The Buzz About Bees

Bees have been making a lot of news lately. Scientists have been confounded by Colony Collapse Disorder (PDF), the seemingly random disappearance and collapse of whole hives of bees. Eat. Drink. Better. has a very good post that breaks down some of the issues related to honeybees.

It’s not well known that bees are absolutely crucial to our food system. Strange that people don’t realize this, because that is how nature works. Bees pollenate all kinds of plants that provide us with food, like almonds, fruit, etc. In my understanding their are not really anymore wild colonies of bees in North America. Colonies are trucked all over the continent to pollenate crops for industrial food corporations. In other words, you pay a company money to truck a semi trailer full of bees to your industrial-sized farm in California for a while. Then when you’re done with them, they get shipped somewhere else.

Does this sound crazy to anyone else?

Here’s where this way of using bees to produce our food gets sticky (I had to…sorry). Shipping bees all over the place to pollenate our crops is one more way that we misread Genesis. Is this method of food production stewardship, caring for the creation on which we are dependent? Or is it dominating and controlling nature, bending it to our own purposes and intentions?

Who Owns Who in Organic Foods

This is a very helpful chart of mergers and acquisitions (PDF) among food companies that own various and sundry organic brands as of January this year.

CSM On Poverty

At first blush many of the issues, such as poverty, don’t really seem connected to food (though the current food crisis has highlighted the opposite). It’s about economics right? Well, food plays a role in the endemic nature of poverty, particularly at the bottom of the globalization totem pole. The bottom of that pole is not, as many think, sweatshops where small children make your Air Jordans. No, it is the farmers producing our coffee and organic produce that face the most difficult climb out of poverty.

The Christian Science Monitor recently had an excellent multi-part series on poverty (start here) by Mark Lange, a former speechwriter for President George H.W. Bush. Although I don’t agree with everything in these articles (I’m not as confident in globalization), they certainly raise a lot of good issues in an easily digestible, but not sugary form. Here’s a few good quotes:

Moral obligation is enough…We need reasons that engage a broader political spectrum. Humanitarian, labor, and environmental goals must be joined with economic and geopolitical priorities, each in service to the other.

Post-9/11 terrorpolitik makes ending extreme poverty a security priority. The left responds to the promise of a more compassionate world; the right, to the threat of a more violent one. We must enlist both.

the greatest asset anyone from a wealthy nation might bring to the challenge of eradicating extreme poverty is a healthy balance of audacity and humility.

It’s ironic, but for the last billion China has proved to be the most inspiring example and a direct brake on progress.

aid agencies, nongovernmental organizations, and contractors suffer from an inherent conflict of interest: They exist to run projects and perpetuate themselves – not to put themselves out of business.

and now for the food connection…

The encouraging lesson here is that astute agricultural development can be a life-saving first rung on the ladder to more diversified industry and export-driven growth.

The Sacajawea Theory

The Sacajawea Theory, in short, is that all newborn babies really need is boobs. Everything else is just marketing.

That line from this excellent post from Sweet Juniper! reminded me about all the things that drive me nuts about marketing to kids. That line says it all really… and history is on his side.

Meatpaper

There’s a new food magazine out there and people aren’t quite sure what to make of it. Meatpaper sounds like a fascinating read.

The Washington Post had this to say:

…Meatpaper is not the kind of practical magazine that’s likely to publish a story called “10 Hot New BBQ Tips for Sizzlin’ Summer Cookouts!!” It’s the kind of arty, cheeky, ironic magazine that just published a story called “Sweat Sock: The Other White Meat.”

Meatpaper isn’t really about meat, it’s about “the idea of meat,” the editors explained in the first issue last fall. “Half the people who pick up Meatpaper assume it’s some kind of vegan hate letter addressed to their salami sandwich. The other half wonder if we’re subsidized by the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association. That’s how we know we’re on to something.”