The US, Canada, and Mexico have just finished the first round of NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) negotiations.  Like all trade agreements, participants are looking for terms that will benefit them.

The U.S. objectives are on record (there are lots):

For agriculture, we want:

• Duty-free market access for agricultural products
• Reduced or eliminated tariffs for our products.
• Elimination of non-tariff barriers—quotas, subsidies, price discrimination and undercutting.
• Reasonable adjustment periods for regulatory changes
• Reduction in burdens caused by regulatory differences.

For “Sanitary and Phytosanitary”—food safety—measures, we want:

• Enforceable science-based measures
• Allowing countries to set their own levels of food-safety protection
• Expeditious resolution of unwarranted barriers to US food products
• Enforceable rules to ensure non-discriminatory implementation of science-based measures.
• Transparency in negotiations

Politico Pro Morning Agriculture has a truly wonderful summary of the positions of the three trading partners (if it’s behind a paywall, try this).

Timeline

• Round #1: ended on Sunday (Here’s the bland trilateral statement about it)
• Round #2: September 1-5 in Mexico City
• Round #3: September 23-27 in Canada
• Finish: before Mexico’s next election early in 2018

Want to know more?  Begin with the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP).

• IATP summary of the issues.
• IATP’s portal site devoted to keeping up with the issues

Want to figure it out for yourself?

• The North American Free Trade Agreement, current version
• US Trade Representative’s home page on NAFTA gives an overview of its history
• US Trade Representative’s 2001 summary of early history
• Announcement of key dates in the runup to the negotiations
• Request for comments in the Federal Register
• Comments submitted on NAFTA
• Transcripts of hearing on NAFTA

The FERN’s Ag Insider summarizes its recent NAFTA coverage , and makes it available outside its usual paywall—a gift:

• On NAFTA, Mexicans will try to give Trump a ‘win’ without losing, 8/14/17
• Meet the farmers who say NAFTA hasn’t helped them, 8/7/17
• Perdue: New NAFTA mantra must be ‘Do no harm to agriculture’, 8/7/17
• Hand-wringing and hand-holding ahead of NAFTA talks, 7/30/17
• The ‘new NAFTA’ inspires anxiety on both sides of the border, 7/26/17
• White House says it will knock down NAFTA barriers, 7/18/17
• Trump meets with his ‘friend,’ Mexican President Nieto, for the first time, 7/9/17
• Is a slowdown in U.S. soy, corn, and poultry sales to Mexico a signal of the future?, 6/29/17
• NAFTA is mutually beneficial, say ag ministers, but needs to be ‘modernized’, 6/20/17
• With NAFTA on the horizon, U.S. deals with Canada and Mexico ag issues, 6/5/17

Enjoy!

Listing calories in chain restaurants, you may recall, was authorized by Congress as part of the Affordable Care Act in 2010.

That was an astonishing seven years ago.  In the interim, the FDA wrote regulations, took public comments, rewrote regulations, scheduled them for implementation in 2017, and delayed them until 2018.

New York City, you might also recall, instituted menu labeling in 2008.  The world did not come to an end.

The City said it would go ahead and implement the federal version of the rules as originally scheduled.

The National Association of Convenience Stores objected (the industry has opposed menu labeling from the get go) and went to court to stop the City from doing this.

The FDA—a public health agency, mind you—is supporting industry in this suit.

Even if the City’s characterization of the FDA’s posture as a delay were correct, which it
is not, the City cannot rely upon a supposed void created by the agency to justify its position. As the Supreme Court has made clear, localities may not use the purported “failure of . . . federal officials affirmatively to exercise their full authority” as an excuse to “use their police power to enact a regulation” in a regulatory realm that is otherwise expressly preempted…[New York] may not choose to take its own path in the face of this clear expression of Congressional purpose.

The New York Times wrote about this, pointing out that since most chain restaurants are already in compliance with the law,” what’s the big deal?

I’m quoted:

Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition and public health at New York University, suggested that the latest delay was part of an industry push under the Trump administration to eliminate the federal menu labeling requirement altogether.

The longer the delay, the more the industry can fight it.

This is a consumer-unfriendly move on the FDA’s part, and not a good sign of what is in store for food politicies under FDA’s jurisdiction.

The CDC tracking of the papaya outbreak continues, with a score of

• Case Count: 173
• States: 21
• Deaths: 1
• Hospitalizations: 58
• Recall: Yes

All foodborne illness outbreaks are devastating for victims but fascinating for investigators, since each is different.

This investigation has traced the illness-causing Salmonella to one kind of papaya (Maridol, under Caribeña, Cavi, and Valery brands) to one Mexican farm (Carica de Campeche).

But four Salmonella strains have been found in papaya samples and in ill people:

• Kiambu
• Thompson
• Agona
• Gaminara

The shift from one to another is evident in the epi curve:

The moral:

• Don’t buy Maridol papayas.
• If you have one, throw it away (but be careful not to cross contaminate surfaces)
• If you don’t know where the papaya was grown, don’t eat it

If you are interested in the legal implications, check Bill Marler’s website.

Sustainable Food Trust has a report on a conference on the True Cost of American Food.

Health is the obvious cost, but others include:

• the cost of nitrate and pesticide pollution of ground and river water from agro-chemicals, which in some areas of the US are so high that the water industry is struggling to provide drinking water within legal limits,
• air pollution from CAFOs shown to be increasing respiratory infections and other diseases in people living nearby,
• the loss of biodiversity, including the decline of farmland birds and pollinating insects,
• soil degradation and erosion from continuous monoculture crop production,
• the human health costs to employees working in stressful conditions in food processing plants.

