If what we have been saying for many years is true, namely that
industrial food production does not give nutritious, healthy
food, then it is normal that consumers eventually feel the lack
of nutrition and go for something better.
c0e433b1-b084-19a6-600b-d6531c9c1a2d@lobo.net"
type="cite">
Food Liberation: Why the Food Movement Is
Unstoppable
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/37564-food-liberation-why-the-food-movement-is-unstoppable
Over the long run of history, the most effective opponents of
excessive wealth and privilege have not normally been city
dwellers, workers or unions. Instead, they have usually been
those with close links to food and the land, what we would now
identify as the food movement.
Even today, in more than a few countries, food is the
organizing principle behind the main challengers of existing
power structures. In El Salvador, the national coordinator of
its Organic Agriculture Movement (MAOES) is Miguel Ramirez who
recently explained:
We say that every square meter of land that is worked with
agro-ecology is a liberated square meter. We see it as a
tool to transform farmers' social and economic conditions.
We see it as a tool of liberation from the unsustainable
capitalist agricultural model that oppresses farmers.
According to Ramirez, the Salvadoran
organic agriculture movement wants much more than improved
farming. It is seeking enhanced political rights, long-term
ecological sustainability, social equity and popular health.
Ramirez calls it "this titanic but beautiful struggle, to
reclaim the lives of all Salvadorans."
They may be small farmers, but they have a grand ambition.
This ambition is even shared worldwide. But how realistic is
it? Are they right to imagine food and farming are the missing
vehicle for transformative social change?
The question is timely. Not long ago, The New York Times
asserted that the center aisles of US supermarkets are being called "the morgue" because
sales of junk food are crashing; meanwhile, an international
consultant told Bloomberg magazine that "there's complete
paranoia" at major food companies where food movements are
being taken very seriously.
Food movements are rapidly growing across the world. In the
US alone, there have been surges of interest in heirloom
seeds, in craft beers, in traditional bread and baking, in city garden plots,
in organic food and in opposition to GMOs. Simultaneously,
there has been a massive growth of interest in food on social media and the initiation or
renewal of institutions, such as Slow Food USA and the Grange movement, to name just a few.
Even at the normally much quieter farming end of the food
value chain, agribusiness has had to resort to buying up "independent" academics and social media
supporters to boost the case for GMOs and pesticides.
All of a sudden, individuals all over the globe are
scrutinizing the products and processes of the food system.
The Direction of the Food Movement
The food movement has a unique philosophy. Unlike all other
systems of Western thought, its philosophy is based on a
biological understanding of the world. It seeks to replace
political and economic ideologies deeply embedded in our
culture with a biologically-inspired imperative which fulfills
the need to align human needs with the needs of ecosystems and
habitats. It is a philosophy which recognizes that our
planetary problems and our social problems are really the same
problem and seeks to transform our relationships with each
other and with the natural world accordingly.
For this reason, the food movement is unexpectedly radical.
Its philosophy exposes longstanding weaknesses in some of the
most fundamental ideas underpinning Western political
establishments. So, while neoliberalism and socialism are
ideological variants of enlightenment thought, the food
movement is concerned with erasing (at least so far as is
possible) all ideologies because all ideologies are,
at bottom, impediments to an accurate understanding of the
world.
This philosophy is apparent in five of its most notable
qualities:
1) The food movement is a leaderless movement
The food movement has no formal leaders. Even the most famous
members of the movement -- such as Frances Moore Lappé,
Vandana Shiva, Wendell Berry and Michael Pollan -- do not set
goals, give orders or decide on the movement's tactics. These
individuals are not power-brokers but rather sources of
inspiration. The food movement is a social movement that is
organic, anarchic and self-organized. It is a food
swarm, and the absence of formal leadership within it is not a
sign of weakness but of strength.
2) The food movement is a grassroots movement
The food movement is also unusually inclusive. It is composed
of the urban and the rural, the rich and the poor, of amateurs
and experts, of home cooks and celebrity chefs, farmers and
gardeners, parents and writers, the employed and the
unemployed. There is no upper limit to membership of the food
movement. It is not defined in opposition to anything -- it
would include the whole world if it could -- and so there is
no essential sense in which it is exclusive. Exclusivity is
often the Achilles heel of social movements, but though its
opponents have tried to label it as elitist, for good reasons,
they have not succeeded. Granted, Prince Charles is a very
enthusiastic member, but so too are hip hop artists from Oakland, the landless peasant movement of Brazil, the
instigators of the Mexican soda tax and the urban agriculture movements of Detroit,
Chicago and Cleveland. Such groups are neither elite nor
elitist. The food movement reaches across class lines. It is
indeed beyond grassroots.
3) The food movement is international
The food movement is international and multilingual. In each
locality it assumes different forms. The Campaign for Real
Ale, Via Campesina, the Zapatistas, Slow Food
and Europe's anti-GMO movement are very
different, but instead of competing or quarreling, there are
remarkable overlaps of purpose and vision between the parts.
This was on display at last winter's British Oxford Real Farming Conference where
food producers and good food advocates from all over the world
shared stages and perspectives and the effect was to
complement and inspire each other.
