Using the VUE software from Tufts University to illustrate food industry input-output flows

This new visualization tool allows you to explore resource flows between industries.

For example, you can see how much meat and poultry flows into the restaurant food industry, and then how much restaurant food flows to the final consumer (all measured in billions of dollars per year). You can create your own diagram showing the industries and flows that you select, in any order you choose.

This project extends the capability of Tufts University’s Visual Understanding Environment (VUE).  I worked on this with Rebecca Nemec, Graham Jeffries, Mike Korcynski, and Jonelle Lonergan.  Our working paper (.pdf) gives instructions for using several practice data sets, or for downloading your own data from the federal government's Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA).  Accompanying data files and a processing program are available on my department's working paper series page.

The best way to understand the capabilities of this visualization tool is to watch this video, also available full-size on Vimeo.

Visualizing Input-Output Data Using VUE from Tufts University - Online on Vimeo.

House and Senate mark up farm bills

At long last, the House Committee on Agriculture and the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry both marked up farm bills this week.  But there are many miles to go before this legislation ever reaches home.

The Associated Press has a summary of several key differences in the main provisions (with dollar amounts stated on a per year basis).

In a partisan division that we saw already last year, when this legislation was still over-optimistically known as the "2012 Farm Bill," the House committee proposes deeper cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) than the Senate committee does.  The House committee proposes to cut $2 billion per year, while the Senate committee proposes to cut $0.4 billion per year.  The Republican committee leaders in the House sought the deeper SNAP cuts in part so they could move slower on budget cuts to direct payments for cotton farmers (largely in the South), and in part so they could accommodate the strong anti-food-stamp sentiment among some Republican legislators on the floor.  Yet, these deep SNAP cuts may make it difficult to reach eventual agreement with the Democratic-led Senate, leading to possible continuation of the years-long impasse over U.S. food and farm policy.

For the Senate committee bill, the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition summarizes provisions of interest to producers interested in sustainable production practices, especially at the local and regional level.  For the House committee bill, Politico reports on the political angles.  The Hagstrom Report (gated, but valuable) is working overtime this week, and the FarmPolicy blog links to many national and regional media sources.

A good question about food aid

Continuing to follow the food aid reform issue that we discussed in April and last year, it is worthwhile to consider the toughly worded question that Cornell professor Chris Barrett asks on cnn.com this week:

How many of us read a story of disaster striking people half a world away and respond by getting out our checkbooks? Tens of millions of us in any given year, and Americans are especially generous. ... But is anyone foolish enough to go to the local grocery store, buy food and ship it to communities devastated by disaster? Of course not. That would cost much more, take too long to reach people in need, risk spoilage in transit, and likely not provide what is most needed.

Yet with only minor oversimplification, this is precisely what our government’s food aid programs have done since 1954.

Revitalizing Detroit with food and agriculture

Some amazing good things are happening in Detroit's food system.

Betti Wiggins, Director of Nutrition Services for Detroit Public Schools, is carrying out her vision for converting underutilized land to vegetable gardens.  Hear it in her own voice, from the Detroit Stories project.




The Detroit Eastern Market, operating continuously since the 1890s, offers a major regional event each Saturday and serves as a focal point for food business initiatives throughout the city.

Credit: http://www.detroiteasternmarket.com/.

See also the Detroit Food Policy Council, whose annual report (.pdf) provides greater detail about food system initiatives; the Colors Restaurant, an experiment in good food and worker justice; the Kitchen Connect project from Detroiters Working for Environmental Justice; the food system work of Detroit's youth movement; and the role of food initiatives in the broader Detroit Future City community planning initiative.

Any visitor to Detroit is struck by the depth of economic distress, visible in the physical environment and people one meets throughout the city.  The city population has declined by 25% in recent years.  Detroit is on the brink of bankruptcy (npr) and an emergency manager has been appointed (nytimes).

The remarkable entrepreneurs and innovators who are driving forward with new investments in food businesses and public initiatives are some of the most faithful, dauntless personalities I have ever met.

Upcoming Events: Michigan State University April 30

I look forward to giving a brown-bag talk about U.S. food policy at the MSU Center for Regional Food Systems, Michigan State University, this Tuesday, April 30, at noon.  Location: 338 Natural Resources Building.  Come visit and say hello.

Then, I will be in Detroit from April 30 late afternoon to May 2 for a meeting of the AGree agricultural policy initiative.

Josh Balk of HSUS at the Friedman School April 24

Josh Balk, director of corporate policy for the farm animal protection campaign of the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), will speak at the Friedman School, tomorrow, Wednesday, April 24, at 12:15 pm, in the Behrakis Auditorium of the Jaharis Building on Tufts University's Boston Campus.

The abstract says:

His seminar will offer an exceptional opportunity to discuss the controversial strategies and tactics used by HSUS, addressing the vexing issue of animal welfare in a meat-eating society.

You may register to see a live stream of this presentation.

I will introduce the event and moderate a conversation afterwards.

I have been especially interested in the work of HSUS in recent years, following the organization's successful negotiation with leading egg industry associations about egg production practices and labeling.  You can read an impartial and even-handed summary of that agreement (.pdf) from the Congressional Research Service.

The Humane Society is one of the few major public interest organizations that shares my curiosity about the semi-governmental National Pork Board's questionable $60 million purchase of the "Other White Meat" brand from a leading pork industry trade association.

Interpreting science at #EB2013 in Boston

While enjoying the excellent sessions sponsored by the American Society of Nutrition (ASN) at the Experimental Biology 2013 meetings here in Boston this week, I was struck once again by the way actual nutrition science research results are filtered or digested into short memes of conventional wisdom before they reach the public.

This filtering process is necessary, unavoidable, and even healthy.  And yet it is a key step, which brings politics and interest into the process of producing nutrition policy and dietary guidance.

Here is a passage from my chapter on Dietary Guidance in Food Policy in the United States: An Introduction (Routledge/Earthscan).

Filtering is the process of reading a large body of research and concisely summarizing its relevant points. Because the scientific literature is so heterogeneous, its policy impact depends heavily on how the research is filtered.

Filtering may be biased toward certain types of conclusions. Food industry organizations hire scientists and public relations specialists to spread the good word about favorable studies, without mentioning unfavorable studies. The public relations specialists are evaluated according to their success in placing favorable stories in the mass media. Reporters do not purposely seek to serve as a vehicle for industry public relations, but they face intense pressure to generate buzz by reporting novel and surprising findings. Hence, even though the balance of evidence in the scientific literature changes only slowly, headlines each week tell the public that everything they previously believed about nutrition and health was a big fat lie.

To summarize a complex scientific literature with less bias, scientists prefer to rely on systematic evidence reviews. In a systematic evidence review, an inter-disciplinary team establishes a protocol, a document that describes in advance the procedure for selecting relevant research studies, reducing the temptation to concentrate on studies that are favorable to the team’s prior expectations. For each selected study, the team evaluates the strength of the evidence, again using criteria established in advance.

Systematic evidence reviews do have some limitations. While they can avoid errors that stem from selective reading of just favorable parts of the scientific literature, systematic evidence reviews cannot fix misinterpretations that are widespread in the literature. Also, such reviews may not reflect recent improvements in scientific research. Still, because of their transparency and replicability, systematic reviews can clarify the state of the evidence on contentious scientific issues.

If you are attending the Experimental Biology 2013 meetings this week in Boston, the book itself is on display today at the CRC Press booth (#531 in the exhibition hall).  Please stop by the booth, and please share your thoughts on whether food policy is a worthy topic of study at a meeting of scientists.