Tag Archives: food and ag

Lay Off the Almond Milk, You Ignorant Hipsters

by LucretiOrta Posted on July 16, 2014

Mother Jones

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Almonds are a precious foodstuff: a crunchy jolt of complete protein, healthful fats, vitamins/minerals, and deliciousness. Given their rather intense ecological footprint—see here—we should probably consider them a delicacy, a special treat. That’s why I think it’s deeply weird to pulverize away their crunch, drown them in water, and send them out to the world in a gazillion little cartons. What’s the point of almond milk, exactly?

Evidently, I’m out of step with the times on this one. “Plant-based milk” behemoth White Wave reports that its first-quarter sales of almond milk were up 50 percent from the same period in 2013. In an earnings call with investors in May, reported by FoodNavigator, CEO Greg Engles revealed that almond milk now makes up about two-thirds of the plant-based milk market in the United States, easily trumping soy milk (30 percent) and rice and coconut milks (most of the rest).

Dairy is still king, of course, comprising 90 percent of the “milk” market. But as our consumption of it dwindles—down from 0.9 cups per person per day in 1970 to about 0.6 in 2010, according to the US Department of Agriculture—plant-based alternatives are gaining ground. Bloomberg Businessweek reports that sales of alternative milks hit $1.4 billion in 2013 and are expected to hit $1.7 billion by 2016, with almond milk leading that growth.

Now, I get why people are switching away from dairy milk. Industrial-scale dairy production is a pretty nasty business, and large swaths of adults can’t digest lactose, a sugar found in fresh dairy milk. Meanwhile, milk has become knit into our dietary culture, particularly at breakfast, where we cling to a generations-old tradition of drenching cereal in milk. Almond milk and other substitutes offer a way to maintain this practice while rejecting dairy. (Almond milk has been crushing once-ubiquitous soy milk, perhaps partly because of hotly contested fears that it creates hormonal imbalances.)

All that aside, almond milk strikes me as an abuse of a great foodstuff. Plain almonds are a nutritional powerhouse. Let’s compare a standard serving (1 ounce, about a handful) to the 48-ounce bottle of Califa Farms almond milk that a house guest recently left behind in my fridge.

A single ounce (28 grams) of almonds—nutrition info here—contains 6 grams of protein (about an egg’s worth), along with 3 grams of fiber (a medium banana) and 12 grams of monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats (half an avocado). According to its label, an eight-ounce serving of Califia almond milk offers just one gram each of protein and fiber, and five grams of fat. A bottle of Califia delivers six eight-ounce servings, meaning that a handful of almonds contains as much protein as the mighty jug of this hot-selling beverage.

What this tells you is that the almond-milk industry is selling you a jug of filtered water clouded by a handful of ground almonds. Which leads us to the question of price and profit. The almonds in the photo above are organic, and sold in bulk at my local HEB supermarket for $11.99 per pound; this one-ounce serving set me back about 66 cents. I could have bought nonorganic California almonds for $6.49 per pound, about 39 cents per ounce. That container of Califia, which contains roughly the same number of nonorganic almonds, retails for $3.99.

Click here for more comparisons. Mother Jones

The water-intensive nature of almond milk, of course, is no secret. By law, food manufacturers have to name ingredients in order of their prevalence in the product. For Califia and other almond milk brands, it starts like this: “filtered water, almonds.” Given that it takes 1.1 gallons of water to grow a single almond in California, where 80 percent of the world’s almonds are produced, drenching the finished product in yet more water seems insane.

Califia does make a couple of splashy nutritional claims: “50% more calcium than milk,” the bottle declares, and “50% RDI of Vitamin E.” Almonds are a great source of these vital nutrients, but not that great. Our ounce of whole almonds contains 74 mg of calcium vs. 290 mg for a cup of whole milk, and 7 mg of vitamin E, about 37 percent of the recommended daily intake.

