Climate-Smart Food
Climate-Smart Food

Author: Dave Reay

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2019-07-01

Total Pages: 200

ISBN-13: 3030182061

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This open access book asks just how climate-smart our food really is. It follows an average day's worth of food and drink to see where it comes from, how far it travels, and the carbon price we all pay for it. From our breakfast tea and toast, through breaktime chocolate bar, to take-away supper, Dave Reay explores the weather extremes the world’s farmers are already dealing with, and what new threats climate change will bring. Readers will encounter heat waves and hurricanes, wildfires and deadly toxins, as well as some truly climate-smart solutions. In every case there are responses that could cut emissions while boosting resilience and livelihoods. Ultimately we are all in this together, our decisions on what food we buy and how we consume it send life-changing ripples right through the global web that is our food supply. As we face a future of 10 billion mouths to feed in a rapidly changing climate, it’s time to get to know our farmers and herders, our vintners and fisherfolk, a whole lot better.

Bread, Wine, Chocolate
Bread, Wine, Chocolate

Author: Simran Sethi

Publisher: HarperCollins

Published: 2015-11-10

Total Pages: 279

ISBN-13: 006222154X

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Award-winning journalist Simran Sethi explores the history and cultural importance of our most beloved tastes, paying homage to the ingredients that give us daily pleasure, while providing a thoughtful wake-up call to the homogenization that is threatening the diversity of our food supply. Food is one of the greatest pleasures of human life. Our response to sweet, salty, bitter, or sour is deeply personal, combining our individual biological characteristics, personal preferences, and emotional connections. Bread, Wine, Chocolate illuminates not only what it means to recognize the importance of the foods we love, but also what it means to lose them. Award-winning journalist Simran Sethi reveals how the foods we enjoy are endangered by genetic erosion—a slow and steady loss of diversity in what we grow and eat. In America today, food often looks and tastes the same, whether at a San Francisco farmers market or at a Midwestern potluck. Shockingly, 95% of the world’s calories now come from only thirty species. Though supermarkets seem to be stocked with endless options, the differences between products are superficial, primarily in flavor and brand. Sethi draws on interviews with scientists, farmers, chefs, vintners, beer brewers, coffee roasters and others with firsthand knowledge of our food to reveal the multiple and interconnected reasons for this loss, and its consequences for our health, traditions, and culture. She travels to Ethiopian coffee forests, British yeast culture labs, and Ecuadoran cocoa plantations collecting fascinating stories that will inspire readers to eat more consciously and purposefully, better understand familiar and new foods, and learn what it takes to save the tastes that connect us with the world around us.

Agrobiodiversity
Agrobiodiversity

Author: Karl S. Zimmerer

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2023-10-31

Total Pages: 403

ISBN-13: 0262549697

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Experts discuss the challenges faced in agrobiodiversity and conservation, integrating disciplines that range from plant and biological sciences to economics and political science. Wide-ranging environmental phenomena—including climate change, extreme weather events, and soil and water availability—combine with such socioeconomic factors as food policies, dietary preferences, and market forces to affect agriculture and food production systems on local, national, and global scales. The increasing simplification of food systems, the continuing decline of plant species, and the ongoing spread of pests and disease threaten biodiversity in agriculture as well as the sustainability of food resources. Complicating the situation further, the multiple systems involved—cultural, economic, environmental, institutional, and technological—are driven by human decision making, which is inevitably informed by diverse knowledge systems. The interactions and linkages that emerge necessitate an integrated assessment if we are to make progress toward sustainable agriculture and food systems. This volume in the Strüngmann Forum Reports series offers insights into the challenges faced in agrobiodiversity and sustainability and proposes an integrative framework to guide future research, scholarship, policy, and practice. The contributors offer perspectives from a range of disciplines, including plant and biological sciences, food systems and nutrition, ecology, economics, plant and animal breeding, anthropology, political science, geography, law, and sociology. Topics covered include evolutionary ecology, food and human health, the governance of agrobiodiversity, and the interactions between agrobiodiversity and climate and demographic change.

