much more on that story and everything that we have been covering ex especially our lead story there the situation in chad on our website you can see it there al jazeera dot com. and now a reminder of the top stories on al-jazeera chad's president the wrist a b. has died of injuries sustained leading soldiers on the front lines against rebel 3 forces they'd be had just won re-election for a 6th term a state funeral will be held on friday his son has taken charge named interim leader by a council of military officers the move is unlikely to please the opposition which has long seen the rule as oppressive with concerns about security growing a nationwide nighttime curfew has been imposed. ukraine's foreign minister has

warned of the will soon be more than 120000 russian troops on the x. soviet country's borders to me through labor has called for more western sanctions the top diplomat joseph oro called it the largest russian army deployment in the area ever. jurors are sitting for the 1st full day of deliberations in the trial of former minneapolis police officer derek show ven the jury is considering 3 weeks of testimony from 45 witnesses chauvinism queues of killing george floyd after kneeling on his neck for more than 9 minutes well the case is also being closely followed by president joe biden who called george floyd's brother on monday . polonius what's the president say to you what did you say to him and what was that like in general. who's this is calling. he know it is to lose

a family member he knows the process of what we've gone through so he would says let them know lynas know that he was praying for us and hoping that everything will come out to be ok this is basically thousands of migrant workers in india have left major cities ahead of lockdowns aimed at curbing a devastating surge in corona virus cases the capital is already in lockdown with mumbai set to follow later this week the country reported more than $700.00 deaths on tuesday the highest number of fatalities in a day since the pandemic began india's prime minister has called off a planned trip to portugal next month because of the cove 819 crisis. well those are the top stories i'm going to have the latest on all of them in half an hour is stay with us though coming up next year and al-jazeera it's the stream thanks for watching a season of ai. i

am for me ok welcome to the climate emergency series on the stream all of this week the episodes will look at some aspect of our climate crisis today we're going to be focusing on food and the connection with climate change with the help of mark bittman he's a journalist and also the author of animals which will junk a history of food from sustainable to suicidal market i say good to have you on the stream a welcome good to have you. you're so welcome octaves for the benefit of our international audience who may not have

read every single one of your books i was going to a little little bit of a scrawling here this is mark bittman just google books and you will see so many publications how to do this how to do that some it's a ration simple ways to cook and bread and so it goes on and on and on month but what is special about animal vegetable junk. well i did i've been writing about food for 40 years and a lot of that has been about cooking travel restaurants etc etc that's one side of it but have found through that period about 20 years ago i recognized that that food is life it is everything food is when more important than how you prepare it. agriculture is political through it is political and these things need to be talked about there hasn't been a lot of conversation given how important food is there isn't

a lot of conversation about the role that it plays in every aspect of society so i started to write about those things and and worked my way into a weekly food column about the policy and politics of and health aspects of and climate aspects of food and did that for the new york times for 5 years and then decided to write an animal's age that will john so i've been working on this for since 2016 about 5 years and yeah i think it's time there's not anything like this book. there aren't a lot of people out here talking about all aspects of food and it's climate is climate and food is a really important topic but so is food and health food and labor food and immigration food and water and so on so yeah there's a lot a lot going on here what we're going to give our viewers i know what seems harmless . direct. questions about food and climate challenge our kind of food system how

do we make it bazza you can do that if you're on you tube right while jumping to the comment section well part of to welcome to work a meeting a little bit off a little book i read it last. well i might just like random here is that. i think you have something for up to just the paper into the big. i will start the conversation well you know i like i will read a little bit but but let me let me just say this. we need food to live that's obvious but the most important aspect of food is soil and in order to produce good food for us for everyone from now until the race ends we need healthy soil so let me read a little bit about that agriculture is an eternal experiment performs annually or seasonally it's always being improved in the eyes of its practitioners or those who

govern them its key components are sun letter soil and labor sun we can take for granted water and soil however are precious and finite resources that must be manipulated and stewarded responsibly that work is the farmer's labor so let me say right there what we have what's involved in producing food that's most important is land. water sun labor and soil which is part of land so new we can take for granted it's one of the few things we can what are you either have or you don't and obviously wars are fought over water and and land. but labor and soil are the key things over which we have control and those are the things that are being ignored by industrial agriculture or being exploited i should say by industrial agriculture those are the things we need to fix if we want to

