Full-Circle: Group 1

SUMMeRIZING RECIPES for 2100

Group Members: Sai Vikas Amaraneni, Nic Bennett, Sudip Chakraborty, Karen Chen, Mayeesha Humaira, Helen-Nicole Kostis, Lisa Moren, Jessica O’Reilly

Climate Phenomenon

  • Ocean warming raises water temperatures, while ocean acidification happens as oceans absorb CO₂, making the water more acidic. Both harm marine life and disrupt ecosystems.
  • Warmer, drier weather reduces crop and grassland quality, leading to unstable harvests.
  • Surface ozone, formed from pollutants in heat and sunlight, damages plants, further lowering yields and threatening food security.
  • Extreme weather events like droughts, floods, and heatwaves disrupt food production, damage crops, and harm livestock, leading to sudden food shortages and economic losses.

 

 

Scientific Findings

Ocean Warming and Acidification
  • Decreased sustainable yields of some wild fish populations (high confidence) by 4.1% between 1930 and 2010.
    Affected farmed aquatic species (high confidence).
  • Harmful algal blooms and water-borne diseases threaten food security and the economy and livelihoods of many coastal communities (high confidence).
  • Ocean warming enhances bioaccumulation of contaminants (e.g., mercury) in seafood, impacting food webs and human health (medium confidence).
Warmer/Drier weather
  • Negatively affecting crop and grassland quality and harvest stability (high confidence).
    Warmer and drier conditions have increased tree mortality and forest disturbances in many temperate and boreal biomes (high confidence)
  • At low latitudes, temperatures have crossed upper tolerance thresholds, more frequently leading to heat stress and/or shifts in distribution and losses for crops, livestock, fisheries and aquaculture (high confidence).
  • Higher temperatures and humidity promote toxigenic fungi in crops, threatening food safety (very high confidence).
Surface Ozone
  • Crop yields are compromised by surface ozone (high confidence).
Extreme Weather Events
  • Increased frequency and intensity of droughts, floods, and heatwaves cause sudden food production losses and negatively affect grazing systems, livestock fertility, and recovery rates (medium to high confidence).

Source: Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Working Group II Contribution to the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report

 

Human Impacts

How climate change impact the food production and consumption in a specific region

Blue Crabs: Critical habitats, such as seagrass beds and salt marshes, are being lost due to sea-level rise, threatening the population of juvenile crabs.

Oysters: Ocean acidification caused by higher CO₂ levels weakens their ability to build shells, leading to population declines.

Striped Bass: Rising water temperatures disrupt their spawning and migration patterns, potentially reducing their population in the Chesapeake Bay.

Atlantic Surf Clams: Warming waters have caused their range to shift northward, reducing availability in traditional fishing areas.

Maize: Droughts and heat stress caused by rising temperatures threaten local yields.

Wheat: Wheat is grown on Maryland farms, and rising temperatures, combined with erratic precipitation, threaten yields.

Coffee and Chocolate (indirectly related to cost): While these are not Maryland-grown crops, the state relies on imports of coffee and cocoa. Climate change in producing regions like Ethiopia and West Africa affects the availability and price of these commodities in Maryland.

Strawberries: Increased temperatures and altered precipitation patterns can lead to higher incidences of diseases like gray mold (Botrytis cinerea). Climate-induced stress may also reduce fruit quality and yield.

Dairy Products: Due to rising temperatures, Maryland’s dairy industry is affected by heat stress on cattle. Heat stress can reduce milk production and affect animal health, leading to economic losses for dairy farmers.

Poultry: increased temperatures, can lead to heat stress in birds, affecting growth rates and mortality. Additionally, climate change may influence the prevalence of poultry diseases.

