The agricultural industry has been scrambling to protect crops, too—for instance, Washington state’s cherry orchards—from drying out and causing major economic losses. And while this is an undeniably tragic effect of the climate crisis, the most urgent reality is: people are dying.

In Oregon and Washington state alone, 180 deaths and counting have been attributed to the recent heat wave (it’s also had a devastating impact on wildlife). Other severe health impacts from the heat are also reported: from heatstroke to breathing difficulties caused by smoke emitted from wildfires to kidney issues that worsen pre-existing conditions like asthma and heart disease.

Those most at risk? Farmworkers and migrants. Humanitarian organizations on the US-Mexico border report dozens of heat-related migrant deaths in the past month—a tragedy likely to worsen “as the world grows hotter, as countries in the Global South become more unstable, and as more folks head north.”

For the largely-immigrant agricultural workforce, very few US states offer heat protections—and dangerous heat is increasing rapidly: June 2021 was the hottest June on record in the United States and farmworkers die of heat at roughly 20 times the national rate, according to the CDC. This has prompted farmworker advocates to redouble efforts to enact state and federal heat protection legislation to guarantee adequate shade, water, and rest breaks for workers.

As another dangerous heat dome is set to descend on parts of the United States, this should be a wake up call to listen to farmworker-led organizations and enact not only heat protection, but broad labor protections, increased wages, access to healthcare, and legal status for frontline food and farm workers (not to mention halting the fossil fuel expansion and industrial ag model causing climate chaos to begin with). Do those who bring food to our tables deserve anything less?

In community and solidarity,

Tanya, Tiffani, Christina, and Anna

 
Read the full issue of the Real Food Scoop

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Indigenous Peoples’ Day has us thinking about all the ways indigenous communities, knowledge(s), cultures, seeds, and foodways are central to building the world we need. This isn’t just about preserving traditions, it’s about recognizing indigenous people as leaders, change-makers, and innovators of food and climate justice movements.

This great article by Nick Estes—which we shared in our latest issue of the Real Food Scoop— argues that the green jobs envisioned in the Green New Deal have been pioneered and are already being modeled by indigenous peoples, whose stewardship of nature is rarely viewed as “productive work”: 

Rarely is Indigenous caretaking defined as work. Yet, like unwaged caregiving work, land defense and water protection are undervalued but necessary for the continuation of life on a planet teetering on collapse.

Demonstrators reach out for food donated by supporters in Quito on Oct. 9. (Photo by Jonatan Rosas/Washington Post)

Indigenous people in Ecuador are leading one of the most powerful protests in the world right now against the extractive industries that are wrecking the climate—with the first and most severe impacts felt by indigenous farmers. The protests are led by the indigenous confederation CONAIE, with strong leadership from women. 

In many ways, indigenous worldviews are better equipped to understand the climate crisis and organize collective responses to it that are rooted in centuries of sustainable land and water management and adaptation to changing weather patterns. Critical to applying this invaluable knowledge to the current climate emergency is protecting, and restoring, indigenous community control over land and territory—especially considering these territories are home to upwards of 80 percent of the world’s biodiversity.     

Modern agroecology—the science, movement, and practice of sustainable agriculture—is based in large part on the many techniques, insights, and principles developed by indigenous peoples around the world. 

Alliances across multiple sectors of society are necessary if we are to address the most urgent ecological and humanitarian crises of our time. But in this new global movement we are building— against environmental destruction and (neo-)colonialism, and for relationships that protect and care for the earth and each other—we would do well to center indigenous peoples and leadership.

Check out our four Real Food Reads book picks in celebration of Indigenous People’s Day, and for more reflection, discussion, and action on the climate crisis, see our Climate Toolkit.

Header image: People demonstrate in Quito on Oct. 9. The march is made up of a union of all ethnic groups originating in the Ecuadoran Andes. In the coming days the Amazon communities will also join the rallies. (Jonatan Rosas/Washington Post)

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As we were putting the final touches on our Tackling Climate Change through Food organizing toolkit, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change came out with perhaps its most alarming report to date: a global temperature increase from 1.5° C to 2° C would put millions more people at risk of famine, disease, economic loss, and displacement. To stay at or below 1.5° C—which would still change the world as we know it—we need to urgently slash greenhouse gas emissions, and reach net zero by 2050. And a new global study shocked us with this staggering news: as much as forty percent of all insect species are in serious decline around the globe, due in large part to the expansion of toxic industrial agriculture.

