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In Wake of Romaine E. Coli Scare, Walmart To Track Leafy Greens
Lately, food safety has been in the public eye: 2018 has already seen a large outbreak of E. coli in romaine lettuce and Salmonella in a number of products from eggs to breakfast cereal.
September 25, 2018
Lately, food safety has been in the public eye: 2018 has already seen a large outbreak of E. coli in romaine lettuce and Salmonella in a number of products from eggs to breakfast cereal.
Walmart and Sam’s Club sent a letter to suppliers of fresh, leafy greens asking them to trace their products all the way back to the farm using blockchain technology. Suppliers are expected to have all these systems in place by this time next year.
This change means that the information gathered by these suppliers will be open and accessible through technology that offers real-time, end-to-end traceability from farm to table. Blockchain allows for digitized sharing of data in a secure and trusted way.
What happens when the food you buy has been identified as having Salmonella or E. coli? You may not know where or how your Caesar salad was affected. You just know you don’t want your family to get sick when eating it.
This year, many customers and grocers were forced to throw away large amounts of romaine lettuce when an E. coli contamination in romaine lettuce spread through the food industry. Health officials at the Centers for Disease Control told Americans to avoid eating lettuce that was grown in Yuma, AZ.
“But it was difficult for consumers to know how to determine where their lettuce was grown,” said Frank Yiannas, vice president of food safety at Walmart.
“None of the bags of salad had ‘Yuma, Arizona’ on them,” he said. “In the future, using the technology we’re requiring, a customer could potentially scan a bag of salad and know with certainty where it came from.”
It’s crucial to respond quickly and accurately to food-safety issues like these. But with the traditional paper-based method of capturing information that exists at many farms, packing houses and warehouses, tracking down important data from multiple sources is extremely time-consuming.
With paper-based ledgers, Yiannas mentioned that it may take his team seven days to track down where a product came from. The team has to contact the supplier, get paper records and use those records to contact the company that imported or shipped the product to Walmart’s distribution center.
“The food system is absolutely too large for any single entity to [track],” Yiannas said.
But blockchain changes everything.
“We’ve been working with IBM to digitize that, so the information is captured on the farm with a handheld system. It’s [also] captured at the packing house at the supplier,” Yiannas continued.
Now, Walmart plans to use the power of blockchain to speed up identifying, researching and reacting to food safety situations.
Instead of taking a week to hunt down information about potential Salmonella in a product, blockchain tracking takes only a couple of seconds.
The Centers for Disease Control & Prevention believes that this change will help make more effective recalls.
“Customers trust us to help them put quality food on their tables for themselves and their families,” said Charles Redfield, executive vice president of food for Walmart U.S. “We have to go further than offering great food at an everyday low price. Our customers need to know they can trust us to help ensure that food is safe. These new requirements will help us do just that.”
Making information available in the interest of public safety is a step change for the industry. But it matters to everyone.
“When it comes to safety, this is not a competitive issue,” Yiannas said. “We all win or lose together.”
"North American Diets Require More Land Than Available"
The researchers found that global adherence to United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) guidelines would require one giga-hectare of additional land—roughly the size of Canada
If the global population adopted recommended North American dietary guidelines, there wouldn’t be enough land to provide the food required, according to a new study co-authored by University of Guelph researchers.
hoto by Gary Csoff
The researchers found that global adherence to United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) guidelines would require one giga-hectare of additional land—roughly the size of Canada—under current farming practice. Their findings were published in PLOS ONE.
“The data shows that we would require more land than what we have if we adopt these guidelines. It is unsustainable,” said Prof. Madhur Anand, director of the Global Ecological Change and Sustainability lab where the study was undertaken.
Prof. Madhur Anand
“This is one of the first papers to look at how the adoption of Western dietary guidelines by the global population would translate into food production, including imports and exports, and specifically how that would dictate land use and the fallouts of that,” she said.
Although the dietary guidelines are viewed as an improvement on the current land-intensive diet of the average American, the researchers say that dietary guidelines should be further developed using not just health but also global land use and equity as criteria.
