PepsiCo recently hired experts to conduct a carbon life cycle analysis on their Tropicana products, including orange juice.  Much to their surprise, "it wasn't running the factory or transporting the heavy juice containers, but the nitrogen fertilizers, which require natural gas to make and can turn into a potent greenhouse gas, that were the primary contributor," according to Wendy Gordon, founder of "The Green Guide" in an article at Huffington Post.

Steven Chu, new Energy Secretary, warns about the impact of global warming in California by the end of this century.  "We're looking at a scenario where there's no more agriculture in California," Chu says in an article in the LA Times this week.

He suggests that California's vaunted agricultural lands and vineyards could vanish with the disappearance of 90% of the Sierra snowpack.  Not that California's cities would do much better.  Chu said that the hope lies in educating the public on the dangers of complacency. 

Food Democracy Now, the folks who brought us the unsuccessful petition for a more sustainable Secretary of Agriculture, have developed a list of 10 suggested policies that they hope the Obama Administration enacts in the first 100 days.  They have developed a set of steps that can be taken immediately to build "a 21st century food and agriculture system guided by sustainable farm and food principles".  The list was compiled with the input of leading advocates for sustainable agricultural values, all of which are consistent with the Rural Agenda laid out by presidential candidate Barack Obama.  They are:

Mark Bittman has been in town these last couple of days promoting his new book, "Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating", so I've been hearing about him on the radio a lot.  He was also speaking on a panel at Kane Hall last night as part of their Arts and Lecture Series. 

The focus on conscious eating and the links to global warming and environmental issues is what made me want to explore what he is saying more.  I've noodled around the Internet and found a couple of things which might be interesting to readers already pretty focused on sustainable farming, climate change and alternative energy. 

The UK's Environment Secretary, Hilary Benn, government has just formed a Council of Food Policy Advisers to rethink the fundamentals of food policy to address concerns of food security and rising prices.  BBC News reported that Benn warned at the Council's launch,  "Global food production will need to double just to meet demand.  We have the knowledge and the technology to do this, as things stand, but the perfect storm of climate change, environmental degradation and water and oil scarcity, threatens our ability to succeed."

A few weeks ago, our partners at C-2-C (Community-to-Community), Rosalinda Guillen and Erin Thompson, travelled to Wisconsin to participate in a historic meeting of the Domestic Fair Trade Association (DFTA).  Farmers, farmworkers, traders, processors, marketers and food system advocates sat down as equals to bring fair trade home to the US.  The 35 founding members agreed to make it their mission to: "Promote and protect the integrity of Domestic Fair Trade principles through education, marketing, advocacy and endorsements."