Seed Stories

Book's I'm reading: Tomorrow's Table

2011-06-09T19:02:00.000+08:00

Tomorrow's Table: Organic Farming, Genetics, and the Future of Food has been on my 'must read' list for quite a while now. But with all the work I do in agriculture every day, and 10+ years working in the industry, I wasn't sure what I could really expect to learn from another book on agriculture technology and the policy debates that surround it.

Boy, do I have a lot to learn!

Tomorrow's Table is co-authored by Pamela Ronald, an articulate and accomplished plant scientist and professor at the University of California-Davis, and Raoul Adamchak, an equally articulate and accomplished organic farmer in California. They happen to be married, and together have produced a very personal and fascinating primer on the technologies and issues at play in agriculture these days.

Here are a few of the things I appreciated about it:

I love the book's basic approach of explaining new agriculture technologies by describing historic and current agriculture technologies and practices first. For people who don't have a good practical understanding of how agriculture works today, new technologies seem exotic and overly complicated. It's important to know just how complex agriculture has become, and why. The descriptions of farming practices, agriculture businesses of all kinds, and technologies are among the best I've ever read.

The chapters are all structured around real-life experiences of the authors in their work and at home. For example, the chapter "Who owns the seed?" begins with Adamchak eagerly thumbing through a new seed catalog. As he describes the different characteristics and costs of the seeds, we learn how new varieties are developed, how 'heirloom' varieties are preserved, the use of hybrids and the pluses and minuses of each from the perspective of someone who actually grows them. Building on this context and understanding, Ronald writes the following chapter, "Who owns the genes?" These episodes in each chapter are perfect examples of what I call 'seed stories' -- that begin in familiar and concrete experiences and then illuminate the much more complex issues behind them.

I also appreciated the fact that the book is written from the perspectives of a university-based scientist and a farmer. It doesn't represent the pro-technology agenda, or an anti-corporate mindset, nor is it a dry a policy treatise. Since I left the corporate world three years ago, I have come to really value and appreciate the different ways that there are to talk about agriculture science and technology -- particularly those that thread a narrow but distinct and important path between louder proponents and opponents.

Finally, throughout the book there are engaging descriptions of conversations that the two authors have with students, colleagues and family members. These discussions are sometimes difficult, particularly among those with different opinions or beliefs about agriculture. But they are always respectful and seem to always end with everyone gaining a new insight. I admire the authors' open willingness to have these talks, and I wish all my conversations about agriculture technology could be this way!

I've already been recommending this book to colleagues -- and I'll probably even buy a few copies for friends and family. Check it out!

I wish I knew about this 5 days ago!

2011-05-20T18:41:00.003+08:00

The "Live below the Line" campaign got started on Monday -- if only I'd known I would have joined from here in Singapore!

From this Monday, May 16 – Friday, May 20, a bunch of people across the US, Australia & the UK have been spending no more than US$1.50 per day on food and drink, to better understand and raise awareness about the challenges of those living in extreme poverty.

By the way, that's one-fourth of the people we share the planet with: 1.4 billion people!

What's most interesting to me is reading about the stories and experiences of my fellow Americans as they're going through the week. Many are complaining of hunger, and counting the weight that they've lost. The descriptions of meals of ramen noodles, rice, beans, oatmeal and eggs are a bit desperate in tone. Some are trying to add more nutritionally-balanced foods into the week, but it's hard when you only have $7.50.

This is what it's like to use the money you have available for food on things that will fill you up the most. This is how you avoid starvation but still lack the nutrients to thrive, to flourish, or to live a fully vibrant life. This is why rising food prices around the world hit the poorest the hardest.

What I love about this campaign (and I will join in next year, if not earlier) is that it makes these struggles very concrete and real for those of us who are used to spending $7.50 for a latte and brownie on a Friday afternoon.

PS: This is also why we need diverse, abundant and healthy agriculture to help end poverty!

A metaphor too far...

2011-02-24T13:45:00.003+08:00

Check out this excellent column in Nature News that I'll be thinking about for a long time.

The Nature News column describes new research showing just how much influence metaphors have on our reasoning and opinions -- often without us even realizing it. When crime is described to people as 'a beast', they want strong enforcement. When it is called 'a virus' in society, they favor prevention and rehabilitation measures.

The writer worries that the use of metaphors to help describe scientific findings, theories and new technologies can be misleading, and too easily used for political purposes. They can also be difficult to dislodge when science moves on, as it always does.