4) The food movement is low-budget
The fourth distinguishing characteristic of the food movement
is that it has little money behind it. Despite efforts by
corporations, such as the Walmart Foundation, to sway the
movement's direction through multimillion-dollar donations to the
Food Research and Action Center and Feeding America, on the
whole, the movement owes little to philanthropic foundations
or billionaire backers. Instead, it consists overwhelmingly of
amateurs, individuals and small groups and whatever money they
possess has followed, not led them. This is an indication that
the food movement is spontaneous, vigorous and internally
driven.
5) The food movement has many values
The food movement has multiple values and many component
parts. It integrates concerns about human health, animal
welfare, agricultural sustainability, ecological
sustainability, food justice, political empowerment and more.
The Philosophy and Synergy of the Food Movement
The food movement embodies a profound philosophical shift.
The narrative dominating international food policy,
especially post-1945, has been that food is a commodity (when it is not a weapon) and agriculture
is a business. This conceptualization of food is an
ideological extension of the current dominant Western
philosophy, which is atomistic and mechanistic, so that in the
formal and official worlds of business, government, the law
and education, phenomena are assumed to be unconnected until
proven otherwise.
This ideology allows the agriculture "industry" in the US to
be exempt from most anti-pollution legislation and for doctors
not to be educated in nutrition. This ideology also values the
health requirements and food needs of one species (humans) --
and usually just a few of those -- above that of all other
organisms.We are thus surrounded in everyday life by
institutions and practices whose founding rationale is the
ideology of disconnection.
In contrast, the food movement believes in something very
different: that the purpose of life is health and that the
optimal and most just way to attain human health is to
maximize the health of all organisms, with one of the most
effective ways to do that being through food.
This belief system is derived from practical experience. The
food movement has internalized certain observations, such as
the potential of compost to improve crop growth and soil
function, the human health benefits of a varied diet, and the
successes of numerous farming systems in the absence of
synthetic inputs. It also has noted apparent powerful
connections between health, agriculture, animal welfare and
the environment. These connections allow for the existence of
a virtuous circle in which the most ecologically healthy farms
generate foods that are the healthiest and the tastiest. These
farms are also the most productive. (For US examples, see here, and for an example from rice,
see here.)
Food philosophy thus replaces the neo-Darwinist narrative of
life-as-competition with the idea that life thrives in the
presence of other life. There is perfectly good evidence for
this -- we know, for example, that the tens of millions of
species on Earth are interdependent. Plants and algae excrete
oxygen, which all animals need. Animals eat plants and algae,
but excrete nitrogen and phosphorus, which all plants and
algae need.
Similarly, all biological organisms are, in fact,
self-optimizing and self-repairing systems. They therefore
tend to maximize their own robustness and health unless, as
unfortunately but commonly occurs, they are actively prevented
from doing so by a limited environment or a deficient diet.
The Origins of Food Philosophy
This food philosophy has three notable antecedents. One is
philosopher Peter Singer's famous anti-speciesism argument
from his book, Animal Liberation: that humans have a
duty of care towards all animals, with the crucial
difference being that the food movement extends Singer's
argument to all organisms, not just higher animals.
The second precedent is Gaia theory, which proposes that life
forms create and enhance their own living conditions. The main
difference being that food philosophy applies this thesis to
every scale, notably to soils and to landscapes.
The third precedent is Barry Commoner and his four laws of
ecology. His second and third laws are consistent with food
philosophy. However, Commoner's first law: "Everything is
connected to everything else" needs modification. The reason
is that all things are not connected equally -- most
connections occur through food. Commoner's fourth law, "There
is no such thing as a free lunch," is flatly contradicted by
the virtuous circle of the food movement. All ecological
systems generate synergies, and synergies between organisms
are essentially free lunches; that is why species diversity
and biological productivity on Earth have risen over the eons.
Food philosophy, therefore, represents a major split from
post-enlightenment philosophy in its vision of life and
biology. It doesn't ask, as Descartes did, What does
rational thought reveal about how we should live? It
asks: What does nature reveal about how we should live?
We might thus summarize food philosophy as follows:
(1) Biological interactions allow synergisms of individual
health and system productivity, which can be taken advantage
of in good farming.
(2) Biological interactions occur primarily through food,
which represents the chemical energy running through the
system.
Implications of Food Philosophy for the Food Movement
The attitudes of the food movement reflect this philosophy.
Since the philosophy is universal, constructive, inclusive,
flexible and nonviolent, so is the movement. For example,
whereas people outside of the food movement tend to see the
issues of human health, food quality, animal welfare and
ecological and agricultural sustainability as concerns to be
solved separately (if at all), those inside the food movement
are likely to see them as connected and therefore insoluble
except together.
Consequently, alliances between individuals and between
organizations can and do form around common goals, and the
food movement emerges as a synergy between issues formerly
identified as distinct, channeling a vast reservoir of
positive social energy in consistent directions.
Being guided by a food philosophy causes its members to use
whatever resources are at hand in the most appropriate manner.