Our Changing Menu
Our Changing Menu

Author: Michael P. Hoffmann

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2021-04-15

Total Pages: 267

ISBN-13: 1501754645

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Our Changing Menu unpacks the increasingly complex relationships between food and climate change. Whether you're a chef, baker, distiller, restaurateur, or someone who simply enjoys a good pizza or drink, it's time to come to terms with how climate change is affecting our diverse and interwoven food system. Michael P. Hoffmann, Carrie Koplinka-Loehr, and Danielle L. Eiseman offer an eye-opening journey through a complete menu of before-dinner drinks and salads; main courses and sides; and coffee and dessert. Along the way they examine the escalating changes occurring to the flavors of spices and teas, the yields of wheat, the vitamins in rice, and the price of vanilla. Their story is rounded out with a primer on the global food system, the causes and impacts of climate change, and what we can all do. Our Changing Menu is a celebration of food and a call to action—encouraging readers to join with others from the common ground of food to help tackle the greatest challenge of our time.

Cocoa
Cocoa

Author: Kristy Leissle

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2018-02-12

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 1509513205

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Chocolate has long been a favorite indulgence. But behind every chocolate bar we unwrap, there is a world of power struggles and political maneuvering over its most important ingredient: cocoa. In this incisive book, Kristy Leissle reveals how cocoa, which brings pleasure and wealth to relatively few, depends upon an extensive global trade system that exploits the labor of five million growers, as well as countless other workers and vulnerable groups. The reality of this dramatic inequity, she explains, is often masked by the social, cultural, emotional, and economic values humans have placed upon cocoa from its earliest cultivation in Mesoamerica to the present day. Tracing the cocoa value chain from farms in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean, through to chocolate factories in Europe and North America, Leissle shows how cocoa has been used as a political tool to wield power over others. Cocoa's politicization is not, however, limitless: it happens within botanical parameters set by the crop itself, and the material reality of its transport, storage, and manufacture into chocolate. As calls for justice in the industry have grown louder, Leissle reveals the possibilities for and constraints upon realizing a truly sustainable and fulfilling livelihood for cocoa growers, and for keeping the world full of chocolate.

Chocolate Crisis
Chocolate Crisis

Author: Dale Walters

Publisher: University Press of Florida

Published: 2020-12-22

Total Pages: 189

ISBN-13: 1683402820

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Chocolate is the center of a massive global industry worth billions of dollars annually, yet its future in our modern world is currently under threat. In Chocolate Crisis, Dale Walters discusses the problems posed by plant diseases, pests, and climate change, looking at what these mean for the survival of the cacao tree. Walters takes readers to the origins of the cacao tree in the Amazon basin of South America, describing how ancient cultures used the beans produced by the plant, and follows the rise of chocolate as an international commodity over many centuries. He explains that most cacao is now grown on small family farms in Latin America, West Africa, and Indonesia, and that the crop is not easy to make a living from. Diseases such as frosty pod rot, witches’ broom, and swollen shoot, along with pests such as sap-sucking capsids, cocoa pod borers, and termites, cause substantial losses every year. Most alarmingly, cacao growers are beginning to experience the accelerating effects of global warming and deforestation. Projections suggest that cultivation in many of the world’s traditional cacao-growing regions might soon become impossible. Providing an up-to-date picture of the state of the cacao bean today, this book also includes a look at complex issues such as farmer poverty and child labor, and examines options for sustainable production amid a changing climate. Walters shows that the industry must tackle these problems in order to save this global cultural staple and to protect the people who make their livelihoods from producing it.