All of this is certainly daunting. But there’s no time to waste on feelings of helplessness and isolation. People, organizations, and communities all around us taking bold action every day. We hope our new toolkit will help you connect to—and grow—the movement to transform our food system from one of the biggest drivers of the climate crisis to one of the key tools in our toolbox for planetary survival.

Get the Tackling Climate Change through Food toolkit 

Header photo: Organización Boricua

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By Anna Lappé, Earth Island Journal

2009. That was the last year there was any significant legislation on the table to confront the climate crisis barreling down on us. The Waxman-Markey Bill passed in the House and failed in the Senate. And that was it: Over and out. Fossil fuel companies helped kill that bill and anything else aimed at regulating the industry, spending an estimated $2 billion since 2000 alone.

These billions have landed blow after blow to the environmental movement and, in turn, to the planet. Now, a new Congress and reenergized environmental movement is breathing fresh life into the idea of comprehensive climate change policy — and food and agriculture could, and should, play a starring role. The Green New Deal is what it’s being called, which The Hill characterizes as “a climate change initiative that aims to fight carbon emissions by transitioning the country to 100 percent renewable energy use.”

Few around the country had even heard of it just a few months ago. But in last year’s mid-term elections a number of the winning candidates, including Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, ran on a platform that included the Green New Deal. A week after those elections, the youth-led Sunrise Movement occupied House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office demanding a select committee on the Green New Deal to hash out just what this bold vision could look like. By December 2018, a whopping 81 percent of all registered voters in a George Mason and Yale University poll — Democrats, Republicans, and Independents alike — either somewhat or strongly supported the idea of a Green New Deal. Said Saikat Chakrabarti, chief of staff for Ocasio-Cortez, “We thought it would take a year to get a movement going around the Green New Deal … [Instead] it took weeks.”

While a select committee with teeth was replaced with a climate-focused committee that has more limited powers, the conversation has shifted and popular imagination has been ignited. As bright minds dig into the details, and movements continue applying pressure, it’s critical to keep food at the forefront, not least because our food producers are so vulnerable to the crisis. As Renata Brillinger from the California Climate and Agriculture Network notes: “Farmers and ranchers are on the frontlines of the impacts of climate change, facing drought, wildfires and record-breaking weather extremes.”

But food and agriculture should also be central to a Green New Deal because food producers can play a critical role in climate mitigation and adaptation. As Brillinger adds: Farmers and ranchers “are also on the frontlines of delivering powerful solutions that cut emissions and — importantly and uniquely — sink carbon by improving soil health.”

This food-friendly Green New Deal can take a page from the Golden State, learning, for instance, from the work done by Brillinger and her network, which has helped to pass a suite of agriculture programs that have moved more than $200 million to farmers to incentivize storing carbon, saving water and energy, reducing methane emissions on livestock operations, and permanently protecting agricultural land. This precedent-setting policy could inspire one comprehensive food and agriculture component of the Green New Deal.

It’s impossible to predict what happens next. One thing we do know: Sitting on the sidelines will only help ensure nothing does. Putting our voices behind a big and bold vision, and including food at its heart, could just made the Green New Deal a reality.

Header photo by Sunrise Movement

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Asked what we as individuals can do to help solve the climate crisis, most of us could recite these eco-friendly mantras from memory: Change our light bulbs! Drive less! Choose energy-efficient appliances! Food rarely enters the climate conversation, though this is beginning to change. Awareness about how our dietary choices contribute to the crisis crisis, especially our appetite for meat, is on the rise.

Indeed, industrial meat and dairy production alone are responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than all of the world’s transportation combined. And industrial farming—which largely produces animal feed, biofuels, industrial materials, and unhealthy food products and food additives—is a big part of the problem too. With its reliance on synthetic fertilizers, fossil fuels, and petroleum-based chemicals, the industrial food system contributes at least one third of all greenhouse gas emissions.

And those who contribute least to the climate crisis are those who suffer disproportionately from its impacts. Low-income countries and communities are the most vulnerable to increasingly powerful storms and droughts, pollution-related health effects like respiratory illness, diseases caused by temperature shifts, crop loss and food insecurity, and conflicts intensified by a changing climate.

