Towards
a Just & Sustainable Food System:
Re-connecting People & Causes
Kathy Lawrence, Just
Food
For
me, as a budding food-systems activist, the 1992 UN
Conference on Environment and Development held a
simple and powerful truth: environmental, economic
and social justice problems are inextricably linked
- as are their solutions. As I and many others have
worked to put that truth into practice around
food-system issues, the linkage that we have
consistently found most difficult is that between
sustainable agriculture and anti-hunger work.
We find that people and groups who should be natural
allies have tended rather to see themselves in
separate camps: one looks at the dramatic decline in
numbers of farms and farmers, the rapid
monopolization of our capacity to produce, process
and distribute food, and its attendant environmental
and economic destruction; the other focuses on the
shocking increase in hunger and demand for emergency
food, the severe cuts in government aid at all
levels, and the tremendous social and personal
devastation wrought by poverty and indifference. For
decades these groups have used different tools of
analysis and different language to describe their
problems; their solutions and successes have been
defined in very different ways.
Yet
despite these apparent conflicts, the food access,
farming sector and ecological crises we face in the
United States and throughout the world share a root
cause: a global political and economic system that
drives inequity, exploitation, overproduction, waste
and poverty. And those of us dedicated to
eradicating these ills also share a common
cause.
We share a desire for justice and
healthy communities living in harmony with each
other and with nature. We share a vision of a
society where everyone is well-fed, where all have
access to fulfilling livelihoods, and where our
living and working environments are clean and
safe. Perhaps most fundamentally, we share the
need to eat and a dependence on the processes of
sun, soil, air, water, and human ingenuity that
produce the food we need to survive.
We
also agree on many basic issues. I think we
all agree there is currently plenty of food and
production capacity for everyone to eat quite well.
What hunger and malnutrition in the U.S. reflect is
a lack of jobs and safety nets that provide people
with the money or public benefits to buy the food
they need.
And many, though not all, agree
that we continue to lose farms not because farmers
are poor managers who deserve to go under, but
rather as a direct result of decades-long policies
centered on "cheap food" and the
government and industry push (through programs,
subsidies and subsidized market clout) for farms to
"get big or get out". We certainly
agree that we would all be better off if we had more
jobs that provide meaningful work, living wages and
a multiplier effect that circulates dollars in local
economies to create and sustain even more jobs.
Still,
recognizing this vast common ground is easier than
finding practical ways of working together today,
tomorrow and next month. [For too long we have used
divisive language and identified ourselves not by
our goals but by our approaches: cheap food vs. fair
prices, productivity (or basic needs) vs.
environmental protection, urban vs. rural, global
vs. local, charity vs. self-reliance. To get
past these false dichotomies, I believe we must go
back to our common goals.]
We must [also]
begin to ask ourselves the right kinds of
questions. Instead of asking, "How can we
make food as cheap as possible so poorer people can
afford it?" or "How can we get consumers
to pay more for the food they buy?", we can
help each other frame a different set of questions.
"What kind of food system do we want to create
and invest in?", "How can we promote the
production of high quality food and the
ability of all people to either grow, buy or barter
for it?", "How can we ensure that farmers
and others working throughout the food system make
wages adequate to live, work and retire with dignity
and respect." "How can we create
more high quality local food-system jobs?"
["How can we ensure that productive land is
preserved and that new farmers will want to farm it
sustainably for generations to come?".]
Throughout
the country, diverse groups have asked these
questions and begun to re-connect the severed links
in our economic, social and environmental webs in
small ways: a community garden grows fresh organic
vegetables for a nearby soup kitchen; a food bank
secures land and hires a farmer to produce food for
their programs; a community-supported
agriculture (CSA) group creates a guaranteed market
for a farmer and access to quality food for
low-income members; a welfare-to-work training
program links with farmers, chefs and local food
businesses to create jobs.
In relation to the
huge food-system problems we face, the number of
people involved and volume of food produced through
such ventures is small. But the overall impact
is large and will continue to grow, because these
are empowering steps toward re-defining our
problems, our solutions and what is possible.
The
next challenge is how to "scale-up"; how
to involve many more people, farms and institutions
to create a mainstream food system that
really works. Unless we want to re-build the
entire food system from scratch, our first step
should be to identify resources, programs and
policies that can be re-oriented for far greater
effect.
For
example, the documented successes of the Market
Nutrition Program, which joins the interests of
local farmers and low-income communities, should be
adapted and applied to other programs. Many
government and private agencies would be much more
efficient and effective if their nutrition and food
access goals were linked to farm, environmental,
economic development objectives.
Imagine the
dramatic impact on diets, health, local
economies and employment if all government agencies
procured as locally as possible; if all school
breakfast and lunch and other meals programs
purchased fresh, flavorful foods from regional
farmers; if regional farm groups coordinated
gleaning efforts to eliminate the waste of
nutritious food and emergency food providers
directed their food purchases to regional farmers.
While
there is tremendous gain in re-directing existing
current polices and purchasing decisions, some
systems will need to be rebuilt.
Agribusiness consolidation has resulted in a
"dumbbell effect" - with many small and
medium-sized struggling farms on one end, many
ill-served individual consumers on the other end,
and a tiny number of huge and growing food
conglomerates in the middle making their profit by
squeezing whatever they can out of both "ends"
and
pitting one against the other.
"Consumers" need food and jobs and
farmers produce food and jobs, but these
natural allies can't bypass the middle and come
together until we re-establish regional food
processing and distribution systems. This
would be the multiplier effect in action: farmers'
need for markets, distribution channels, labor and
paying customers translated into enhanced employment
and food access through local trucking, processing,
marketing and distribution networks.
The
potential to create jobs around localized food
systems should not be underestimated. A shift
back to smaller-scale, regionally-focused food
processing in the Northeast region, for example,
could improve farmers' bottom line, ensure greater
access year-round to regionally-produced foods and
begin to bring back the more than 4 million food
processing jobs that we've lost in this region since
1954.
While
re-assembling the scattered pieces of our food
system, we also share the simple joys and healing
power of food. From a child's delight in
watching a seed grow into a fruitful plant to the
satisfaction of sharing a sumptuous harvest feast
with friends and neighbors, we are creating
powerful, positive ways to reconnect with each other
and the earth.
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