Trends in Sustainable Chocolate Production
Trends in Sustainable Chocolate Production

Author: Charis M. Galanakis

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2022-02-24

Total Pages: 369

ISBN-13: 3030901696

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Chocolate is consumed by people of all ages in all segments of society throughout the world. However, recent changes in legislative frameworks, environmental concerns and increasing attention towards sustainability have stimulated the chocolate industry to reconsider their management policy. Current books in the market cover chocolate manufacture without taking into account sustainable practices of production, consumption and market aspects. Trends in Sustainable Chocolate Production fills this knowledge gap by covering all the important aspects of chocolate industry (manufacture, functionality, sustainability of the supply chain, commercialization aspects and market characteristics) in one reference. Starting with the health outcomes of chocolate and an overview of its manufacture, the book explores techniques to improve the functionality, flavor and microstructure of chocolate, as well as its environmental impact through sustainable practices and supply chains. By connecting research to industry and consumer interests, this text aims to support members of the scientific community, professionals and enterprises working to develop a sustainable chocolate sector.

Agroforestry as Climate Change Adaptation
Agroforestry as Climate Change Adaptation

Author: Mette Fog Olwig

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2024-02-09

Total Pages: 181

ISBN-13: 3031456351

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This open access book provides multidisciplinary perspectives on the potential of agroforestry to mitigate the negative impacts of climate change on cocoa production. Against the backdrop of increasingly precarious farmer livelihoods, it focuses on cocoa-agroforestry in Ghana – the second largest producer of cocoa in the world. Taking the reader on a journey across experimental plots and on-farm studies, the book delivers a holistic understanding of cocoa-agroforestry. Chapters examine historical yield and climate interactions, the effects of heat and drought on cocoa plants and the role of differing shade trees on soil fertility, yields, pests and diseases. The book discusses the socioeconomics of shade tree management, including cost-benefits, tree rights and competition for natural resources emphasizing policy implications and recommendations. Taking a multidisciplinary approach to climate-agriculture interactions, the book provides an innovative understanding of agroforestry and perennial cropping systems that goes beyond the Ghanaian cocoa belt. It is of relevance to students, researchers, farmers, practitioners and policymakers working with agroforestry and climate change adaptation. This is an open access book.

Global Climate Change and Human Health
Global Climate Change and Human Health

Author: Jay Lemery

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2021-05-11

Total Pages: 674

ISBN-13: 111966795X

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Learn more about the impact of global warming and climate change on human health and disease The Second Edition of Global Climate Change and Human Health delivers an accessible and comprehensive exploration of the rapidly accelerating and increasingly ubiquitous effects of climate change and global warming on human health and disease. The distinguished and accomplished authors discuss the health impacts of the economic, climatological, and geopolitical effects of global warming. You'll learn about: The effect of extreme weather events on public health and the effects of changing meteorological conditions on human health How changes in hydrology impact the spread of waterborne disease and noninfectious waterborne threats Adaptation to, and the mitigation and governance of, climate change, including international perspectives on climate change adaptation Perfect for students of public health, medicine, nursing, and pharmacy, Global Climate Change and Human Health, Second Edition is an invaluable resource for anyone with an interest in the intersection of climate and human health and disease.

Chocolate
Chocolate

Author: Ross F. Collins

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2022-06-01

Total Pages: 644

ISBN-13:

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Chocolate is nearly always with us—when celebrating or mourning, in love or alone, healthy or sick, happy or sad. This book offers a comprehensive look at how an exotic food grew to play such a central role in our lives. No food in the world can offer as storied a history as chocolate. Chocolate: A Cultural Encyclopedia focuses on cocoa's history from ancient Mesoamerican beginnings as a symbol of ritual, life, and death, to its omnipresence in Europe, North America, and the rest of the world. In 10 thematic chapters covering chocolate in society and culture, 80 shorter entries, recipes, and a comprehensive timeline, this new book takes a closer look at how chocolate has served as a medicine, an indulgence, a symbol of decadence, a door to romance, a tempting taboo, a means of survival, and a snack for children and adults alike. Why did popes and kings so fear their chocolate? Who invented milk chocolate, and why was its formula kept secret? Why did soldiers in World War II despise their chocolate rations? Who makes the most chocolate today? Find out the answers to these questions and more as this book tells you everything you wanted to know—and a lot you didn't even know existed—about the seed from the world’s favorite fruit tree.