How does Califia’s beverage manage to outdo straight almonds on calcium and vitamin E when it lags so far behind on protein and fat? Again, the answer lies in the ingredients list, which reveals the addition of a “vitamin/mineral blend.” All fine and well, but if you’re interested in added nutrients, why not just pop a vitamin pill?

Moreover, almond milk isn’t just a few nuts packaged with lots of water. It often contains additives. For example, in addition to vitamins, the Califia product, like many of its rivals, contains small amounts of carrageenan, a seaweed derivative commonly used as a stabilizer in beverages. Academic scientists in Chicago have raised concerns that it might cause gastrointestinal inflammation.

I’m not saying your almond milk habit is destroying the planet or ruining your health, or that you should immediately go cold turkey. I just want people to know what they’re paying for when they shell our for it. As for me, when I want something delicious to moisten my granola or add substance to a smoothie, I go for organic kefir, a fermented milk product that’s packed with protein, calcium, and beneficial microbes. Added bonus: according to the label, it’s lactose-free—apparently, the kefir microbes transform the lactose during the fermentation process.

The industry, meanwhile, aims to take its lucrative almond-milk model on the road. FoodNavigator reports that White Wave is setting up a joint venture to market its plant-based milks in almond-crazy China.

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Lay Off the Almond Milk, You Ignorant Hipsters

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Your Almond Habit Is Sucking California Dry

by VictorF32nso Posted on July 14, 2014

Mother Jones

California farmers will reap a record 2.1 billion pounds of almonds this year, the USDA estimates—about three times as much as they did in 2000. That’s great news for the world’s growing horde of almond eaters, because the state’s groves supply 80 percent of the global harvest. As this chart shows, California has been planting more and more almonds over the past two decades:

And those almonds are miniature cash cows:

But in the long term, the almond boom may prove bad news for everyone who relies on California’s farms for sustenance. You might have heard that the state, supplier of half of US-grown produce, is locked in its worst drought on record. Meanwhile, it takes 1.1 gallons of water to produce a single almond, as my colleagues Alex Park and Julia Lurie have shown. You don’t have to scramble to figure how many almonds make up 2.1 billion pounds to realize that that’s a hell of a lot of water.

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Your Almond Habit Is Sucking California Dry

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"Make It a Quickie," "Get Paid for Doing It," and Other Advice From San Francisco’s Water Agency

by UQEEmiliojhttek Posted on July 1, 2014

Mother Jones

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In response to California’s ongoing drought, San Francisco’s water agency has come out with a hilariously creepy ad campaign to make saving water sexy. In addition to the commercial above, featuring a water-efficient showerhead being stroked and a seductive male voice telling you to “screw them on,” ads encourage water users to “Make it a quickie” and “Get paid for doing it” (“it” referring to your shower and the replacement of your old toilet, respectively).

Unfortunately, new data from the state’s Water Resources Control Board shows that Californians need to be “doing it” a lot more. Gov. Jerry Brown requested that Californians voluntarily reduce their water usage by 20 percent in January, when he declared the drought to have reached a state of emergency. But the Control Board found that, as of April, Californians had reduced their water usage by only 5 percent, and Bay Area residents had reduced by only 2 percent. The state has yet to enforce mandatory water restrictions, though a handful of cities have. Listen to KQED’s deep dive on water reduction here.

And, in the name of water reduction, here are a few more ads:

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"Make It a Quickie," "Get Paid for Doing It," and Other Advice From San Francisco’s Water Agency

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Yes, You Can Now Call Your Crock Pot on Your iPhone

by EdisonWJOkpkr Posted on June 24, 2014

Mother Jones

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From the annals of stories I’m afraid to read:

The age of cooking by smartphone is here. We test a Robo-Crock in the connected kitchen.

But I’m a professional, so I clicked the link:

For my first test, I made chili….But instead of reaching for any knobs or buttons on the front of the device, I launched an app on my phone to set temperature and time.

