The Nation — When Michelle
Obama began planting an organic garden on the South
Lawn of the White House recently, there was no doubt she was sending a
message, but the message was more subversive and far-reaching than most
American media coverage recognized. On March 20, joined by a class of
local fifth graders, the first lady lifted the first shovels of dirt onto a
1,100-square-foot plot that will feature fifty-five kinds of vegetables,
including spinach, peppers, arugula, kale, collards and tomatoes (but no
beets–the president reportedly does not like beets). Various herbs and
berries will also be grown in the garden, which is fully visible to the
thousands of tourists and other pedestrians that pass by the White House
daily. (There will also be two boxes of bees for pollination.)

Michelle Obama’s stated message was simple and was clearly aimed at her fellow
Americans: fresh food tastes better and is better for you,
so kids and grown-ups alike should eat lots more of it. “A real,
delicious heirloom tomato is one of the sweetest things you’ll ever
eat,” she told the 10-year-olds, adding that freshly picked
vegetables were what prompted her daughters to try new kinds of
foods.

What made Obama’s message so subversive was something she left
unsaid: the food most Americans eat nowadays is not fresh, tasty
or healthy. The superiority of fresh ingredients may be obvious to
Italians, but it is a truth most Americans long ago forgot, if they ever
knew it in the first place. Over the past fifty years, the United
States has been transformed into a fast food nation, in author Eric
Schlosser’s phrase. What the typical American eats is not so
much food as it is highly processed food derivatives that have traveled
thousands of miles since leaving the farm, losing along the way most of
the flavor and nutritional value they once possessed. To disguise such
losses, food manufacturers overload products with fats, salts and
sweeteners, especially corn syrup–additives that, along with the
massive portions typically served in the United States, help explain why
nearly one in three Americans is obese.

Now, by publicly championing fresh local food, Michelle Obama clearly hopes
to entice Americans away from their junk food past to a healthier, more
delicious future. And that is what makes her message so far-reaching.
Change America’s eating habits and you can change the world.

Shifting to a greener diet would be good not only for the health of
America’s children and families but the health of the planet. (04/21/09)
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BBC Ocean Science – “If you encourage a man to fish to abandonment, he will deplete the
oceans in a day; but if you encourage him to fish for a sustainable
profit, he will manage his stocks for a lifetime.” …

The European Commission’s green paper on reforming the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) is about as honest a piece of analysis as you will see from a governmental body. Stocks “have been overfished for decades”, and the fleet remains “too large for the available resources”. Overall poor performance - ecologically and economically - is “due to chronic overcapacity, of which overfishing is both a cause and a consequence”. Narrow, short-term political concerns have led EU member governments to “request countless derogations, exceptions and specific measures” - a fragmented picture that makes sustainable management impossible.

The commission’s headline statistics are scary: 30% of EU fish stocks are outside safe biological limits (ie at risk of collapse), and 88% are fished beyond their maximum sustainable yield (ie heading towards eventual collapse, and yielding less profit than they would if they were more robust). For North Sea cod - the touchstone stock for UK consumers - 93% of fish are caught before they can reproduce. Yes, you read that correctly - 93%.

In fact, just about every facet of the green paper could have been written by one of the environmental organisations that have been publicising the parlous state of EU fisheries for more than a decade. Except for one, and that’s the most important facet of all - the solution.

I must try here to avoid lumping all environmental NGOs into one basket - they’re as different as fishermen themselves - but it’s not uncommon, shall we say, to read prescriptions that are entirely top-down - mandating quotas, mandating limits on days at sea, mandating types of gear. All those things have their place. But among the commission’s favoured solutions is something that has traditionally been anathema to many regulators and environmental groups alike - working with the industry.

To first borrow and then distort a famous phrase of the development movement: if you encourage a man to fish to abandonment, he will deplete the oceans in a day; but if you encourage him to fish for a sustainable profit, he will manage his stocks for a lifetime. The logic is that if fishermen have an incentive to preserve stocks for a later day, they will. Some countries (including, among EU states, Denmark) have established transferable quota schemes, where fishermen are given the right to fish a portion of the stock for many years - perhaps for ever.

There are many variants of the basic idea, and it isn’t a complete solution - but broadly speaking, the evidence from Iceland and New Zealand and the US and Australia is that it can be part of a solution. (04/21/09)
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