have a kind of agriculture that supports the land that cares about the health of the soil the cares about the health of humans the well being of humans. that's what's key here and that's what's missing like i want to introduce you to cat attempts kite apes as a director of nutrition she's read your book and just a question for him his loss and your fuck you to a really beautiful job of describing how our modern industrialized food system has really helped contribute to a lot of the health disparities that we see today so my question is how might cultural food traditions be used to be a part of the solution and butter problem my cultural food traditions play and helping to produce health of equities visit great question kelly thank you for that and. i want to make one statement that is at this is absolutely true and this

and this gets us into that conversation an interesting way. there is no culture that has abandoned its traditional diet that hasn't gotten sicker so another way of saying that is every single traditional diet no matter what it is every single traditional diet is healthier than the contemporary american diet which is spreading throughout the world the junk food diet the high in animal products diet so to the extent that we can preserve our our traditions our cullen arre traditions and to the extent we can appreciate each other's commentary traditions we're going to be eating better again it begins with farming farming is the key to all this because we can only eat what's out there for us to eat so you can see a mediterranean diet a traditional japanese diet

a traditional middle eastern thought you can eat those if the food that's in the market is american junk food so it really begins with supply but it's important to as kelly said to have these cultural changes to respect our cultural traditions and to eat the way that our ancestors ate to the extent that we do that we're going to have healthier diets. i don't know if factual junk is a history book it's a book about food and it's a book about us and how do we cut where we are in terms of how we trailed off into how we grow our food. samples that you cover at the very beginning of the book about societies that really well with agriculture they were so i have a i when they over thought it out and. it's. a simple a moral that will simply following right now tell us about one of our societies well i mean there are there are many and then you range from soon to rome and

mesopotamia i mean there are there are many examples but in each in each case there was this historian named that your members 1st name but loudermilk who talked about agricultural suicide and what he meant by that was societies that were successful they built canals they figured out how to irrigate their lands and yet they overextend that they demanded too much of the soil and when you demand too much of the soil it produces less so the paradox the story of historical paradox is that agriculture allowed and still allows populations to grow when populations grow we demand more of agriculture now with a stabilizing human population which which we know we have it's not expected to exceed 10000000000 and we are able to feed 10000000000 people given the right styles of agriculture with a stabilizing population we can tend to the soil we can use water appropriately we

can use other resources appropriately and we could have a kind of agriculture that produces healthy food for everybody that's also affordable for everybody this is obviously a great change a lot of work it's not going to happen overnight but we know what the 1st steps are in getting to that players more in like is. also michael some suggestions martha what do you think about paul small insults get rid of foster food get rid of fast food processing i want natural vegetables or not that's the way to fix our food system candid response to marie well i mean i'm with her but but you know we can people say what should we do and you can say get rid of fast food you could say get rid of monoculture you can say get rid of chemical fertilizer you can say get rid of imprisoning animals and what amount to concentration camps you can say those things but those are not the kinds of solutions that are going to happen imminently

those are great goals and we hope that within a generation we can get to all of them my question in animal vegetable junk my question in my life really right now is what can we do in the next couple of years that will show us the way to get to a place where saying things like let's get rid of fast food isn't taken as a joke because i will that i'm all in on that front let's do it but we don't have a czar of food who can say ok we're getting rid of fast food now it's not happening so what do we do to move towards that danielle has. i'm going to run it by will. and you know where you live in the world's climate change can be affecting what you eat in very different rates if you're one of the millions of people whose dietl actually consists of grains such as wheat or rice and you may

not be getting as many nutrients as you once used to other crops such as coffee how i become increasingly difficult to grow and so farmers are starting to switch to more stable crocs that can easily adapt to increasing temperatures and decreasing range. what that means for us less coffee and less chocolate in the future. as an individual some things that you can do is start to research where your food comes it's you know your farmers trying to support farmers that adopts climates like family techniques and treat meat as a laxity as opposed to a staple not that that's all great advice. i'd like to say this there's a lot of there's been a lot of talk and i bet you hear a lot of it this week that the impacts of climate change has on agriculture there's