The machine fired up, eventually reaching a simmer. The app kept track of time and alerted me with a pop-up message when my three-hour stew was ready for mass consumption. If I had wanted to bump the temperature from High to Low or adjust the cook time, I could easily do that whether I was down the street or half a world away.

I am happy to report that the $130 Smart Crock-Pot works as billed….The chili came out great. It was at that point that the greater existential questions surrounding a Smart Crock-Pot began surfacing: When would I really need this? Is it worth the extra $50? And is it smart enough?

Indeed. Is it smart enough? I’d say no, because it still forces me to cut up all the meat and vegetables and then manually toss them in the crock pot. That doesn’t sound nearly smart enough to me. Call me back when a robot version of Wolfgang Puck is available for $130.

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Yes, You Can Now Call Your Crock Pot on Your iPhone

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Is Your Cereal Giving You a Vitamin Overdose?

by EzekielMontoya Posted on June 24, 2014

Mother Jones

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Those bran flakes with “original antioxidants” or “extra vitamin A”? You might be better off without the added nutrients. A report released on Tuesday by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) found that cereals and snack bars that have been fortified with extra vitamins and minerals to appear healthy may actually be harmful—particularly for kids.

The report, How Much is Too Much?, explains that there are some nutrients that most Americans don’t get enough of, like calcium, vitamin D, and vitamin E. But it turns out that kids are eating too much of other nutrients, and overconsuming certain vitamins and minerals for a long period of time can have negative health implications in the long run.

EWG focused on three nutrients that are regularly consumed in excess: vitamin A, zinc, and niacin. Only six percent of 2- to 8- year olds are deficient in vitamin A, and less than one percent are deficient in zinc and niacin. But, according to the report, an estimated 28 million children between the ages of two and eight are overexposed to these nutrients from food and supplements.

Studies have shown a host of illnesses associated with excessive intake of these nutrients. Here are the effects of overconsumption, according to the EWG:

Vitamin A: Liver damage, brittle nails, hair loss, skeletal abnormalities, osteoporosis and hip fracture (in older adults), and developmental abnormalities (of the fetus)
Zinc: Impaired copper absorption, anemia, changes in red and white blood cells, impaired immune function
Niacin: Skin reactions (flushing, rash), nausea, liver toxicity

Renée Sharp, the EWG’s director of toxics research, explained that the associated health risks are “more chronic than acute”: If a child eats too much of a given nutrient over a long period of time, he or she might experience the associated illnesses down the line. The tricky part is that it’s nearly impossible to link a specific case of an illness to overconsumption of fortified food, so there isn’t a hard and fast set of rules on what to eat and what to avoid. But, according to the report, several studies have shown that “cumulative exposures from fortified food and supplements could put children at risk for potential adverse effects.” Put more simply by Sharp: “if your kid is eating highly fortified cereal, and that kid is also eating snack bars and other fortified foods and you’re giving your kid a vitamin pill, that adds up. And there’s no reason to put your kid at that risk.”

Part of the reason for childrens’ overconsumption of certain nutrients is marketing: If products are marketed as healthy, people are more likely to buy them. According to NYU nutrition professor Marion Nestle, “Plenty of research demonstrates that nutrients sell food products. Any health or health-like claim on a food product—vitamins added, no trans fats, organic—makes people believe that the product has fewer calories and is a health food…Added vitamins are about marketing, not health.”

Adding to the confusion among shoppers is nutrition labels. Young kids have significantly lower recommended daily intakes of nutrients than adults, but nutrition labels, even on brands marketed towards kids, almost always show the recommended values for adults. Furthermore, the EWG contends that the intake recommendations, which were calculated by the FDA in 1968, are themselves out of date: “Those values were set at a time when people were worried about nutrient deficiencies,” explained Sharp. “Scientists just hadn’t done as much research on the potential pitfalls of over-consuming nutrients. Things have changed.”

