1. The Transcontinental Lettuce By Brian Halweil

2. The Mississippi  Major path for shipping about 35000 metric tons of soybeans a day.  US Army Corps of Engineer project: add to the existing lock infrastructure to allow more flow of goods.  Expansion adds to 85 million meters of sand and mud already lost from the bank and bottom every year.

3. Economic Incentive  Lower the cost of shipping soybeans by 4 cents per bushel.  Analysts think this isn’t possible even with the construction.

4. S. American Plan  The governments of Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay, Argentina, and Paraguay created a plan to dredge 13 million meters of sand, rock, and mud from the Paraguay-Parana River.  Came at nearly the same time as the Mississippi plan.

5. S. American Plan  Calls for the building of a major port and dozens of locks in the world’s largest wetland.  Soybean production and export in the region is second only to the United States.

6. Lobbying  Lobbyists for the Mississippi, as well as ones for the Paraguay-Parana, construction argue that the expansion is necessary to “improve competitiveness, grab world market share, and rescue farmers from their worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.”

7. Lobbyist Arguments  The Midwest River Coalition 2000  Essential to feeding the world as the shipping of soybeans will be much faster.  Locks will save the environment because hungry peasants and indigenous peoples will not have to clear rainforests for farmland.

8. Um…No  The author argues that anyone who examines both sides of the debate will find that US farmers and Brazilian farmers will not just be more competitive with each other.  A more likely outcome, he states, is that there will be a race to maximize production.  Maximizing production will force farmers in both regions to cut deeper into environmentally integral lands, like river banks and rainforests, to garner the most profit.  There will be more soybeans being shipped at faster rates, but each farmer will earn less per ton.  The increase in amount of produce shipped will not matter when small-scale farmers are eventually bought out by corporate farms.

9. Why don’t they see why this cannot work?  Lobbyists calling for this plan are working for the top soybean processing companies using the rivers—Archer, Daniels Midland, Cargill, and Bunge.  It is in these companies best interests that the price of soybeans fall because they buy the crops from farmers.

10. Just Another Day in the Global Economy  A handful of companies control the fates of many farmers.  Construction on the Mississippi will be funded at a huge public expense.  Expense not only in a dollar sense, but also in environmental and social ones.  Corporations use emotional phrases like “hungry masses” or “farmer’s plights” to gain cooperation.

11. Ecological Damage on the Mississippi  Increased barge traffic  Kicked up sediment will block sunlight, reducing the depths at which plant life can live.  Reduces the number of species that depend on the same plants for sustenance (i.e. birds, mollusks, fish).  US Army Corps of Engineers plan threatens 300 species of birds and 127 species of fish.

12. Ecological Damage on the Parguay-Parana  The proposed plan will destroy bird- nesting habitat and fish spawning areas.  Many indigenous societies depend on these animals for sustenance.  Just as on the Mississippi, reduce the depth at which plant life can survive.

13. Justification  Senators say that the plan is required for efficiency.  This efficiency relies on a short- sightedness that doesn’t factor in the environmental ruin.

14. History  Even just a few decades ago, most people obtained their food from local sources.  In ancient times though, there was still shipping and international trade for exotic flavors and supplemental foods.  Until modern times, only wealthy individuals were able to partake in these items.

15. Today  Local foods are playing an ever-shrinking role in our consumption while foreign- made foods are increasingly made available to everyone.  In 2002, $442 billion of food were shipped around the globe.  898 million tons of food shipped each year.  4x increase from 1961 total of 200 million.

16. Why Do We Eat Less Local Produce?  Part of the reason can be attributed to urbanization.  Food needs to be moved from the centers of production to the cities.  Technology allows for longer storage and more distant movement.

19. Food Storage  Mikal Saltveit, a Plant Science professor at the University of California, “directs a lab concerned with ‘how to keep lettuce and carrots from browning, among other things.’”  He claims that throughout human history, man has been preoccupied with storing food.  Societies invented such things as salting, drying, pickling, and fermenting.  Storage practices were developed over time to lessen the hardships of summer months where there was little food to survive on.

20. Industrial Revolution  The Industrial Revolution came at a time when large standing armies were established and people began urbanizing at an appalling rate.  1809: Napoleon offered a reward to anyone who could find a way to keep rations from spoiling.  A French chef, Nicolas Appert developed the first method for canning as a response.  He “packed food into glass jars, sealed the cork tops with pitch, and boiled the jars.”  1815: the British had refined the technique with tin- coated steel.  1860s: canned foods were everywhere.

21. Industrial Revolution cont.  1875: Mechanical refrigeration  A Chicago meatpacker, Gustavus Swift, developed a refrigerated railroad car.  Later advances in freezing during WWI brought about a frozen food craze.  Mid-1920s: Birds-eye started freezing produce.  1920s: British scientists created a storage process for apples that slows ripening.  Today: most all apples are shipped with this technique.

