Restaurants’ role in averting famine

Posted on May 30, 2011 by IFSS Staff

Julian Cribb had promised not to pull punches during his keynote address, and he didn’t renege: If the world doesn’t replace its current mode of food production with sustainable methods, he stressed during his presentation Wednesday, we’re heading for a famine of epic proportions.

“This is the great challenge of our time, if not in all human history,” remarked Cribb, an agriculture journalist whose recent work includes the acclaimed book, “The Coming Famine.”

The reasons for the imminent shortage are varied and complex, Cribb told a rapt audience of chefs, restaurateurs, suppliers and educators. The factors range irresponsible consumption—half of what the world’s farmers produce end up in consumers’ garbage cans, Cribb noted—to a depletion of phosphorus, an essential nutrient currently being hoarded by some nations.

A major contributor, Cribb said, is the conversion of arable land into urban space. “We are losing about 1% of the world’s farmland every year,” he said. With 24% of the world’s farmland already converted into city streets and buildings, and food consumption on its way to doubling, “you do the math.”

But, Cribb stressed, “It is also a magnificent opportunity.”

He likened the situation to a wake-up call that can no longer be ignored. And the ways of contending with the situation, he said, are neither difficult nor difficult to identify.

He posed five remedies:

–Doubling the amount of money spent on food research, to $80 billion a year.
–Investing another $80 billion in a campaign to “share food knowledge,” or best cultivation and consumption practices.
–Reinvent farming systems to use less land, water, energy and pesticies.
–End waste.
–Educate people to respect and value food.

He also stressed that foodservice professionals are key catalysts to reversing the situation.

“The chef, the restaurateur, sets the fashions for the rest of the society. You are the leaders,” said Cribb. He urged the restaurant business to foster a new food “ethos” by choosing and popularizing foods that deliver standout benefits from the least intensive methods.

Cribb’s speech was one of the high points of a two-day conference on foodservice sustainability, a first of its kind.
Organizers indicated that the event will be repeated next year, though dates have yet to be set.

Chefs as sustainability missionaries

Posted on May 25, 2011 by IFSS Staff

A variety of production factors are mustering farmers to the cause of sustainable agricultural. Stoking public demand for the outcome is where restaurant chefs are playing the critical role, according to one of the world’s leading experts on responsible food production.

Fred Kirschenmann, a farmer by trade and the U.S. godfather of sustainable agriculture by reputation, went as far during his kick-off presentation at the IFSS this afternoon as portraying restaurants as missionaries of the natural-farming movement.

It’s not so much a retro-movement as “taking some wisdom from the past and combining that with today’s science,” said Kirschenmann, who helped the U.S. Department of Agriculture draft the nation’s organic standards. The best way for farmers to do that, he stressed, is “to use nature as the model.”

But restaurants are also playing a key role, using spatulas and menus instead of harrows and hoes.

“When you product food this way, the flavor is much better,” he told the audience of chefs, foodservice suppliers, students, educators and journalists. “This is where chefs play a critical role.”

If they can hook the public on sustainably grown food, as they’re doing to a considerable degree already, the surge in demand could shift the current more-and-cheaper agricultural imperative to a more earth-friendly orientation.

“If we want to change the food system, we have to redesign, and we all have to be involved,” said Kirschenmann, who oversees a 3,000-acre farm in North Dakota. He’s also the authority-in-residence at Iowa State University’s Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture.

“It’s not about going back,” he said. “It’s about going forward.”

What’s next in restaurants’ green movement?

Posted on May 19, 2011 by IFSS Staff

As an early proponent of sustainability, George McKerrow Jr. knows how far restaurants have progressed from the days compact fluorescent bulbs were considered leading-edge. What’s he see as the next phase in the greening of the business? The CEO of Ted’s Montana Grill will share his vision of the future at the International Foodservice Sustainability Symposium next week.

Among the issues McKerrow expects to move front-and-center is garbage. Society is producing too much of it, and he wants restaurants to consider how they can cut their contributions through recycling, composting and lesser-known routes.
For instance, he cites an entrepreneur in Wisconsin who says he can find a second use for every scrap of garbage that’s produced by a fast-food restaurant, leaving only air and water as the final by-products.

“It’s much sexier to talk about windmills, but garbage is something very important, and the industry will be paying attention to it,” he said during an interview.
He also voices hope that the industry will awaken to the green ambassadors it has at its disposal—if it can just fire them up for the cause.