Zinc perfectly exemplifies this double whammy. The FDA currently recommends that adults consume 15 milligrams of zinc per day, and that children less than five years old consume 8 milligrams per day. But food packaging, which shows recommended intake levels calculated in ’60s, still says that adults should consume 20 milligrams per day. “If you think about it, every single food sitting in the grocery store has a nutrition fact panel right now that is largely irrelevant for young children,” says Valerie Tarasuk, a University of Toronto nutritional scientist.

In the years since the FDA calculated its recommended Daily Values, the Institute of Medicine (IOM), a branch of the National Academy of Sciences, have developed “Tolerable Upper Intake Levels” for these three nutrients (referenced in the graph above). Often, they’re considerably lower than the FDA’s recommended daily allowances. An FDA proposal to revise nutrition labels is currently open for public comment. Though the FDA proposed similar changes in 2003, the Daily Values for nutrients have remained consistent since the 1960s. An FDA spokesperson declined to comment for this article.

In EWG’s review of fortified foods, the top source of excessive intake of the three studied nutrients was cereal. Cereals made up 43 percent of all sources of preformed vitamin A, 52 percent of added niacin, and 97 percent of added zinc.

But not all cereals are fortified equally. The EWG’s analysis of the nutrition labels for 1,556 cereal brands found that 114 cereals were fortified with 30 percent or more of the FDA’s daily intake values (for adults) of Vitamin A, zinc, or niacin. The full list of those cereals is here, but here are a few brands you might recognize:

Cap’n Crunch’s Chocolatey Crunch
Food Lion Whole Grain 100 Cereal
General Mills Fiber One, Honey Clusters
General Mills Wheaties
General Mills Total Raisin Bran
Kashi U 7 Whole Grain Flakes & Granola with Black Currants & Walnuts
Kellogg’s Crispix Cereal
Kellogg’s Smart Start, Original Antioxidants
Kellogg’s Special K
Kroger Frosted Flakes of Corn
Malt-O-Meal Corn Bursts
Safeway Kitchens Bran Flakes
Stop & Shop/Giant Source 100 Crispy Whole Grain Wheat & Brown Rice Flakes
Trader Joe’s Bran Flakes

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Is Your Cereal Giving You a Vitamin Overdose?

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Why Californians Will Soon Be Drinking Their Own Pee

by JerrellRosas Posted on June 17, 2014

Mother Jones

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This story originally appeared in Slate and is republished here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

California has a lot of coastline. So why all the fuss about the drought? Desalination to the rescue, right?

Not quite. The largest desalination plant in the Western Hemisphere is currently under construction in Carlsbad in San Diego County at great expense. The price tag: $1 billion.

Right now, San Diego is almost totally dependent on imported water from Sierra snowmelt and the Colorado River. When the desalination plant comes online in 2016, it will produce 50 million gallons per day, enough to offset just 7 percent of the county’s water usage. That’s a huge bill for not very much additional water.

Desalination is not a new technology, but it’s still expensive. Despite the cost, its uptake is growing as dry places look to secure drought-proof sources of water. A new desalination plant built on reverse-osmosis microfiltering (the same method as the Carlsbad plant) will supply one-third of Beijing’s water by 2019. Desalination is already a major source of water for Australia, Chile, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and other drought-prone coastal regions. Smaller solar desalination plants are also gaining appeal in California.

When regional water agencies first considered a Bay Area desalination plant more than a decade ago, they briefly considered making it more than double the size of the plant currently under construction in San Diego County. Since then, the idea for the Bay Area plant has been scaled back to about 10 percent of the original size based on the maximum intake capacity of the local water district. A tentative location has also been chosen: Mallard Slough, near where the Sacramento River meets the Bay. The plant is now on indefinite hold pending local demand, though studies have proven it’s technically feasible.

“We’re nowhere near done doing all the environmental impact reporting,” said Abby Figueroa of East Bay Municipal Utility District, one of the partners of the would-be Bay Area desalination plant. “There are other options that are more likely for us to use in the short term. We’re counting on conservation as one of those supplies.”

