Who moved my corn?

I have the great pleasure of giving a talk this week at the annual meeting of the Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society (AARES).  Tonight they held their awards ceremony, and I happened to be sitting next to Phil Pardey from the University of Minnesota who won (along with Jason Beddow) one of the research awards for a paper they published in the Journal of Economic History titled "Moving Matters".  

This is a fascinating paper that documents the movement of corn production over time in the US.  The paper illustrates the impact of hybrid and then genetically modified corn influencing what can be grown and where.  Changes in genetics and management practices allowed the corn plant to move  to soils that best suited the production of the crop.  As a result, they calculate that upwards of 21% of the growth in corn production can be explained by the geographic movement of the crop.   The results have implications for assumptions about impacts of climate change (i.e., that farmers can adapt by moving which crops, and which genetics, are planted where in response to changing temperatures) and for arguments about local foods (i.e., the sustainable production of crops depends on location of production, and allowing farmers to specialize in the geographic production of a crop can dramatically increase production).  

Here's the abstract:

“U.S corn output increased from 1.8 billion bushels in 1879 to 12.7 billion bushels in 2007. Concurrently, the footprint of production changed substantially. Failure to take proper account of movements means that productivity assessments likely misattribute sources of growth and climate change studies likely overestimate impacts. Our new spatial output indexes show that 16 to 21 percent of the increase in U.S. corn output over the 128 years beginning in 1879 was attributable to spatial movement in production. This long-run perspective provides historical precedent for how much agriculture might adjust to future changes in climate and technology.”

And, an interesting graph:

Food, farm, and kitchen innovations

 A few links I've come across recently on food, farm, and kitchen innovations:

• Probiotics for seeds?  "Researchers are testing more than 2,000 different microbial seed coatings on half a million test plots in the U.S."
• No more grocery store checkout lines?  "The concept . .  will allow grocery store customers to skip the check-out lines and instead scan items with their phones as soon as they stuff them into their cart."
• Hand-held food scanners to indicate nutritional content
  • "Hold it about half an inch from homogeneous food — food with the same texture as a glass of OJ, as opposed to mixed vegetables — and the sensor compares the near-infrared signature with patterns stored in the cloud. It will relay nutrient info to your phone via BLE (Bluetooth low energy) and create a food log in the DietSensor app. Snap a pic with your phone to complete the process. Calories, carbs, protein, fat, and alcohol levels are covered.  At the very least, it handles the record-keeping hassle."
• Run your whole kitchen through an app on your phone?  
• Wine dispensers
  • " Simply take a vial of wine and turn it upside down into the top of the machine. An embedded chip in the vial tells the machine what type of wine it is. Then, the machine chills the wine (red or white) to the optimal temperature, aerates it, and dispenses it into a glass below."

Kirkus Review of Unnaturally Delicious

““A provocative, well-documented challenge to one of the major contentions of environmentalists.””

That's a summary of the review of my forthcoming book, Unnaturally Delicious, from review magazine, Kirkus.

Here's the whole review:

“An exploration of “the innovators and innovations shaping the future of food.”

Lusk (Agricultural Economics/Oklahoma State Univ.; The Food Police: A Well-Fed Manifesto About the Politics of Your Plate, 2013, etc.) admits that along with the abundance we now enjoy, there are significant challenges that must be met head-on, including climate change, environmental degradation, cruelty to animals, the abundance of unhealthy junk food, obesity, and more. Nonetheless, the author is optimistic. “We have inherited a bountiful world of food…[that] our ancestors could scarcely have imagined,” writes the author. For him, this is proof that Malthus and his modern followers such as Paul Ehrlich—author of The Population Bomb (1968) and other books—were misguided. Lusk’s claims are provocative, but he buttresses them by citing Department of Agriculture statistics demonstrating that U.S. agriculture has kept up with population growth through the application of technological innovations. Lusk reports that American crop production has more than doubled since 1970 while the use of pesticides has fallen, less land is in production, the agricultural labor force has decreased by half, and soil erosion has been reduced. In short, “agriculture has one of the highest rates of production of any sector of the U.S. economy.” The author admits to having had an axe to grind in the past, and he bristles at the use of the descriptive term “sustainable.” To him, it was “synonymous with organic, natural and local” and implied the necessity of reducing population. Lusk explains that he now recognizes that true sustainability depends on the use of agricultural technology. One counterintuitive example is the sustainability of U.S. beef production, which he claims has a “far lower carbon footprint than [grass-fed beef] in other parts of the world” because it is fattened with grain. Another fascinating example is the use of information technology to regulate seed-planting by providing farmers detailed, real-time information about their fields.

A provocative, well-documented challenge to one of the major contentions of environmentalists.”

It's officially out March 22, but you can buy your copy now.

On the Chipotle Food Safety Outbreaks

Much has been written in the past couple weeks about the foodborne illnesses contracted by Chipotle customers.  I've been a bit reluctant to weight in because, at least in some social media circles, there seemed to be some pleasure taken in Chipotle's misfortune.  From my perspective, however, I don't want to delight in someone else's misfortune (particularly some unsuspecting food consumer's foodborne illness) even if I've previously been critical of the vendor's marketing practices.   What I will say is that Chipotle engaged in a variety of marketing practices  (e.g., going non-GMO, no hormone, etc.) the best science suggests have no material impact on food safety, and yet the moves were likely aimed (at least in some part) to increase the perception (rather than the reality) of food safety.  