Human Contributors

Direct Contributors
  • Farmers

Causes:

      1. Methane (CH₄) emissions from livestock enteric fermentation. (Popp et al. 2017; Rogelj et al. 2018a)
      2. Use of inefficient fertilization techniques leading to nitrous oxide (N₂O) emissions. (Hasegawa et al. 2018)
      3. Rice paddy farming practices producing CH₄ due to waterlogged conditions. (Frank et al. 2017)
  • Foresters and Land Managers

Causes:

      1. Deforestation for agriculture and bioenergy production. (Popp et al. 2017; Obersteiner et al. 2016)
      2. Poor forest management practices leading to loss of carbon sinks. (Humpenöder et al. 2020)
Indirect Contributors
  • Policymakers and Regulators

Causes:

      1. Insufficient or poorly enforced laws on deforestation and land-use change lead to illegal logging and forest conversion for agriculture. (Camia et al. 2020)

      2. Subsidies for intensive farming practices encourage overuse of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, increasing nitrous oxide (N₂O) emissions and soil degradation. (Van Meijl et al. 2018). Biofuel subsidies in some regions drive large-scale land conversion to bioenergy crops, leading to deforestation and loss of carbon sinks. (Popp et al. 2017)

  • Consumers

Causes:

      1. Increased consumption of meat and dairy fuels the livestock industry, which is a significant source of methane (CH₄) emissions from enteric fermentation and manure management. (Bodirsky et al. 2020)

      2. Approximately 30% of all food produced globally is wasted, leading to unnecessary emissions from the production, transportation, and decomposition of food. (Roe et al. 2019) and High demand for imported and processed foods increases transportation emissions and reliance on monoculture farming, which depletes soil carbon. (Frank et al. 2018)

      3. Limited understanding of sustainable consumption leads to choices that indirectly contribute to deforestation, soil degradation, and higher emissions (e.g., choosing non-certified palm oil products). (Frank et al. 2021)

  • Financial Institutions

Causes:

      1. Investments in large-scale industrial agriculture prioritize profitability over sustainability, promoting practices like monoculture farming, deforestation, and overuse of agrochemicals. (Van Vuuren et al. 2019)

      2. Limited availability of financing options for sustainable farming and forestry practices hinders the transition to low-emission practices. (Frank et al. 2019)

 

Collaborative Agents
  • Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs)

Causes:

      1. Difficulty in reaching remote or underprivileged communities for awareness campaigns. (Popp et al. 2014)

      2. Challenges in lobbying for strong governmental action on deforestation and land degradation. (Obersteiner et al. 2016)

  • Private Sector Collaborators

Causes:

      1. The private sector, particularly in agriculture, forestry, and mining, often prioritizes profit maximization over sustainability. Practices such as clear-cutting forests for monoculture plantations, grazing, or mining lead to deforestation, soil degradation, and biodiversity loss. (Prudhomme et al. 2020; Roe et al. 2019)
      2. Many private sector entities have extensive supply chains reliant on fossil fuels for production, transport, and distribution, leading to significant greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. (Hasegawa et al. 2018)
      3. A lack of accessible financing options for adopting sustainable technologies or engaging in green business practices discourages companies from investing in mitigation measures. (Van Meijl et al. 2018)

 

 

Change Theory

A murmuration is a large group of starlings that fly in a synchronized, shape-shifting pattern. This is similar to flocking and swarming behavior in other animals. This behavior was developed as “boids” by Craig Reynolds in artificial life to simulate such flocking behavior. It’s based on the idea that starlings in particular have a diminishing sense of 6 organisms to their left and right and fly in coordination with their immediate group. This strategy is inherently cooperative and non-hierarchical. Summarizing Recipes is in part based on the idea that successful change requires an evolving social order that is malleable and in sync with its neighbors. Murmurrations also exemplify context-specific movement, including the movement of thought.

Our events will consider Aaron Deslatte’s presentation on change theory, including:

Priors: Attitudes and emotions that filter and influence our reception of information. A prior is our way to evaluate and deliberate new information and is a stronger influence than facts, or on-the-ground reason. This is why offering information outside of someone’s priors will most often offend and shut down dialogue and even cause people to firmly argue against rational information if it’s too far outside their values or priors.