much less talk about the impact agriculture has had and is having on climate change and one could argue that agriculture is the most important or certainly the 2nd most important contributor to greenhouse gases and climate change in the world today for example producing chemical fertilizers alone just that one thing counts for 2 percent of greenhouse gases the methane from industrial animal production accounts for nearly 10 percent of climate change these are big numbers and these are the result of the kind of industrial agriculture that's run rampant 1st in the united states next in europe and now all over the world what shuttles ols on. thank you for being part of the fall show what she does wants to know how can organic food be more expensive than regular food they seem to be less involved in its production why is it so expensive i want to get you started on

a ogata food right so i'm going to say oh got it and then take it away well. it's more expensive because it's not easier to grow it's more difficult to grow and it's less subsidized so it's what's easy to grow is a 1000 acres of corn with chemicals and soil that's nearly dead by a system that's been proven to work that's pretty easy and doesn't take a lot of technological know how a lot of experience even on the part of the farmer it's what they call spray and play pray you you plant the right seeds you apply the right chemicals you use the right pesticides and you have a you have a crop unfortunately it's not a crop that that that builds soil health and it's not a crop that that iggs in human health more organic food. would

mean planting crops that belong in the in the region in which they're growing better tended more carefully than are. grown without pesticides or without chemical pesticides that is more complicated but at the same time i want to say that we're janick as it were has lost much of its meaning and that we're gannett junk food is still junk food we're gannett shampoos is not particularly helping the planet what we need in the world that we use now to talk about better farming is agro ecology which is a combination of the words agriculture and ecology honestly and that means farming in tuned in harmony with nature farming in a way that appreciates what the earth is giving us and gives what we need to give back to the earth i know this sounds a little we'll but it's actually the wave of the future when we put on our

website there are a couple of questions that will also have a look here my laptop per child thing i've done a lot of the planet's climate is agriculture pulling up 2 giant questions i'm quite general but mean a precise who has a question for the gets a whole lot more specific let's have a look. my question for mr bittman is how do we get people to mobilize around this issue we're worn out we're trying to get food on the table and this is going to require big structural change and while calls to eat more sustainably or vote with our forks are well intentioned they're divorced from most people's realities. i mean. this i didn't catch his woman's name which is brilliant yes this is this is the problem it's not a simple your 1st question was can changing our diet why the planet sure but most people are not able to change their diet let's look i've been i've been harping on

this a little bit i'm going to say it again we can only eat the food that's out there so what we grow determines to some extent what we eat what we grow and what we process and what we market and what we sell is what we eat so it's 50 or 60 percent and that's that's the range of 50 or 60 percent of the calories produced are in the form of junk food and junk food is bad for us it's hard for us to change our diets so how do we engage people the question this is really not a food question this is a this is a political question because we have many issues facing us as citizens as voters as activists they include climate change income inequality racism gender discrimination immigration issues labor issues all over the place and so on food is one of these food happens to be something that's high's all of those issues together but it's not just a question of changing our diets it's

a question of changing our society and we have to do that on all of those fronts including food so the other question was how. a public health profession if this question is for roll i just like all the fans and i don't have to be a vote on but also should know how to think i'll cook likewise before i go to. rest the polls. he can recipe for vegan virgins what it may look i think there is 3 recipes that are the most important recipes in the world and then is our rice and beans by which i mean lay goons and whole grains and that's probably the world's most important recipe because legumes are the world's most important protein source and honey grains are the world's most important source of calories so rice and beans is my 1st choice a chopped salad that is take whatever you have job and dress it nicely that's

a good choice too. i'm not sure that's convincing someone who would really like a steak but. i'm happy here you can have you can have the diet that you have now and you can get yourself into illness and you can eat the planet into destruction or we can create diets that work for everyone and that work for the planet is no that was a bunk from an author imo friendship ok all right let's talk reaction to the boat carrie is one from jennifer erickson when i read mark bed men's animal vegetable jog i was compelled by the way he considers justice from an agricultural point of view what's more important than feeding children while teaching them what real food means he writes the sooner we begin to raise children who recognize that coke and snickers don't bring happiness and the sooner we teach children how and by whom food is produced the sooner will stop producing

generations of adults who struggle with diet our school district motto is always learning always growing and then spoke inspired me to reach out to our principal and ask to extend our votto to growing food growing community changes planted one see it at a time maybe our courtyard could be that scene. i mean that's awesome there's no question there but but let me reiterate something which is until we raise children who understand what good food is and know where it comes from we're going to be cultivating generation after generation as unhealthy adults so if we want healthy 40 year olds we have to teach healthy 4 year olds that's really. good questions have on each of them and just go back to its food waste. for sustainable future how much does and it'll cost a refund for food waste impact the planet so that concept about food for us how