Marketing aside, there is a real trade-off to be made between selling "clean", fresh, food sourced from small-local vendors and food safety.  There are likely some taste benefits with fresh, unfrozen food and there is nothing inherently wrong with being willing to pay a bit more for wares from smaller more local providers.  But, choosing these options may make ensuring food safety a bit more challenging.  

That's the message I tried to communicate to the reporter Kimberly Leonard for this piece in US News & World Report.  She quoted me as saying:

““If you want to make products fresh, that means you’re not going to use a preservative or it’s going to be unprocessed,” says Jayson Lusk, president-elect for the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, who has been critical of Chipotle’s marketing practices. “It does provide a real tradeoff in terms of providing a safe product for the consumer.””

and

“Lusk says his research has shown that the increase in demand for all-natural, so-called “clean” food, is a “real challenge to food safety.”

“We tend to have this idea that small is clean and safe – it could be true but it’s not necessarily true,” Lusk says. “You’ll have more food waste and it will be more expensive, and your food safety is more of a challenge. … It’s just a trade off they make.””

I touched on this same topic for a chapter on technological improvements related to food safety I wrote for my forthcoming book, Unnaturally Delicious: 

“The bigger problem, however, is what happens to the safety of food when seemingly unnatural ingredients are not used. Keeping food safe without using chemical additives is a big challenge for food manufacturers and retailers. Consumers are increasingly demanding fresher, more natural, “clean” food. Yet, as one food safety expert told me, “It’s a tremendous strain on the food-producing industry. If you take away growth inhibitors, what do you do?” One executive of a large food retailer remarked, “As consumers are asking for fresh and more natural food, we have to take out ingredients and preservatives, which makes food less safe.” Fresh foods might have taste advantages, but they also tend to have shorter shelf lives, increasing the likelihood of earlier spoilage and food waste. Moreover, research and development costs involved in reformulating preservatives to increase the perception of naturalness are passed on to the consumer in the form of higher food prices, even when the preservatives’ underlying chemical properties have not changed.”

Here's another portion of the book related to a discussion I had with Frank Yiannas, the VP of food safety for Walmart (written well before news of the Chipotle outbreaks emerged):

“I started by asking about the size of Walmart. More than 120 million Americans (more than a third of the U.S. population) shop at Walmart every week. Does the sheer scale of the operation make the U.S. food system riskier? If Walmart has an outbreak, multitudes would be sickened. Yiannas replied: “One out of every four dollars spent on food are spent at a Walmart. We can make a big difference. Large organizations like Walmart result in a safer food system.” He points out that when Walmart makes a change, it affects the whole system. Sure, smaller companies might have outbreaks that affect fewer people, but when lots of small companies are having lots of small outbreaks, the problem is more widespread. A downside to small companies, said Yiannas, is that they can’t easily invest in improving the system as a whole. While Walmart often attracts negative attention because of its size and scale (e.g., Do they pay workers fairly? Do they hurt local mom-and-pop busineses?), at least in the world of food safety, their size has significant benefits for its customers, and as I’ll soon discuss, even for non-customers.”

Unnatural Food

My forthcoming book Unnaturally Delicious is set for release in March.  So far, the most common questions have been, "why did you pick that title?" and "is it a book about GMOs?"  The questions stem from a food culture that has elevated the status of "natural" food to such a point that it seems odd to pair a positive connotation with the word unnatural.  There is, in my assessment, a vast under-appreciation for all the unnatural ways our food has changed over time (and I'm not talking about GMOs - I only lightly touch on this issue in a couple chapters of the book - hopefully in ways people haven't thought about before).  

These thoughts came to mind when I stumbled upon  this 2011 paper by Nathan Nunn and Nancy Qian in the Quarterly Journal of Economics.  They discuss the evolution of the potato and the impacts of this crop as it moved from the New World to the Old.  Many of us think of "Irish Potatoes" or Britian's "Bangers and Mash" as if they were the most natural foods these folks could have every eaten.  The historical reality, of course, is that potatoes are were "unnatural" foods introduced to Europe only a few hundred years ago.  

The authors begin the paper:

“Between 1000 and 1900, world population grew from under 300 million to 1.6 billion, and the share of population living in urban areas more than quadrupled, increasing from two to over nine percent.”

Nunn and Qian make a compelling case that a significant explanatory factor for this change was none other than the spud.  They write:

“According to our most conservative estimates, the introduction of the potato accounts for approximately one-quarter of the growth in Old World population and urbanization between 1700 and 1900”

How?

“Potatoes provide more calories, vitamins, and nutrients per area of land sown than other staple crops”

Maybe you think the world is too crowded already, and that this change is a curse rather than a blessing.  Another way to look at it: there is a reasonable chance some of the people reading this very blog wouldn't be here right now had the potato stayed local and not spread out from South America.  

The paper makes the case that the potato, along with other items that made up the  Columbian Exchange, is a significant factor contributing to the rise in European living standards in the 16th and 17th centuries.  The paper shows that regions that first adopted the potato, and had soils and climates more suitable for potato growing, experienced more rapid population growth, and thus the potato possibly affected national and international politics of the time.  The whole paper is full of interesting historical details.  For example, looking at the height of soldiers in France, the authors find:  

“for towns that were fully suitable for potato cultivation, the introduction of the potato increased average adult height by 0.41–0.78 inches.”

However natural potatoes might now seem, it is important to keep in mind there was a time when they weren't.  And, we're better off today because our ancestors took a chance on the unnatural foodstuff.