Gateway beliefs: Models that influence emotional priors (as a gateway) to affecting beliefs. This is a more successful strategy when seeking to evolve long-term belief systems that change priors.

Giving people tools that support short-term belief systems will enforce their priors. This shared belief may offer a gateway opportunity for influence.

Minimize surprise: According to The Engine of Reason (Mercier/Sperber), a core principle to influence change is to minimize surprise and avoid triggering priors.

Other working strategies:

  • Translate data into models for change
  • The public needs to feel they can individually make a change.
  • Filter bubbles are difficult to penetrate

 

Communication Theory

Community Capitals Framework
  • The Community Capitals Framework (CCF) is a way to categorize a community’s assets and understand how they interact. It helps communities identify strengths and areas for improvement.
  • The seven capitals are (We will focus on the first four capitals with hopes of strategizing toward the fifth):
    • Natural: The environment, including air, water, soil, and wildlife
    • Cultural: Traditions, stories, ethnicity, spirituality, and heritage
    • Human: The people in the community
    • Social: The relationships between people in the community
    • Political: Access to power and the ability to influence decisions
    • Built: The physical infrastructure of the community, such as roads, utilities, and buildings
    • Financial: The resources available to invest in the community, such as grants, loans, and community foundations
  • This is a framework that can be used to identify areas that the community currently functions and what they might wish to change.
  • Overall, incorporates the concept of “spiraling-up,” which describes the process of reversing a downward spiral of community loss into an upward spiral of hope and positive change
Dialogic and Cultural Forms of Science Communication
  • Lay publics are positioned as active in handling and negotiating scientific information and any decisions they make regarding science and technology (Blue, 2019).
  • Relate to excellence theory models in public relations, which proposes that two-way symmetrical communication (not one-way) is the ideal form (Grunig & Hunt, 1984)
Acknowledging Power in Science Communication
  • Concepts such as “dialogue” although ubitious in our recommendations for science communication are also often more complex in practice than in theory (Horst, 2013)
  • Critiques of dialogic science communication say that it doesn’t take into account the power differences between scientists, scientific institutions, and their audiences
  • Therefore, we are also paying special attention to trying to think about how knowledge is co-produced.
Contact Theory
  • Positive interactions between members of different groups can reduce prejudice and improve attitudes towards one another
  • Also related to concepts of “bridging” from theories of Othering and Belonging: recognizing shared humanity even when disagreeing (Powell & Menendian, 2016)
Cultural Community Wealth
  • Recognizing that scientists are not telling the farmers what to do. Farmers have great knowledge of their land, crops, history, etc. The goal of this work is to co-create knowledge about the current and future state of food in the community to plan for the future.
  • Cultural Community Wealth is forms of cultural capital marginalized populations possess, even when that form of capital is not valued by the dominant culture
    • These forms include: aspirational, linguistic, familial, social, navigational, and resistance wealth.
References
  • Allport GW. 1954. The Nature of Prejudice. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
  • Blue, G. (2019). Science communication is culture: foregrounding ritual in the public communication of science. Science Communication, 41(2), 243-253.
  • Horst, M. (2013b). Learning from Discomfort: Science Communication Experiments between Diffusion, Dialogue and Emergence. In Knowledge and Power in Collaborative Research (pp. 30-50). Routledge.
  • Powell, J. A., & Menendian, S. (2016). The problem of othering: Towards inclusiveness and belonging. Othering & Belonging, 1(1), 14-40.
  • Yosso, T. J. (2005). Whose culture has capital? A critical race theory discussion of community cultural wealth. Race ethnicity and education, 8(1), 69-91.