Unfortunately, many proposed solutions to climate change—like carbon trading or genetically modified crops—fail to address the root cause of both climate change and vulnerability: a system that accumulates profits for a handful of corporations and individuals at the expense of the majority of the world’s people and environments.

With a problem this big, can becoming vegetarian or eating organic help to solve it? Yes and no. Without a doubt, dietary change has to be part of the solution. North Americans and Europeans currently eat a whopping 183 pounds of meat (mainly beef, pork, and chicken) per year, with devastating impacts on the environment, not to mention public health and animal welfare. But unless we put a stop to the massive corporate subsidies that favor industrial agriculture—and shift support towards energy-saving, real-food-producing, and biodiversity-enhancing agroecology—we have little hope of making a dent.

Luckily, there is hope. And that hope lies in building movements for just and sustainable community-based food systems that can take on corporate power and heal the planet. People are already doing it!

The resources in this toolkit will help you organize a fun and engaging film viewing event that highlights local and global initiatives for food & climate justice, exposes corporate greenwashing, and inspires people to join the movement.

The post Organizing Toolkit: Tackling Climate Change through Food appeared first on Real Food Media.

We at Real Food Media know that to turn our collective energy into people power, we need to organize. From community gardens to town halls across the country and beyond, nothing is more powerful than people coming together to break bread, share ideas, and create the kind of world we want to see.

Our organizing toolkits offer resources to help you bring your community together, spark impactful conversations, dig deeper, and take action. (Last updated Spring 2019)

If you believe a just, healthy, and environmentally sustainable world is possible: let’s get busy.  

TOOLKIT THEMES:

BUILDING POWER WITH FOOD WORKERS

TACKLING CLIMATE CHANGE THROUGH FOOD

WHAT YOU’LL FIND IN EACH TOOLKIT:

• Curated film reels you can watch or screen for a group on the people, places, and stories at the heart of each theme
• Guiding questions to facilitate reflection and discussion
• Engagement activities to turn your film screening into a community-building, action-oriented event
• Downloadable resources to share with your audience
• Ideas for ways to organize in your own community for food system change
• A glossary explaining key terms used in the toolkit
• Tips for individuals and organizations interested in hosting their own event around these themes

TOOLKITS ARE GEARED TOWARDS:

Individuals

• Who care about good food and want to dig deeper to understand how our food system works (or doesn’t work) and how food can be a starting point for building a better world.

Groups

• Food, health, labor, and climate activists who are eager to organize their communities around concrete campaigns and actions
• Students and educators looking for tools that combine learning with action, inside and outside of the classroom
• Faith-based groups interested in fostering support for healthy, just, and sustainable food systems
• Neighborhood associations and other local organizations looking for ways to strengthen community through informed engagement with food issues
• Offices, unions, and other workplace groups that want to facilitate conversation among co-workers about their place in the food system

Have something else in mind? The sky’s the limit! Toolkits include materials accessible to people from diverse backgrounds and levels of experience. Tell us about your group and let us know if we can help you get organized by contacting info@realfoodmedia.org. 

Header photo: Annette Bernhardt, Oakland Fast Food Strike, December 2014.

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While you may not think “global warming” when you sit down to dinner, our tangled web of global food—from Pop-Tarts packaged in Tennessee and eaten in Texas to pork chops raised in Poland, with feed from Brazil, then shipped to South Korea—is connected to as much as one third of total greenhouse-gas emissions. Livestock alone is associated with more emissions than all of the world’s transportation combined. Move over, Hummer. Say hello to the hamburger.

If we’re serious about the climate crisis, says Lappé, we have to talk about food.

In this groundbreaking book, Lappé exposes the interests resisting this conversation and the spin tactics companies are employing to deflect the heat. With seven principles for a climate-friendly diet and success stories from sustainable food advocates around the globe, she offers a vision of a food system that can be part of healing the planet. An engaging call to action, Diet for a Hot Planet delivers a hopeful message during troubling times.

One of Booklist’s Top 10 Food Books of 2010

One of Kirkus Reviews’ Best Books of 2010

The post Diet for a Hot Planet: The Climate Crisis at the End of Your Fork and What You Can Do About It appeared first on Real Food Media.