Six years and 194 dinner parties with meals from around the world to help relieve the global hunger crisis.

A dinner party is more than an excuse to eat a few exotic dishes: it’s a reason to be with other people, engage in a lively conversation, and maybe even learn something. Sometimes it’s even a chance to celebrate a cause, or solve a global issue like hunger.

That’s the idea behind United Noshes, a six-year project aimed to cook a feast from every United Nations member country (in alphabetical order). That makes for a total of 194 meals (there are 193 UN members, plus two non-observing members, Holy See (Vatican City) and Palestine, and Holy See will get wrapped in as appetizers before the Honduras meal). The two women behind the project, Laura Hadden and Jesse Friedman, are estimating that to make that many meals will take about 6 years, finishing towards the beginning of 2017.

What makes United Noshes special is two things: First, they put an emphasis on local community as much as they do global. For the United Noshes team, cooking from around the world is not just a way to explore new foods, but a way of bringing people together. They invite new friends and old, and you can sign up for their newsletter to learn about upcoming dinners. Second, they use the meals as a way to raise money for World Food Program USA – as of December 2012, they raised over $12,000.

The United Noshes blog is an exploration of not only different foods, but also a geography lesson, giving you a look into even the smallest of countries. As James Michener once said, “If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion and avoid the people, you might better stay at home.” Food is an avenue for exploring cultures, and fortunately the United Noshes team is providing people with the opportunity to do that even when they are at home.

Kitchen tables are the place for us to connect, and what better way than learning about the culinary culture of new countries and taking part in something that benefits others that are not so lucky to have access to elaborate meals?

Image: Daniel E. Lee

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The rich guys fighting clean energy spend a staggering amount of cash making the world a dirtier place.

Like many other big oil companies, ExxonMobil loves to boast about how much money it spends on renewable energy research, but what they don’t tell you is that they’re spending millions fighting clean energy legislation at the same time. A nearly untraceable amount of cash goes into lobbying against renewable energy each year, and fossil fuel giants are hardly alone in doling it out. The list of deep-pocketed companies and organizations actively smearing clean energy is disturbingly long. But what if we could take those millions and put them toward good causes instead?

The organizations that send lobbyists to Washington to campaign for fossil fuels and against clean energy projects are so tangled, it’s hard to figure out who’s who. Many of them are backed by the same powerful businessmen, like the Koch brothers, and many are fronts for the dirty energy industry. A project called Fight Clean Energy Smears, which is run by the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), gathers them up and gives us a broad look at who they are and what they’re doing.

Here are just a handful of examples:

• ExxonMobil recently put $600 million aside for algae biofuel research, but the company’s total expenditures on clean energy are less than 1% of its total earnings, and it also spends millions on lobbying for fossil fuels. Exxon is also among the financial supporters of the American Council for Capital Formation (ACCF), an organization that produces inaccurate analyses of climate change legislation that have affected US Chamber of Commerce ‘forums’ on climate. This allows Exxon and other companies to engage in dirty tactics to protect their billions in government subsidies without stamping their name right on them.
• The Chamber of Commerce has also joined conservative, climate-change-denying groups like American Crossroads in spending $70 million on anti-clean energy ads. These groups also spent a collective $242 million on lobbying on behalf of polluters.
• The organizations behind the Clean Coal marketing campaign have spent at least $35 million on ‘educational’ and lobbying efforts trying to convince the government and the public that coal power can be an environmentally friendly enterprise.
• Peabody Energy Company, the world’s largest private-sector coal producer, spent $14.2 million in direct federal lobbying in 2008 and 2009, and Arch Coal, America’s second-largest coal company, spent $3 million.
• The organizations funded by the billionaire Koch brothers, who also fund the bulk of many Republican political campaigns, outspends ExxonMobil on clean energy disinformation. Greenpeace has learned that Koch Industries has spent $48.5 million since 1997 on climate change denial and anti-clean energy efforts.

What a mess, right? From this, we can assume that these companies and organizations have spent at least $412 million on anti-clean energy efforts in the last few years, and that’s undoubtedly an incredibly low estimate, even assuming that some of these figures may overlap a bit. The real number likely reaches into the billions.