They do not await orders. They develop arguments, write
letters, make calls, avoid products, share information and so
on, wherever they perceive the need or opportunity to be
greatest, just as the workers of an ant or bee colony do
whatever job appears in front of them without explicit
instructions. To the multinational corporations who are its
targets, movement activity may feel like a piranha feeding
frenzy. Blood is scented; arguments are sharpened; protests
register on social media; more attackers arrive; the target
howls; opportunistic journalists pile in (and maybe some
legislators too), until finally the target agrees to amend,
label or remove the offending product, ingredient or
publication. These are food swarms and they are what direct
democracy looks like. Similarly, a government can instruct
people that irradiated or GMO food is safe to eat. But it
cannot make them eat it.
Resistance based on food logic is always likely to beat
enlightenment logic when the subject is food because it is
both rational and relatively easy for the people to form their
own opinions and spend their money elsewhere. The food system
is perhaps the one domain where the people retain this power,
certainly more than they do in any other domain of public
life.
The successes of the food movement are now sufficiently
evident so that major parts of the old environmental movement,
plus the health and wellness movements, and even parts of the
labor movement have begun to reframe their activities as
coming from a food system perspective. Some have largely
migrated into the food movement altogether. For example, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers is much
better known to the public and has been more successful through its food
connections than through its union ones. To a
significant degree, once-separate social movements are
converging to become branches of the food movement.
In other words, food is a highly successful rallying point.
It serves well because food is not only a conceptual framing for much of human affairs that
is strongly distinct from the standard enlightenment framings
of economics and social Darwinism, but also because it acts as
a potent organizing principle for individuals to act around.
The frame used by the food movement precisely reflects the key
biological reality that a universal daily requirement of all
humanity is food. And the same is true for other species.
Thus, our good food also needs good food, and so on ad
(almost) infinitum. Anyone who adopts that devastating
logic has a huge advantage, not only in understanding how the
world really works, but also in acting on that information.
How Will the Food Movement Impact Society?
Ideas are the currency of power. Philosopher Peter Singer
wrote Animal Liberation in 1975. It
spawned the international animal rights movement and drove
society-wide debates on the human usage of animals for
research and in agriculture. Forty years later, the increasing
popularity of veganism shows his ideas are still gathering
momentum. Singer's achievement was to show that enlightenment
thinkers had attempted to rationalize -- rather than ditch --
the concept of human exceptionalism, which dated back at least
to the Bible's authorization of the dominion of "man" over the
Earth. At a stroke, Singer destroyed the arguments for
treating animals badly and provided a perfect example of how
enlightenment rationalizations have functioned to constrain
modern thought, and most particularly, the human potential to
do good.
Because they go far beyond our treatment of sentient animals
and extend to all organisms, the implications of food
philosophy are significantly more profound and far-reaching
than those of Peter Singer. Food philosophy is an intellectual
key to overthrowing mechanistic reductionist society. To the
many individuals who suspect that enlightenment thought is the
engine driving our societies over an ecological cliff, food
philosophy offers the conceptual way out, and just as the food
movement is feeding and growing as a consequence of its
philosophy, so also the expansion of the food movement will in
turn enable this philosophy to challenge existing political
systems.
In just this way, enlightenment thinkers laid the groundwork
for a meritocratic and commercial society to replace feudalism
and their ideas justified the necessary concepts that the
founders of the new society came to rely on: mechanization,
individualism and competition. Nowadays, their ideas are used
for preserving this order, even as the intellectual flaws of
that understanding are increasingly manifesting as ecological
crises, not least in the form of global climate change -- a
crisis that the food movement could play a critical role in
addressing.
Confronting Climate Change
The food movement did not come together to solve the issue of
climate change but many in the food movement believe they have
the tools to largely solve the problem. The reasons are
simple. First, perhaps as much as 50 percent of all greenhouse
gas emissions result from the activities of the industrial
food sector. Secondly, carbon can easily be removed from
the air and stored in soil and in the process create the type of soil actively desired
by organic and agroecological farmers. These farmers are still
developing their techniques for carbon sequestration, but
anecdotal evidence suggests that soil sequestration can
combine with food production to store many tons of carbon per
acre per year. Thus, as a recent report suggests, the food
system desired by the food movement can make our atmospheric
carbon problem manageable and perhaps solve it completely.
The leaders of the mainstream climate movement, however, seem
to believe climate solutions must be technical or social, but
windmills, solar power, electric cars, dams, divestment, and
infrastructure protests are largely symbolic actions. Unlike
reducing demand for energy by reforming and localizing the
food system or storing carbon in soil, they do not necessarily
reduce overall use of fossil fuels and do nothing to prevent
the loss of greenhouse gases from ecosystems. Worse, as
resource-inefficient ways of generating and storing energy,
technofix solutions have the effect of increasing other forms
of pollution.
Hopefully sooner, rather than later, the well-meaning but
misled climate movement will come to understand the error of
singling out individual forms of pollution, like carbon
dioxide or methane, and become the next social movement to
join the food liberation movement.
In any event, the food movement is going to continue to grow,
and its vision will force a social and intellectual
transformation of our society. The benefits of this
transformation will be immense.
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