22. Recent Food Storage  1924: Ethylene discovered  Ethylene gas allows companies to ship fruits unripe and ripen them upon arrival to their destination.  Most bananas today are bred to not ripen on their own, and instead must wait for a gassing.  Top food preservation techniques rely on no packing or cooling and instead look to biotechnology.

23. Mikal Saltveit  “Both traditional plant breeding and biotechnological genetic engineering are being used.”  Mikal warns that concerns about genetic tainting shouldn’t mar its uses.  “Reducing softening of tomatoes by anti- sensing [reversing through genetic engineering] a specific gene should not be viewed with the same concern as introducing human genes into a pig.”

24. Science Fiction?  For extremely fragile foods, scientists are currently looking into edible packaging.  Works best with whole, uncut foods.  Working with this technology, the US Army has created an “indestructible sandwich.”  Can stay fresh for as long as three years.

25. Squeamishness  People have always been wary of new food storage techniques.  Some of the first canned foods were labeled “embalmed.”  In the first half of the 20 th century there was widespread opposition to the pasteurization of milk.  People may reminisce about veggies before genetic engineering, but they must remember, according to Saltveit, that they were not available year round back then.  Saltveit: “quality of food is increasing as is the healthfulness of the diet.”

26. Opposition  Robert Sommers, another University of California professor disagrees with Saltveit.  “The universities were supporting research to make things look pretty at the neglect of things that were important to consumers.  Argues that “hard” tomatoes were the turning point in this type of research.  “consumer resistance to the tough, square, tasteless tomato was so great that the universities couldn’t just support the mechanical, industrial type of agriculture.”

27. Opposition cont.  Sommers recalls that tough fruits are able to be picked much faster by machines than by people.  Many California farm workers have been put out of work by mechanization.  After several events like this, the University of California established a few alternative agriculture programs.

28. Jet-Lagged Fruits  Falling oil prices and new modes of transportation in the mid 1900s reduced the costs of shipping food.  Traveling produce uses as many modes of transportation as people during their vacations.  Ride a boat from England to east US coast, then refrigerated train cars across the nation, shipped to Japan, and then trucked across the country.  During all of this movement, produce is taking advantage of its many storage wonders.  Containerization, or the process of using small, uniform containers that are easily loaded and moved, has further increased the speed at which food is transported.

29. So Happy Together…  Food shipping and processing advances work in tandem.  In response to the US government asking for an orange juice that could be shipped overseas to US troops fighting in WWII.  Starting point for multibillion dollar frozen orange juice business.

30. Fuel for Lettuce  All of the movement across the globe requires ridiculous amounts of fuel.  A head of lettuce grown in California and shipped to Washington DC costs 36 times as much fuel energy as it provides in protein energy when consumed.  When this head arrives in London the fuel energy/protein energy ratio is 127.  These “Perishables” are the fastest growing segment of the food shipping industry.  Most international trade is by boat and rail.  More efficient than airplanes.

31. Fuel for Dry Food  Beans and grains can be shipped without refrigeration.  These small foods can contain loads of protein and nutrition.  Cause four times less greenhouse gas emissions than perishables.  In Britain, food transport is the country’s fastest growing industry and therefore its leading greenhouse gas emitter.

32. Farming Effects  Climate change hits farms the hardest.  Farms require a stable climate to be productive.  Studies provide evidence that in the next 50 years, agricultural yields in many areas will drop substantially.

33. Global Change  Dependence upon imported foods will become ever more expensive as climate damage continues.  Due to heavy dependence on fossil fuels.  Shocks to the oil industry like peak production or massive price increases will also negatively affect our food production.

34. Local Foods  Interest in local food production could help break an addiction to oil.  By learning to farm with less oil now, farmers will avoid negative consequences in the future.  Illogical to import foods.  Many nations import foods they already produce.  This “food swap” is part of the subsidization of transportation, centralization by food manufacturers, and trade agreements that set import quotas.  These economic forces explain why Tropicana juice bottles list over five countries for concentrate origins.  How can one be sure of what he/she is drinking?

35. Ecological Economist Herman Daly  “Americans import Danish sugar cookies, and Danes import American sugar cookies. Exchanging recipes would surely be more efficient.”

36. Waste  Food trade cycles leave enormous pressure to deal with waste on one end.  On the other end, there is a loss of useful organic waste.  Food scraps and packages now make up a greater portion of waste than ever before.  Edible packaging could help.  Landfills filled with food waste could be utilized.

37. Conclusion  Long-distance food has helped feed people, but it has been overdeveloped.  Necessary at one time.  Greed is motivation.  Technology overused.  Elimination of local growers and food.  Taste reduction.  Wasted fossil fuels and organic matter.