The topic of food economics and policy is a broad one with far-reaching implications, but especially important to consider during the growing season. A long list of helpful books and other resources is growing longer and beginning to develop a thoughtful following among those who believe that sustainable agricultural practices will require changing the way the world grows and consumes food.
The inspiration for this particular blog entry is Democracy Now’s interview with Paul Farmer, in which he expresses relief over former President Clinton’s policy of convincing Haiti to eliminate its rice tariffs and the resulting devastation to Haiti’s capacity to produce its own food. The interview is approximately 5 minutes and can be watched on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yx1PsYBo-kE
Hopefully this will spark discussion about other crop subsidy programs and their impact on world food supplies, for example, the implication of flooding Mexico with non-indigenous corn species, or using corn or other food crops for ethanol rather than using woody cellulose or aggressively exploring wind and solar energy power as an alternative to using food for vehicle fuels. Currently a great deal of ethanol is produced from Brazilian sugar cane….does any of it come at the expense of preserving rainforests?
Two books which have become more or less mainstream in addressing the sustainability of food cultivation systems are Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense Of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto. But additional titles are becoming available every day. An amazon search for one book will usually provide a number of other suggestions, and today I stumbled across Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit, and Stuffed And Starved: The Hidden Battle For The World Food System.
While some may never read these books, feeling that they raise at least as many questions as they answer, there are some common threads which run throughout every study of sustainable food systems Firstly, is becoming more and more apparent that a diet of primarily plants, with animal products added in as a smaller proportion of consumption, will need to become the norm. Secondly, encouraging developing economies to either sabotage or altogether skip the process of developing their own sustainable agricultural base, is a disaster waiting to happen.
My most recent trip to the Colorado Farm and Art Market in Colorado Springs reminded me of the importance, on every level, of creating diverse and secure food systems. For only $7 altogether, I was able to purchase giant bunches of locally produced spinach and basil, and a huge head each of lettuce and broccoli, from Venetucci Farms of Colorado Springs and Country Farms of Pueblo. While solving ALL of the world’s food supply challenges may seem out of reach for most of us, the point I wish to make is that by informing ourselves and taking such seemingly small, concrete actions at the local level, and then duplicating that wisdom in other environments where the world’s people are challenged with setbacks to growing their own food locally, we can bring about the changes that world leaders won’t have to apologize for later.
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