“We need to look at diet not just as an individual health issue but as an ecosystem health issue,” said Anand, a professor in U of G’s School of Environmental Sciences (SES).
The authors found a strong east-west division worldwide. Most Western Hemisphere countries would use less land by adopting a USDA guideline diet, while most Eastern Hemisphere countries would use more land.
Co-authors of the paper are U of G Prof. Evan Fraser, holder of a Canada Research Chair in Global Food Security; SES graduate student Sarah Rizvi; Chris Pagnutti, an NSERC post-doctoral researcher in SES; and Prof. Chris Bauch, Department of Applied Mathematics, University of Waterloo.
“We need to understand human and environmental systems in a coordinated manner, and this is where the interdisciplinary aspect of the work shines. This is also why we worked with an applied mathematician,” said Anand.
The authors call for international coordination of national dietary guidelines because global lands are a limited resource.
Prof. Evan Fraser
“This could be similar, at least in principle, to how greenhouse gas emissions are increasingly being coordinated internationally to address another major global problem: climate change,” Anand said.
Fraser, scientific director of the Food from Thought project and director of the Arrell Food Institute at U of G, added: “One of the 21st century’s great challenges is to develop diets that are both healthy for our bodies and sustainable for the planet.
“Developing the technologies and insights to help industry and consumers is part of what many of us at the University of Guelph are working on through the Food from Thought initiative.”
This research was supported by an NSERC Discovery Grant and is associated with the University of Guelph’s Food from Thought project, supported by the Canada First Research Excellence Fund. The project is intended to increase the sustainability and productivity of global food production through leading-edge data science, agri-food research and biodiversity science.
Source: University of Guelph
Publication date: 8/10/2018
Aquaponics As A Way To Reduce Food Imports In The Caribbean
Tackling the Caribbean’s high food import bill and improving food security is increasingly being explored through aquaponics.
This potential was highlighted by the recent visit to the Choiseul aquaponics facility and mobile desalination plant in Laborie in Saint Lucia by both the Hon. Dean Jonas, Minister of Agriculture of Antigua and Barbuda and Mr. Jedidiah Maxime, Director of the Ministry of Agriculture, Lands, Fisheries, and Barbuda Affairs.
Minister Jonas said that while the OECS faced an unacceptably high food import bill, the region also faced an unprecedented opportunity to lead the way in aquaponics which needs 90% less land and water than agriculture but has the potential to generate 3 to 4 times more food than the latter.
“While traditional farming will always remain the backbone of the OECS agricultural industry and is envisaged to expand with the support of enterprises such as the agri-shipping initiative, we must also expand investment in complementary food production techniques such as aquaponics and hydroponics where sometimes limited agriculture land tenure and space demand creative new ways of food production” said Minister Jonas.
“An aquaponics industry can facilitate the rearing of fish for high value protein concurrently with green leafy vegetables, beans, peas, radishes, onions, herbs and other produce which as an import substitution measure can help reduce dependence on these foreign imports.
“I commend the Choiseul facility for helping pioneer the important role aquaponics can not only play in driving economic activity but also in ensuring food security through the production of more eco-friendly, nutritious and high-value produce for local communities” said Minister Jonas.
OECS Director General Dr. Didacus Jules said the Choiseul aquaponics facility was a model for the rest of the OECS to replicate for the highly efficient use of existing space for more economical food production.
“Crops may be produced according to the interests of growers and local demand and notably production is generally more environmentally sustainable than traditional farming" said Dr. Jules.
“Depending on market trends, crop production can be rapidly accelerated according to local, tourism and export demand.
“There is also an opportunity for small holders and young people seeking a career in complementary agricultural technologies to enter aquaponics, both as a commercial venture and as way to produce food for local consumption.
“However, public-private investments in the right frameworks of support and infrastructure will be required beyond present capacity and to this end we will also be seeking to engage our development partners further as part of an existing coalition of support to the OECS’s agriculture industry” said Dr. Jules.
For more information:
OECS
The Rise Of The Urban Rooftop
With space at a premium, cities are exploring new ways to make better use of their rooftops.