"Metaphors....tend to stick," he says. In fact, Simplicity is the first principle of good communications advocated by my gurus, Chip & Dan Heath, in their must-read book Made to Stick. Metaphors and analogies are sticky because they substitute something easy to think about for something difficult.

Still, metaphors shouldn't be chosen lightly. As a communicator, I want to encourage the agriculture scientists that I work with to use words and concepts that people will understand, to "explain what is going on as clearly and honestly as we can," just as the columnist recommends.

The Girl Effect in Agriculture

2010-11-19T15:07:00.014+08:00

In a blog post last year about the importance of women in agriculture, I recommended the original Girl Effect video, which blew me away with what it said about the role of girls in ending poverty and hunger -- and by how it said it.

This year it's the new video above that's got me going, and the Girl Effect blogging campaign, timed to coincide with International Children's Day on November 20, presents a perfect opportunity to catch up.

After all, women in agriculture were once girls in agriculture. What do we see when we run the clock back?

The statistics tell us that women grow 80 percent of the food eaten by poor families in developing countries. The Girl Effect tells us that many of these women are really just girls. Instead of going to school, they spend up to 16 hours a day working to grow food on their farms and fetching fuelwood and water. At every age, women struggle to get the seeds, fertilizer, training, and credit that might help them grow more and earn more -- extra resources that would in turn help keep girls in school.

There's another way that agriculture supports the Girl Effect if we turn the clock back even further to pregnancy and the first 2 years in the life of a girl or boy.

A child who receives the right nutrition during her first 1,000 days is less likely to die or be harmed by disease for the rest of her life! Sadly, the opposite is also true: a child that doesn't get enough of the right kinds of foods during this period faces irreversible health problems. To find out more, check out the 1,000 Days campaign, another great cause with another great video.

Although many of the poorest families in the world live on farms, they suffer from the 'hidden hunger' of under-nutrition. These families can usually grow enough to keep everyone alive, but their cheap and reliable staple crops aren't nutritious enough to supply all the vitamins and minerals that growing young bodies need in order to thrive.

Promoting home gardens to grow healthy fruits and vegetables helps -- as does providing vitamin supplements and processed foods that are fortified -- but there are still about 200 million children under the age of 5 who suffer from from chronic under-nutrition. More can and should be done.

Last week I was at the first Global Conference on Biofortification, with agriculture researchers and nutritionists who are working together to breed crops that are just as easy to grow but are a lot more nutritious. I'll write more about that soon, but to steal a line from the original Girl Effect video, do you see what's going on here?

Better crops > more nutritious food > healthier babies > healthier girls > the whole world is better off!

Genetically modified advertising

2010-09-03T15:26:00.007+08:00

An eagle-eyed client was surprised to see the words "Genetically Modified" featured prominently in this automobile ad in Singapore last week!

We're more used to seeing marketing based on the absence of genetic modification (GM), with the words "non-GM" or "GMO-free" featured on packages of organic food. It's presented as something to be avoided, even if the labels don't explain why.

In contrast, this ad promotes the genetic modification of its product! Like the negative labels, it also neglects to explain why you should want to buy a car 'armed with completely modified DNA'. Perhaps it is somehow connected to a 'commitment to progression' that the customer shares with KIA.

Along with many others working in agriculture technology, I've always preferred the term 'biotechnology' because it sounds less frightening and mechanical than genetic modification. But I find myself using the term GM more and more often now. Perhaps the fact that the term shows up in car ad is a sign that others are finding it less frightening-sounding as well.

Which would indeed be a progression!

The Globalization of Food

2010-08-24T18:21:00.004+08:00

There’s a lot written in the popular press these days about the ‘globalization of food’. Often these are pretty simple, yet interesting, accounts of what’s right or (more often) wrong with the way food is produced, processed, transported and consumed around the world. While I admire the way these stories catch my attention, and give me a new way of looking at things, I wonder what complexities are being left out of the headlines.

I picked up the book “The Globalization of Food” at my local library hoping to get a deeper sense of what’s going on underneath the surface. It is a decidedly intellectual collection of writing by sociologists and anthropologists from universities around the world looking at the globalization of food from different angles.

In fact, although I like to think that I have a pretty deep knowledge of food and agriculture, it took some time and effort to work through new terms from this field, and understand what they were getting at. I’m more at ease with the language of economists and political scientists, who tend to focus on food production and distribution mechanisms, while sociologists and anthropologists usually study food consumption.

