Food
“The health of soil, plant, animal and man is one and indivisible.”
- Albert Howard
Across the countries and cultures of our planet, one thing we all share is the need for food, a simple truth that intrinsically links our own livelihoods to our living environment on a global scale. But the processes behind our global food system have a severe negative impact upon both individual wellbeing and community resilience, as well as for the natural world. The need to find sustainable solutions that can provide for an ever-growing population is dire.
The answer is not, however, more production (which equals greater destruction, ultimately, rather than expansiveness, as claimed)— 50% of habitable land around the world is already used to produce food— but implementing smarter approaches that establish food security long-term (in wealthy and poorer nations alike, addressing this imbalance).
The need to find sustainable solutions that can provide for an ever-growing population is dire.
No More Hunger
Out of place as it may seem in the apparent abundance of the 21st Century, world hunger remains a reality, due largely to a spike in food prices. How did food insecurity become such a widespread issue? Well, because it’s integral to the dominant means of production, of course.
A key driver of world hunger is our neo-colonial system of extraction and exploitation. For centuries now, a wealthy few countries’ elite have owned the bulk of tillable land (and all the food yielded), fixing the price to suit their interests, while shirking the blame for shortages. Of the planet’s 862 million ‘chronically hungry’, 75% live rurally and rely on agriculture to provide their earnings. Huge areas of land in poorer countries are owned by Western companies rather than the local people who work it, whose rents are unfeasibly high as a result.
Historically, drought and other ‘natural’ disasters have been accused of causing famines, however local communities have always been braced for such events. Extreme weather conditions may overtly trigger famines, but the full devastation is a result of autonomy stripped and resiliency robbed over time, which make it even harder for people to feed themselves.
To amend our worldwide hunger crisis, we need to radically change the current food system, not just expand it as multinational companies would have us believe - this would only exacerbate conditions.
The hidden reality is that most of our food is already produced by small-scale, high-yield farm practices that are also ecologically-minded; while a great deal of the food produced is being lost in transit, during processing, and after it reaches us (through at-home waste). The powers-that-be promise to resolve the problem through providing genetically modified crops... so just another version of the same problematic system, basically… Thanks?
There is already enough food available on the planet to feed the world on a vegetarian diet. What we lack is enough animal feed (cereals used to fuel expanding the meat industry) to continue as we are – i.e. destructively. More food is not the answer to chronic global hunger; greater efficiency is, alongside sensitivity to the needs of nature.
Increasing local land sovereignty and agricultural efficiency in poor and developing countries is essential to achieving a sustainable future for all. This would lower prices and raise income levels for smallholders, thus benefitting the poorest people the most, as they spend the greater share of their income on food.
Disconnect From Food
One problem inherent to food supply chains is the disconnect between consumers and production, or specifically between the land and local communities - which today suffer a profoundly fractured relationship, if any at all.
This ‘convenience’ has inconvenient effects. We buy imported strawberries in plastic punnets in the dead of Winter, or meat from the other side of the globe (often going back and forth to various locations to ensure the cheapest processing labour - and most carbon emissions, by proxy) and that is the considered norm.
And sure, if all goes smoothly, this model ‘works’, or rather it functions to the limit of its efficiency (i.e. not very, as fostering extreme interdependence and environmental breakdown aren’t classic hallmarks of success) and only in the short-term. But COVID-19 brought home in the West what has been patent among developing nations for decades: the natural world doesn’t operate according to our plan. As it stands, our food security is tenuous at best.
Living in a wealthy country is no safeguard against this fragility either (although it’s those in the Southern Hemisphere facing the worst effects so far), made stark in the UK by the coincidence of Brexit with the pandemic in 2020. Britain relies upon a long-held import tradition that has over time eroded socio-economic equality and caused ill-health to farmers, consumers, animals, and the environment alike. This is the inevitable outcome of a system that prizes private profit over people and planet. Whilst there will likely always be some essential food trade travelling across the lands, a localised food system would actively combat unfair prices, minimise losses, and strengthen nearby communities. Reclaiming our self-sufficiency lies in reviving these lost connections.
Malnutrition
The impact of the current food system is increasingly visible; the consequences to public health significant, with mass malnutrition hitting societies everywhere. For the first time in history, the number of overweight people rivals the world’s underweight population (each near 1.1 billion).
The world number of diet-induced diabetics now exceeds the total US population; while in the UK, nearly a quarter of adults are obese, leading to a marked rise in related diseases. This is in no small part the product of an attempted resolution to hunger under the Britain’s neoliberal conservative policies.
The low-cost food economy was designed to support the nation’s lower-income households, but in fact only makes them ill (further stretching the system). Women especially, are affected. Food banks, instituted for emergencies, are now buckling under the growing demand.
There are limits to our ability to provide for those in need within the ever-expanding agri-business framework. The sad fact is that ecologically-minded and locally produced food isn’t available to a large number of people. Some parts of the world are termed “food deserts’, in which it is nearly impossible to access fresh healthy food.
The cost of consumption within these confines becomes more evident as once developing nations increase wealth and thus the demand for meat. China leads this so-called “livestock revolution”, which saw their own overweight population jump from nine to fifteen percent from 1989 to 1992. This growth is mirrored by a concurrent jump in world hunger: as of 2020 there were around 60 million more undernourished people than in 2014 (funny, because the current model is only growing too…).
So, to break down the insanity: countries with starving citizens are exporting grain grown on their land to feed Western livestock, bred for slaughter. Quality, nutritious food is diverted far away from poorer communities to produce meat for those abroad, who are gripped by overconsumption. What’s more, the destructive factory farm industry is now spreading to the developing world, along with its associated health problems.
Our food system is fundamentally broken. Millions go hungry while we waste almost half of food produced, while diet-related illness is an epidemic in the West.