The rooftops of our cities are wowefully under-utilised, despite the constant-battle for land (Image credit: Shutterstock)
With space at a premium, cities are exploring new ways to make better use of their rooftops.
Our cities have never been denser, taller, or busier than they are now, and with that, comes the constant battle for land. Whether you’re a city dweller, developer, transport planner, or farmer, you’re forced to compete for dwindling amounts of available space. And with two-thirds of the world’s population predicted to live in cities by 2050, the stress on urban infrastructure looks set to outpace even the most carefully-laid plans. But if we look at aerial images of any city center, we can quickly spot plenty of unused space – the rooftops. Speaking to Scientific American, Steven Peck from a non-profit called Green Roofs for Healthy Cities, describes the roofscapes of our cities as “the last urban frontier – (representing) 15 to 35 % of the total land area.”
So what can we use this precious resource for? In a growing number of high-density cities, some of it is dedicated to recreation – everything from bars and pools, to soccer pitches and running tracks can now be found atop skyscrapers. Others host smog-eating roof tiles or questionable wind turbines, while in China, a large shopping mall has 25 villas on its roof. But when a rooftop offers access to sunlight, there are two more obvious candidates for its use – agriculture and solar power.
Green Cities
Green roofs have been growing in popularity for more than a decade, and in some cases, growing in scale too – atop a convention center in Manhattan sits the city’s largest, covering an area of 89,000 m2. Usually comprised of planted beds, or carpet-like tiles that encouraged the growth of low profile vegetation, green roofs can provide a habitat for birds and insects in an otherwise hostile environment. They also act as thermal insulation for the building, and reduce storm water runoff that can otherwise cause havoc in urban sewers.
Green roofs come with the added benefit of mitigating the dreaded urban heat island effect, whereby, as a result of heat-absorbing materials like asphalt and concrete, cities can be several degrees warmer than the surrounding countryside. In contrast, trees and green spaces can absorb shortwave radiation, and use it to evaporate water from their leaves – a kind of ‘double cooling’ effect. There are countless studies that back up this idea. One of the most interesting came from researchers at the University of Georgia. In 2015, they showed not only that ‘green’ cities are cool cities, but that networks of small urban green spaces, such as parks, gardens and green roofs, were more effective at reducing a city’s temperature than a singular park of the equivalent size.
In some European and US cities, councils now offer significant financial incentives to developers who install a green roof – in Hamburg, building owners can receive subsidies of 30–60% of its installation costs. And from 2020, green roofs will be considered compulsory for all new, large-scale builds in the city. (CONTINUED...)
uilding-intergrated PVs are growing in popularity. But are they always the best option? (Photo by Thomas Imo/Photothek via Getty Images)
As food security and urban nutrition creep ever-higher on the agenda for the United Nations, there’s also a worldwide movement of using green roofs for hyper-local food production. In regions with suitable climates, hundreds of different vegetables, fruits, herbs and salad leaves can be grown on rooftops. Beehives and chicken coops are also becoming commonplace amongst the high-rises. But not all rooftop farms are equal, as we’ll discuss.
Power Up
But first, what about solar power? With so many cities now divesting from fossil fuels, and the costs of solar panels dropping dramatically, photovoltaic (PV) systems have become the ‘go to’ option for generating distributed power in built-up areas. And, even with standard commercial panels, the energy gains are dramatic. The US National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have estimated that rooftop PV systems could generate almost 40% of electricity demands nationwide. NREL also developed a very cool visualization tool called PVWatts to help people discover if solar panels would work for them. In 2012, Dutch researchers calculated that building-integrated photovoltaics could deliver 840 TWh of electricity – that’s more than a fifth of the total annual demand for all of the EU-27 countries.
In 2011, a fascinating map was published by the City University of New York. Assembled from images taken by a LIDAR-enabled (Light Detection and Ranging) aircraft, it showed that at the time, 66.4% of New York’s buildingshad roof space suitable for commercial photovoltaic systems. Furthermore, they estimated that, even with NYC’s changeable weather, rooftop installations could meet close to 14% of the city’s annual electricity consumption.