The American Farmland Trust and Growing Food Connections have published GROWING LOCAL: A Community Guide to Planning for Agriculture and Food Systems.

This is an enormously useful how-to guide to developing local food systems with lots of facts and figures .  Here is an example:

The Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis , of all things, has issued “Harvesting Opportunity: The Power of Regional Food System Investments to Transform Communities.”

Harvesting Opportunity…highlights models for collaboration between policymakers, practitioners and the financial community, and discusses research, policy and resource gaps that, if addressed, might contribute to the success of regional food systems strategies.

New Food Economy has an analysis by Katy Kieffer on who really owns America’s farmland

While urban commercial real estate has skyrocketed in places like New York, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C., powerful investors have also sought to turn a profit by investing in the most valuable rural real estate: farmland. It’s a trend that’s driving up costs up for the people who grow our food, and—slowly—it’s started to change the economics of American agriculture.

As a result of yesterday’s post, readers asked questions about sugar.  Here’s one:

Q: Is there a difference between cane and beet sugar?

A: It depends.

Both are 99.95% sucrose.

But the plants are different.  Sugar cane is grassy; sugar beets are a root vegetable.

The sucrose is extracted and refined by different methods.

And that remaining 0.05%: chefs say it makes a difference in cooking properties.

The San Francisco Chronicle did some comparative baking and then ran blind taste tests.

These showed big differences, with cane sugar a clear winner.

Who knew?

Just for fun, here’s another difference: sugar beets are about 95% GMO; sugar cane is non-GMO.

Also for fun, here’s cane-plus-beet versus high fructose corn syrup:

You know the drill.  Everyone would be healthier eating less sugar—no matter whether it comes from cane, beets, or corn.

I am a faithful subscriber to Jerry Hagstrom’s Hagstrom Report on issues having to do with agriculture.  He attended the International Sweetener Symposium in San Diego and took notes.  If you want to know how the sugar industry is dealing with the “eat less sugar” message, here are some hints (wish I’d been there):

From José Orive, executive director of the London-based International Sugar Organization:

There is “sugar diarrhea” in the media, Orive said, referring to the many articles urging reductions in sweetener consumption.  “We need to talk the bull by the horns in pointing out the role of sugar in human nutrition” and talking about the importance of exercise.

From Craig Ruffolo, an analyst with McKeany-Flavell in Oakland, CA:

We need to get back to positivity, not negativity. The sugar industry has a really great message. It starts with 15 calories per teaspoon.

From Courtney Gaine, president and CEO of the Sugar Association:

“We have this obesity crisis that has become a massive economic problem,” Gaine said. The pressures on governments to address the human and economic costs of obesity have combined with “a public health community that does not trust industry” she said.

A lot of the food companies “who should be our friends” are instead reformulating products and advertising they are using less sugar, she said. Coca-Cola is replacing its “Coke Zero” with a label that reads “Coke No Sugar” and is already supplying Delta Air Lines with napkins bearing that slogan.

From Lynn Dornblaser, director of innovation and insight at Mintel, a Chicago market research firm:

“Products making low sugar claims won’t be going away anytime soon”…The “no high-fructose corn syrup” claim “is not losing its power.”

Hagstrom’s summary comes with references:

▪  American Sugar Alliance – “An Evaluation of the Global Sugar Market Environment” by José Orive
▪ “Sugar Market Outlook” by Craig Ruffolo
▪ “The New State of Play for Sugar: Trends, Policy, Consumption and Activism” by Courtney Gaine
▪ “Consumer Trends and Industry Response” by Ron Sterk
▪ “Trends in sugar, sugar reduction, and sweeteners” by Lynn Dornblaser

If you are like me, you may have trouble understanding what this term means, but it’s the hot new word in alternative agriculture.

Farms of the Future says agroecology is the only way forward.  It is collecting signatures on a petition to make agricultural production practices tore ecological.

But what does that mean, exactly?

The Wikipedia definition is no help at all.

Agroecology is the study of ecological processes applied to agricultural production systems. The prefix agro- refers to agriculture. Bringing ecological principles to bear in agroecosystems can suggest novel management approaches that would not otherwise be considered. The term is often used imprecisely and may refer to “a science, a movement, [or] a practice”. Agroecologists study a variety of agroecosystems, and the field of agroecology is not associated with any one particular method of farming, whether it be organic, integrated, or conventional; intensive or extensive.

Thanks a lot.

Does agroecology mean the same thing as sustainable agriculture?

Fortunately help is at hand.

• Peter Rosset and Miguel Altieri: Agroecology: Science and Politics.

• John Vandermeer and Ivette Perfecto: Ecological Complexity and Agroecology

Start reading!

I like the way it tastes, but oh the hype about its health benefits.

I haven’t posted anything about industry-funded research for a long time, mainly because I’m working on a book on the topic.  Here’s one asking whether coconut water works as well as Gatorade for rehydration after exercise.

Of course it does.  Both have water.

Study title: Comparison of coconut water and a carbohydrate-electrolyte sport drink on measures of hydration and physical performance in exercise-trained men.

Authors: Douglas S Kalman, Samantha Feldman, Diane R Krieger, and Richard J Bloomer

Competing interests: Financial support for this work was provided by VitaCoco^® Company (New York, NY). The investigators have no direct or indirect interest in VitaCoco^®. RJB has received research funding or has acted as a consultant to nutraceutical and dietary supplement companies.

VitaCoco must want to market its product as a sports drink.  In this instance, neutral (“as good as”) results position this drink as an alternative to Gatorade or its equivalent.

Water works too…