The Breakthrough Journal
Berkeley, Calif., July 26, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The new issue of the Breakthrough Journal, “Produce Problems,” challenges the misleadingly simple concept of “farm to table” by exploring the environmental impacts of the complex, and sometimes murky, supply chains that actually bring food from where it is grown to our mouths.
The Breakthrough Journal is the Breakthrough Institute's quarterly magazine delivering pragmatic opinion and analysis grounded in the belief that even our most wicked environmental problems have technological solutions.
Now on shelves in Canada, Europe, and the Middle East.
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This issue includes ten essays and one movie review. Authors include:
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Tamar Haspel, James Beard Foundation award-winning columnist at The Washington Post;
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Michael Hathaway, Professor of Anthropology, Associate Member of the School for International Studies, and the Director of Simon Fraser University’s Center for Asian Studies;
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Rober Paarlberg, Associate in the Sustainability Science Program at Harvard Kennedy School;
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Jenny Splitter, award-winning journalist and Managing Editor at Sentient Media;
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And more!
A sneak peek at this issue’s incisive commentary:
This issue starts in the backyard: Washington Post columnist Tamar Haspel’s. In “Plants Everlasting,” she shows how growing your own garden can even be ripe with dilemmas: pursue supposedly sound permaculture with perennials and end up with basically nothing you want to eat, or plant annuals and then prepare to arm yourself with pesticides.
If you do opt for pesticides, you certainly won’t win any organic certifications. But maybe that doesn’t matter, write authors Linus Blomqvist, Breakthrough’s Dan Blaustein-Rejto, and Dave Douglas in “Measuring What Matters.” Such labels measure practices rather than outcomes and, in doing so, miss the metrics that matter most. What’s more, they create opportunities for fraud, points out Breakthrough’s Alex Smith. To consumers, an avocado looks like an avocado no matter how it is farmed. But call it organic, and you can charge twice as much. Not surprisingly, hucksters have caught on, Smith writes in “Fraudulent Foods.”
You may also be paying a premium for alternative meat, not only for its environmental benefits but also in the hope that its production is better for workers. In that respect, reports journalist Jenny Splitter in “Out of The Jungle,” it can be a tool for a just environmental transition for animals and people alike. But it is no silver bullet. Meanwhile, alternative proteins, points out Harvard’s Robert Paarlberg in “It’s What’s for Dinner,” won’t replace animal meat any time soon. Until then, there’s plenty we can do to make livestock lives better. Almost none of it involves the kinds of things many environmentalists imagine.