Sustainable Food Systems Required Reading/Watching/Listening
REQUIRED TEXT
The Omnivore’s Dilemma, (Penguin 2006) by Michael Pollan
Food System Primer: Industrialization of Agriculture
WRI: How to Sustainably Feed 10 Billion People by 2050, in 21 Charts
SUPPLEMENTAL TEXT
Greening Your Small Business (Random House 2009) by Jennifer Kaplan
The Sufficiency-Based Circular Economy—An Analysis of 150 Companies by Nancy M. P. Bocken, Laura Niessen, & Samuel W. Short
Designing Science Inquiry: Claim + Evidence + Reasoning = Explanation
WEEKLY ARTICLE/VIDEO/PODCAST/READING LISTS
Week 1: Intro + Food Systems & Sustainability: Is Food System Sustainability Possible?
Omnivore’s Dilemma, Introduction
Video: True Cost Accounting Real Cost Cheap Food
Video: Ben & Jerry’s Social Mission: An introduction a Triple Bottom Line (TBL) food company. Are they or aren’t they?
Video: Mad Men Picnic: What a perfect example of the 1950s ethos about disposable food packaging and public litter and trash.
Video: Crying Indian PSA: Another example, circa 1970, of the growing awareness of our disposable food packaging and public litter and trash problem.
The Sufficiency-Based Circular Economy—An Analysis of 150 Companies by Nancy M. P. Bocken, Laura Niessen, & Samuel W. Short
LinkedIn post by Edouard Audi, Co-founder & CEO at apiday: Elon Musk thinks that my startup is bullshit.
For more on the history of trash and trash cans: The Remarkable Evolution Of Trash And All Its Dirty Secrets
Week 2.1: Climate Change, Horticulture & Botany
Omnivore’s Dilemma, Chapters 2-4
BBC Video: What is climate change? A really simple guide
NY Times: Your Questions About Food and Climate Change, Answered
NY Times: Cutting Greenhouse Gases From Food Production Is Urgent, Scientists Say
Video: Tuning Up Photosynthesis: 1) All the food we eat comes directly or indirectly from plants. 2) Photosynthesis is the process by which plants make food from light, water, nutrients, and carbon dioxide. 3) To understand the food system, you need to understand that, “All agriculture is at its heart is a business of capturing free solar energy in a food product that can then be turned into high-value human energy” (Omnivore’s Dilemma, 188).
Video: Pollination: Trading food for fertilization: Without pollination, the food system would be in trouble.
Video: Migrating with Honey Bees: If you have ever wondered how commercial beekeepers release their bees, this mesmerizing video is worth a watch.
Week 2.2: Produce Selection: Quality/Condition, Growth/Maturity & COVID
Video: Food maturity: Why Food Changes Color: Understanding how food ripens is the first step in understanding how to use (aka. not waste) food at all stages of maturity.
Scientific American: Food Dumped During Pandemic Comes with an Emissions Price Tag
Deloitte: COVID-19 has broken the global food supply chain. So now what?
BCC Podcast: On Synthetic Meat and the Future of Food Manufacturing
Week 3.1: Production Practices: Regenerative Ag & Farm-to-Fork
Omnivore’s Dilemma, Chapters 8, 9 & 11
Video: Gabe Brown @ TEDxGrandForks: Regeneration of Our Lands: A Producer’s Perspective
Video: The Agricultural Value Chain
Video: Vertical Farming: This Farm of the Future Uses No Soil and 95% Less Water
CNN Podcast: From farm-to-table: Is the food supply chain breaking?
Week 3.2: Production Practices
Livestock Video: Factory Farming (CAFOs)
The Guardian: Have we hit ‘peak beef’?
Agfunder News: Let’s Get the Facts Straight about Livestock’s Carbon Footprint
Food Navigator: How do animal welfare standards impact the taste of meat?
Food Navigator: Italy’s ambition to ‘lead the ecological transition’ sparks meat sector criticism
Video: The Meat of the Future: How Lab-Grown Meat Is Made
Seafood Production
Video: The Business Case for Responsible Aquaculture
Video: #KeepOceansFishy: Chefs for Sustainable Seafood
New Republic: The Problem with Shrimp
Week 4.1: Water And Energy Use In Food Service
Video: Green H2O
Video: Wasted Food is Wasted Energy (click through to the video in the article)
Video: How much food can you produce for 1kg of GHG?
Videos: 8 NRA ConServe water conservation videos: Down and dirty water conservation how-tos.
Videos: 13 NRA ConServe energy conservation videos: Down and dirty energy conservation how-tos.
Week 4.2: Locavore Movement, Local Economies & Biodiversity
NY Times: What Farm-To-Table Got Wrong by Dan Barber: A stunningly well-conceived and important argument about how to leverage the FTT movement.
Slate: Can You Really Save the Planet at the Dinner Table? An economist’s critique of The Omnivore’s Dilemma: All good arguments needs counter arguments!
Video: Economies of Communities
Video: Simran Sethi: We're Losing Food Biodiversity
Freakonomics: The Inefficiency of Local Food
NC State Extension: Local Food Systems: Clarifying Current Research
HBR: Why Sourcing Local Food Is So Hard for Restaurants
Week 5.1: Sustainable Sourcing & GMOs
Chapter 15: Green Purchasing, Greening Your Small Business
NRN: Chipotle spins carne asada supply woes into buzz
Restaurant Dive: Sweetgreen stretches to continue local sourcing at scale
Wired: GMOs Are an Ally in a Changing Climate
Video: Neil deGrasse Tyson on GMOs
Week 5.2: Food Waste
Video: Tristram Stuart @ TEDTalk: The Global Food Waste Scandal
The Guardian: From field to fork: the six stages of wasting food
Eating Well: How One Woman Has Saved Over 3 Tons of Waste From Coffee Scraps
Snapchat Story: How Avocado Waste is Turned Into Plastic
Video: Food for Soul
Bread is Gold by Massimo Bottura, Introduction
ReFED Restaurants and Foodservice Stakeholder Recommendations
Week 6: The Food Justice and the Future of Food Service
Foodtank: From Crisis to Possibility: Five Aspirations for our Food System
Video: Susan Feniger: How to Make Sustainability your Restaurant's Selling Point
Video: Rick Bayles: How to Grow Your Sustainable Restaurant
Eater: Read 52% of Fast Food Workers Need Government Assistance to Make Ends Meet
SF Chronicle: The restaurant equity revolution will not be Instagrammed
JBF: The Power of the Chef Community
NYTimes: The ‘Hidden Punishment’ of Prison Food
Impact Justice: Eating Behind Bars: Ending the Hidden Punishment of Food in Prison (extra credit)
Week 7: Food-Tech, Ag-Tech and Climate-Tech
Why precision fermentation completely disrupts industrial animal farming by 2030