by Jason Bradford
For something as critical as food, it is common sense that society
should design for resilience. Reliability in food production in the face
of change requires a system capable of rapid evolution. Resilience is
therefore a core principle of sustainability. Unfortunately, our daily
bread relies on a food system that is not resilient. As I have explained
before, this state of affairs is an outcome of government policies,
financial pressures, cheap fossil fuels, and market forces in play over
the past several decades. The result is a food system dominated by
relatively few large actors, which creates conditions of rigidity and
brittleness.