much of our food to read just for a while well the last estimate is a 3rd to even even more and that is a lot but. you know i like to take iconic lastic positions and i will not i would not at all downplay the seriousness or importance of food waste but i'd also like to point out. that what we plant determines what we eat as as i said before and if we are planting some of the best agricultural land in the world this is not just in the united states but in brazil and china and france and other parts of europe some of the best agricultural land who world is planted in corn and soybeans that are destined to produce junk food i would consider that a waste of land we could be growing food to feed people on that land and we're not doing that because of your long history of writing about for understandable

idolizing for people who look to you for advice and suggestions and for some little step. with a new offer it's. for people who want to know how do we make our food system better how do we tackle climate challenge a climate crisis knowing that a food systems a contrapuntal to read and such are several achievable goals people can find on twitter but what is what you share with us right now here on the street look i think the most important things we can do right now and again this goes back to something we talked about about 10 minutes ago yes we can say let's abolish junk food or we can say universal healthy free breakfast for all children great weeks we should be doing those things and working towards those things but some things that we can do like right now are get antibiotics out of the food supply 4 fifths 80 percent of the end of next used in the united states and elsewhere where there's

industrial animal production good animals not humans that's predicting bacterial resistance it's breeding resistance to antibiotics it's breeding human disease that's one the 2nd is to enforce existing laws and create new regulations around pesticides pesticides are well known carcinogens they are engineer to cause death so let's try. either do without them reduce their use or produce safe pesticides we haven't done that the 3rd would be enforce existing regulations and to create new regulations around the industrial production of animals we've discussed that this is an ethical issue a moral issue obviously it's a health issue and it is a health and safety issue for people who work in those in those factories and for people who live nearby those factors where there are higher rates of higher rates of cancer a couple of other things are reduced the marketing of junk food to children this goes into what we were just talking about

a couple minutes ago educating our young people and getting land into the hands of people who've been excluded from land giveaways around the world people who want to farm well who want to produce food that's healthy for the rest of us to eat but who have been shut out by racism colonialism legal colonialism land grabs and so on just profile a lot because we're just at the very end of the shot i'm just curious about covert marlton of. how was thought to the well look awful systems. i think 2 things that cover the 1900 made really clear one is that local food systems work better than international food systems and millions of people have become aware of the value of their regional food system as a result of a coven $1000.00 farmers markets are crowded c s a's are selling out local farmers are doing are doing very well we need more of that obviously it's still a very small percentage of our food supply but it's

a percentage that is both more climate resilient and more pandemic resilience and the other thing is that we know that people who have less good diets less healthy diets are more susceptible to so the complications of coffee healthier people people who eat better do better when they get caught people who we do worse when they get well when john ross has also the author of our animal fat sports history a food from sistan up or to sore a side oh well i'll kill so much for joining us well randi appreciate the time. and this wraps up the haste episode to all of the strains covering climate now and you can also find more stories at covering climate that's watching everybody see you next time.

you see you a family man. politicized by the forces of nature. film no before year ends a kenyan farmer documents his struggle for his community survival and builds a template for global action on climate change. he's seen the climate

diaries a witness documentary on al-jazeera. talked to al-jazeera. you told me what the government you represent is now illegitimate and we listen we do not sell the fence material any country during the conflict in yemen we meet with global news makers until about the stories that matter on syria. planet earth a wondrous diverse ecosystem but human activities that escalate. in climate change and posing an existential threat you don't go to research but it's to try to scare in the lead up to us to al-jazeera ground special coverage documentaries discussions and to coop's exploring the consequences of our actions and inactions very hard. a part of the all civilization. and showcasing ways in which some are seeking to turn the time they're straight ahead there are 3

individuals in very rare to see them really exciting the season of programming exploring the climate crisis ahead of the earth day on al-jazeera. the. the minneapolis jury reaches a verdict in the trial of derek chauvin the former police officer accused of killing george floyd. hello i'm barbara starr this is al jazeera live from london also coming up a military council is in charge and a curfew in place in chad after the president the very state be dies in fighting just the day after he was reelected.