices.

Here at home Loblaws has launched the Naturally Imperfect program selling ugly duckling produce at cheaper prices.

These initiatives are doing more than working against food waste, or providing food at lower cost. Most importantly they are helping to change attitudes about things that appear less than perfect, and about what we really need.

As Mahatma Gandhi once said: "The world has enough for everyone's need, but not enough for everyone's greed."

           

Email: shaman@vianet.ca
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Yellow Jackets and EpiPens

Their work for the year almost done, the  yellow jacket wasps now have time to explore human spaces, and the leftovers they contain.

There is much to explore. Fruit is ripening on the trees and bushes. The last of the sugary summer drinks are being spilled on decks and patios. The wasps are out in large numbers, tasting it all.

  

We appear to be heading into a record fall wasp season. Yellow jackets seem to be everywhere already, especially if they make you nervous.

Most people have little reason to worry about wasps, provided they resist the urge to swat them, and avoid their nests. But for some people the hyper-activity of autumn yellow jackets is the season of fear.

Large wasp populations are likely the result of a milder winter. More queens than usual lived through it. Wasps die off during the winter, except for some queens who live to start new colonies each spring.

My wife recently walked into a yellow jacket nest and suffered about two dozen stings. She is not allergic to their venom, thankfully. Many people who are carry an EpiPen, the epinephrine injector that buys time for anyone suffering severe allergy shock.

EpiPen is the only easy-to-carry, easy and quick-to-use medicine for people who suffer severe allergy shock. This includes many children dangerously allergic to some food items, peanuts to name a common one.

EpiPen is the focus of a yet another pricing scandal in the United States. Profit greed has tripled the price of the life-saving device in the U.S. Mylan Pharmaceuticals, which acquired the EpiPen rights in 2007, has increased its price by more than 400 per cent.

The drug epinephrine itself costs only pennies. The EpiPen allows for super fast, uncomplicated delivery. You simply take it from its plastic case and jab it against your thigh.

So if you live in the U.S., have a severe allergy to stings, or have a child with a food allergy, you have to cough up at least $600 U.S. The pens expire after 12 months.

Teresa Voght Lisek, interviewed for the Mother Nature Network, said her husband and two children each have severe allergies. She says that extra pens must be kept in several locations in case of emergency. Buying enough to cover them safely would cost $5,600.

The cost of one EpiPen in Ontario is just over $100 Canadian plus provincial tax. Our health care system protects us from any outrageous price increase like the one in the States, but don’t be shocked if someone finds a loophole.

The U.S. price of an EpiPen was $57 when Mylan acquired it nine years ago.

Mylan’s EpiPen price increases mean that some people simply cannot afford to buy the protection. They are left to take their chances. Meanwhile, Mylan’s chief, Heather Bresch, 47, received $19 million in compensation last year for doing such a great job.

She is unapologetic about the outrageous price increases on a drug and delivery device that many people need to save their lives.

“I am running a business,” she told The New York Times. “I am a for-profit business. I am not hiding from that.”

Ms. Bresch has experience with controversy.  A report by the University of West Virginia said she was awarded a business degree, 10 years after attending classes and without completing the course work because her father was West Virginia’s governor. He now is a senator.

Senator and daughter might get to meet face to face in Congress. A special  Senate committee has called on Mylan to appear before it to explain the price increases.

Mylan also has angered some Washington politicians for moving its headquarters to the Netherlands in 2014, a move that reduced its tax rate and prevented a takeover that its investors had favoured.

The company will not say how much it makes off EpiPen but sales of the pen exceed $1 billion.

Meanwhile, if you want to keep wasps at bay, try this: Mix one cup of hand soap with 20 drops of peppermint oil. Top up with water and put in a spray bottle. Spray in areas wasps frequent.

Email: shaman@vianet.ca
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Pretty in Pink?

Blink a couple of times and the fall hunting season will be here. So it’s time to start checking the hunting gear.

 It used to be enough to check just the shotguns, rifles, ammos, knives and other stuff we need for the annual trek into the autumn woods. Not any more. Now you need to check your fashion. It is becoming necessary to be fashionable in the forest.

The clothing industry is here to help you, while of course, increasing corporate profits.

The clothing folks have a problem. They have produced too many real leaf/tree camo outfits. Almost every piece of human apparel now comes in camo. There are camo underpants. Camo thongs. Camo jock straps. Camo bras.

 Almost everyone already has a camo hoody or T shirt. So the industry has been looking for other ways to sell more. They have found it in the colour pink.

The clothing lobby has been all over the politicians and they are getting what they want. Wisconsin, New York State and Louisiana will allow pink hunting clothing this fall as an alternate to blaze orange.  Other states are considering doing the same.

I can hear the sewing machines whirring already, spinning out those hot pink vests, caps, gloves, jackets and pants. We already have seen pink gunstocks, pink camo bows and other pink outdoor accessories.

All this pink supposedly is about attracting more women into hunting. More women hunters means more hunting clothing and equipment sales. And, more money for governments through sales taxes and licensing fees.

Many women are not impressed. Promoting pink in hunting is sexist, they say.

“We felt like it was demeaning to us,” various media quoted Sarah Ingle, Women’s Hunting and Sporting Association president in Wisconsin. “I feel that the legislation should have taken a deeper look into why the sport was declining.”

The Wisconsin government’s time would have been better spent determining what women really need to become interested in the sport, she said.