And cities have certainly taken note of this data – in many cases, making such installations compulsory, as in Sao Paulo, where Brazil’s Ministry of Cities announced that future low-income housing developments should include rooftop photovoltaics.
Which one to choose?
There’s no doubt that in both cases, a network of ‘productive rooftops’ could benefit the local community by supplying a portion of a necessary resource – either food or electricity – while also reducing their environmental burden. But is one better than the other? (CONTINUED...)
This was the question posed by researchers from MIT and the University of Lisbon in a recent paper in the journal Cities. Focusing on the rooftops of a mixed-use neighborhood in Lisbon, they carried out a Cost-Benefit Analysis for four scenarios – 1. Open-air rooftop farming, 2. Rooftop farming in low-tech greenhouses, 3. ‘Controlled environment agriculture’ (farming in high-tech greenhouses) or 4. Solar PV energy generation. Starting with existing data on everything from installation costs and resources used, to carbon footprint and yield, they modelled the impact that each installation would have on the local community over a period of 50 years.
The researchers took a footprint of one square meter of roofing, considered a population of 17,500 residents, and for the farms, looked only at a single crop – tomatoes. The fruit is not only incredibly popular in the Portuguese diet – with an average of 10.4 kg eaten per year, per person – there’s also a large body of data available on their growing requirements and yields. For solar power, they considered standard single-crystalline silicon PV modules, arranged on flat or pitched roofs. They also assumed that the PVs installation would act as part of the grid – in other words, though generated locally, the electricity would be distributed via existing infrastructure.
Urban farming might add value to a neighbourhood far beyond what had been previously assumed (Photo by John S Lander/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Here are a few highlights from their study:
The benefits of food production varied according to the supply chain, except for high-tech rooftop farms, which were predicted to be profitable regardless. Open-air and low-tech greenhouses were found to only profit when the crops are sold directly to consumers.
If the demand for tomatoes in Lisbon was to be met through rooftop farming, you’d require 1.89 square meters for organic field cultivation (#1), 0.37 m2 for soil-less cultivation in unconditioned greenhouses (#2), or 0.15 m2 for controlled-environment agriculture (#3)
A rooftops farm could potentially create five times as many local jobs as a rooftop PV system, but would involve much higher operation and maintenance costs
The electricity yield for PVs installed on south-oriented unshaded rooftops was calculated to be approximately 300 kWh/m2/year.
So, both options seem pretty good. But it’s when we look at the bigger picture that the differences start to show. I’ve written about the questionable profitability of urban farming in the past, but that was only ever as measured on individual farmers, which – I say, with the benefit of hindsight – doesn’t make all that much sense in the context of a city.
This study, however, takes a broader, and much more sensible view – it looks at rooftop installations as part of an interconnected network. And it’s which measures the overall value – in terms of economics and the environment – to both the building owner, and the community around it. And by looking at it that way, they concluded that for Lisbon, the use of rooftops for food production could yield significantly higher local value than solar PV energy generation or standard green roofs. Of course, this is very site-specific – in another city, you might come to exactly the opposite conclusion, but that’s kind of the point. There is no one-size-fits-all solution to make cities more sustainable, and anyone who tells you otherwise is massively over-simplifying a complex issue.
There are lots of things that will help anywhere – e.g. moving from private cars to mass transit, making renewable energy the default option, being smarter with how we use water, reducing our reliance on concrete, minimizing our waste footprint, and reserving single-use plastics for very, very specific applications. But when it comes to ‘other’ questions, like should we use our rooftops for energy generation or farming, the answers are a lot less black-and-white. By adopting research like the study I’ve featured here, we can get much closer to making the right decision for our specific circumstances. The authors said that their study “…aims to provide decision-makers with a basis for systematic and integrated comparison of these productive uses of rooftops.” Now, all I hope is that some of those decision makers start using it.
Why We Need To Rethink How We Produce Food
With rapid urbanization sweeping Asia-Pacific, the food industry is under pressure to feed 4.5 billion people with nutritious food that doesn’t cost the Earth.