“Our industry employs 13 million people,” he says. “If we can motivate them, get them excited about it, think of all those people picking up trash, recycling, doing the right thing. It’s very powerful.”

Employee motivation doesn’t involve a major capital investment, said McKerrow, who founded the Longhorn Steakhouse chain before launching the Ted’s chain with environmental enthusiast Ted Turner.

Lessening a restaurant’s contribution to landfills can save the place money, he adds.

In both instances, the returns are attractive—a point he knows is top-of-mind for many operators today, given the economic climate.

“That’s always going to be a challenge, balancing a cost against wanting to do the right thing,” he says. “But you can do both.”
McKerrow will be participating in a panel with Dickie Brennan, a member of New Orleans’ famed restaurant family.
The session will be moderated by TV star and ecological advocate Bill Kurtis.

A sampling of what you’ll hear at IFSS

Posted on May 11, 2011 by IFSS Staff

Want a preview of the ideas you’ll hear aired at the International Foodservice Sustainability Symposium?

Here are a few comments from Dr. Fred Kirschenmann, head of a 3,500-acre organic farm and distinguished fellow at Iowa State University’s Leopold Center for Sustainability Agriculture. The sustainability pioneer is scheduled to give the opening keynote address at the IFSS.

These comments on issues of interest to the foodservice industry were taken from a recent interview of Kirschenmann by Chris Koetke, dean of Chicago’s Kendall College School of Culinary Arts.

On local sourcing: The presumption with local… is that it has a smaller eco-footprint which is not necessarily true. For example, some data indicates that if an individual farmer puts a crate of vegetables in the back of his truck and drives it 40 miles to the farmers’ market, that footprint could be larger than that of a large truck that hauls a full load of produce in from California…You can’t legitimately call something local that comes from more than 150 miles away. There are people who do, but it’s another instance of greenwashing.

On “food deserts”: When oil hit $147 and the price of food went up 15 to 20%, particularly in resource- poor countries, there were actually food riots in the streets. That was a wake-up call for a lot of politicians. People like Manhattan [N.Y.] Borough President Scott Stringer began to realize what we were experiencing globally could also become a serious problem for New York City because has its own food deserts [ed. note: The term used by some for areas lacking in healthful food choices]…When politicians start thinking like that, I think there are some real possibilities to bring about changes in the food system.

Contributions of restaurant chefs: One of the things customers want is authenticity. As a chef, if you use clear and simple language about what you’re serving your customers, that it has absolute authenticity and that what you’re doing, to best of your knowledge, meets requirements for ecological resilience, etc. you’re on the right track.

Then explain to your customers, in simple terms, why what they eat is important and while they’re enjoying healthy, delicious food, they’re also making a contribution to their grandchildren.

Bill Kurtis adds star turn to IFSS

Posted on May 7, 2011 by IFSS Staff

Millions watch his broadcasts, and countless more know his voice. With 44 years in television, Bill Kurtis is instantly recognizable to the generations of viewers who’ve tuned into CBS Morning News, A&E’s Investigative Reports and American Justice, to name just a few of the programs he’s hosted or narrated. And he’s still drawing followers with his nightly news work on CBS’ Chicago affiliate.

What those millions may not know—or at least not yet—is that Kurtis is also a spokesman for sustainability. When he wanted to find a unique use for his Kansas ranch, which happened to be the real-life setting for Laura Ingalls’ Little House books, Kurtis was drawn to sustainable forms of ranching. He decided to try raising cattle on a diet of local prairie grass. His “experiment” became Tallgrass Beef Co., a fast-growing supplier of grass-fed beef.

Kurtis has agreed to apply his knowledge of sustainability during the International Foodservice Sustainability Symposium by moderating an all-star panel of green-minded restaurateurs.

Also on the panel will be George McKerrow, Jr., founder of Longhorn Steakhouse and currently the CEO of Ted’s Montana Grill, which he launched in collaboration with bison rancher and media mogul Ted Turner.

Adding a New Orleans perspective will be Dickie Brennan of the Crescent City’s famed Brennan family.

Their session is scheduled for May 25 at 3 o’clock at the Hotel Allegro in downtown Chicago.

Other routes to kitchen sustainability

Posted on May 5, 2011 by IFSS Staff

Restaurants often follow the U.S. Green Building Council’s standards to give new or renovated facilities a greener tinge. But the points-based system doesn’t extend to such energy and water-saving measures as installing the right kitchen equipment, notes kitchen designer Josh Smith.

