Before you begin reading my delightful blog, be sure to watch this awesome Recyclemania video (two soda cans wondering about the afterlife)
And now for this week's sustainability news. A group of hardy Bard students, including yours truly, piled into the van last Saturday and drove to a Global Food Crisis Conference organized by SUNY students. My own personal breakfast food crisis was averted at the registration table, by BATHTUB-SIZED BASKETS of the most delicious muffins the world has ever seen. Reeking of cinnamon and dribbling crumbs, I plopped into my auditorium seat, not sure quite what to expect.
The keynote speaker came on stage. His name was Eric Holt-Gimenez, and he spoke with great passion and statistical accuracy about the evils wreaked by the Industrial Agri-Foods Complex. In 2008, food riots shook the world. These riots occurred not only in places you'd expect (Haiti and Nigeria) but also in Milwaukee and Italy. The media blamed climate change and financial speculation. But when you look at the numbers, 2008 was actually a year of record crops. Why were there no grain reserves? Why did the USA, one of the planet's richest countries, experience an increase from 36 to 50 million food-insecure citizens? Why can't we just feed the hungry?
It turns out 2008 was not only a year of record hunger, but also a year of record profits for the industrial agri-foods complex. Monopolies control prices and prevent the formation of grain reserves to ensure there is always plenty of demand. First world countries pump billions of dollars of subsidies into our industrial farms, which pollute the watershed, destroy the topsoil, and dangerously diminish biodiversity. Since we focus on growing only a few crops, our world food system could get a big hole knocked in it by a single unlucky disease (a la Irish Potato Famine.)
The subsidies make the products of industrialized farming so cheap it's hard for sustainable farmers to compete. When we ship our food to developing countries and sell it (usually at below the cost of production, so much for the free market) the native farmers cannot compete and go right out of business. We have essentially colonized their markets by flooding them with our artificially low-priced goods. In a very short period of time, developing countries have gone from a net food export of one billion to a net food import of eleven billion; there's twelve billion dollars worth of dependency for you. For this reason, "Food Sovereignty" has become a rallying cry for poor countries loosing their political autonomy due to reliance on foreign food.
Meanwhile, the focus of our farming system on a few cash crops means Americans are eating increasingly more unhealthy diets. Fresh fruits and vegetables suffer at the expense of endless calorie-rich, nutrient-poor, corn-syrup based products and processed foods. The resulting obesity, of course, causes enormous drag on our health care system.
Food issues, despite drastic environmental and health implications, remain low on the priority list of the world's leaders. Most of the world's leaders did not grace the UN World Food Summit with their presence. In fact, the sole significant result of the Summit was to drop the Millennium Development Goal to end hunger by 2025, (the goal was deemed too ambitious.)
After the talk, the speaker offered copies of his book, Food Rebellions! Crisis and the Hunger for Justice, for the signing. I asked him, “What first got you interested in these issues?” He looked at me, a handsome face, iron-grey hair, pouches drooping under tired eyes.
“I worked with farmers in Latin America on sustainable agriculture systems,” he explained. (He was originally trained as an agronomist.) “I was working in Central America when a terrible hurricane destroyed their agriculture systems. The sustainable farmers went to the government and said, 'Since we have to rebuild anyway, why not rebuild our way?' They had scientific evidence that the sustainable way was working better. But they were completely ignored. It was then that I realized that being right isn't enough. You can't just figure out the right way to do things; you have to start a political movement to convince people of what you've discovered. And that's what I'm working on now.”
After the keynote speech, we heard from a farmer-activist who moved from what he called “New York Shitty,” to live with the land and grow organic apples. “Never take no for an answer,” he urged us energetically. “Don't listen to the negative thinkers who tell you its impossible. Where there's a will there's a way. They wouldn't let me join the farmer's market. What did I do? I organized my OWN farmer's market, and people were forming lines!” A New York city student told us about extending Community Supported Agriculture to low-income families in the Bronx. Best of all was the delightful gentleman who told us about the sustainable mill and bakery he ran with a cooperative of local grain farmers-- croissants from fresh and delicious Hudson Valley Wheat!
After attending workshops in the afternoon (all topics from permaculture to kombucha tea) we returned to Bard excited about all we'd learned. Freshman year, I used to volunteer for the Community Garden. I remember how muddy and exhausted I was after turning over the vegetable beds looking for bindweed. I loved the garden and I loved the idea of growing my own food. But I didn't understand why, in the grand scheme of things, little projects like our Bard Community Garden are so important. Now I understand why. Not to be melodramatic or anything, but it's an act of defiance and hope, against the global systems of agriculture who have us enfolded in their chains.