Just for fun, let’s take a look at some of the hugely important humanitarian and environmental issues that could be tackled with that amount of money:

1. Clean water for over 4.12 million people in developing countries like Kenya and India. According to The Water Project, a single well serving 3,000 people costs about $30,000.
2. Switch 27,466 U.S. households from grid power to solar power. The average cost for a single household to set up a solar energy system, after government tax breaks, is $15,000.
3. Plant 8.24 million trees. Oxfam America Unwrapped will plant a forest of 1,000 trees for $500.
4. Stock cereal banks in 1.648 million villages. $250 will fill a storehouse with corn, millet and other grains to feed the hungry and ensure food stocks in case of emergency.
5. Plant 10.3 million fields of organic cotton. It costs just $40 to start a single field. Switching from conventional to organic cotton farming could eliminate a large quantity of toxic pesticides like cyanide from the environment.
6. Start 824 mobile health clinics and fund each of them for an entire year. Mobile health clinics can respond to disasters like the earthquakes in Haiti and Japan, and serve thousands of migrant farm workers and their families in the United States.
7. Feed 22.89 million African AIDS orphans lunch each day for one year, which costs just $18 each.
8. Build 686,666 houses in Haiti, where living conditions that were already poor before the 2010 earthquake have deteriorated rapidly. With four people per house, this amount of new construction could shelter nearly a third of the nation’s population.

Of course, none of this is to say that these companies and organizations can – or should – spend that money on these particular things. But it does provoke thought on how money is thrown around by the few who hold the most of it – and why.

Photo: VictoriaPeckham

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We may be facing unprecedented world hunger caused by environmental degradation.

According to recent report from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) prices may increase by 30-50 per cent within decades causing those living in extreme poverty to spend up to 90 per cent of their income on food.

Climate change – its impact on water supply, encouragement of invasive insects and plants and fueling of epidemics diseases – is the key reason that worldwide agricultural yields will fall.

The report talks about the need to change the way crops are grown, subsidized, and distributed but it also points to two surprising and elegant solutions.

Surprising, because they haven’t been talked about much before. Elegant, because both cannot only help feed a growing population, but also help slow global warming.

Solution 1: Addressing food waste

Over half the food produced today is wasted or discarded. In the US these losses are as high as 40-50 percent, with up to one quarter of all fresh fruits and vegetables in the US lost before they ever get to your refrigerator. In Australia, it is estimated that food waste makes up half of that country’s landfill. Almost one-third of all food purchased in the United Kingdom every year is not eaten.

Not only is this a tragedy for the world’s hungry, but it must be stopped because food decaying in landfills emits methane, a powerful greenhouse gas.

In addition, 30 million tons of fish are discarded at sea every year. Over one-third of the world’s cereals are being used as animal feed. (This is expected to rise to 50 per cent by 2050.) And we are growing grains to feed our autos instead of our bellies. The report suggests that salvaging the discarded fish alone could support a 50 percent increase in aquaculture.

The research also draws out the possibility of producing biofuels from discards like straw and nutshells instead of growing crops to produce them.

Solution 2: Increasing organic crop production in developing countries

Spin from agribusiness continues to promote the idea that genetically modified organisms and large doses of chemical fertilizers and pesticides are the only ways to feed a growing population.

But a survey of 114 small-scale farms in 24 African countries found that yields more than doubled where organic, or near-organic practices were used, with the in-yield jumping to 128 per cent in east Africa. Organic practices outperformed both traditional methods and chemical-intensive conventional farming. Organic methods improved soil fertility and helped the soil retain water and resist drought more effectively.

Since conventional farming methods also contribute more to global warming than organic methods, due to their reliance on petroleum inputs, and growing research suggests that organic farming can feed the world, we need global cooperation and financial investment in promoting organic farming worldwide.

And of course we need to deal with food waste. There have been many suggestions here at EcoSalon, but it can’t only be left up to individuals.

Image: iChaz

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