Still, the drought may force a decision sooner rather than later. “This is year one of the drought for us. Other parts of California are in year three or four. The real pressure for us is going to come next year if it doesn’t rain.”

Which brings us to the pee-drinking.

This year’s drought has motivated California to invest $1 billion in new money on water recycling efforts statewide, a much more cost-efficient way of increasing potable water supplies. But reusing purified sewer water for brushing your teeth is not without its own set of issues. National Journal describes the biggest holdup:

The problem with recycled water is purely psychological. Despite the fact the water is safe and sterile, the “yuck factor” is hard to get over, even if a person understands that the water poses no harm. In one often-cited experiment, researchers poured clean apple juice into a clean bedpan, and asked participants if they’d be comfortable drinking the apple juice afterwards. Very few of the participants agreed, even though there was nothing wrong with it. It’s forever associated with being “dirty,” just like recycled wastewater.

While it’s not quite correct that every glass of water contains dinosaur pee, it is true that every source of fresh water on Earth (rainfall, lakes, rivers, and aquifers) is part of a planetary-scale water cycle that passes through every living thing at one point or another. In a very real way, each and every day we are already drinking one another’s urine.

Earlier this year, the city of Portland, Oregon (in one of the most Portland-y moments in recent memory) nearly drained a local 38-million-gallon reservoir after a teen was caught urinating in it. Slate‘s Laura Helmuth made a brilliant calculation that the poor lad would have had to pee for 40 days straight to raise the reservoir’s nitrate levels above EPA-allowable limits and make the water unsafe to drink.

The good news is that this hurdle isn’t permanent. Psychologists have found that when cities reintroduce purified municipal wastewater into natural aquifers, streams, or lakes for later withdrawal, public acceptance of the fact that yes-it-was-once-pee improves. Since 2008, Orange County has recharged a local aquifer with billions of gallons of recycled sewage via the largest potable water reuse facility in the world.

They’ve also had a large public awareness campaign. This clip from Last Call at the Oasis, a 2012 documentary on global water issues that mentions Orange County’s water recycling efforts, features Jack Black in a spoof ad for “Porcelain Springs: Water from the most peaceful place on Earth”:

Thanks to public support, Orange County will add another 30 million gallons of drinking-quality recycled water per day via a new $142 million expansion due to come online in 2015. Factoring in the costs of the current plant, Orange County will soon produce twice as much water for less than one-third of the average cost of San Diego’s new desalination plant. Reusing water that’s already been pumped to Orange County over mountain ranges also uses half the energy as importing new water.

The conclusion here is easy: If drinking purified pee weirds you out, don’t live in a desert.

California had a water problem long before climate change came around. Now, with growing demand from both cities and agriculture along with dwindling supplies, something’s gotta give. Conservation and common-sense measures like municipal water recycling can happen immediately. Grass on golf courses and lawns can be severely restricted, immediately. Agriculture can get smarter, immediately. Groundwater pumping can be regulated, immediately. All of these improvements can be had for very little change in quality of life. California’s water problems could diminish practically overnight.

New dams? Over the next 10–30 years you’d need to double the capacity of reservoirs that currently exist, just to replace the snowpack that will be lost due to climate change.

Barring a miracle, desalination is among the least desirable options. There are significant economic, environmental, energy, and political barriers. Desalination is the Alberta tar sands of water resources. When you look closely at the choices, it’s clear the future of Western water supplies is toilet water.

For all its issues, here’s another thing Tucson, Arizona, is doing right: Since 1984 the city has been offsetting drinking water imported across hundreds of miles of desert with recycled water for grass lawns and golf courses. Why there are still grass lawns in Tucson is anyone’s guess. (In fairness, Tucson gets about three times the average annual rainfall as Las Vegas, a far worse offender in the desert-lawn-growing category, even though it also recently started using recycled water.)