 

Communication Asset or Action

SUMMERIZING RECIPES: Dinner Gatherings & Conversations
  • Based on scientific data (IPCC) Summerizing Recipes will organize meals based on available ingredients in 2100. Local ingredients will be considered, with an initial meal in Maryland’s eastern shore that will be a template for reproducing the project in other localities nationally.
  • Dinners (or meals) that bring together farmers, fisherman, and local stakeholders (?). Invited participants will gather around round tables and experience a meal of future. The meals will be influenced by history, traditions, local ingredients, and include alternate ingredients or even recipes to take into account how food harvest will change due to climate.
  • Recipes will be developed cooperatively between the Summarizing Recipe team and local cooks, chefs and families.
  • Intergenerational stories will be collected considering the history of food, farming and fishing amongst local families.
  • Stories and recipes will be collected as a blog or website and in eventually be published as cookbook.
Where
  • Site specific (examples: religious institutions, schools, town halls, farmers market, etc)
Who
  • Farmers (high/low yield)
  • Fishermen
  • Chefs
  • Native communities
  • Multi-generational farmers (FFA)
  • Traditional cooks (inter-generational family recipes)
  • Hippies
Recipes
  • Inspiration
    • Traditional recipes using local ingredients
  • Alternative/Future
    • Take into account scientific findings on how climate will impact food production by date 2100 and create alternative recipes by suggesting substitutes
Meal preparation
  • Work together with locals (families, cooks/chefs, bakers), understand the food culture and gather recipes
  • Consult with native/tribal communities
  • Strive for healthy and fresh local food (take into account food deserts)
  • Based on scientific findings, find alternative ingredients (vegetables, fish/shellfish, fruits) that can be harvested instead of current ones that can promote food security and support the economy
  • Prepare the recipes together with locals
The Dinner Event
  • Meal served and participants share stories shared about multi-generational recipes
Produced Assets
  • Collection of Assets
    • Documentation of stories and recipes from locals (family members, cooks, bakers, farmers, fishermen etc)
    • List of potential/future food
    • Ingredients
  • Dinner
    • Retelling stories to guests
  • Documentation
    • Website/blog/vlog
    • Cookbook with recipes, stories and climate findings

 

Evaluation

Goal

Start conversations around climate futures and food production to decide as a community what assets we have and what we’d like to change.

  • Pre and post
    • Community Asset Mapping
    • Emery, M., & Flora, C. (2020). Spiraling-up: Mapping community transformation with community capitals framework. In 50 Years of Community Development Vol I (pp. 163-179). Routledge.
  • Surveys
    • Main Goal- previous experience with having conversations about climate change
    • Climate identity
    • Climate anxiety
    • Climate hope
    • Contact Theory–attitudes towards
      • Scientists (for the farmers)
      • Farmers (for the scientists)
  • Interviews (individual)
    • Protocol would include:
      • Previous experiences with conversations about climate change
      • Previous experiences and attitudes with the “other” (scientist for farmer and farmer for scientist)
  • Participant observation of dinner itself
    • Spradley, J. P. (2016). Participant observation. Waveland Press.

 

References

The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) is a specialized agency of the United Nations, dedicated to eradicating poverty and hunger in developing countries. One IFAD project Recipes for Change by chef Sophie Grigson who travelled to Malawi to meet local small-scale farmers. Rural communities are fighting back against climate change by diversifying their crops with Chef Sophie Grigson collecting these recipes.

OSI Fellow and Baltimore artist Charlotte Kenniston developed Pigment Food for Thought, a grassroots food justice organization. Charlotte started by setting up tables to create pop-up grocery stores. She would put up signs that said, “Free, take all that you need,” and quickly met others in the community who also wanted more access to more healthful foods. Keniston started to hold community meals in strategic, abandoned places. She would set an elaborate table with a tablecloth, cloth napkins and real forks and plates. Pigtown Food for Thought will expand its healthy food mural projects, farmer stands with cooking demos and its food and nutrition curriculum.

X-Species-Dinner is a molecular gastronomy project by Natalie Jeremijenko, scientist and artist and founder of the Environmental Clinic at NYU. Jeremijenko has initiated a series of dinners in conjunction with her environmental work to address issues facing humans and other species and proposing cross-species solutions.

Collaborative Process