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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