If the West wants to get serious about water, there are many things they can start doing right away, like drinking their own pee.

In the finale to the Thirsty West series, I’ll head north to Oregon to see how one small-scale farmer is fighting generations of precedent to try to build a new model for profitable and environmentally friendly agriculture.

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Why Californians Will Soon Be Drinking Their Own Pee

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Don’t Believe Anything You Read About Pomegranate Juice

by ShawnVHVUu Posted on June 13, 2014

Mother Jones

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In ancient Greek mythology, pomegranates symbolized death. They were certainly a source of grief for Coca-Cola on Thursday morning, when the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the pomegranate juice company POM Wonderful can sue Coke for marketing a product that contains 99.4 percent apple and grape juice as “Blueberry Pomegranate.”

And like many Greek myths, the Supreme Court decision is also rich with irony: POM is currently locked in a separate court battle over allegations that its own pomegranate juice marketing misleads consumers.

Both companies have relied on some pretty questionable rhetoric. Coke claimed that because the Food and Drug Administration had approved its juice label, it couldn’t be sued under other trademark laws for misleading consumers. “We don’t think that consumers are quite as unintelligent as POM must think they are,” Coke’s lawyer Kathleen Sullivan told the Court in April—an argument that fell flat when Justice Anthony Kennedy responded, “Don’t make me feel bad because I thought that this was pomegranate juice.”

But as HBO’s John Oliver has pointed out, POM isn’t exactly a hero here. In September 2010, the Federal Trade Commission charged POM with falsely claiming that its products could prevent or treat a variety of medical conditions. According to the FTC, claims that POM juice has “SUPER HEALTH POWERS!… Backed by $25 million in medical research and proven to fight for cardiovascular, prostate and erectile health” have no basis in reality.

POM has contested the FDA’s complaint, but so far, judges have sided with the federal agency. The case has made its way to federal appeals court in Washington, where the judges don’t seem particularly sympathetic. At a hearing in May, Judge Merrick Garland read one of POM’s ads aloud and said, “I don’t understand if you look at those two paragraphs how you can say that it’s not misleading.”

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Don’t Believe Anything You Read About Pomegranate Juice

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Big Food Still Plans to Sue Vermont Over New GMO Labeling Law

by BlondelCSS Posted on June 6, 2014

Mother Jones

Last month, when Vermont passed a new law requiring food and beverage manufacturers to label genetically modified foods, Big Food went ballistic. The Grocers’ Manufacturers’ Association, a trade group that represents Monsanto, General Mills, Coca-Cola, and other giant food companies, warned that the labeling law—the first of its kind in the nation—was “costly” and “critically flawed,” and vowed to sue the state to force it to scrap the measure.

At the heart of the debate is the question of whether states should be allowed to regulate food labeling. The GMA argues that any laws requiring manufacturers to label genetically modified food should come from the federal government—and only if the feds deem GM foods are a health risk. But Vermont lawmakers argue that the state should be able to move forward on its own. “We believe we have a right to know what’s in the food we buy,” Peter Shumlin, the state’s Democratic governor, said in a statement last month.

The GMA insists that genetically modified foods are perfectly safe and pose no risks to human health: “They use less water and fewer pesticides, reduce crop prices by 15-30 percent and can help us feed a growing global population of seven billion people,” the group noted in a press release. But Vermont lawmakers maintain the new law is more about transparency than health, and that customers have a right to know whether genetically modified organisms are in their food. There’s popular support for that idea: 79 percent of Vermonters support labeling genetically modified food, according to a recent poll conducted by the Castleton Polling Institute for VTDigger, a Vermont media outlet.

That polling doesn’t seem to have affected the GMA’s position. The group hasn’t sued yet. But when I called to ask if the GMA still planned to sue Vermont, a GMA representative referred me to last month’s statement, which promises a lawsuit “in the coming weeks.” Get ready, Vermont—Big Food is coming for you.