It’s hard to argue against pink as an acceptable hunter safety colour. Fluorescent  pink, or hot pink, is easily seen in the woods.         

Pink certainly will not bother the deer, who are essentially colour blind. Their vision is limited to the blue-green spectrums, so blaze orange or pink does not stand out for them.

Deer do see ultraviolet, which can cause some objects to glow, or fluoresce. That’s why hunters are told not to wash their hunting clothing in detergents with brightening agents that absorb light in the ultraviolet and violet region.

Allowing pink as safety colour is part of a drift toward making hunting a more upscale pastime. Urbanites are seeing it as a fit with the locavore/farm-to-table movement in which people want to grow, gather or kill their own food.

In trendy neighbourhoods of California, you’ll find a growing number of fashionable chicken coups, where more people are said to be signing up for butchering courses.

Another factor has been the Becoming an Outdoors Woman (BOW) program started back in the 1990s but which has gained increasing popularity only in recent years. Many U.S. states and six provinces now have BOW inspired programs that teach shooting, hunting and handling game.

I don’t have any issues with blaze pink as a hunting colour. It doesn’t compromise safety and it’s always nice to have more choice. It is insulting, however, to say that allowing women to be pretty in pink hunters will attract more into the sport.

“That’s terribly insulting,” Peggy Farrell, national director of BOW in the U.S. was quoted in Peterson’s Hunting. “I don’t want a youth-model shotgun, and I don’t want pink on everything I wear or carry when I hunt.”

Women who hunt don’t want pink gear for hunting. They want gear and clothing that is designed for women’s bodies. Gear and clothing that fit properly an comfortably.

Malinda White, the Louisiana politician who introduced that state’s blaze pink bill, is also a hunter and says she didn't consider the concept sexist.

"It also will generate commerce - I guarantee there are sewing machines going off right now," she said.

Do you think the clothing lobbyists were whispering in her ear?

Email: shaman@vianet.ca
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Lessons from the Birds

One hundred and two years ago - at 1 p.m. on Sept. 1 to be exact - someone walked past the Cincinnati Zoo bird cage and saw Martha on the cage floor, drumsticks up.

Martha died of old age at 29. She was the last living passenger pigeon, North America’s most abundant bird species, once numbering three to five billion.

Early European settlers described flocks of passenger pigeons so large they blacked out the sun. When they roosted in trees for the night, branches often snapped under the weight of their numbers.

Martha’s passing confirmed the species extinction and helped to bring about another important event two years later. On Aug. 16, 1916, 100 years ago this week, Canada and the United States signed the Migratory Bird Convention in which both countries agreed to uniform systems of protecting migratory birds.

The agreement was aimed at stopping the “indiscriminate slaughter” of the billions of birds that       made their remarkable journeys north in the spring, and south in the autumn.

Indeed, the slaughter had been indiscriminate. Ducks, geese, pigeons and others were shot by the thousands and shipped in barrels to markets and restaurants in big cities such as Toronto, New York and Chicago. Thousands upon thousands were packed in crates destined for factories where their feathers were used in fashionable clothing.

There is one story of one million bobolinks and rails killed in one month near Philadelphia to provide feathers for women’s hats.

Until late in the 1800s it seemed impossible that North America’s huge numbers of birds could become extinct or see their populations dramatically reduced. As the 20^th century approached, however, people began to realize what was happening.

Organized hunt clubs were diligent in recording kills in club registers. Entries from the register of the Winous Point Club near Port Clinton, Ohio show what was happening.

Year                Canvasbacks           Mallards        Blue-winged Teal

1880                           665                 1,319                          2,110

1885                           237                     943                         1,019

1890                           697                     394                         603

The migratory bird convention brought some sanity into a society that believed  wildlife resources were limitless and existed solely for human satisfaction. It led to prohibition of hunting non-game birds, closed seasons for hunting game birds, limits on the length of hunting seasons and bans on the sale of any birds, eggs or nests.

The convention could not bring back the Marthas that once blackened the skies. It was a start, however, to changing attitudes about wildlife and slowed the possibility of other extinctions.

Extinction still threatens many species today. The latest North American Bird Conservation Initiative report notes that without significant conservation action 37 per cent of our bird species are at risk of extinction.

Nearly 20 per cent of wetland birds are on a Watch List indicating extinction concerns. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says wetland losses have increased 140 per cent since 2004.

Habitat loss and climate change have replaced uncontrolled harvesting as the biggest threats to birds. Both, of course, are the result of a soaring human population.

Bird Life International reports that 150 bird species are facing world extinction. Also, it lists 197 species as critically endangered.

Populations of common birds seen in urban areas also are decreasing. Various bird organizations have reported declines in common species once considered widespread. Bird surveys have reported that some common species have lost more than half of their populations over the past 40 years.

Declining numbers of birds show that diversity of life on our planet is shrinking. Earth continues to fall behind in the struggle to regenerate from the beatings we humans give it.

Three-quarters of the world’s fisheries now are fully or over exploited. (You probably already figured that out if you bought those mushy farm-raised trout that have been raised on pellets).

More than 350 million people do not have guaranteed clean water to drink every day. (And, if you think that’s just a far-off problem, read up on the roughly 100 Canadian First Nation communities that are without potable water).

So all this is not just about the birds. There is a good chance that sometime off in the future it won’t  be just Martha lying drumsticks up in her house. It will be humankind. 

           

Email: shaman@vianet.ca           
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