As the world's population slowly but surely shifts to cities, urban farming has gained popularity as a solution to food security challenges. Image: Pixabay
By Zafirah Zein
10 September 2018
Feeding today’s world produces a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions. With the accelerating pace in which people are moving from countryside to the city, changes in land use and the agriculture industry could amount to 70 percent of total emissions by 2050, according to projections by the World Bank.
“Where we are in agriculture is 30 years behind the other sectors,” said Dr. Juergen Voegele, senior director of food and agriculture practice at the World Bank. “We need to rethink the way we produce our food in a very fundamental way. We cannot solve climate change unless we change the way we produce our food.”
He was addressing business leaders at a panel discussion titled Food to Nutrition: Affordable Access for a Growing Asia, part of this year’s Ecosperity conference. Organised annually by Singapore investment firm Temasek, the conference explores how businesses can provide sustainable solutions to the world’s most pressing problems.
Joined by other industry leaders, Voegele spoke urgently of displacing the food system now regarded as one of the biggest impediments to achieving the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, a series of ambitious targets to make the world a fairer, more equal and environmentally balanced place by 2030.
Increasing urbanization is projected to cause a loss of 2 million hectares per year. Most of that land is arable farmland that has traditionally put food on our plates. Moreover, as more people move to cities, fewer will remain on farms, painting an uncertain future for agriculture.
2.3 billion new middle-class consumers are predicted to emerge by 2030, with Asia-Pacific holding 90 percent of the growing number of people with greater purchasing power. In the region’s largest country, China, economic growth and changing tastes have resulted in a surge in demand for food, especially animal protein.
“Today we have a relative food shortage globally,” said Dr Koh Poh Koon, Singapore’s Senior Minister of State at the Ministry of Trade and Industry. “Already we are overconsuming more than what we produce.”
Asia-Pacific is experiencing a growing health crisis, with rising obesity rates among children. Shortages in nutrition and disparities in access to healthy foods have led to more than 40 percent of adults in the region being overweight or obese.
Coupled with the rising constraints of dwindling labor, climate change, and land degradation, the mismatch between demand and supply and the troubling state of health poses the question: how do we sustainably feed a rapidly growing Asia with nutritious and affordable food?
Reforming agricultural production
Growing food in cities could boost food security by making local sources more accessible and improving cost efficiency, experts at Ecosperity said. Across Asia, urban farming through the innovative use of existing infrastructure has taken off. In Singapore, alternative methods such as hydroponics and aeroponics have become a popular way to increase and diversify food supply. More underused spaces in the city such as rooftops are also being transformed into urban gardens.
However, with the high capital needed to support urban farms, challenges to its adoption persist, especially in developing countries where resources are less accessible for the underprivileged.
Cutting down on food waste
According to a report by the Food and Agriculture Association of the United Nations, if food wastage was a country, it would be the third largest emitting country in the world. Despite the alarming contribution food waste makes to climate change, its environmental and economic costs are mostly lost on consumers.
In Asia, there has been a wave of policies and initiatives aimed at reducing the carbon footprint left by discarded food. Seoul is one city imposing the true cost of food waste on its population. A 2013 policy implemented in Seoul meant that citizens would pay for recycling services according to the amount of food they disposed of. Since then, food waste has decreased by 10 per cent and the policy has been introduced to 16 other cities in South Korea. In China, the grassroots-led “Clean Plate Initiative” also pushes for zero food waste when dining out.
Speaking at Ecosperity, Patrick Yu, president of COFCO, China’s largest food processing company, advocated for government regulation in managing the country’s food waste mountain. “If we can structure the restaurants so that all the waste can go to a certain place, we can aggregate the treatment of food waste. It’s important for government to play that role,” he said.
Today’s consumers prioritize safety amid concerns of food fraud and malpractice in recent years, particularly in China. Dr. Koh proposed government legislation and more research to eliminate breaches in safety regulations in the food industry.
China, for example, introduced the Food Safety Law after several high profile cases. Chinese multinational Alibaba also announced last year that it was exploring using blockchain technology to map food products along their supply chain for businesses to trace where their products are at every stage of production.