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Big Food Still Plans to Sue Vermont Over New GMO Labeling Law

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8 Disgusting Facts About Hog Poop

by ReubenDeberry Posted on May 21, 2014

Mother Jones

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Manure isn’t supposed to smell good. But people living near hog farms complain of unbearable stenches that affect their health and essentially keep them prisoners in their own homes. The Environmental Protection Agency does not regulate manure odor, and neither do most states. In the May/June 2014 issue of Mother Jones, Bridget Huber writes about two attorneys bringing odor nuisance suits against Big Pork—and winning their hog stink-affected clients at least $32 million to date.

So just how much poop are we talking about here? And what’s it really like to be neighbors with a factory hog farm? A few facts to keep in mind:

Read more Mother Jones coverage of mysterious exploding poop foam.

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8 Disgusting Facts About Hog Poop

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6 Charts That Show How We Became China’s Grocery Store and Wine Cellar

by RoderickHaswell Posted on May 5, 2014

Mother Jones

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Jaeah Lee

We hear a lot about the perils of consuming food from China—and very little about the food we send to China. Yet we export five times more chow to China than we import from it (see chart above).

No doubt, China has undergone a full-on food-production miracle over the past generation, but there’s zero chance that its farms will emerge as a global exporting powerhouse, as its vaunted electronics factories have done. As this 2013 UN report notes, China’s total farm output has tripled since 1978. But it has to feed nearly a fifth of the globe’s people on just 8 percent of its arable land. Meanwhile, nearly 20 percent of China’s farmland has been polluted by runoff from industrial waste and/or excessive agrichemicals, its government recently acknowledged. On top of that, the country’s water resources are extremely limited.

Nevertheless, China is a major supplier of some high-profile items in our grocery stores and restaurants. Which ones?

Alex Park

Overall, though, China is a relatively minor source of food for the US—we import much more from both Mexico and Canada. The much bigger story is rocketing exports. China overtook Mexico as the country that sucks in the most US food in 2012. We export more than $25 billion worth of food per to China, as the chart at the top shows—an amount nearly equal to total food expenditures in the state of Ohio.

Jaeah Lee, Julia Lurie, Katie Rose Quandt

The main driver: China’s rapid switch to a US-style meat-rich diet. China taps US farms to feed its fast-growing meat habit in two ways. First, it directly imports it. Pork exports to China have surged over over the past decade. China is also a large importer of beef on the global market (mainly from Australia), but it has banned US product since 2003, over a mad-cow disease scare. With its beef demand soaring, though, it recently signaled it might lift the beef as early as July. As for chicken, China imports a huge amount from the US; and it has also invited US agribusiness giants Tyson and Cargill to plunk down chicken farms on domestic soil. These factory-scale facilities need a steady supply of feed to keep humming—and that’s where we get to the second way China looks to the US for its meat supply: by importing lots and lots of livestock feed, namely, corn, soybeans, and alfalfa (fed as hay to cows). Chinese consumers are also demonstrating a surging appetite for another protein-rich US product: nuts, almost all of which are grown in California. And, perhaps to help wash down all of that meat, there’s a growing thirst another California-centric luxury product, wine.

Jaeah Lee and Alex Park

These final charts, drawn from recent USDA projections, suggest that China’s love affair with meat will continue. Meanwhile, its appetite for nuts shows no sign of abating. For the US, these trends no doubt mean a windfall for the agribusiness companies that dominate meat, grain, and nut production. They also mean yet more pressure on our two most important food-growing regions: California’s Central Valley and the Midwest’s corn belt. As I’ve pointed out before, the Central Valley, source not only of nuts but also of alfalfa, is already rapidly drawing down fossil water resources to irrigate its drought-parched farms; and the corn belt is quietly undergoing a potentially devastating loss of topsoil, under the strain of maximum production and chaotic weather.

Jaeah Lee

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6 Charts That Show How We Became China’s Grocery Store and Wine Cellar

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