He’ll be part of a panel at the International Foodservice Sustainability Symposium that looks at sustainability practices that may not earn points in the USGBC’s LEED certification process.

Part of the presentation will deal with choosing equipment, says Smith, director of business development for Next Step Design in Annapolis, Md.

But also covered will be “philosophical things that are not tangible,” like systems and policies.

For instance, he says, the convention has long been to put refrigeration equipment inside a restaurant kitchen for the sake of convenience. But moving a walk-in outside the building shifts a heat-generator out of the production area, easing the burden on the exhaust system. It’s also easier to maintain that way, he adds.

Similarly, “not distributing water bottles in your restaurant” won’t get you any LEED points, but it’s a major step toward greater sustainability, says Smith.

He’ll be joined on the Sustainable Building & Kitchen Design panel by a Next Step colleague, designer Russell Stillwell, and an architect, Peter Hapstack, a principle of hapstak demetriou + pllc.

The session is scheduled for Wednesday, May 25, at 1:30 p.m.

Shedding light on new lighting options

Posted on April 28, 2011 by IFSS Staff

Recounting the cost benefits of LED lighting is dog-bites-man stuff. What restaurateurs might not realize, says sustainable-lighting expert Derry Berrigan, is the potential impact on sales.

“If you’re trying to drive sales, lighting most definitely impacts that,” says Berrigan, who’ll be talking about lighting at the International Foodservice Sustainability Symposium next month.

Not surprisingly, the effects on evening and nighttime traffic can be particularly pronounced, she adds.

Indeed, Berrigan stresses, lighting affects everything, and has to be viewed from a macro viewpoint.

In the case of LEDs, the low-consumption lights “improve your bottom line on both ends—costs and sales,” she says.

The savings are dramatic. LEDs can cut energy bills by as much as 81%, making them an economical choice no matter how you slice it, stresses Berrigan.

That’s why it’s important to assess a lighting product by its whole lifespan, not its upfront price, she stresses.

At the conference, Berrigan will recount case histories of two LED installations: A one-year-old McDonald’s unit, and a two-year-old KFC-Taco Bell combo store.

“We’ll be explaining how LED is now affordable for any restaurant franchise,” she says.

Berrigan is co-hosting the Cutting Edge of Sustainable Technology session with Richard Young of the Food Service Technology Center, a California facility that tests and verifies the energy efficiency of commercial restaurant equipment.

The breakout is slated for 4:45 on Tuesday, May 24.

Sustainability talk in a sustainable setting

Posted on April 20, 2011 by admin

It’s fitting that the first foodservice sustainability conference will be held at one of the trade’s greenest educational facilities.

Kendall College, host of next month’s International Foodservice Sustainability Symposium, decided in 2005 to instill a green sensibility into every aspect of its School of Culinary Arts. The effort extended to the replacement of plastic tasting spoons with wooden ones, and a switch from disposable paper toques to cloth rewashable ones.

Today the downtown Chicago school recycles, composts and maintains an on-campus sustainable garden that supplies its student-staffed fine-dining restaurant. The garden affords an opportunity to teach students the sustainability principles that will be discussed at the IFSS.

The fine-dining facility was expanded last year into a 22,000-sq.-ft. space with a hotel-sized display kitchen situated behind a floor-to-ceiling glass fronting the 90-seat dining room. Patrons see their locally and sustainably grown vegetables being produced on energy-saving equipment by students who’ve been schooled in maintaining a green approach from field to fork.

Kendall is not only the host of the IFSS, but a founding co-sponsor, in collaboration with the National Restaurant Association.

Chefs as super heroes

Posted on April 19, 2011 by admin

Julian Cribb, author of the acclaimed “The Coming Famine” and a keynote speaker at next month’s International Foodservice Sustainability Symposium, has spied an unexpected hero in the world’s mounting food crisis. More Clark Kent that Superman, given more to culinary whites and toques than capes or masks, Cribb’s potential rescuer is the foodservice chef. 

He explains why in this interview with Christopher Koetke, executive director of the Kendall College School of Culinary Arts, the host of the IFSS.

Koetke: It’s exciting to think that chefs may hold one of the keys to this dilemma because they set “food fashion.” Where do they start? What can we say to chefs about what they really need to do to help people understand the issues at hand?