Making the transition to better nutrition
As cities have grown, so has the consumption of processed and fast foods. Indonesia is a case in point, where processed meat and poultry markets have expanded at a growth rate of 27 percent per year between 2011 and 2015.
Investing in research into fresh foods and nutrition education might go a long way to influence people to eat healthily. Through redevelopments in packaging and labeling, nutritional information could appear more appealing to the average consumer. “Free-from” foods are already paving their way to the mainstream as they are increasingly perceived across Asia as premium, healthier products.
Food experts at Ecosperity painted a troubled picture of the future of food, one where demand has outstripped supply while causing grave damage to the earth. Nevertheless, consumer mindsets are changing and businesses are adapting to new demands.
“Consumer trends are pushing us to find out where their food comes from, the companies behind it, and the farmers who grow it, and whether these are following the right practices,” said Ehab Abou-Oaf, regional president of Mars Wrigley Confectionery in Asia-Australia, Middle East and Africa.
As such, the food system is making incremental changes towards a sustainable future. But is this enough? As Voegele pointed out, business-as-usual for agriculture is slight, continuous improvement – and that won’t fix the food system. If the energy sector had moved at the same pace as agriculture, we wouldn’t have the solar panel or windmill, he said.
Greater support for technology and education in sustainable practices and behaviours is needed to drive momentum towards a more sustainably fed world. “Nutritional outcomes are so out of whack that 50 per cent of the world’s population is currently malnourished,” said Voegele.
“We need to see investment in truly sustainable food systems. This would incentivise the private sector, which has been outcompeted by a public focus on food.”
Voegele concluded: “Agricultural policies are ready to be disrupted. They’ve been politically difficult to touch, but that has to change.”
Woman Sues Pepperidge Farm And Minnesota Whey Producer Over Salmonella
17-Aug-2018 By Douglas Yu
A Mississippi woman has filed a lawsuit against Pepperidge Farm and its whey powder supplier Associated Milk Producers Inc. (AMPI) alleging that Salmonella had contaminated its snacks.
USDA Assists Vertical Farmers With Funding, Research
Imagine walking into your local grocery story on a frigid January day to pick up freshly harvested lettuce, fragrant basil, juicy sweet strawberries, and ripe red tomatoes – all of which were harvested at a local farm only hours before you’d arrived. You might be imagining buying that fresh produce from vertical farms where farmers can grow indoors year-round by controlling light, temperature, water, and oftentimes carbon dioxide levels as well. Generally, fresh produce grown in vertical farms travels only a few miles to reach grocery store shelves compared to conventional produce, which can travel thousands of miles by truck or plane.
by Sarah Federman and Paul M. Zankowski
Beyond providing fresh local produce, vertical agriculture could help increase food production and expand agricultural operations as the world’s population is projected to exceed 9 billion by 2050. And by that same year, two out of every three people are expected to live in urban areas. Producing fresh greens and vegetables close to these growing urban populations could help meet growing global food demands in an environmentally responsible and sustainable way by reducing distribution chains to offer lower emissions, providing higher-nutrient produce, and drastically reducing water usage and runoff.
Indoor and vertical farming may be part of the solution to rising demands for food and limited natural resources. Photo credit: Oasis Biotech
Recently, USDA and the Department of Energy held a stakeholder workshop focused on vertical agriculture and sustainable urban ecosystems. At this workshop, field experts shared thought-provoking presentations followed by small group discussions focusing on areas such as plant breeding, pest management, and engineering. Workshop attendees from public and private sectors worked together to identify the challenges, needs, and opportunities for vertical farming. A report on this workshop will be released to help inform Departmental strategic planning efforts for internal research priorities at USDA and external funding opportunities for stakeholders and researchers.
We’re excited about the potential opportunities vertical agriculture presents to address food security. That’s why USDA already has some of these funding and research opportunities in place. The National Institute for Food and Agriculture has funding opportunities (PDF, 1.22 MB) that could support future vertical agriculture conferences and research. Similarly, the Agricultural Research Service is working on a project to increase U.S. tomato production and quality in greenhouses and other protected environments. We look forward to continuing our partnership with our customers, both internal and external.
Source: USDA
Publication date: 8/20/2018