What I learned from this book is that there are many different food ‘globalizations’. There is not one ‘global food system’ and there is no single definition of ‘local food’. If we learn to recognize and appreciate the diversity contained within terms like these then, in the words of the editors, “analysts of food of all hues will truly become refined connoisseurs of the most pungent, but also the most delicate, of all tastes that the many food globalizations of the future will have to offer.” Sign me up!

Here are some of the topics of chapters I enjoyed most, and a few of the ideas I took away from them:

Slow Food – a fascinating history of the origins of the Slow Food concept in Italy, which celebrates and seeks to preserve traditional foods and production practices that are grounded in local communities. Yet it evolved into an international movement seeking the ‘virtuous globalization’ of the economics of food.

The “Local Trap” – a discussion of the assumption that a local-scale food system will be inherently better than a national-scale or global-scale food system. There is nothing inherently good or bad about any scale of food systems – the outcomes of those systems depend on many things, including the agendas of the people running them. It’s better to focus on a desired outcome (sustainability, justice etc) and consider the strategies, including scale, which can be used to achieve them. (A recent NYT op-ed makes the same argument very succinctly.)

Fairtrade food – particularly how Cafedirect, a UK Fairtrade coffee initiative, seeks to connect consumers and coffee farmers. One very visible connection comes in the form of images and short stories in marketing materials and product packaging that feature the producers’ lives, including the benefits that Fairtrade brings. Making our relationship with coffee into a relationship also with the people who produced it may be a step in the right direction. But do the lives of the farmers also become things to be consumed as images and labels on packages? (Lots more here about Marx and commodity fetishization if you’re interested in that sort of thing!)

I didn’t understand everything I read in this book, but it did open my eyes to different ways of thinking about food production and consumption. I made new linkages between things I thought were unrelated, and found new complexities in ideas I thought I understood thoroughly. Hopefully I’m well on my way to becoming one of those “refined connoisseurs” of the many globalizations of food!

The Globalization of Food, edited by David Inglis and Debra Gimlin. 2009. Oxford: Berg Publishers.

Seed Stories

2010-07-20T16:12:00.001+08:00

I started blogging as A Woman Who Goes Places over a year ago in order to share with colleagues, friends and family some of the more fascinating, thought-provoking, and even inspiring things about agriculture that I’ve learned as I work as a communications consultant in this field. I wanted to help people see, understand, and care just a little bit more about this crucial part of our lives.

Over the past year, I’ve rechristened my business “Seed Stories”, based on the idea that simple stories about plants and people can become the seeds of greater curiosity, understanding and support for agriculture – no matter how complicated the science or policy issues might become.

My work with clients and my own personal travels continue to reinforce this belief while teaching me different ways of seeing the world around me. And so I intend to keep sharing these stories through this new Seed Stories blog, as well as on a new website for Seed Stories that will be launched soon.

Please follow me here if you’d like to hear about my work to help agriculture organizations communicate and build support for the important work they do. My earlier posts are imported below to help you catch up!

P.S. I still plan to be a “Woman Who Goes Places” – but I’m not sure what direction I’ll take. Check in every now and then to find out!

"A Farm is not just a clever crop"

2010-03-02T11:34:00.000+08:00

There is a very short but interesting opinion piece, "Attack of the Really Quite Likable Tomatoes" in the Economist, reflecting on the latest statistics about biotech/GM crop adoption. In 2009, 14 million farmers planted 134 million hectares (the size of Peru!?) of ag biotech / GM crops in 25 countries. 90% of them were small and resource-poor farmers from developing countries.

But what I really like about this piece in the Economist is last paragraph, making the point that, in addition to biotech, there is a lot of other agricultural research that still needs doing. "A farm is not a just a clever crop: it is an ecosystem managed with intelligence. GM crops have a great role to play in that development, but they are only a part of the whole..."

Couldn't have said it better myself.

Seeds = tomatoes = soup

2009-06-10T13:29:00.000+08:00

Campbell's Condensed Soup has been one of the most well-known and respected names in the food world for a long time -- a trusted and traditional brand. By giving away tiny tomato seeds, they're forging concrete connections between the product they're best known for, the real food that goes into it and the farming that makes it all possible.

Andy Warhol's famous images of the canned soup portray the brand as nothing less than a work of art.

My most vivid memory of Campbell's soup growing up is a little more low-brow. It is the kitchen drawer full of the red & white labels that my mom (and millions of others around the US) saved to raise money for the school library. Campbell's "Labels for Education" Program has been going on for more than 30 years and provided over US$100 million in educational equipment to schools.