Cribb: As I mentioned in the book, I’m a very humble domestic chef, but I was impressed when I visited the The World Vegetable Centre regional research facility in Arusha, Tanzania. Scientists there have collected seeds from the whole of Africa, including about 400 vegetables that have never appeared in any restaurant or supermarket; these vegetables were being eaten by local indigenous tribes and, indeed, sometimes even the next tribe didn’t know about them. And that’s just Africa. Think about how Christopher Columbus brought over the American potatoes, tomatoes and peppers to Europe and how that revolutionized the world diet. Now multiply that by Africa, Asia, and Australia. We have about 6,000 edible plants in Australia and only five of them are regularly consumed – macadamias, cumquats, bush tomatoes, bush pepper and lemon myrtle. We have not even begun to discover the richness of this world’s edible plant foods. We talk about eating more plant foods and it can be a marvelous and healthy culinary adventure.

Koetke: You say you’re not a professional chef but your comments are very much those of a professional chef because we are increasingly learning about the diversity within the plant world and it is great inspiration. I frequently travel to other countries like Brazil and I’ve tried a whole host of fruits and vegetables that I never knew existed. It’s fascinating and elicits the kind of creative inspiration that really gets the ideas flowing, whereas meat is essentially limiting.

Cribb: Well, meat isn’t all that limiting. I was recently invited to address a beef feedlot association’s annual conference and I gave them my usual message, which really worried them, and one guy asked, “What can we do?” The fact is that if the primary input, grain, is going to triple in price, then beef feed lotting isn’t going to work out. And I said to them, “Have you ever thought about diversifying into guinea pigs?” I mean there are livestock other than just cattle. Smaller livestock, like guinea pigs and rabbits can run in much smaller areas, can eat a more diversified diet – you can grow algae and feed it to them or you can use vegetable waste from supermarkets. The current formula is very limiting, but my point is that it doesn’t need to be. I believe that diversification is going to happen; we already see it with the Chinese who essentially eat anything that runs, swims or jumps. I think people will even begin farming certain types of insects as a good source of protein, just like we’re farming prawns, which are essentially insects of the sea.

Koetke: In Chapter 12 of your book you open up with a scenario set in 2085 in which students visit a museum to see how their ravaged world came to be; they see an object at the end of a long hallway that is the cause of the end of the world, the symbol of indulgence – a cookbook. I thought that was really interesting and would like you to comment on that really means.

Cribb: People think their own indulgences don’t matter, but when you multiply those personal indulgences by seven billion human beings, they have a very big impact. A cookbook looks innocent, but the wrong kinds of advice in a cookbook about what you eat can kill you and make agriculture unsustainable. We need to have cookbooks that help farmers and send market signals to grow fruits and vegetables in sustainable ways. Current cookbooks aren’t produced like that.

Koetke: You’ve pointed out a potential cookbook market segment that could be very interesting.

Cribb: Without being too preachy, I’d like the cookbook to gently educate the reader. Perhaps recipes could be labeled with a number of droplets signaling that the recipe is water-heavy or water-light, oil-heavy or oil-light so they understand their choices.

Koetke: That’s interesting because that kind of weighting is very much what the nutrition industry has done. It could be done much like nutritional content is done now. I think there’s an awful lot there to think about.

Cribb: Ordinary people in cities that don’t have contact with agriculture don’t understand these things. They don’t know how their food is produced and that most of our meat is produced by cruel, inhumane and toxic methods. They just see it as pink stuff in the supermarket that’s part of their diet. Chefs, cooks, and food designers can look further upstream in an attempt to understand it and help educate people, because as I said before, they set the food fashion.

How can you help avert famine?

Posted on April 13, 2011 by admin
“This book,” celebrated author Julian Cribb explains in the preface to his latest work, “is a wake-up call.”
No doubt about that. “The Coming Famine” details how the dynamics shaping food demand and production are combining to push the world toward an unprecedented level of hunger and starvation. Throw wars in there as a likely outcome, too, Cribb writes.
But there’s a big “if.” If the world doesn’t address the mounting shortages of water, land and agricultural know-how. If the agricultural mindset doesn’t change. If new, more responsible methods aren’t adopted.
What he doesn’t say in the book, but will likely stress at his key address at the International Foodservice Sustainability Symposium next month, is the “if” of big agriculture not responding to the pressures directed at them by foodservice chefs and their customers.
It’s not a matter of pleasing some well-heeled foodie who likes his asparagus harvested just that day. It’s a matter of sustaining the world’s food production capabilities.
Hear more about how restaurants can remedy the situation at the IFSS, a daylong brainstorming session on sustainability.