Campbell's current promotion is something completely different. Visitors to the HelpGrowYourSoup.com website are able to enter a code off of a can of soup and receive free tomato seeds in the mail that can be grown at home. Seeds are also donated to the Future Farmers of America (FFA). The goal is to give away enough seeds to grow a billion tomatoes!

People who send away for the free seeds will also get two really concrete messages that are important for Campbell's and everyone else in the food business these days:

there's 'real' food in my canned food (real tomatoes in my soup) and
it actually takes quite a bit of care and attention to grow that food -- to turn a seed into a tomato.

Ideas about what 'Food' is and where it comes from have been getting progressively abstract over the past decades.

People live in cities farther from farms and rural places where they might be able to see agriculture 'happening'. Nutrition guidelines have become more scientific, emphasizing different kinds of fats and vitamins in our food instead of ingredients. Technology's role in developing new varieties of crops and producing food more efficiently contributes to the abstraction.

We seem to want to regain some concrete connections to what we eat every day. This program is a great way for a food company to help people just do that. Real seeds make real tomatoes make real soup.

P.S. More about this later, but I stumbled upon this campaign while looking for agriculture and food stories that are 'sticky'. My very favorite communications book is "Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die" by Chip Heath and Dan Heath, and this is a fantastic example of the principle of 'concreteness'.

IRRI's Front Yard

2009-05-26T16:22:00.000+08:00

In the US, you can tell a lot about a family by looking at what's in their front yard: neatly clipped grass and seasonal flowers, sports equipment or children's toys. In the Midwest, you might see concrete "lawn geese" festively dressed for any upcoming holiday.

What we do with the property around our homes expresses our values, our resources and our personalities. The same is true for all kinds of organizations, including agricultural research institutes!

Last month I had a wonderful opportunity to visit the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in Los Banos, Philippines, which is about 90 minutes' drive southeast of Manila.

IRRI is the world's leading research institute devoted to rice, a crop that feeds about half of the people on our planet. It is also the largest non-profit agricultural research center in all of Asia.

So what's in the front yard of their headquarters building? Not high fences to keep people out. Not acres of lushly landscaped tropical plants to impress visitors. Not a big parking lot for hundreds of staff.

Instead, IRRI's front yard (pictured left) is basically one big research farm. It contains plot after plot of new rice varieties that are being developed in pursuit of their mission "to reduce hunger and poverty, improve the health of rice farmers and consumers, and ensure that rice production is environmentally sustainable."

One of these new rice varieties in IRRI's front yard is "Scuba Rice." It's called that because it can withstand two weeks of complete submergence under water and still recover enough to give a good harvest. According to Rice Today, farmers in Bangladesh and India lose up to 4 million tons of rice every year due to flooding -- which is enough to feed 30 million people!

It doesn't all happen here. Much of today's agriculture research starts off in sophisticated laboratories, where genetic information about plants are analyzed and research is planned. And the most important field testing of new varieties happens in the tough real-world growing environments of farms all around Asia.

But for the almost 50 years of IRRI's existence, the windows of their senior staff offices have looked right onto this particular piece of land. I like to think that this keeps IRRI scientists and administrators grounded in their mission, wherever it may take them. They have watched these fields growing right outside their offices -- day after day, season after season and year after year.

IRRI staff have also watched the people who benefit from their research working these fields year after year. The day I visited, teams of workers from the local community around IRRI were beginning to harvest some of the research plots. These are seasonal contractors (mostly women) who come in just a few times a year to help out. Most of the time they are in their own fields, perhaps tending crops that resist disease or produce more because of research done here decades ago.

Growing plants that feed your neighbors. What could be more inspiring than that in your front yard?

Ancient Agriculture Images (& free ice cream at the end!)

2009-04-04T16:09:00.000+08:00

The weekend crowd at Singapore's Asian Civilisations Museum last Saturday was probably bigger than usual, thanks to free admission, a variety of dance and musical events, and give-aways for those who visited a featured exhibition inside.

So my friend and I hurried to join the queue, intending to quickly cruise the gallery and claim our free ice cream at the end. Instead we got stopped in amazement by 300-year-old images of agriculture in China.

The exhibition is "The Kangxi Emperor: Treasu r es from the Forbidden City." I had never heard of him, but Kangxi ruled China from 1662-1722, a 61-year reign that is still one of the longest in history. The exhibit opens with massive brightly colored portraits of Kangxi's ancestors and the Emperor himself. Rich ceremonial garments, ornate household items, and even the emperor's own calligraphy tools are displayed.

But what really fascinated and inspired me was a scrolled painting, over 60 feet long, depicting the Emperor on the second of six inspection tours he made to the southern part of China during his rule. According to the exhibit's Gallery Guide, the Emperor Kangxi was concerned about the living conditions of his people and particularly with agricultural production. He undertook these long journeys in order to inspect new actions that were being take to manage China's vast river system.

So the scrolls are like his photo album from the trip. They depict his entrance in to key towns along the way, but also the life of the villages and surrounding countryside. In great detail, you can see people at work in all kinds of places. The village scenes buzz with thousands of tiny figures, each with hair and expressive faces, going about daily life in dumpling shops, temples, tea houses, canals, and markets. Outside of the village areas you see fruit orchards of all kinds, livestock being tended (including a runaway cow!), and various crops being seeded, tended and harvested.

No wonder it took a team of artists six years to complete all 12 scrolls commemorating this journey! This picture from another one of those scrolls shows its color and vivid detail.
The scroll got me thinking about all that we can learn about how communities really work -- and where agriculture and food production fits in -- that if we just take the time to look closely.

Today, the life captured in Kangxi's scrolls can be found in pictures like this gorgeous image from the Philippines, among others on IRRI's terrific Flickr collection.

Maybe its because I grew up in an urban area, but I find these landscapes absolutely fascinating. True, they're separated by 300 years and a thousand miles or so, but the details in images like these teach me about places and the geography, climate, and cultivation practices. They also give me feelings about the place, including the atmosphere, energy, humor, industry. I'm filled with curiosity. I want know who these people are, if it rained, what they had for breakfast, and what they will do tomorrow.

Unfortunately too many images of modern agriculture are "red barn" pictures like this : no features, no people, nothing seems to be happening. No wonder it's hard to gain support for new agricultural technologies and policies -- it all seems so peaceful just the way it is!

Our own travel photo albums most likely do not capture the richness and detail of Kangxi's scrolls, and we probably don't spend much time looking at agriculture in the places we visit.

Farming can be brutally hard work, but it is often done in beautiful places by people of dignity and strength. The next time you are in a rural area, or see an image of 'agriculture', take time to really look. Discover what you can learn from the details.

Then go have some ice cream -- we took so long looking at Kangxi's 300 year old photo album that they ran out by the time we left!

International Women's Day: Women in Agriculture

2009-04-04T15:03:00.000+08:00

In case you missed it, March 8 is International Women's Day, observed in different ways around the world. For me it's always a reminder to update myself on the special challenges faced by women less fortunate than I -- particularly those working in agriculture to provide food and income for their families. And then I always get inspired to share what I've found with friends and colleagues, for the sole purpose of spreading the word on a topic that should get more attention than it does.

This year, I found a short video "Why Women Matter" from the World Bank. You'll see women around the world doing back-breaking work to feed their families, and learn a thing or two about why they're doing that work. In a nutshell:

Women grow around 80% of the food eaten by poor families.
On average, they spend 16 hours a day working on their farms and fetching fuelwood and water.

Most women farmers can't get the seeds, fertilizer, training, and credit that could help them grow more.

Women receive only about 10 cents of every dollar spent on agricultural assistance.

Then watch the brilliant Girl Effect video, which I've been sending people to all year, to make the connection between what happens to a girl and what happens in the world.

It's one thing to know the statistics, and another thing to know the real women behind them.

In December, I was so privileged to meet several women farmers in Indonesia and China while collecting agricultural stories and pictures for a client. In the first photo is Maria, a 50 year old widow with five children in North Sumatera, Indonesia. She grows tangerines, carrots and chilies to support her family.

In this next photo is Shuhua, who's 40 and grows cabbage, rapeseed and pigs in the Sichuan province of China. Her husband lives and works away from home in a city, as many do in China, and so she alone is responsible for the crops that support her family.

These are some of the strongest women I've met in my life, and I'll bet on them every time to survive and prosper. But technology and training are central to gains both Maria and Shuhua have recently made in earning better incomes while growing safe and healthy food for their families and communities.

Their stories have inspired me to share this message with you today. Women are important. Agriculture is important. Women in agriculture are amazingly heroic, and they need support. Tell a story and pass it on!